Suppression

by Mindy Schulke

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I am the redhead in front of my Dad. I was born with an enormous amount of heart energy. We had a lot of huge family events like birthdays and wedding anniversarry’s of great aunts and uncles and such. I remember one gathering when I was 2 years old which I think was my Grandma and Grandpa Else’s 50th wedding anniversary: in a large church basement full of people sitting in metal folding chairs, I toddled around smiling lovingly at each person until someone smiled back. I held my arms up and they would usually pick me up. Sitting on their lap, I would hug them with my little arms, melting into them and pouring out this love.

By 5 or 6 years old. I had learned that love wasn’t easily accepted by most. Now, your arms and hands are an extension of your heart energy so I started shutting off the flow of love I could generate by curling my hands under and humping my shoulders down. Sounds tragic but only if I never recovered. But I did recover. ❤️

The Pretty Dress

by Mindy Schulke

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Most homes in Colorado Springs can see Pikes Peak. My family lived on the Western edge of town 30 or more miles away from the iconic mountain. I would climb a ladder to the top of the shed, jump onto the attached garage, and then boost myself up onto the 2nd story roof of our home. I brought binoculars and hung out up there scanning Pikes Peak and monitoring the entrance to NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain (which would be to the left of Pikes Peak off screen in the photo). Later in life I actually went inside NORAD as part of my job. I should tell the story of my NORAD encounter with a 3 star General.

I wore a pretty dress to work that day. My office was off-site but I needed lab time now and then in a NORAD facility. The area of the building contained many glass-walled labs filled with military men from all disciplines, even Canadians, working on computer terminals. One long hallway cut down the middle of all the labs. This hallway had an occasional glass door for no reason — about 5 doors. When I say all men, that’s accurate. Never did I see another woman around those labs.

That day, I needed to pickup a printout and felt in a hurry to leave before traffic picked up. I started rushing down this glass hallway. Many uniformed airmen began holding each of the doors open for me. I thought —“I should wear a dress more often!” Until one airmen put his arm out in front off my shoulders and pushed me against the glass wall. An entourage of United States Air Force men led by a 3 star general approached this particular door from the opposite side of where I stood — where I stood in my pretty dress against the wall surrounded by a small sea of airmen and pinned against a wall by an out-stretched arm. It wasn’t my dress: the general is why they were holding the doors open. I had almost cut him off.

The General said exactly what a 3 star General would say and should say. He stopped, moved aside and said “Let her go.”

Yeller

By Mindy Schulke

My Dad made the rounds each day on his Stallion Maverick for Mr. Lewis, looking for cows in heat, using a paint gun to mark them. Different paint colors signified different timing. Later, he and the old cowboy Dewey would round them up based on color. My Dad worked for Mr. Lewis as his artificial inseminator.

We lived a mile or so off the Highway in an old sod house that had been plastered over and added onto with wood framing. An octopus heater filled the entire living room. My sister Jodie, 6 years old, and I at 7 years old lived for one year in this house on Banning Lewis Ranch. Ninety percent of my joyful childhood memories come from that year. We ran wild on acres of land finding adventure. No one worried about us all day nor called us to come home. Now that is freedom.

Jodie came for me in the yard one day and said “Dad got a dog.” “No he didn’t,” I replied. She pointed out past the cattle grate towards a slight hill into a pasture. A golden lab stood there, head held high with his chest pushed out. He watched us from afar on that hill. To me, seeing that dog was childhood partnership, unconditional love, and magic all rolled into one beautiful future of golden adventures.

My Dad dismounted Maverick and called out “C’mon” to the dog who hesitated and then came running into the yard. Jodie and I said “Yeller” out loud immediately, naming the dog after our favorite movie. And after that Yeller was either always with us on adventures or off on his own adventures catching jack rabbits or birds.

Strangely, the day I remember most often with Yeller is a mundane somewhat typical day. From behind our house, I called for him, “Yeller”. And he ran to me from somewhere unseen. I started running as fast as I could with him out into the land behind our house. I loved running full-bore, feeling every breath fuel power into my legs. When I ran like this, the world disappeared, swallowed by the pounding of my heart. Yeller and I ran hard like that through the brush down into a mini overgrown valley. And then, I screamed and halted. I looked down to see blood on the inside of my knee, sliced open by an old piece of rusty barbed wire that had sprung up when I stepped on it. I sat in the brush to apply pressure to the cut. Yeller circled me, concerned, occasionally licking my wound.

Do you know that two decades later, I saw a piece of Banning Lewis Barbed Wire on display at the Pioneer Museum in downtown Colorado Springs? Apparently barbed wire could be as distinguishing to a ranch as their cattle brand. But I am off-track of my story about the end of Yeller.

After we moved from the ranch into an apartment in town, Yeller lived on a dusty mat on our cement porch near the entrance of our basement apartment. My mom did not want to pay the pet deposit and likely, we didn’t have the money for it anyway so Yeller layed outside our door most of the day. He ventured off only to use the bathroom. That apartment had one swing set in the back with three inch jagged landscape rocks covering the entire back ‘yard’ of the apartments. No kids ever even used the swings with all those jagged rocks beneath them. No more acerage to explore. No more old barns, abandoned out-buildings, arrowheads, bullets, junk piles, wagon trail ruts, boulders with carved initials, ravines, bluffs, trees to climb, tumbleweeds, yucca bushes, jack rabbits, snakes, horses, cattle, births, deaths, nor cuts on old barbed wire.

