Writings, Thoughts & Misc

Leslie J. Wyatt

“Live for what is recorded in heaven. Care nothing for what is recorded on earth.”

It’ll be Great

Leslie J. Wyatt

“Come on, Phyllis. It’ll be great.”

Had she known what was to come through the years, that phrase might have struck terror in my faithful younger sister’s heart. But somehow she liked being with me, in spite of where it landed her at times. And besides, she didn’t have much choice, as I usually didn’t take no for an answer.

I was six, she was four. Dragging our baby dolls everywhere we went took up a major part of our life. But one day being mothers of plain dolls wasn’t good enough. We had a new baby sister and compared to her, our heretofore perfectly satisfactory “children” became much too tame. They needed to be able to drink from a real baby bottle. Mine did anyway. So I dragged my doll (known as “Miss Peep”) and my sister out behind the propane tank. Miss Peep lay motionless while I operated to cut her lips open.

Hey, hey, it worked! Borrowing a bottle from our baby sister, we squeezed the doll’s cheeks to open her newly made mouth, and voila! As we continued to squeeze and release her cheeks, she guzzled four ounces in nothing flat. We didn’t know where the water went, but it was fun watching it go down. Like a real baby.

A few days and several bottles later, we realized we had a problem. Her plastic body was filled with stuffing (no doubt to give her a lifelike weight). Now she not only weighed more—a lot more—she was taking on a decidedly rank odor—and it wasn’t her diaper.

“Come on, Phy. I’ll fix it.” Back behind the propane tank once more, Phyllis kept a lookout for passersby while I performed a second operation. The newly cut hole in Miss Peep’s southern end immediately began to gush forth soured milky water and stuffing. I was thrilled. Now Miss Peep was even more lifelike—drinking and wetting! Not completely convinced this was a good plan, but loyal to the end, Phyllis dug a hole and buried the stuffing as I pulled it out.

That was typical. I proposed, she mopped up after us, somehow managing to salvage most fiascos in such a comradely, sincere way, that I seldom realized the full implications of some of my schemes.

No problem slowed us for long. I chose to ignore the “grin” that spread over my favorite doll’s face. How was I to know that the mouth I’d cut would slowly tear wider and wider until she had a smile that could truly be called “ear to ear.”

But we moved on to other things. Like making hair tonic from fermented wild flowers and using it. (It turned Phyllis’ usually fine, brown hair to a weird, stringy gray, which fortunately faded as it dried). Or concocting pudding from dirt ground as fine as powder, mixed with questionable water and considerable care.

“Come on, Phyllis. We both have to taste it,” I insisted. Her blue eyes held decided doubt, but she none-the-less swallowed her dutiful spoonful.

We learned Pig-latin and talked it so fast we had certain people convinced that we knew a real foreign language. We conspired on the best methods to get sick in order not to have to go to school. Bare feet on icy windows and fake coughing proved minimally effective. Then I got a stellar idea. We’d save the pork chop bones we’d gnawed and spit on during our last sickness, and when we regained health and vigor, we would chew on them and re-infect ourselves.

“Come on, Phyllis. You said you’d do it…”

Boy, did those bones ever taste old and dusty. Didn’t work either.

Those were the early days—seven, eight, nine-years-old. Outside of trailing around in a forty-acre woods gathering pinon nuts and coming upon an Indian family doing the same, our exploits were small and close to home.

But we grew, and soon Phyllis was riding behind me on our Dad’s little Honda 90 motorcycle—auspiciously used for irrigating, but in off hours the uncomplaining machine doubled as a way for teenagers to cool off and have a change of scene.

At top speed (must have been all of thirty miles an hour) we blew down gravel back roads, leaving clouds of dust behind us, half hoping people would see us and marvel at our freedom, totally embarrassed if someone did. We laughed, we sang, and whiled away many a summer afternoon in this fashion. (I never stopped to think until now that somehow I was always the driver. Not that Phyllis couldn’t drive. I just probably never gave her the option).

Then there was the day we came upon a long, deep puddle on a deserted stretch of road. “Come on Phy. This will be great.”

It was. We’d get a run at it, and when those hard-working little tires hit the muddy water, they’d send out twin geysers, we’d feel the cooling splash on our bare legs, and come out the other side just as the engine started to lug down.

I don’t remember how many passes we took through that puddle before the engine stalled right in the middle and we tipped over on Phyllis’ leg. I do remember the long limping walk home, pushing the suddenly heavy motorcycle between us and alternating between hysterical laughter and a nagging worry that we’d somehow incapacitated our dad’s irrigating transportation.

We graduated, put in some time at separate colleges, then an opportunity arose to room together at a different school. “Come on, Phy. It will be so fun.”

We went, and my homesickness was so intense that if it had not been for my sister, I doubt I would have survived. But with Phyllis there, it was like old times. We tended to get de-merits for messy room and for keeping others awake with our laughter, but we were together again and it is the one bright memory from that season of my life.

And then came the landmark day when I walked down the wedding aisle. Phyllis was there front row, cheering me on. Somehow it was always this way—me surrounded by activity, caught up in the sweep of the moment—and her in her sincere, supportive way, somehow enabling me and making the impossible seem within reach.

She rarely did something wild and crazy against my instructions, but that day in June was one time she didn’t listen to her big sister. The scene stands out to me like a shaft of sunlight streaming through a cloud.

“Come on, Phy. No messing with the truck, all right?”

I had thought I didn’t want the attention and the hullabaloo. That’s why Dave hid our vehicle and we chose to be chauffeured away from the church. But as we dashed to the get-away car midst showers of rice, I found myself wishing for some last fanfare to celebrate this watershed moment when dreams were unfolding.

My new husband and I pulled up beside the little blue truck that would carry us into married life and who did I see? Phyllis. In a grand gesture of farewell, she was tying a final string of cans onto the bumper and had blazoned “Just Married” tastefully across the back window.

We two had been through so much together, and now we were about to separate. I blinked back tears and tried to find words. She was blinking too, but she smiled with the bravery born of love, and repeated the words I had said to her so often through the years— “It’ll be great.”

And as Dave and I rattled down the street, leaving my girlhood behind and beginning a new season in life, the music of those cans sang to me of my sister’s love and care. Things changed, yes, and yet—what the two of us share remains fresh and unfaded to this day.