I was born and raised in Cheyenne. I’ve left and returned several times. Eleven years ago, we moved back to Wyoming from 15 years in California. We bought 35 barren acres of prairie out in the middle of nowhere and decided that this would be our new home. When I say barren, I mean it, too. The tallest thing on our land when we bought it was an antelope, and I haven’t seen him since! My urban California friends thought we were nuts. They teased me with phrases that included Little House on the Prairie references, and laughingly predicted that I would need to join a quilting bee and learn to can vegetables.
When I got here, my husband had completed the garage. All our possessions went into storage safely inside it, and we moved into a borrowed motor home parked in the middle of our land until the house could be built. There was electricity – we ran an extension cord from the power pole to the motor home, and there was running water by the grace of our new well and a water hose. Cell service was ify – if I went outside the motor home and raised my arm just so, maybe I’d get a signal. So began our lives on the prairie.
About three days after we ‘moved in’, a pickup truck carefully made its way across the blowing grass and stopped in front of our temporary home. Out stepped an older woman wearing jeans and worn work boots. Her face was filled with soft folds and lines that spoke of good and hard times. Her hands were a bit gnarled from arthritis, spotted with age, and carrying a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, and some flowers. She introduced herself as our closest neighbor, Lula, and explained that all three of her gifts came directly from her ‘place’ just a third of a mile away. She couldn’t stay long, she was on her way to a quilting club meeting.
So began a precious friendship. Lula did, in fact, teach me to quilt and to can. I treasure those lessons and her patience and friendship. I look out and see the iris bed in my back yard. The iris bulbs are antique and came from Lula’s garden. The raspberry jam I have in the pantry are from cuttings that she gave me from her raspberry patch. The green beans and carrots that are also in the pantry were canned using her recipe. In the spring I know that the first green shoots I see will be the peonies that she gave me which are now sleeping under the frosted ground outside the back door.
Lula passed away and was buried last Saturday. She’d been ill a long time, and I have missed her and grieved for her for a while, but even so, the final good-bye was difficult for me. At the same time I have grieved for myself, I have been absolutely joyous for Lula. She loved God and knew (knows!) Jesus as her Savior, so she is now safe and secure with Him. She isn’t old or in pain any more. She is happy and probably making zuchini chocolate cake for the heavenly host. I’m comforted because I know she has also become one of the ‘great cloud of witnesses that surround us’ (Hebrews 12:1). I picture her, maybe sitting next to my mom (they will like each other very much) and cheering me on until my race is done, too.