So that morning, as I rushed out the door to catch the school bus, I caught a glimpse of Yeller on that dusty mat. And I caught his feeling by the look in his eyes. I went over to him and tried to comfort his heart which pined like mine for the days on the Ranch. And that was the morning of the day my heart was destroyed: when I came home from school later, my sister told me Mom had taken Yeller to the Humane Society.

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We moved again to a house eventually and had other dogs after Yeller but I never let myself love them, not with that deep adventurous love of commaderie. What could possibly ever have overcome this trauma of mine and repaired my heart at least somewhat? At a Memorial Day picnic with co-workers, my 8 year old daughter played with two Jack Russel Terriors for 5 hours and for 5 hours, she did nothing more than simply pour out a joyous belly laugh. We bought two dogs for her after that and I still have one. He is blind and deaf but a deeply loved comrade.

That seems like a great ending to this hearts-journey but Yeller’s story is still not over. About 10 years ago, one of my Spiritual teachers led our class on a Shamanic Journey — a meditation of sorts traveling from the mineral and gem realms, to the plant realm, and then the animal realm. On the journey to the animal realm, I met up with my sister Jodie who passed away 30 years ago. And when Jodie and I entered that animal realm, there was Yeller watching us from afar with his head held high and his chest puffed out. I called to him but he would not come to us. And I got it — he was telling me “You always remember me laying on that dusty mat but you need to remember me like this, with my head high and my chest out.” And I changed my mind’s-eye’s memory of him in that instant. And then Yeller came running full-bore towards us.

First Date

by Mindy Schulke

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In 8th grade, the boy across the street, Steve Rodriguez, took me on my first date. On a summer afternoon, we walked down South Peterson Boulevard towards Peterson Field Air Force Base in Colorado Springs where, just before the I-24 intersection, there was a 7-eleven, a gas station, and this dive bar which was our destination. Back then, underagers were not really forbidden from bars, they just weren’t served. Steve and I were the only patrons in the place. Steve bought us a pizza. Because of nerves, I ate really slowly. The owner/bar-tender commented that I took “really tiny bites” which embarrased me. Steve and I went to play pool at the only pool table in the bar and on the way, Steve gave me a quarter to put in the juke box. I loved Marvin Gaye, had the album shown in the photo, and I really loved the song “Let’s Get It On”. Of course I chose that song on the juke box and yes, I did so innocently, not intending to send any message at all to Steve. And guess what? Steve never tried anything more than kissing me. For the whole three months we ‘dated’, we only ever kissed. We both had braces and once when he visited me while I was at the Stratton’s babysitting, after the kids were in bed, Steve and I kissed a few times and he lost his gum and told me he thought he lost his gum in my mouth. But I told him no. He said he must have swallowed it. If only my future relationship issues remained as simple as missing gum.

After that first date, Steve used to come to my house each evening during the week to take me on a walk around the block. I was so shy that I eventually found the walks unbearable. The night Steve offered me a promise ring on our walk, I broke up with him. What a sweet human being Steve was. I think about him occasionally and I sincerely hope I did not hurt him — he never minded my shyness and for that, I should have been grateful. Shyness really limited me for years but I grew out of it thanks mostly to being a cocktail waitress and learning to deal with drunks.

I attended a Lutheran School and Steve a public school so I never had to see him except from a distance across the street. One year later, my parents divorced and his parent divorced. He moved away with his Dad and brother Joe and even though i started attending public High School, Steve had moved to a different School District so I never saw him again.

DeBella On My Hip

by Mindy Schulke

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During college I worked as a math tutor for Sarah Care Sitting Services. This company branched out into tutoring from their base business of providing sitters for things like an elderly parent of vacationers. Sara Care LLC called one Sunday morning and asked me to substitute for a church daycare sitter who called in sick.

I found the unmarked ”church” in a strip mall. Inside the front door, the all black congregation stilled themselves to stare at me, the lost-looking white stranger. This phased me for a few seconds but then I got on with it, asking the nearest lady about the job ahead of me. The children and I, five young ones under 4 and two twin babies sleeping in cribs, occupied the back corner of the leased space behind a tall office-like partition. The daycare section offered two cribs, a round kid-sized table, and some toys.

Just before the service started, the Pastor visited our little corner and introduced himself. He asked if I had everything I needed. Aware that all the noise from us would be heard on the other side of that partition, I said, “I just don’t know what I’ll do if they all need help at once”. The Pastor answered, “We’ll send help.” That Pastor eminated a gentle-souled, genuine man of God. His grace filled that strip mall space.

The twins slept most of the service. I sat at the table with the other children, keeping them occupied with wooden puzzles and shape-fitting toys. Near the end, after one twin awoke, I kept her on my hip while the young ones and I started picking up.

The parents came around the partition and began retrieving their children. My honesty prevails here at this point in the story — the twin’s mom came around that parition, halted, and gave me a look of “How dare you hold my child Cracker.” She would not approach me either, frozen with that look next to the partition. No amount of tenderness I showed her child would ever wipe out years of her justified or unjustified beliefs that I stirred up by holding her baby, God’s precious promise, DeBella.

