Holda's Hands

So when Melinda came into my life she, at first, she offered me that unconditional love I so craved.  She encouraged and empowered me, or so I felt. 

It was never my intention to leave the HP coven.  I felt in many ways we had hived off.  The HP coven had grown so large, that I felt we were just taking the overflow.  I did not spend Yule with the HP coven.  Melinda and I spent it together.  I went to the HP at Imbolc with the express idea of leaving for good.  In a private moment between us, I told her this.  She begged me to stay, and blessed me.  I agreed.  I told her of Holda’s Hands and she said that was a good thing, and encouraged me to keep doing it.  Ostara of 2012 was the last time I would stand in the HP circle.  I left my besom, Hagatha, there as a sign I would return.  That eventually I would come home. I never would.

At Beltane 2012 we officially dedicated Holda’s Hands.  Tired of never getting anywhere with the corded belt system, so common in Wicca, I made belts for all our members who held a position.  It was a way to add distinction our group.  We even sewed charms on them, to show where we had been in our spiritual path.  Melinda and I decided to co-lead, we chose to use the triple goddess aspect in our leadership.  Melinda was initiated as the crone, her daughter Vicky as the maiden, and I as the mother.  Juno was initiated as Bard, a musician and storyteller.  It was a happy day for all of us. 

No story exists in a vacuum. Events in our lives are all inter-layered like a good cake. There was a lot going on with me then. Juno and her wife Kay came into our lives during that spring.  Melinda had met them, at a knitting group off shot, she used to hold at Books-a-Million.  We loved them immediately.  We tucked them into our lives and we all became fast friends. 

Tami had also joined my life about that time.  In the Fall of 2011 I was just swimming in goats milk.  I was getting sick of making cheese.  One night laying in bed, we were watching a “Billy the Exterminator,” marathon.    The show was filmed locally.  Billy would find injured wildlife and take them to the Cypress Black Bayou Zoo.  I asked Jay, “You think they could use some goat’s milk, for all those babies?”  He said yes, and we contacted them soon after. 

Tami was basically running the place.  We came by one day to drop off milk.  They were terrible grateful, but busy as usual.  Saving babies takes a lot of effort.  We were given the tour of the place.  They had 4 beautiful goats.  I commented on how lovely they were and that we had goats.  Tami shocked us by asking if we would like them.  We talked it over and decided to take 2 of them, Muffin and Patches.  We brought them home and would rename them Bridget and Morgan.  Bridget is a fat, little, gray and white pigmy goat.  She is spoiled rotten and still with us.  Morgan would eventually go to live with Melinda, along with her babies Anu and Danu. 

Tami, her hubby, her son, and all there animals were living in at 35’ travel trailer, when I met them.  She and I had hit it off almost immediately.  She was an animal lover and a spiritual seeker.  We began to talk about her moving into Momma Muriel’s house, as it had been vacant since Mike D. had left, but needed repairs.  They moved to the farm in May of 2012, and into the house in August of that year.  Tami’s menagerie included dogs, cats, birds, and a little gray, Vietnamese Pot Belly Pig named Henry.  

After a while we tucked Henry in with the goats.  He is wonderful and gentle with them. He would lay on his side, and the goat babies would just use him as a spring board.  Tami would move from the farm to her own home, a few miles away, in August 2014.  We never could figure out how to move Henry, who was now over 200lb., without traumatizing him, so he stayed with us.  Mr. Henry still lives with Star and Kali in the pen. I am looking at his happy piggy butt right now, out my window, as he is eating some grass, and wagging his happy piggy tail.  I’m not into pigs, but I sure do love this one.  He will even sit for a cookie, Tami taught him that one. 

I had known Melinda about two years at that point.  She often mentioned how messy her house was.  Tami and I told her that we would love to help her clean.  It took some convincing, but Melinda finally let us in her house in the Summer of 2012.  I know why she had trepidations about this.  Melinda had a secret.  She was a hoarder. 

