Soft Is The Air I Breathe

By Karen Helmer

This is a testimonial to the true witness of God's love and forgiveness as you follow Karen's journey. Karen starts her life with innocent dreams that only become shattered when she wanted nothing more than to find the love of her life and God's will. Karen experiences true heartbreak, sadness, and an intense fight for her mental and spiritual survival as she meets and discards the men in her life. The overpowering male relationships make her question herself over and over as she battles herself, God, and if she is "good enough" for His love and forgiveness. People that she meets in her life try to "save" her in their own way and mold her into a person she doesn't want to be. Karen ends up using alcohol to deal with the pain and tries to escape a loving God in hot pursuit. Will she find the love of her life? Can she find forgiveness and God's ultimate grace?

Cancer also hits her between the eyes as she battles, prays, and fights for healing of this disease pounding its way through her body resulting from chemotherapy.

Experience the prayer she says under her breath one night.

This book reveals the dark and the light in this spiritual journey showing that it is never too late for any person to experience the life-changing effect God can have. Karen's hope is women can take comfort in knowing that it is never too late for love from reading Soft Is the Air I Breathe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887512686

Book preview

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Soft Is The Air I Breathe

Karen Helmer

ISBN 979-8-88751-267-9 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88751-268-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Karen Helmer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Leap Year

Chapter 2

How They Met

Chapter 3

Malott

Chapter 4

Blinky

Chapter 5

Paul

Chapter 6

Dick

Chapter 7

Obsessed

Chapter 8

Waiting

Chapter 9

Yes, Really

Chapter 10

Moving on

Chapter 11

Questions

Chapter 12

Choices

Chapter 13

Expectations

Chapter 14

Funny Things Happen

Chapter 15

Trailer

Chapter 16

A Start

Chapter 17

Medical Transcription

Chapter 18

The Affair

Chapter 19

Raining Jealousy

Chapter 20

Stripper, Death Alley

Chapter 21

Mirror, Nope, and Thunk, Thunk

Chapter 22

Blown Away

Chapter 23

Freedom

Chapter 24

New Life?

Chapter 25

Homesick

Chapter 26

Charmed?

Chapter 27

Fire and Brimstone

Chapter 28

Swords and Knives

Chapter 29

Flying Wheat

Chapter 30

Escape the Darkness

Chapter 31

Timber!

Chapter 32

Begin and End

Chapter 33

Colchuck

Chapter 34

All Things

Epilogue

Ashes

Writing the Book

About the Author

In memory of those I love and those I have lost.

I have tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them. To protect privacy, in some instances I have changed the names of individuals. I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties and occupations. I am expressing my opinion on some characters and events.

Present day

A different way of life was coming at me, full force. The decision to shave my head was not easy, as I sat in a kitchen chair, my feet propped up on the lower rung, holding a towel tightly around my neck. It had been coming out in clumps recently, leaving a trail of blondish, dark-root hairs everywhere. In the shower, I watched more and more hair drop to the bottom of the tub. The doctors had warned me of this, though I didn't really believe them. I had asked my son Brenden to do the deed, setting up this slightly monumental day. My husband, Kipp, walked in the kitchen and said, You can get through this, honey, kissing me on the cheek. I mustered a wane smile, as I pulled the towel closer around my neck and held it tighter, also holding a blue round mirror up to my pumpkin-sized face. Brenden started the FaceTime call with my youngest son, Josh. His face came on the screen as Brenden handed the phone to Kipp. You got this, Mom! he said. I was showing false bravado as I agreed. I was not ready for this, as I felt this loss was forced upon me. Brenden started with scissors, cutting away the bulk and letting long portions fall. I looked again in the mirror at the chop job, then put the mirror in my lap. Then he held the clippers close and buzzed, with dark hair falling onto the towel and to the floor. I tried not to look. He kept buzzing down to half-inch, stubby dark hair. I looked in the mirror finally and couldn't say anything. I smiled a little as Josh kept encouraging me. Kipp took pictures of me in hats and scarves with my new look as I tried to accept this new reality.