So, with God’s promise on my hip, I continued picking up the puzzles. But before I did, I smiled slightly and warmly at DeBella’s mom. When she did approach me and as I transferred her baby to her, I said, “they both slept the whole time until near the end DeBella woke up.”

The Vandals

by Mindy Schulke

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On his 11th birthday, my son and a couple of his friends broke some outdoor lights at the nursing home behind our house. The feuding and jealous neighbor lady took delight in calling to tell us that her son had witnessed Nick and his friends do this criminal act.

My husband called the nursing home, told them, and asked if Nick could volunteer there to pay his debt. They asked if he should do maintenance work such as help the groundskeeper but in an unusually intuitive move, my husband said no, that he would like Nick to work with the residents.

My son started playing cards and serving cookies to one particular small group of residents. One day, this elderly Professor from the UofMN named Andy came around playing an acoustic guitar and singing WWI & WWII songs, Johnny Cash, and religious hymns. Nick told Andy that he also played the guitar. Andy invited Nick to play with him next time he made the rounds. Nick started out playing with Andy by watching Andy’s hands and copying the chords Andy was playing. Nick also started going to the nursing home 3 times a week on his own to play guitar in certain resisdents rooms “to cheer them up” he said. He especially loved to play for Millie. Andy and Nick eventually settled to doing their concerts twice a week in the entertainment room rather than roaming around.

As time passed, Nick switched from acoustic to electric guitar, hauling his amp to the nursing home. At this time, Nick was taking guitar lessons from a talented guitarist Jacob Park Evans. As a year turned into two and then three, Nick was improvising jazz riffs to such songs as “Bicycle Built For Two”, “When The Saints Go Marching In”, and “Man In Black”. Andy would often ask Nick to teach him the chord or riff he had just played.

Nick played at the nursing home for about 7 years. In this way, he got really great at live performance and improvising. I handed out cookies at the concerts and in this way, got to hear him perform to my hearts delight. The residents just loved Nick. They often came up to him as they entered the room to say Hi personally. I over-heard one lady tell the gal beside her that she loved everything about Nick including his red hair and the way he wore baggy carpenter shorts all the time. The residents eventually threw Nick a big High School Graduation party. Nick got genuine love and acceptance at that nursing home in stark comparison to the bullying he was enduring at school.

Look at the great and powerful things that came from a criminal act.

Fourteen Kittens

by Mindy Schulke

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Dewey’s grandson Tony volunteered to shoot Tiger. And he asked who wanted to watch. I went with him out behind Dewey’s house. Why did Tony use a rifle? I suppose that’s all he had ammunition for at the time. Tony was an asshole anyway: he used to tell me the Boogie man would come and get me during the night. But that rifle blew Tiger apart in an unessecary way that I can not erase from my mind.

I rescued the first two kittens and I don’t care what my older sister Jill says, she did not help. Jill and I rode the old bikes down the mile-long lane to the mailbox on Hwy 94. [photo: bottom circle]. The bikes had old wire baskets attached for holding the mail. Our house was an old Soddy that had been plastered over [photo: top circle]. We rode past Pinky Lewis’s mansion [photo: middle circle] rumored to have a glass floor with goldfish under it. Jodie accompanied my Dad into the mansion once and reported that the glass floor was nothing more than a square of plexiglass in the entry floor with a fish tank below it.

At the mailboxes, we heard kitten cries from the 3 trees there. We knew what this meant: unwanted pets were dumped out on the Ranch often. Jill foisted me in a tree to retrieve one kitten. It took a bit of tree-climbing skills as the kitten was fairly high up. Once I got to it, you can’t imagine how deeply clawed up my arm got from maneuvering that kitten down the tree. Jill foisted me back up to get a second one that was higher up than the first. I retrieved number two, got more deep claw wounds, and knew I could not go any higher to rescue the others. They cried out from branches too flimsy for even a six year old human. When I think about Tiger getting blown apart, then I hear the cries of those remaining kittens at the same time.

The next five kittens were given to us by a church member. And the final seven came from inside a gunny sack that Dewey found out on the range. The sack flopped around and Dewey thought a bobcat had gotten caught in it. He cut it open, with his rifle aimed, ready to shoot but out came those 7 kittens. Now we had 14 kittens total which we kept corralled in an old above ground swimming pool wall in our front yard. We ended up giving all but 6 of them away to people at our church. 5 became wild barn cats. That leaves Tiger, named by his black stripes cutting into his brown body like tiger stripes. After church, while playing with the kittens, Jodie stepped on Tiger with her church shoe and broke his back. Tiger drug himself around for a day with his paralyzed back legs before Tony showed up to rectify the situation in what seemed like the best way to end Tiger’s situation.

Tibetan Heaters

by Mindy Schulke

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The Tibetan Monestary in NE Minneapolis offers Saturday night teachings. I attended regularly for a year or so. The monks keep one shoulder bare and the monestary feels like it’s 60 degrees inside during the Winter in Minnesota. Visitors learn to wear layers. However, the first time I attended I did not know about the temperature. I attended the first time with a yogini friend. The whole night, I felt a warm heater on my shoulders which radiated into my torso enough that I felt fairly comfortable. I kept looking up but there was no heater above me — the ceiling is about 20 feet high anyway. The attached photo is the actual inside of the Monestary.

At one point, in a flash, the heat stopped and I felt a rush of frigid air hit me. I thought someone had opened the back door and let the cold in but I looked back there and no one had come in or out of that door. And then the heater came back over my shoulders.

