River Deep Mountain High

Lil Bit has a fascination with rivers. She always has.

When we go for drives to "see what has changed," we always drive to the river to check the water level. To see that the water is still headed to the sea as she says. The woman who now has trouble finding the right words can find her way to the river no matter how crooked the road.

She is drawn to the muddy, red water like a talisman. Her love for the river, and really all rivers, is deep, which is the very definition of irony when you consider what a river did to her.

As a child she was a bit of a river rat. Think Huck Finn but without the side of racism. She grew up on a bend in the river north of town on a farm that her father managed. The family of six (Dad, Mom and four girls) lived in a two bedroom, one bath house. My poor grandfather was the OG Girl Dad - vastly outnumbered, adored and had to shower outside because can you imagine the line when you have five ladies and one bathroom?

It was a beautiful place and the absolutely perfect home for a wild child like Lil Bit. She could explore the river for hours - fishing from the banks or reading a book in the afternoon sun.

When Lil Bit's mother was looking for her, because Momma was known to disappear when it was time to learn or perform household tasks. The river was Lil Bit's sanctuary and church, but it turned on her. For the water was not holy but held a virus that would change her life.

When she was nine, Lil Bit was infected with the polio virus from her cherished river. The virus was raging in Chickasha so badly at that time there were no rooms available at the local hospital. Fortunately a kind doctor found treatment for Lil Bit at a new hospital in Comanche County.

Momma would spend the next four or five months (the details are a bit fuzzy) laying in a bed in Lawton. Her parents would come see her once a week - there was work to do, a farm to manage and other young girls to care for - but most of the time she was alone expect for the doctors and nurses.

During this time she would look from her bed through the small window towards the horizon and she would focus on Mt. Scott in the Wichita Wildlife Refuge in the distance. Every day she would look toward the mountain, determined to walk again, to become a doctor and to go to the top of the mountain.

When she was released Momma and her parents went to the top of Mt. Scott. Lil Bit stood there in the Oklahoma breeze with the sun on her face and now looked towards the room in Comanche County Hospital that had held her so long.

Like rivers do the river of her childhood had changed her journey. And she didn't look back.