Southwest Sierra #69 — What Goes Around Comes Around

This week, I am pivoting back to “personal stories”. This story starts in 1985, the year that my only biological child, Wyatt was born. When I was pregnant with him, both my maternal grandmother and Dad’s sister Irene sent presents. By coincidence they both sent handmade baby items that featured rocking horses. Grandma Rodriquez used two large wooden embroidery hoops to make lace rocking horse wall hangings. Aunt Irene made a quilt with a lace rocking horse center panel surrounded by navy blue calico and an eyelet ruffle around the edge.

A couple of years later, my friend Donyale Hall was expecting a baby. I put together a box of Wyatt’s left-over baby items and brought it to her in Downieville. The box contained mostly baby clothes and blankets, including the quilt that Aunt Irene had made.

When Wyatt was 5 years old, a lack of work forced us to move from the cabin near the Golden Bear Mine Bunkhouse to Watsonville where my husband David always had work with his brother Ivan’s building contractor business. Wyatt attended kindergarten there.

A few years before we moved to Watsonville, my Mom started having health issues. She had intermittent signs of dementia and a condition called nystagmus (wiggling eyes). It took years of trips to neurologists and UC Davis to finally get a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MRIs were fairly new at that time, and it was an MRI that finally provided the diagnosis. Prior to MRIs, MS was one of the more difficult diseases to pinpoint because the symptoms are so inconsistent. “Sclerosis” means scarring and the disease is an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack its own nervous system. This creates multiple scars on the nerves. Nerve damage can happen any place in the body, thus the varied symptoms from person to person. In Mom’s case the initial damage was in her head affecting her eyes and brain.

The day that we got Mom’s diagnosis was so very sad. It was a summer weekend day, and as usual, friends and family were there at the Golden Bear Mine Bunkhouse to play horseshoes and have lunch. Someone had brought the mail from Alleghany, and I noticed an envelope from the neurologist. I opened it and read the letter to Dad. We used our 1967 encyclopedia Brittanica to look up “Multiple Sclerosis”. The encyclopedia spelled out the worst-case scenario in black and white. I remember Dad weeping. I later learned that there are two main categories of MS: “Remitting Recurring” which is more common and the rarer “Chronic Progressive” form of the disease. A “Chronic Progressive” diagnosis requires several years of observation, but it turned out that Mom did have the rarer form of the disease. We later received a letter of apology from UC Davis stating that they did not expect the neurologist to send the diagnosis by mail (he had a private practice in Grass Valley). That day bifurcated our lives, forever after there was “before” and “after” the diagnosis.

While we were living in Watsonville, Brush Creek Mining and Development Company purchased both the Ruby Mine and the Golden Lion Mining Corporation’s holdings. This included the Golden Bear Mine Bunkhouse. They told Dad that he would stay on as caretaker. Getting ready for winter was no small task and Dad proceeded with the assumption that they would stay. My brothers Steven and Jason were still living there. Dad had taught them how to mine and they’d been working underground with him. The “pantry” (actually a room in the house) was stocked, the 1,000-gallon propane tank was full, and the woodshed was filled with 12 cords of firewood when Brush Creek told Dad that he had to leave before winter! They used Mom’s illness as the reason, and perhaps that was why, but the timing could not have been worse.

Almost exactly 13 years after moving to the Golden Bear Mine, Dad rented a house in Alleghany from the Sixteen to One Mine. Steven and Jason got their own places. Mom’s symptoms continued to worsen and all I could think about the entire time that we were in Watsonville was that I needed to get back to take care of her. At the end of the school year I moved to Nevada City where my in-laws generously opened their home to us. Wyatt attended first grade there while David continued working in Watsonville. In Nevada City, I was able to take caregiving classes and tapped into the many resources available there. I didn’t have my own vehicle and wasn’t able to get to Alleghany as often as I wanted, but I was a step closer. Near the end of Wyatt’s first grade school year, I called Mike Miller and asked if he might have work for David. He did, and we moved to Alleghany that summer (1992). Finally, I was able to help Dad take care of Mom.

The Tenney family had moved to Alleghany while we were away, and Dad had made friends with them. Not long after our return, I was at the Tenney’s house when toddler Gus threw a fit because he didn’t have his blanky. Vicky pulled it out of the dyer and handed it to him. I did a double take. Tattered and barely recognizable, there was the quilt that Aunt Irene had made for Wyatt seven years prior! Evidently it had been handed around Sierra County until it landed in Alleghany to become Gus’ blanky. Aunt Irene was delighted when I told her the story!

This week’s article is dedicated to the memory of Irene (Bell) Carey, 5/11/1936 - 12/12/2022