When this was all over, I asked my friend if she had felt the heater. She said heck no it was really cold in there. My friend never returned but I became a regular after that. I wasnt even going to be a Buddhist but they don't care about that. Those monks would accept an ax murderer. Years later, I finally asked a psychic in a reading what that heater was all about. She said it was some of the Tibetan Monks keeping me warm. I guess they wanted me to come back.

Bridge Collapse

by Mindy Schulke

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I drove over the I-35 bridge twice a day Monday-Thursday for 15 years. This section of I-35 in Minneapolis over the Mississippi River is the busiest piece of interstate in all of Minnesota.

On August 1, 2007 around 6:30 PM, a co-worker of mine came to my desk and asked me how I was going to get home. I had a personal rule, If I did not leave work by 3PM then I would stay until sometime after 6 PM to avoid rush-hour traffic. My workplace honors flex-time in an amazing way, by the way.

So from my co-worker I learned that the 1-35 bridge had fallen into the Mississippi River at 6:05 PM. I recalled going over that bridge that morning. Traffic was down to one lane due to construction. Trucks and equipment and road workers filled the closed lanes. Traffic was start and stop going over the bridge. When stopped, out my open window, through holes in the road where pieces had been cut away, I could see the Mississippi River flowing below the bridge.

Powering A Mongolian Army

by Mindy Schulke

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I rode in the Mongolian Army in the 13th or 14th century. I refuse to do a full past-life regression on this Mongolian life as I know I did unspeakable things, operating under a spell, addicted to the lust for conquest. Why rehash these heinous acts and give them life in the present? I likely paid my karmic debt for this already as I have no lust for conquest in this life.

A scene in the movie Secretariat triggered this past life memory — the scene where Secratariat pulls ahead in the Belmont Stakes eventually winning by 31 lengths. Secretariats rider, Ronny Turcotte, let Secratariat run the race without holding him back nor pushing him either. In this scene, the filming focused on the horses head and neck muscle movement while the only sound was the horses breath. The camera captured that forward thrust of Secretariat, powered by breath and invoking all that supernatural power in his body to propel himself forward with a force of which men can only dream. Have you ever felt a horses neck? A horses neck is one hundred percent muscle. A horse is God’s most amazing creation of pure potential energy.

The sacred part of that Mongolian life was the time in between battles — riding my horse at full speed to get somewhere — leaning down onto my horses neck, becoming one with him, hearing his breath, undulating with every forward thrust. And the only thing I had to do to experience that tremendous machine was to hold on.

Broken Legs

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Ruth Banning operated the Banning Ranch south of Colorado Springs which was established by her father in 1897. In 1917, she sold this ranch and purchased land 10 miles east of the city, In 1921, Ruth married Raymond “Pinky” Lewis and together in 1924 they formed the Banning-Lewis Ranch. Ruth and Pinky slowly added properties to eventually consolidate the ranch into over 30,000 acres on which Colorado Domino Type Herefords were raised. I love that Ruth honored her maiden name in the name of the ranch and Pinky went along with that,

Ruth died in 1962. In 1968, my Dad got a job as Mr. Lewis’s artificial inseminator. We moved form my Mom and Dads roots in in the farms near Galva and Holstein Iowa to out West of Colorado Springs. My Dad used the opportunity to escape the in-laws but within a year or so, my Mom’s parents moved to Colorado Springs and in the 70’s, my Mom’s sister and her husband moved there also.

We got free housing in that we moved into an old sod house that had been plastered over and added onto in odd ways. The bathroom was as big as the kitchen. The living room was consumed by a giant ‘octopus’ heater, The dining room was a few steps up from the living room and that’s where my parents had there bedroom. there were two actual bedrooms, one off the living room and one off the dining room. That was the left side of the house. The right side of the house was the kitchen in front, doorway from the living room to kitchen, and behind the kitchen was the bathroom which had an old claw foot tub and a door to the backyard. You entered the bathroom from my [parent’s bedroom. Water was powered by a windmill. Our first night there, my mom drew a bath for my sister Jodie and I. The water was rusty. I fussed about getting into the bath but I eventually did. The water wasnt rusty after that it just hadn’t been used for a while but likely we should nit have been drinking that water.

T-Cross Ranch neighbored Banning-Lewis. Bob Norris ran T-Cross and possibly purchased the land from Pinky. Whenever other Ranchers came, my Father got uncharacteristically jolly and accepted and smoked cigars from them. he seemed puffed up and oblivious to his family. Outside of that, he always let me curl up in his lap in a chair or helped me off to bed sometimes. Once when the T-Cross rangers came as they all stood around outside smoking cigars, I came up beside my dad and was going to sort of hug around his leg when he let his cigar hand swish down and the cigar burned me right on the cheek. I started to bawl and my sister Kim helped me and swept me away to the house. My Dad was a very gentle but insecure man — insecure with his peers and I know this embarrassed him in front of the ranchers.

A Tale from Winter Survival Camp

by Mindy Schulke

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Through the 10” base of old snow, ice-crusted and packed, we forged a way for 6 hours in a blizzard, sinking with every step. The kids were in charge, using a mechanical compass to navigate. The brain of the class, George, handled the compass while leading us silently from the front of the line. Adults at the back were sworn to non-intererence. This 7th grader Jack, second in line after George, became the vocal leader of our group: the intermediary between George and the line of the rest of the kids, two of us parents, and one wilderness guide.

