I always imagined that my Aunt Donna would be waiting for me in Canby, Oregon for a visit. I always thought I’d be able to drive South, take the exit at Charbonneau and drive past Fir Point, a place she introduced to me, to get to her house. When, I got there she would be working on a project, whether it be in her garden, her studio or her living room. She be knitting socks, making a quilt for someone or planning out what she was going to try next in her garden. She was absolutely full of ideas and when I was little we didn’t seem to waste anytime getting them started. She would be knitting right up until we walked out the door to go on an adventure. On our way driving somewhere, we stop and pick blackberries and a few hours later, her house would smell like blackberry jam. She’d take me on field trips to learn things: like where paper comes from. We stop and read historical signs. We’d go to farms and see creative ways to keep animals, such as goats in small areas. We’d go to the fair or up the elevator in Oregon City or to the coast. We’d never take the direct routes or the freeway, but the back roads. As we wound around corners and drove up and down hills, she’d tell me stories about our relatives, about my great grandmas, about her dad, and my mom. She’d tell me about her boys.
When Nias, my son, was just a baby, she took us both to the Rockaway Beach. Nias was tiny, but I wanted to show him the ocean as did she. It was so beautiful there. We stayed at her place and when the sun went down, she built a fire in a little ceramic stove on her deck. We sat there for hours. I am sure she was knitting and telling stories and I was holding Nias. The next morning, she made pancakes for us. They were silver dollar size and at first I couldn’t believe she’d made pancakes so small. I’d never seen that before. Since then, I have always made my pancakes small like that, in fact, when my mom and I received the call from Bill we were eating some Donna size pancakes I had just made.
One time, she sent me a picture of a Heritage rose called Eden. It was the most beautiful rose I’d ever seen, so I got one. I planted it and waited a few years, but we moved before it bloomed. One day, I got a call from the new owner, who said I had to come see the rose. I went over and it was unbelievable -covered with blooms. It was even more amazing than any photograph I’d seen of it. It had gotten big and over grown, like she always did with her roses and it was truly amazing.
Christmas was always special to my Aunt Donna. We’d be at the beach in July and have to visit every Christmas store there. I was sure those Christmas stores were there just for her. Her house always said “Believe” on the front and she reminded us all to keep believing.
I told many of my friends about how she’d taken out all the grass around her house and planted trees and shrubs and roses. I loved it back there. There were little paths that led to benches to sit on, ponds full of Koi that ate out of your hand, a Myrtle tree with the most beautiful gray bark, overgrown roses. And, how could you not have loved sitting by her warm fire in the winter, completely surrounded by stuffed animals including a giraffe, sipping hot chocolate, listening to stories of how she was planning to rearrange her house. I’d gaze across at her turquoise wall, looking at Santa Claus’s, painting, old photographs and listen to her stories.
She had wonderful ideas and a house and a garden full of them; it was bursting at the seams in fact, but all the things in there were her ideas and thing she planned to make for us.
Not always understood, well opinionated, my Aunt Donna walked her own walk. She is someone who influenced my life in many, many more ways than I even know. But, when I stop to think about it and look at the quilt she made me for Christmas in 1980, when I was eight years old, she foresaw my life. The quilt is covered with children, geese, bunnies, and flowers. It is made perfectly to my eye and doesn’t have a stitch out of place. I used on my bed for many years when I was little and last year declared it as our Christmas quilt.
The goats I have now, I have wanted for years, ever since Donna took me to Fir Point and showed me the goats that could climb up into the trees on slabs of wood and pull their food up with a pulley. I am working on creating that in my yard now. I have cats and dogs and 2 geese just like on the quilt. I have a strange weakness for stuffed animals, I love to take back roads and I have even started to stop and read the historical signs along the way. I have begun to plant my dream garden just as Donna did. All my gardens have been full of roses, over grown plants and even some slugs that came with the plants she gave me. I yearn to have a pond with Koi in it every spring and someday maybe my two sons can help me build it. I have ideas too, dreams, just like my Aunt Donna did and I too have more than I will every finish in a lifetime.
BAKE MENAGERIE 