The first night Tami and I went in with shovels.  We shoveled dog shit and trash from her kitchen floor for many hours.  The German Roaches, you know the little ones, were insane.  We came home and Tami did right, she stripped off all her clothes, before she got in her house.  She would later burn them.  I should have done the same thing.  Melinda’s lasting gift to me, for helping her clean, was I got roaches that would not go away. I would fight them on and off for more than a year, before they finally went away.  I should have stripped and burned my clothes too, but I did not.  I had the sensation of bugs crawling all over me for days afterwards. 

I would go back into that house many more times.  To clean out refrigerators that were not working, and one day to wash all her dishes.  JB and I worked hard one morning and got 5 bags of trash cleaned out of the living room and the kitchen.  We were outside taking a break, when she came home from work for lunch.  She flew into a rage when she saw all the bags, screaming at us and tearing them open to see what we had thrown away.  Then yelling at us about what we had thrown away.  Poor little JB, who was only about 13 or 14 at the time, had been so proud of what he had done, just wept.  I had the impression that whatever he did for her, was never enough, was never done the right way.  I would come to see that side of her myself first hand.

JB and I spent one day washing every dish in Melinda’s house.  I would wash, he would dry and we both clean out the cabinets trying to vacuum up dead bugs and fecal matter.  We spent hours doing this.  Melinda was at work.  We knew she would be so pleased, when she came home.  All day long I had been using a sponge with a scrubby side on it.  It was the only thing available.  She came in, and told both of us that we had done it all wrong, that all of the dishes would have to be washed again, because we had used the scrubby side.  And as everyone knows, the scrubby side would cause microscopic scratches, that would let germs grow.  I was deeply, deeply hurt.  It was thank you, but you did it wrong.  I was beginning to see why JB had cried.

Vicky had left some time before, and moved in with her new husband.  She could not take the pressure of Melinda anymore.  JB and I had done a tremendous amount of work.  We had gotten the kitchen, living room, pantry, and some of the hallway cleared.  Every day I came in, we started at square one, picking up trash and dog shit. 

I started on Vicky’s room.  It took me 2 or 3 days to dig it out.  It was buried in about a foot of dirty clothes, trash, and sprinkled with cat shit.  I had to wear a mask.  When I started on that room, which was a good, 15 x 20, I could not get the door open, but about 6 inches.  Slowly it came.  I have no idea how many bags of garbage I pulled out of that room.  But I do know I pulled out 9 laundry bags full of dirty clothes, shoes, belts and purses, but mostly clothes. 

I am very glad I at least did that. Melinda had her room, but I never could figure out where JB slept.  It took me a while, to dig a path, to even get to where his old room was.  Of course you could not get in it.  It was covered in junk and trash.  After we cleaned out Vicky’s room, JB turned it into his room.  He made a pallet on the floor and that is where he slept.  I believe that JB had been sleeping on the couch in the living room for years.  He had no dresser to hold clean clothes, hell most of the time he only had just a little bit of that, he had no place for his books, he had almost nothing to call his own in that house. 

Washing clothes was always hard in that house.  Of to the right of the living room was a hallway that was treacherous and covered in stuff.  That led to a set of stairs.  At the base of the stairs was a very large room maybe 30 x 30, covered in stuff about a foot deep.  I could tell you there were pieces of furniture, but I have no idea what else was in there. I never dared go in that room.  I stopped at the stairs.

To the left of that room, was a washroom.  Only JB was nimble enough to get in there.  We did not know until later, that the water heater was busted, and had been leaking into what was the washroom and other large room, until we saw water pouring out between the house and the foundation one day. It had started to grow black mold.  We had no idea how long this had been going on.  The room adjacent to the washroom was covered in about 6 inches of water and furniture had begun to float.  I have no idea how long it had been like that.  Melinda seemed to suddenly be shocked at the condition of this room and blamed it all on Vicky and how she could not keep house. 

After JB and I had worked all day, she did not come home and help.  Nope she simply went in her room, often times closing the door.  As if we were the peasants, the hired help and she was too good to help.  Even some days complaining how bad her back hurt her.  One day we called a work day at her house, with the rest of the coven.  She sat in her chair the whole day and did not lift a finger.  Melinda was beginning to show her true colors in the way she was treating everyone and I was starting to get really pissed about all this.  I felt I was in a way being conned. That’s when it all started to unravel, like we were frogging a knitting project.

Ilsa