I saw something really great in Jack that day — when the group began grumbling, wondering if we would ever make it and if we were even on track - Jack would stop the line, tell us to rest. Then he would make his way down the line, repeating something like this to about every set of 5 people “George is on track, he estimates another 30 minutes until the ridge and then we turn left and start descending” (or whatever directions made sense to our position). The line calmed, regrouped and persevered, united and resolved by Jack’s words.

Our group arrived first to camp. A second group never made it and required snow mobile rescue. Another group took 8 hours to arrive. The two leaders of that group, one tall sassy female class-outcast and an overly-talkative, indulged boy, fought the entire 8 hours, the boy throwing up from stress back at the lodge.

Jack is a natural leader. Few are.

Hollywood Uses Banning Lewis Ranch

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Foot-Schulze Life

by Mindy Schulke

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The building where I live in Saint Paul Minnesota incarnated as the Schulze Shoe Factory in 1916. Valspar paint rented space here at one point. My cement floor has both tannery stains and rings from gallon paint cans. In the 70’s, the building transformed into artist lofts. A co-worker’s sisters lived here as fabric artists in the 80’s. Prince lived on the third floor at some point.

Living in a warehouse loft was on my bucket list. I spent six months totally revamping the entire space. I ate out of a toaster oven for half a year and painted everyday, eventually going through 31 gallons of paint. I made this place all about everything I loved visually. I love my home but I miss outdoor space: I miss nature. Soon it will be time to move on.

The Sublessee

by Mindy Schulke

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Rocky Hollow Farm seemed not a farm at all but a rich Southern boy’s folly built for a former wife in the mountains of Charlottesville Virginia. My parents and grandparents all come from the farms in Iowa — now those are real farms. But “Farm” is what the Southerners call their estates. Broken Dream Farm is what Rick’s estate should have been named. In my upcoming year of Rick as a landlord, you should have heard how fondly he spoke about every little thing in that house and how and why “they” had picked out each item together. Despite its gloomy reason for being a rental, Rocky Hollow offerend me a chance to live in a cool modern house in the country.

Rick lived in DC but his parents lived down the road from Rocky Hollow on Dogwood Estate. I met Rick at Dogwood to sign the sublease. These Southern-things were all new to me like the estates, speaking with a drawl, and fancy hats worn to horse races. Pretentious it felt to me coming from my beginnings in the mid-West.

On my drive over, a slight rainy drizzle began. At Dogwood Estate’s entrance, I steered around the circular driveway and parked next to a long portico leading to a double front door. As I opened my car door, a decrepit man made his way under the portico and opened up an umbrella as he arrived beside my car. This was Rick who seemed too crumpled and sickly for such a young man in his thirties. And he had a perpetual dry cough. I sensed that his first wife had not just broken his heart but that his life’s dreams had been broken in a really bad way.

Inside I met Rick’s new wife and his parents. His mom had the best name “Jecky” but as she sipped coffee, she stared out the window longingly as if she was trying to find a life she missed living. This broken-dream issue appeared generational for this family.

But back to that umbrella. Rick must have been watching for me to arrive. Now mind you, I was not even a real lessee at this time. I was a lowly sublessee. And I parked right next to the portico which offered immediate protection from the rain. When I pulled up in the circular driveway, Rick came out to escort me under an umbrella so that the drizzle would not affect me even in the slightest way. After that, I understood what it meant to be a true Gentleman.

Thomas Jefferson’s Mountain

by Mindy Schulke

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I rented the main floor of a house one ‘hill’ over to the west and north of Monticello. I could see the top of Montecello most of the year until the spring foliage exploded overnight in late March.

When turning off the main road onto the state hwy that led to the road that led to my house, there was a sign for “Pantops Mountain”. I just moved to Charlottesville from Colorado Springs where I grew up with the Rocky Mountains always and forever looming within sight.

One day at the nearby Food Lion, I finally asked a local about this sign — I said, “I keep seeing that sign for Pantops Mountain but where is it? How do I get there?”

“You’re on it” she said.

The Jump

by Mindy Schulke

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Homeward bound from Sunday church service, my mom disrespected me once again from her throne in the front seat of our family station wagon. There seemed to always be something I did or did not do in church that she found disreputable: that she felt like announcing in front of the family.

My dad drove down the gravel road that led to our house on the ranch. My little brother sat on my mom’s lap in the passenger seat. My three sisters and I sat in the backseat, me by the door behind my Mom. I wore a dress and knee socks. At 7 years old I can tell you that I had heart-felt beliefs that a kid did not deserve to be disrespected by her mom, especially unjustly — so little could a 7 year old know about the seemingly-secret nuances of behaving perfectly at church.

I threatened to jump out of the car if she did not shut up. My Dad did something really smart, he slowed the car down and turned his head back to keep one eye on me as he drove. He wanted to be sure he did not to run me over if I jumped out.

Did I open the door and jump? Yes I did. But first I opened the door and hesitated when I looked down and saw gravel moving beneath the car. I sort of fell out of the car onto my side, my right thigh acquiring severe road rash. My Dad stopped the car. I refused to get back in and walked the reminder of the way home. No one helped me with my wounds. In fact, no one ever said anything about this ever again. But neither did I get scolded nor disciplined in anyway for the jump. And after that day, my mom seemed to allow me noticeably more self-sovereignty than any of my other siblings.