Chapter 1

Leap Year

1964

My thirty-six-year-old mother, pregnant with me, would go to her doctor's appointments very uncomfortable. At each appointment she would say, I do not want a leap year baby! Dr. Meyer promised by Valentine's Day baby would arrive. Next appointment, Baby will be here by Presidents' Day. Presidents' Day would come and go. Mom would tell him, "Not on leap year!" but sure enough, I was born on a leap year, 1964. My mother always lamented the tale of being in labor for thirty-six hours on twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth and how dare I celebrate on February 28?

The local Omak Chronicle had a poem when I arrived:

Lines for a Leap Year Lass

Karen Elizabeth Crandall, poor dear,

Was Born February 29th of last year.

So when will Karen have a birthday fete…

On March the first, or Feb. two-eight?

Karen's family all love her a lot—

They're the Ken Crandalls, who live at Malott

Their problem's a child who can vote when she's five,

At the ripe age of four she'll be licensed to drive!

Think, if you will…imagine how sporty

This kid's going to feel when she gets to be forty.

How old are you? she'll be asked now and then,

And she'll smile demurely, Who, me? I'm just ten.

Karen Elizabeth, dear little tot

Old aunt Dorth's meter sure went to pot.

But this had to be done, and here's the because—

Happy Birthday to you (whenever it was!)

On my first birthday, at age four, the newspaper sent a reporter to do another article. My friends and I sat around the cartoon tablecloth and had cake and ice cream with the reporter taking pictures.

Excerpt from article published Thursday, February 29, 1968.

Today is Karen Elizabeth Crandall's birthday. But whether she is one year old or four depends on your point of view. She is not yet old enough to be aware of the potentials of having your birthday fall on February 29, by the time she is two…er, eight…she will—womanwise—have figured out some of the niceties.

She will enter grade school before her second birthday, apply for a driving learner's permit when she's 4. She will graduate from high school before her fifth birthday and may even graduate from college before she's 6. She can truthfully buy children's train, theater and ski-tow tickets until she's nearing 50, yet can't be tried in adult court until she's 72. She can marry without parental consent at age 4 ½ and vote when she's 5.

Chapter 2

How They Met

My mother Terry (Elizabeth) grew up in Alameda, California. My grandmother was an alcoholic and died at age forty-five. Mom had stories of covering her front teeth with tissue paper for school. Eventually all of her teeth fell out, and she had bad fitting dentures as a teenager. She received her name Terry from playing Terry and the Pirates with her friends at school. They were having a fake sword fight out by the school on a cement wall, and one of them called, Terry, come down here and fight us! The name stuck, and no one ever called her Elizabeth again. She worked from the time she was thirteen, walking through the tunnels to a department store after they had fumigated rats. She became a ward of the court at fifteen, and a family took her in along with my Aunt Laura, a buxom white-haired aunt that gave us many treasures from traveling the world with her husband John who worked for the Kaiser corporation. They paid for Terry to attend college at Pullman where she took geology.

My dad Kenneth grew up in Okanogan County, escaped going to WWII, and went to college also at Pullman to study agriculture. He grew up on the farm and learned to hunt and fish. He was a woodworking perfectionist and rebuilt the family home in Malott from a two-room wooden shack to a three-bedroom home. He had a pilot's license at age sixteen before his driver's license and flew small planes. In later years, he had an article published about deer hunting in Outdoor Life's Best Deer Hunting Stories.

As the story goes, my parents met in a classroom in Pullman where he walked over to talk to his buddies grouped around the doorway. Mom had her back turned, and all he saw was raven black curly hair to her shoulders above a light blue dress. Then Mom turned around. Dad saw her hazel eyes and they floored him. He was smitten right then and there.

They were married for seventy-four years.

Chapter 3

Malott

My dad had finished the shack built with dark boards with cracks in between, making it into a three-bedroom, one-bath house for all five of us to live in very comfortably on five acres of pasture. My brother Dale was born in one of the coldest winters in 1952 with the house under construction. There are tales of wind blowing through the chinks in the wood making the curtains stand straight out that year. My sister Valerie was born two years later, and I followed much later.

