Goddess in a Younger Woman

by Judith Bakkensen

Where is that girl?  I knew her well from four to eleven year old.  Her name was Judy.  She was a happy girl who preferred her own company.  However, she loved attention for her accomplishments.  When older girls praised her creations, magic tingles filled her body until they spilled over into body shivers. 

 Her hair was brown; her eyes were hazel.  Her favorite day was Saturday.  She kept her unmanageable hair short and rarely washed. 

By 8:00 am she was up dressed in her two-piece bathing suit.  Judy had an old green ammunition belt to hold her chapstick tube.  She only brought it with her because it fit in the bullet holders.  Her green army backpack had a canteen, a sketchbook and pastel crayons.

Judy never packed food.  It wasn’t on her list of necessities.   She laced her old tennis shoes to the end of her skinny, long legs.  She often looked down at her shoes as the walked through the woods.  She liked her tan ankles and cloth shoes. 

Judy walked out the door, across the orchard, into the cow pasture and into the woods.  By this time, Queenie, the big brown hound dog was by her side.  Judy felt the perfect day.  She walked until a tree or flower attracted her.  Judy sat on the moss or a rock and made the tree or flower come into her sketch book. 

She walked for miles through the woods, finding roads, following utility lines until she felt the pull to go home.  Queenie was always there keeping Judy company.  Queenie was her companion and protector.  Queenie faced off a bull when Judy crawled under the wrong barb wire fence.  Queenie was one of her best friends.

Judy didn’t care how far she walked.  Each adventure took her farther.  She let the unknown pull her.  Eventually, she would turn toward home.  If Judy had gone too far, she would tell Queenie to ‘Go Home’.  Queenie’s ears would perk up and she would run straight home.  Straight home was a much shorter distance than the way she got there.   Queenie’s ‘go home’ journey was never on  trails, but over logs, through briers and in creeks.  The price for Queenie’s help was usually poison ivy strips on the arms and legs. 

Judy hid from Mr. Smith, a retired preacher from Judy’s church.  Judy’s appearance on the country road with her dog alarmed Mr. Smith.  Judy was a young girl out on a country road so far from home.  Judy and Queenie got into his car and went to his house. Mr. Smith called her parents.  From then on, when Judy and Queenie heard a car on Mr. Smith’s road, they ran into the woods or lay flattened in the ditch.  Since cars rarely went by, this was not too much of a bother.