Abandoned

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

My Father was gentle and kind. But he was unreachable. Severe depression and a Diabled Veteran status left him sleeping in his recliner most of my middle school years. By high school, he was relegated to coming by the house and parking outside. My Mom divorced him the summer before I started high school. She was having an affair with the Security Guard at her work and thus the divorce. She never came home at night anymore after the divorce. My older sister Kim had just gotten her own apartment, My 2nd sister Jill had just left for college, my Mom and the Security Guard driving her to Laurence Kansas. That left Jodie 14, and me 15 home each night with my 2 brothers, George 5 and Willie 2. Jodie and I had no idea we were now raising our brothers. I did not think about it like that. I do recall feeding Willie in a high chair and then cleaning up him and his tray, laying out several toothpicks and one q-tip on his tray and singing the Sesame Street song “Which One of These Things Doesn’t Belong To The Others” and he would pick out the q-tip.

My Mother was unpredictably violent and occasionally jovial in an egotistical way — a fake engagement of her personality to gain attention when she had company over to the house. My mom was unaware of my feelings nor of my skills,. She was a narcissist, incapable of loving, and unabl;e to feel our love for her. Yet she screamed for us to love her. Her favorite rant was “I should just leave and see how you all like it.” She was jealous of my looks and my sister Kim’s looks. She said about my clothes like “Thjaty would look good on me.” I find this so unbelievably hard to understand as I have a grown daughter and I only want the best for her and a happy life — I do not compete with her. But for my Mother’s generation, there is an archetype that was active which Robert Ohotto calls The Evil Queen who who says looks in the mirror each morning and says “Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all, and it better not be my daughter.”

Dad was unreachable and mom was unloveable and unloving. I am an abandoned child.

I have a confusion over other’s motives and honesty. I trust no one and find no one to be reliable. I have little patience for other humans and find dogs impeccably lovable. Until recently. I could tell you I did 20 years of yoga, countless hours of meditation, spiritual workshops galore, and so many energy healers but what cracked me open and brought down my walls? Unyielding reliabiliy.

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3-28-2024 journal entry

My abbandoned child got pushed to the surface and I am trying to parent her. She sort of surprised me - she is very young in her thoughts. She is vengeful and angry. She has immature reactions to feeling uncared for by her parents … “I’ll show you” or “I’m gone.” And she/I would become obstinate, strongly refute them, run away, or not speak to them for hours or even a day. And yet my parents did not care if “:I showed them” or left. In fact, they didn’t even notice any of this. I wasted all that energy on this immature thinking and associated immature actions or revenge as they did not and still could not care about me. They had severe limits on how they could love. I just hurt myself and isolated myself. In fact, I think my mother pushed me and pushed me until I reached the point where I would disappear so she did not have to deal with me — stubborn and unyielding as I was — so she resorted to hurting me rather than helping me. Revenge against my parents is a disaster for me — loss of energy and a self-sabotage pattern develops. And yet I would come back to try to get love. Occasionally they came through so what to do now — Well Mindy, they just can’t parent you and revenge is self-sabotage and only hurting you., You must grow your own self up. I know you are scared by this but you know how to push through fear — you will do it and you will thrive — that is God’s revenge — you thriving despite being abandoned.

I would end up so angry but had no outlets so I was pushed into an extreme grief and I would cry and cry. Remember sliding down between your bed and the wall and just crying and crying?

My parents were never going to come for me in a reliable and consistent way no matter how many times I jumped out of a moving car.

I am, in an else, alone. That was a blessing for all the amazing freedom I was afforded as a child. Being coddled would have harmed me more.

What does this all mean for the future of receiving love? Please help me keep my walls down Jesus. Please help me become more skilled at receiving love. Please help me build my stamina for sustaining love. Please help me remove my veils and limiting beliefs that keep me from believing in true love so that I may contribute to my partner’s happiness.

A Suicide

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

circa 1965, South Windsor Circle, Storm Lake Iowa, left to right Mindy, Jill, Kim, and Jodie Schulke

The last time I spoke to my sister Jodie was after she lost her umpteenth job for stealing money from the cash register. I spoke in a scolding tone to her on the telephone. I said nothing kind nor encouraging. Our ‘wealthy’ Aunt pulled strings to get Jodie that job in the Hospital Cafeteria. My Aunt worked as an Emergency room nurse at Penrose Hospital. She was the one they educated. Her sister, my mom, was the one who got pregnant at 18 and was forced to mastery my Dad.
My Aunt now lived a life that wanted for nothing in a nice neighborhood with her husband a retired Naval Air Traffic Controller. My mom was the pretty one: the home coming queen .. slim but voluptuous. My Aunt was the ‘horsey’ one — tall and wide-bottomed and flat chested. My mom was now divorced with 6 children on a department store salary. My mom had a jealousy over Ardie’s money. Our lack of money meant my mom’s shame, our family’s shame, entangled itself with Jodie’s job loss.