There was a population of around three hundred in this small rural town. There were a few houses scattered in the sagebrush with horse fences and apple orchards.

It was a pleasant, wonderful, rural home to grow up in. The kitchen was decorated with chickens; Val's room had blue flowered curtains and a yellow-and-blue flowered bedspread. My brother lived in the converted carport. I had Raggedy Ann and Andy colors in my room with pink-and-orange shag carpet, Raggedy curtains and bedspread. We had horses and various animals for pets, including chickens and rabbits. There were chores to be done including breaking ice off water troughs and feeding all the animals. We had hay bailing day and watched as the dogs chased mice through the rows of felled fresh alfalfa. Dad actually had an old red tractor with the huge black wheels, lifting me up for rides on the metal seat.

When my sister was younger, she had a black-and-white cow named Calfy Pellets. Val would read on the cow's back with her head and book on the butt of the cow with her chin in her hands on her elbows perched on the bony butt. Her feet were folded up on the neck of Calfy, and Val could spend hours out there.

Dale was twelve years older, so I rarely saw him. He worked in the hay fields for ranchers in the summers, coming in hot and tired.

Dale also had a whole band come over on Saturdays as he played trumpet and eventually learned guitar. There were five guys crowded in the living room, backed up against the brown paneling and blocking the hallway door to my Raggedy room. One guy was on the peach upright piano, Dale on trumpet; there were also drums and a trombone. They had blocked the hallway, so I was constantly getting whapped with drumsticks playfully just trying to get through the noise.

Mom wanted all of us to learn piano, so she stuck us in lessons. The one rule was to practice after chores in the morning. At five years old, I was up at 5:00 a.m. feeding the animals and in the winter breaking ice off the trough, then practice piano for an hour before school.

I would walk to my grandma's house through the orchards. I never knew my grandfather as he passed away before I was born. My grandma rarely smiled or laughed, but she was an amazing gardener and cook. She made cakes from scratch for all the weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays for families in Malott. She made homemade noodles for chicken soup. If I was sick, she'd say, Well, we better mix up some bakin' soda and water and settle yur stomach. Nasty stuff, but it worked. Her rose garden was incredible with rows and rows of roses, large pink and yellow old-fashioneds and red climbing roses, all cultivated to perfection. I owe my love of gardening and my adequate green thumb to her.

The river in the valley was surrounded by apple orchards, covering the hills with neat rows of the short trees. In the spring, April is beautiful with white blossoms from cherries, bright pink blossoms from peaches, and acres of pink-white apple blossoms. My favorite time of year. However, we were all put in the orchards to work too. Picking apples was hot, monotonous work. After picking, filling the bag, and climbing down an eight-foot ladder, I would dump the apples into a 5×5 red wood bin. Filling the dumb thing up took forever. I will never forget dumping the first bag of apples in that huge bin (to a little kid) and thinking, wow, that didn't even fill a corner! I was paid six bucks a bin, a little cash to save. Needless to say, my mother was very, very wise. My brother went to college to be a lawyer, I went to college for business, and my sister eventually did modeling and was a dental assistant. Mom was very smart.

We also had horses, which I rode practically every day. I would ride for hours through the apple roads and into the mountains around Malott. I would even pack lunches as an eight-year-old and take off on bareback, trotting through the trees and enjoying every aspect of just riding. However, there were incidents that happened on a farm.

