The View from Rockriver Hill

       I’m not much of a music person. This might come as a surprise to those who know me because I frequently sing solos at church, I love to worship through song, and I’ve performed in and directed many musicals. But while I know many people who spend a great deal of money and time buying and listening to music for its own sake, I just...don’t. Though there are special songs that have impacted my life, I don’t have a favorite band or musician.   In our household growing up, my parents rarely purchased cassettes or CDs unless they had a specific purpose, such as special music for church, or a special purchase for a birthday or Christmas. My mother often took us to the library and we checked out cassettes of musicals. Some of my favorite memories involved dancing and singing along to Phantom of the Opera , The Man of La Mancha , and Hello Dolly .   But as money was often tight, my parents didn’t spend money on music for themselves.   In high school, other kids would spend a lot of

The Newest Resident of RockRiver Hill                 My family was a dog family while I was growing up. We had Gidget the Lahsa Apso, a white and brown fluffy lapdog.            She was sometimes sweet, and more often cranky. I suspect the crankiness had a lot to do with needing to defend herself from the (sometimes unwanted) powerful attention and loving overtures of myself and my two siblings.              My family didn't end up getting a cat until I was in college. I still remember Big Kahuna, the tiny grey kitten abandoned in my Grandma Ruth's backyard by his mother cat.            Kahuna was a loving kitten, but grew into a hefty tomcat who didn't particularly like people. Still, he added a lot to my parents' lives and I enjoyed the summers and college holidays I spent with him. The Big Kahuna passed away only a year or so ago.           As an adult, I've been blessed by the presence of four different cats: Bango, Taillight, Mystery Cat, and Moonlight.      

     One of the wonderful things about living on our property is the quail.       Our flock of quail lives high up on the hill in a bramble patch of wild-currants. W ild currants are covered in thorns and the bramble patch is deep and wide, wedged between four huge boulders.       In this hiding place, the flock is safe from coyotes, bobcats, domestic cats, and foxes. This patch of safety is why our quail easily grow fat and multiply.  In the spring we sometimes see a mother quail wandering about proudly with a string of baby quail walking single file behind her.       Occasionally, the flock will come out of hiding in the quiet cool morning and wander down close to our house to hunt for seeds.  They especially love to come seed-hunting after we have weed-whacked or mowed an area. The weed and wildflower seeds fall loose and the quail can easily find them on the ground.        A few mornings ago, I noticed a flock of about a dozen quail wandering around my house. I could only photograp

    Wild Nights by Sandra Rose Hughes    I’m onto you, Emily Dickinson. I don’t believe you never left your house, Dainty, sweet, Belle of Amherst- I know you snuck out at night Through secret tunnels under your house To dance in the moonlight To hunt the chupacabra And search for the sasquatch In your high lace collar and tight laced leather boots You can’t fool me.      This poem was originally published in Taft College's Literary Magazine, "A Sharp Piece of Awesome" in 2014.     For the text of the original poem, "Wild Nights" by Emily Dickinson, you can click here .    

  Silent, Docile- Dangerous      “Mother, there’s a snake in fairy-land!” yelled my daughters. They were out of breath, their feet pounding over the wildflowers and soil to where I stood playing tetherball with my son under the bright blue sky.             “What kind of snake?” I asked, reaching for the shovel, grasping its long smooth handle and examining its sharp edge.             “It might be a rattlesnake, but it’s just a baby,” said my oldest daughter, who at 6 years old, already knows a thing or two about rattlesnakes.             “Let’s go see,” I say. I hope she is wrong. Perhaps it is a beneficial snake- a king or a garter or a gopher.             She is not wrong. There, under the spreading juniper tree surrounded by small boulders (an area of our property that my 4-year-old calls fairy-land and where she often plays,) lay a tiny snake, coiled passively amid the soft dirt, juniper berries and evergreen leavings.             I herded the children to a safe distance

            My son, at 2 years old, sitting at the Maple Table. He is 8 now.  The smooth maple table with two leaves belonged first to my great-grandmother, who passed it on to my mother, who gave it to me.                 My father’s mother found the solid wood maple chairs at a thrift store. (It took a lot of family members to furnish the home of my mother and father, a single-income pastor’s family.)                 Now the table and chairs, refinished several times, sit patiently in my dining room.                 It is my children’s turn to squeak in the chairs and to learn the rules- “Don’t leave spilled water sitting on the top of a wooden table. Don’t scratch your name into the table.” It is difficult to get too angry with them, because every infraction reminds me of the times I did exactly the same thing. The scratches and scars I left upon the table bear witness to that.                 Easter meals, family dinners, children growing from high chairs to big chairs, to

    I could not buy strawberry plants in March of 2020. I simply could not find them in any local hardware store. With the COVID shut-downs newly in place, I was definitely not comfortable dragging my three children (my oldest unexpectedly out of school) the hour down to Bakersfield just for the sake of entering Lowes to buy strawberries. These were the weeks where I only left the house for grocery shopping at 6AM- and we were supposed to stay home for 2 weeks to “slow the spread.”     Other people were worried about toilet paper and meat, but I was saddened by the lack of strawberry plants. This may or may not have been because of COVID- it might have simply been a bad year for strawberries.  My strawberry planter, which is supposed to hold 25 strawberry plants, remained empty for the year.             In May, we  suddenly found it impossible to buy appliances online. Our 15-year-old dryer gave out, and no big-box stores would ship a new one to our house. We line-dried our cloth

Surrounded by My Easter Flowers    Dear Baby, Whatever your name will be (Randall David or Isabella Michelle,) you cannot see us, and we cannot see you- but you can feel the warmth of my body and the rhythm of my movements. And you can hear. You hear our voices, and you hear our songs. Every Sunday you hear us sing with our church family, and every day you hear me practice hymns on our out-of-tune piano. Even when we worship at home, we still worship- we sing to the best of our ability, we play, we praise. I am no great musician, but music (even unskilled) is still a gift, a legacy that we, and our church family, give to you. It is a gift that in your fetal 9 months, and in the 5 years you will have at home with me, you will hear far more praise songs than yelling, far more praise songs than cursing, screaming, fighting, or even (hopefully) scolding. Week after week, we will bring you to church- to be blessed, loved, prayed for, taught, and sung over. We will give you the only