My sister Jill reported some details of Jodie’s death to me. Jill lived in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and I lived in Minnesota. About a week or so later, Jodie failed to show up for work at her new job. A co-worker wanted to check on her but her work said they were too busy. This was a temp job with a janitorial service. Jodie had been quite upset at her new job when she found out she wouldn’t be paid for two weeks. Somehow, Jodie’s dear long-time friend Michelle got involved. Michelle and Jodie had a two decade-long friendship. Michelle is the sweetest soul. Jodie however had a chip on her shoulder and exercised it often. Jodie was a survivor and took care of herself despite abusive men in her life who used her for money and rides from Colorado Springs to Denver. So for Michelle to stand by my sister, she must possess some divine angelic unconditional love. Michelle went to Jodie’s the next day. Jodie’s apartment door was actually ajar. Jodie lay on her bed on her side dead. The blood had pooled to the left side of her face and fluids had leaked from her body. A few days later, Michelle rounded up some friends and removed the mattress, a bio-hazard.

Michelle, a nurse, checked Jodie’s glucose monitor wehich she found in the kitchen. Michelle reported to Jill that Jodie knew her blood sugars were rising. Jodie had quick acting insulin in the fridge too that could have rectified the blood sugars.

Once Jill arrived days later to clear the apartment out, she heard from a neighbor that Jodie had been seen walking with laundry to the laundry room, looking like she was drunk. The conclusion is Jodie Jill reported that Jodie’s apartment was packed full of large totes, floor to ceiling which were full of new clothes with tags on them and brand new household items and such like spice racks and such. Jodie had two sofas, two coffee tables, and 4 end tables all in her tiny apartment. Living room. There were 2 vacuums also but Jill said that the passageway to get around the rooms in the apartment was too skinny for a vacuum. Jodie also doused her blond hair, one pony tail on top with shaved sides, in baby to match the hair habits of her black boyfriend and his family. So the place reeked of baby oil and had an oily presence everywhere.

I eventually called Michelle even though I had only met her once, The pretense was to thank her for removing the mattress but perhaps my soul in cooperation with my subconscious knew the stakes were higher than a damned mattress. I thanked Michelle for her help with Jodie and for being her good friend all these years. Then I told her about how our last phone call was not good and what I had said to Jodie. Michell said, “Oh Jodie knew you loved her.”

Jodie and I, only one year apart, had always played hard and fought hard. She was always up for any adventure that I schemed up., I taught her how to strike kitchen matches on the side of our stucco house. I stopped doing it but she continued and got caught, got in violent trouble from our Mom but never told on me. Years would go by and then Jodie and I would meet when I visited Colorado. We never hugged nor said I missed you nor asked any of life’s questions. Instead we just found our way to each others side and were always standing or sitting together.

Michelle had said the most perfect thing anyone in my place could ever hope to hear. Of course Jodie knew that I loved her. We both knew how much love was between us.

Jodie became the 4th daughter in 6 years of my parents marriage. 4 years later they would have a boy and another 3 years after that. My Mom did mot say much to me about her young life but two things stuck out. “I had three small children by the age of 21”. “You were so pretty Mindy with your red hair so I gave you attention but with Jodie, I stuck her in her crib with a bottle.”

A Cowboy Dies With His Boots On

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Someone down in Texarkana found my Dad around 11 PM on November 25, 2004., Dad, wearing his cowboy hat and boots, lay dead, slumped over the steering wheel of his truck, engine still running, parked beside the pasture when he kept his miniature horses. Heart Attack.

Dad wore cowboy boots since 1968. He wasn't born a cowboy. He and my Mom were born on farms near Galva Iowa. The first few years after he got my monk pregnant at 18 and married were spent in the Navy. I was born in El Centro California on the Naval Base. Dad left the Navy when I was 2 weeks old and drove us through the Chocolate Mountains back to Iowa. He was both a school bus driver and a cop in Storm Lake Iowa. We played school in the school bus that was parked outside our home each weekday.

Dad got an animal husbandry degree somewhere unknown to me. He landed a big job in Colorado on Banning Lewis Ranch doing artificial insemination for Pinky Lewis for his award winning herefords. Ruth Banning and Pinky Lewis owned 40,000 acres at one point which bounded the city of Colorado Springs on the East. When my Dad moved us to the ranch into that old sod house with bats in the rafters, he bought a pair of cowboy boots, a hat, and started smoking cigars.

Somewhere my Dad learned to ride a house because he and the old cowboy Dewey rode horses each day a looking for cow’s in heat. They shot them with a paint gun, a different color for each day, and eventually rounded up all of one color each day: then my Dad bred them.

I see men at work or on the city sidewalk occasionally wearing cowboy boots. I don’t blame them for wishing, wanting, and trying to be at least a little cowboy.

Sleeping Out

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

AC/DC and Mozart

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

I saw an AC/DC concert at McNichols Arena in Denver when I was 20 years old. The young men in our crew that hung out together stood in line overnight at a music store to get the tickets. Around 10 PM, my friend and I took them some Campbell’s vegetable soup with ground beef and cabbage added to it. It’s the only thing I could cook at that time. So how do I jump from that to loving arias?

The movie Amadeus Mozart was my foray into classical music. After that, Mozart music was to me perfection. He never edited his music as he wrote it perfectly the first time according to the movie. I bought a cassette from Sound Warehouse with the sound track from the movie. \Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major — that got my energy up there in my crown chakra. I later bought a cassette with Mozart Arias. When you start crying from energy moving from your crown into the heavens … well you have to pull over and keep crying and listening.

