Streak of Courage

by Janice Stromeier

The smoke from her Benson and Hedges curled through her hair adding to the yellowing streak of grey that crowned her. Wiry, bird-like fingers pinched the long white filter that promised the-best-smoke-yet; her skinny wrist supporting a bony elbow as she crossed her arms in front of her to enjoy her smoke and contemplate her 80-plus years of life. 

She had traveled far – a young bride from New Zealand, the daughter of ranchers, a veteran of the Great Depression, a traveler on the tough road that was the road for many that decade. Braving the ocean voyage a lifetime ago, she settled in the Canadian prairies to farm the land, raise crops and her family, bury an infant, bury her husband some years later, and eventually to bury a second child.  

Bid was a hard-worn and wrinkled woman, the story of her life etched deeply into her face. Dark rimmed, 60s-style eyeglasses hugged her beak-like nose that seemed to pinch her dark eyes even closer together. Rain or shine, Bid was in her yard, an old dark cardigan wrapped loosely around her skinny frame; her arms wrapped around her waist like the limbs of a tree hugging fast to the last leaves of summer. Her legs were weak and unsteady under the baggy trousers, which hid her bony knees as they gave way to unsteady ankles tied in brown Hush- Puppies. Flakes of ashes from her Benson and Hedges dropped onto the ground as she inspected her garden. Her flowers beamed in the spring; the tall, yellow stalks of summer corn waved their golden tassels over the fence that stood between our yards. In the fall, Bid’s rhubarb, its rusty pink stalks waving faded green flags, made its way to our winter table in rich pies with crusts that crumbled at the first touch of the fork. 

Bid bought the house next door to my childhood home when I was a young teenager, and my forty-year old father started acting like one. My father’s mid-life crisis eventually led him away from our home to the altar and the bed of another wife, and Bid and my mother shared the gaping hole of a missing husband. They shared strength in their loss, and their friendship grew. And in their friendship, my mother found a sister and a rock that would anchor my mother to her own home while she forged a home for my sister and me. Amidst the loss of husband, the loss of dreams, and the loss of a future she envisioned when she, innocent bride, walked on the arm of her proud father to say I do twenty-five years earlier, my mother pressed on. 

In her widow-world, Bid was alone. Her one remaining daughter, Joan, was a spitfire image of her mother: strong, independent, and happily single in her mid-thirties. Joan loved to race cars. In the seventies, a female racecar driver was an anomaly in our not-yet-totally-accepted feminist world, but along with speed-barriers, Joan also broke the social barriers of career choices for women. Joan was a pillar of the non-traditional female world and her cars and engines filled her life – she had no room for affairs of the heart. Her lifeblood was the oil in the engines of the cars she raced.  

Even the sturdiest of pillars can crack, but Joan crumbled when she met Dave who also raced cars but lived in another city, and their blood pumped in passion for their cars and for each other. When Joan wasn’t driving, she was talking about Dave and we all mused at how this lean and sturdy mistress of speed could cave like all the rest of the mortal world when the heart spoke louder than reason.  

Joan was in love. 

Would Joan quit driving? Would she trade in her leathers for a wedding dress? Would she change diapers instead of engine oil? We all waited with proverbial bated breath to see where the next racy phase of Joan’s life would take her. But the breath was wrenched out of our collective throats the day that Bid came over to our house, her bony fingers clasping her sweater in one hand and the other hand firmly gripping the pack of Benson and Hedges, her wrinkled face etched deeper with lines of grief, her black eyes painful with another loss. Joan had perished in a plane crash en-route to visit her love. Bid choked out the words that we could not believe. My mother reached out to catch Bid as she crumpled against the wall of our front entry as though just saying the words snatched the life right out of her. 

The winter funeral was as cold as it was incomprehensible as we said good-bye to Joan, Bid’s last living daughter and quite possibly, her last reason to believe in a God that could bring this burden upon her at this stage of her life. Her last remaining child, a son, stayed for several weeks while they sorted through Joan’s possessions and while Bid worked with the airline company for settlement of loss-of-life. 

Bid’s spring flowers did not bloom the following year, the summer corn was not replanted, and the autumn did not herald in rhubarb pie, and we all cautiously watched Bid go through the motions of her very personal and very profound grief. 

It was now the eighties and the country was in the midst of the oil-boom, and the correlating spike in interest rates. About the same time, my mother, a school secretary, had to refinance our home in order to free my father from a failed marriage which tested my mother’s last thread of dignity as she vowed to keep her home and her girls together. At risk of losing the family home, my mother faced renegotiating the mortgage at five-times its initial rate; a rate that her school-secretary wages could not possibly support, or sell our home. My sister and I knew none of this dread that plagued my mother.  

For many months after Joan’s funeral, Bid had maintained a sad distance from us in her grief, but one cool spring morning, she came to our door. Bid clutched her trademark cardigan in one hand, the Benson and Hedges clamped securely in the other hand, and we felt that she had finally come back.  

Yeah kids, well uh, Oim back. I took an ass-kickin’ but Oimbeddanaow.Her New Zealand accent was a sweet sound we had missed for too long. Yeah, uh, Oi managed to get all that rot straightened eoutabeout Joanie. She turned to my sister and me.Girls, go on naow and leave your mum and me to talk ‘tween friends. 

A few months later, Bid passed away, from either the Benson and Hedges or heartache, or both. My mother’s grief was inconsolable. After we had said our final good-byes to this icon of strength, my mother revealed the conversation she had with Bid the day she arrived at our door and turned my sister and me out of the room.  

Out of tragedy sometimes comes great healing and Bid’s great tragedy saved my mother’s soul. Bid had done the unbelievable. She could find no other way to make sense of Joan’s death and the settlement money awarded from the airlines. For that day when she sat in huddled conversation with my mother, sipping coffee and sucking on the Benson and Hedges, this dear woman forged in pain, found the greatest gift of Joan’s passing. Bid paid off my mother’s house with the money she received from the airlines. Bid would not let my mother refuse. Joan’s death, Bid insisted, would not crash around us in shattered ruins like the airplane that carried Joan to her death.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janice lives in Houston with her husband Paul and five Boxers. She is a college professor of American and World History and an instructor in Adult Education where she teaches high school to adults. 

Her hobbies include piano and voice lessons, trying new recipes, and fostering Boxers through a local rescue program. In rare quiet moments, she loves to work on 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles.  

On weekends, Janice, Paul, and their troupe like to wander off in the “Boxer Bus” for close-to-home road adventures.  

Janice only writes when she breathes.