Just a little something from the writing file......

MRS. GOTROCKS

There was nothing like the air - - the sharp, crisp air of a Santa Fe, New Mexico morning, giving wings to all living things: the gigantic Mountain Jays; the foxy little cotton tails, scurrying along a path of red sand and chimesa; and the wakeful humans coming to terms with the day.

Already she, Mrs. Colleen Gotrocks, was up, dressed in an orange billowy caftan, watering the petunias by the waterfall, breathing in the aroma of the pinon trees, and watching the humming birds dance around the purple hollyhocks. She thought this wasn’t the mansion of servants and gardeners she had dreamed of, but it was more than the little white frame house she lived in for twenty years back in Texas. That was her faraway life, she opined. Different air, different garden (hedges only), and a lifestyle that boasted of football parties and small town gossip.

For years the town gossip had centered on old man Matthews, who swept that poor little Irene off her feet at 19. Why, he was old enough to be Irene’s father, maybe even grandfather, as the whole town knew. Colleen was amused at how long that gossip persisted, for it did become a legend and even followed Colonel Matthews and Irene to every location they lived. People said, “What could cute, saucy Irene see in a man twice her age who had children almost as old as she was?” Colleen always believed that the Colonel provided Irene with a ticket out of a quiet provincial village and into the rest of the world. Matthews was an air force man, moving up in rank, and even though older than Irene, he wasn’t old and decrepit, Colleen recalled. He was more like a romantic Sean Connery, suave and militarily decorated. Colleen had to admit that envy made her speechless when Irene and Col. Matthews returned on furlough from his duty in the Orient. Descriptions of the gold and jade jewelry and silk suits Irene brought back circulated throughout the town. “Did you see that pendant? Did you notice her silk suit at the First Methodist Church service last Sunday?” It depressed Colleen. Someday, she assured herself, “My day will come to leave this little clapboard house, and the stingy man who’s been my husband for too long.

Turning back to her garden she smiled at this reverie then shut off the water. Entering her doubled-walled, charming adobe home situated on a Santa Fe hillside with a view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, she realized her home is far better than the mansion she had imagined.

Next, she took a cup of coffee to Chester, the love of her life, then back into the kitchen to put eggs, bacon and pork chops on the stove for breakfast.