I thought I had heard sound perfection before with Brian Johnson scratching out “Back in Black” but what an ignorant fool I had been. Arias are the sound of sublime and unfathomable beauty.

Mom

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Her story had to be pieced together from family one-liners and rare moments of confessions in one-on-ones.

1. Her grandmother came from Copenhagen to Ellis Island alone with an 11 year old son Lorentz. Dorothea Pederson. I recall going to Ida Grove to visit her — Jodie and I and Mom and Grandma Edith. Dorethea Pederson ended up Dorethea Rasmussun and Lorentz ended up a Rasmussen also. This was the 19XX. I found the Ellis Island boat manifest — she came with eleven dollars and was pondered in Copenhagen by a Mr. Christiansen and in America by Marcus Rasmussen. I wonder if Dorethea was already pregnant with Edith? The family one-liner was that she divorced because “He was mean.” She divorced in the 1920’s — a woman divorced a husband in the 1920s! My grandpa Else, Edith’s husband, in one of his binge-rages would call Great-Grandma Rasmussen “Divorcee” and this was as bad as calling someone the ‘N’-word is now. The visit I recall, and I must have been around 3 or 4 years old, Jodie was one year younger, Dorethea sat in a small room in an apartment and rocked in a rocking chair — he gray hair pulled into one veery think braid that was past he waist. My aunt Jane told me just recently that Dorethea took in sewing to make a living. Before my Mom died, I asked her once how Marcus was ‘mean’ — what did that mean? And she replied, “he was just mean.” for a woman in a small town in Iowa to get a divorce in the 1930’s — I can only surmise that he beat her. We’re the beatrings so severe and so often that she got a divorce or was she just graced with fortitude and determination?

3. Hjhjdshhkjd

My Black History

by Mindy Schulke

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I was a black slave in another life — a cook in the big house. — a big cook in the big house as I loved to eat. I loved to eat and I loved to cook and I got to do both everyday. While not free to leave, I was not abused. I enjoyed what I could about that life. And although that life is seemingly over, it isn’t. It is right here inside of me.

And so all of us carry the consciousnesses of many lives long since passed. What if you were black in a past life? What if a Black Lives Matter’s protester has never been black before in any past life? What if I have more past black lives than white lives? Would I matter more or less now that I am white? So truly, all lives do matter the same: not any one life more than any other. We all suffered. We all abused others. We all enjoyed and thrived at times too. We are each a reflecting pool of experiences gained and witnessed. We are each a sacred child of God.

What Animals Do When Unseen

by Mindy Schulke

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Once when meditating in a sauna in “Legs Up The Wall” yoga pose, I became a bald eagle in my mind’s eye and starting a very fast dive straight downward. Eagles can reach speeds up to 100 miles per hour in a dive and I was likely diving that fast. Then I tucked my wings into to my sides and starting spinning around my centerline as I dove. At the last minute before I hit water, I stopped the spin and pulled up.

I wondered how I could have possibly felt the amazing reality of an eagle diving and so I asked a Spiritual Teacher whose class I was in during that time period. She said I could have been shape-shifting and thus may have been a Shaman in a past-life.

Next time I ran into a bird-nerd friend at work, I asked him if bald eagles ever spun while they dove. He said, “Why would they do that!” which was a rhetorical statement and not a real question. But I answered anyway, “Because it’s exhilarating.”

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In the photo below, Pam Mullins of Canada, captured on camera the bald eagle turned over in mid-flight. Eagles flip as part of a mating ritual but also to make a sudden dive down if they spot food beneath the water.

What else do animals do when we aren’t watching?

Tumbleweeds, Miller’s Moths, and Arrowheads

by Mindy Schulke

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

My entire 6th year of life was spent hoping to find an arrowhead. We had moved to a ranch in Colorado from Iowa. Surely the land east of Colorado Springs offered hundreds or thousands of arrows heads. But I never found a single arrowhead on the ranch.

My Mom and Dad left my older sister Jill in charge of me and my younger sister Jodie one night: something I think only happened that one time during the year we lived on Banning Lewis Ranch. We lived in an old sod house which had been plastered over. In the house to the left of us lived the old cowboy Dewey and his wife in an old 2 story farm-style home. On the right, and abandoned cottage-style house lived no-one but held old antique furniture that belonged to Mr. Lewis. We three girls went outside to play. One of us left the front door open. The sun started to set. When we went back inside, hundreds of Miller’s moths had flown into the house and were on the ceiling and flying around the ceiling light that got left on. [ INSERT PIECE ABOUT millers moths migration route.] Jill got some bowls of water with dish soap suds bubbling on top. We each held a bowl up while Jill got the miller’s moths to fly around (using a room or swatting with a dish cloth or ??? What did she do?). The Miller’s moths would dive in to the suds as they sparkled and popped under the light. And Jill started vacuuming them up off the ceiling with the canister vacuum. Yes we would be in trouble from Mom for letting this happen.

A westwardly horizontal wind blew all day — much stronger winds than normal and it did not let up. The next day, I find a pile of tumbleweeds as tall as our house had formed on the eastern wall of the house. Hundreds or thousands of tumbled weeds all tangled up together in a massive pile.

When I was in my thirties and visiting the Smithsonian museum with my husband and children, we entered a room where the museum had neatly arranged and labeled hundreds of arrowheads behind the glass of display cases.