She never once let us call her Grandma. She wasn’t exactly a grammie or a nanna. She felt that those endearing terms didn’t capture her spirit. She loved Elvis and Jackie O. Born Eula Della Speights in 1917, I can see why one might pick a more charming moniker — she chose Jackie.  I was in awe of her. The name, the defiance, and the way she was completely herself. 

She is my favorite BADSISTER, my everything. I was raised without a mother and it was Jackie who taught me how to take care of my skin, how to walk with purpose, and the power of saying no. On the nights I stayed with her, we practiced these skills. She washed my hair with beer and rinsed it with lemon. We washed our faces gently with luke-warm water and patted them dry. We even took strolls with books on our heads. 

I figure this is how Joan of Arc rode into battle. Jackie was my first teacher and my favorite. She would hand me a cane-fishing pole and send me off to the pond wearing an orange life jacket and toting a baloney sandwich. She would say, “You go catch a big one.” At the age of four, I sat under a willow tree and watched a gigantic bobber float as I made up stories in my mind's eye. I was taught the gift of being alone. She trusted me.

Jackie walked this earth with me for seven short years before the cancer spread throughout her body. I definitely didn’t understand why the Universe would give a motherless child a force so strong and then carry her away so abruptly. 

At the age of seven, in 1976, Jackie had already emboldened, in me, a great contemptuous dream and the poise that would escort me on adventures far beyond the back-wood towns of Oklahoma. I can feel her presence now.

Before the gas shortage in the seventies, American car manufacturers made gigantic vehicles the size of tanks, and you damn well know Jackie owned one. She drove a 1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III. 

We lived in a little quonset hut, five and a half miles outside of town. You could see her coming around the corner. That beastly beauty of a car was pure dark green, so deep it was almost black. She’d turn down our little gravel road and would sneak me away to show me all the “more” I would become.

Jackie would prop me up on the armrest, seatbelt free, gliding to tunes of Elvis. The black, leather, double armrest swung down like a drawbridge to an enchanted world. She always carried a huge purse and she perpetually needed to search through it while driving. I loved how she’d manage the steering wheel with her knee, then grab the sides of her purse, and give it two good shakes to summon a lost object. These memories are the beginning of magic in a child’s mind.

When Jackie could’t find what she was looking for, she would command me to take the wheel. I was five. I’d steer that steel chariot down winding country roads while she searched for lipstick. She never looked up once. I was in charge of the world. I sat up high and looked through the windshield of life, never imagining it wasn’t for me. Wherever the road led, it was mine, as if each gentle turn of the wheel created the road before me. It was like driving through a cloud and creating reality as Jackie pressed on the gas pedal. I was fearless. Jackie’s confidence fueled mine.

I didn’t have routine, structure, after-school-programs or a book of etiquette. I was a poor little girl who lived in the middle of a lost landscape; I had a Jackie. She was married to a bootlegging, beer-joint-owning, boat racing piece-of-work who I called Papa. My Jackie always wrapped her hair in a scarf and wore huge sunglasses on outings. She was a movie star. In the brief scrap of time when she ruled my world, she and Papa owned the enchanted Dixie Marina. They were one hell of a team. They won every sales contest in the state and were awarded travel to far away mysterious places. They told stories that made one long for a world outside of reality. We lived on a red clay chunk of earth in Southern Oklahoma. Here, it was rare for anyone to leave the county, let alone the forged-by-God glory of the USA.

My Papa was expressive. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes, said son-of-a-bitch every other word, and sported a yellow-streak-nicotine-patch down the center of his thick, white hair. I can still see him commanding a room and telling a story about drinking “camel piss in a cave-of-a-tavern” in another country. I was so curious. How do you collect the piss? Why would you drink it? It must be amazing to live where this was a custom. All these years later, it turns out to simply be bad beer. Papa gave me a knack for stringing words together.

My Jackie, on the other hand, was self-collected. She showed me how to dance, both within and beyond a world of judgement and properness —to live a life without explanation or a need to fit in. She was poised, knew the power of grace, and had a poker face that I’m still trying to perfect. She didn’t preach. She articulately distracted the line-walkers while dancing toward a secret passage…portals for the select few with the gutsy vision to create their own reality. 

My bold, eloquent Jackie embraced the art of transfiguration. Both of my grandparents did. We lived smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. We were the clip on the buckle. Brother Crow would stop by the house and talk to us about inviting Jesus into our hearts. I was, and still am, a person who plays movies in my head. I pictured a Richard Prior kind of Jesus pulling up a tall stool next to a microphone. We lived in the land of sin, sin-some-more, and head to church on Sunday. Anybody could invest in fire insurance for the soul! Oklahoma Snake Skin Oil! Buy it by the case. One could cuss up a storm, pull off a big drunken rage, smack their wife and kids around and cleanse it away with the blood of Christ. To this day, I’ll take the truth of Richard Prior and George Carlin. There’s something about humor, sarcasm, truth and the genuine spirit of loving your neighbor that simply works for me. Jackie understood the laws of the land, knowing it was a game, she made up spectacular accommodating principles.

Papa wore his boxers to the post office to retrieve the mail and Jackie drove around like a queen in her Lido “Lee” Iacocca cargo ship on four wheels. I loved watching people watch them. You have to understand, our little town was where all the old bicycles and trailers go to die. Simple as mud. The Baptist church was the center of social life and our local sports were fishing, football and being a hound dog for the scent of good gossip. Papa and Jackie did their own thing. They lived outside of reality. Her 1969 Lincoln Continental might as well have been a spaceship. And there in rural Oklahoma, for a brief instant, I was her co-pilot.  Jackie taught me the rules of transcending the mundane. She taught me to dream my own landscape into reality and live it with flair. 

My Odyssey Queen left this earth way too soon. I know she’s out there winding through distant galaxies and preparing for our next journey. There’s so much more to this than we understand. Maybe she was sent here to teach a poor country girl how to envision the system differently. Allowing me, against all odds, to slip away to another world where there were no set paths to follow. My seven years with Jackie helped form a life, dreamed into existence, from the perch of a drawbridge. She is still by my side on this long journey, pointing out portals to other worlds, a guardian for my spirit, never looking up, trusting me fully.

Here’s to the women who shape us. It only takes one willing soul to love a child so deeply it transforms her life forever. After Jackie passed, Papa sold our great green ride. My father struggled to keep our family together and my siblings and I were placed in a Baptist Children’s Home. 

I ran into many future detours and roadblocks on my journey without my Queen. The line-walkers would attempt to hold me to set rules and direct me to use their maps. I encountered cultural mindsets of ‘can’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’. People demanded, “My way, my rules! Sit down and shut up.” And still, all these forces couldn’t compete with my Jackie. I’d hear her whisper,

Powered by guts and driven by imagination, I knew how to envision and steer a life into an enchanted reality. 

A fierce woman is a wonder to behold! Teach a girl to be brave by example. Let her test the unimaginable and she will not be influenced to permanently live a life not meant for her.