Never Again

Not all the stories from Sugar Loaf are tales of schizophrenics, paranoids, epileptics, Brown Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, severe retardation, or car-crash brain-damage. There are worthy tales from Staff and Administration. One centers around a unique individual, Linda Greyfoot.

Linda was from a long line of Dakota Indians. Raised on a Reservation until she was thirteen, she suffered indignity upon indignity when her parents moved into the whiteman's world. Before she was fifteen she was raped twice. She repeatedly witnessed her alcoholic father beat her toothless mother. I do not want to fill these pages with horror stories so I will stop there. It's enough to know that while she experienced a traumatic childhood, still she lived to finish high school, trained to become a Med Aide, and administer medicine to Sugar Loaf Residents for ten years before I met her. In whiteman words, she overcame her past and made something of herself.

Linda's story is poignant because it shows how we carry our wounds with us no matter how protectively we try to hide them. Because even after escaping her past, the tendency to associate with abusive men clung to her. She was maligned by every male she dated. The fumes of alcohol penetrated her apartment from the wayward men. But finally, thanks to her desire to escape her past, Linda Greyfoot said NO. Never again would she subject herself to abusive, dysfunctional men. But to her that

meant never again could she subject herself to ANY man, because she knew she couldn't discriminate between the good and the bad. So in her private life she quit seeing men altogether. At Sugar Loaf, of course, she couldn't isolate herself completely, especially from John Arrimas.

John was born and raised in a lumber camp in northern Wisconsin. His associations with women were typical of the hurly-burly lumberjacks: women were used for pleasure after a hard day behind a chain saw and axe. That is, that's what John saw throughout his youth; he, himself, never treated women that way. In fact, he abhorred the macho-whore paradigm. He felt women should be treated as comforting mates.

John, like Linda, escaped his background by going to a community college where he majored in agriculture. Instead of chopping trees, he planted them, as well as beautiful flower and vegetable gardens. In time, he was hired by the Sugar Loaf complex as their horticultural expert. He also carried the responsibility of enlisting the help of Residents in taking care of his gardens and lawns.

John met Linda at a Staff meeting. The horticulturist's antennae began to twitch the moment he saw her across the hardwood table. Though he couldn't put his perceptions into words, intuitively he knew that she had been abused. The woman's aura radiated the familiar feeling he experienced among the lumberjacks' one-night stands. His strong desire to dissolve abuse, to grow and culture beauty, planted a powerful urge to both protect and love this petite, black-haired woman.

Linda's feelings were piqued when she sensed John's attention. She sat with eyes glued to the agenda, refusing to make eye contact with him. After all, he was a MAN. She couldn't deny that she was attracted to him, but that was all the more reason for her to shut down. At least shut off his advances. And that set the tone for one of the most heart-felt, tragic

relationships I ever witnessed at Sugar Loaf or anywhere else. Because in time the feelings of both blossomed into love, but still the girl absolutely refused to be taken in by a man. The result was that she buried her feelings so deep they would never be stomped on again. And no matter how delicately John treated her, he couldn't elicit as much as eye contact from the girl throughout the seven years he worked at Sugar Loaf. No matter how many bouquets he left at her work station, how many pints of fresh raspberries he put in her car, how many birthday cards, Christmas cards, Valentine-Easter-Thanksgiving greetings he sent, he never got a single, positive reaction.

In time, John realized he could never expect reciprocation from this woman. He was convinced she was too deeply wounded ever to commit herself again. Finally he resigned from Sugar Loaf. Yet through the rest of his short life (his car was struck by a train and he died before he reached the hospital) he kept Linda in the deepest part of his heart.

And Linda? She kept working at the Health Center until her retirement. True to her promise, she remained single and beyond the reach of abusive males by moving in with a group of elderly women whose greatest preoccupation was crocheting and making quilts. The once-Reservation maiden never dealt with men again.

It was a tragic love affair, but on the other hand, a most pure one. It reminded me of the eccentric-cycling Yoseph and Med Aide Amy. It also had a touch of Cyrano de Bergerac. However real and deep the love, and tragic its outcome, it showed me what lengths some people will go to keep themselves from being rehurt.