Dad had been hunting deer and birds for most of his adult life. He would leave every fall, and Mom and I were left to tend the farm, the horses, and sprinklers. This particular fall, he was off to the blue mountains of Idaho leaving us for two weeks while he bagged an elk. One night Mom knocked on my bedroom door and woke me up. Karen, Lady got out. You'll have try to catch her and get her back inside the fence. Lady was a palomino Dad had purchased for me to ride. She was fifteen years old, slow, and very calm. I put on my brother's old black coat, pulled on my red knit hat and boots, and headed out the back door. Mom followed close behind. I walked down the path in the dark with the moonlight illuminating enough of the ground to see where I was going. I was twelve and pretty adept at catching horses. I was hiding a piece of rope in my pocket with some oats so I could catch her and put the rope around her neck. I saw quickly what had happened: either I (or a gremlin) left the electric gate down and didn't put it back in the slot with the red handle laying in the dirt. Lady had wandered out into the secondary pasture with no fencing, just open pasture by the road. She was happily munching on alfalfa, head down and swishing her blond tail. I was slightly irritated with myself and walked up behind her, not saying a word. I barely touched her on the butt and wham, a swift, hard kick with her hind foot right in my chest. The force plummeted me backward, and I fell down hard in the grass. Mom ran over, shouting, Karen! Karen! Are you okay?

I could not talk or breathe. I don't remember how Mom got me back into the house. She walked me to the brown plaid couch laying me on my side. I lost all vision. Everything was black, and my chest really didn't hurt that much; I was just scared. I just kept saying, Mom, I can't see! She quickly called Dr. Meyer, and he told her luckily the kick landed on the hardest part of my sternum, missing my vital organs narrowly and that my eyesight would return. I just had the wind knocked out of me. An hour passed, and I still laid there. A neighbor came and captured Lady and returned her to the pasture. I just waited to see again! It was the weirdest feeling with eyes wide open but not seeing. I was trying to see any light at all and wondering if I was going to die. My dad heard about all of this when he got back, though he never said a word about the gate. From then on, I made sure that the gate was shut! But that is life on the farm—horses get out, and girls get a swift kick. I guess it taught me to take surprises in stride.

Dad taught me how to fly-fish right there on the front lawn. He put together a smaller fly rod with a plastic heavy fly line, and I practiced trying to float the line out in a straight line on the lawn. Easier said than done. I learned the ten and two o'clock approach, and every time the line would crumple on the lawn in a jagged S-curve, my dad would say, Karen, stop beatin' snakes! Keep working on ten and two and let that last cast out and hold it. I kept on working at it, never getting as good as my father who had been fishing for his whole life. We would hike into private lakes where Dad knew the owner. We would stand on the bank and flip the flies in the water ripples. Nothing.

He also taught me how to tie flies later on. I tied ratty flies, but hey, sometimes they worked. After my dad passed away, I kept precious items like his beat-up dark green felt fishing hat with the fly band around the crown, keeping those memories close.

Fishing was something we did in the summer, fall, winter, or spring. Didn't matter. He had a metal gray canoe with two hard seats that we unloaded out of the back of the truck. Later on after selling coyote hides, he purchased a twenty-seven-foot boat we named the Tranquility and could sleep in it. We would wake up, flip our line in the water at 5:00 a.m. catching breakfast. I was the one-more-cast daughter. I never wanted to come in making my dad row that canoe around a lake until I caught something. Okanogan County was filled with lakes full of trout, bass, crappie, perch, walleye, and more. We fished for it all. Later on, he purchased a green canoe; and we would take the green canoe out to Omache Lake, with him paddling around, lowering lures in the water, and pulling out huge Lahontan cutthroat trout. We would spend nights on the Tranquility, enjoying the beaches, swimming, and fishing.

On these many trips with my father, I fell in love with mountains, water, fishing, outdoors, and nature. We would backpack and hike into beautiful lakes with the mountains towering above. I learned about mice, bugs, tents, fishing, and fire-making.

The days went by in slow but beautiful haze. I never knew what we had as a family had until later in life when I looked back and thought, wow, what an upbringing. I did not know it at the time, but I would call upon that sereneness, happiness, and calm waters in the canoe many times. Sometimes I would totally forget about it until the darkest of times.

Chapter 4

Blinky

We were happy in the house at Malott; however, Mom wanted to move to Spokane. Dad worked for the ASCS office or the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service and rose to director in the Okanogan office. Dad kept getting promotion offers from the state and the federal government that he would consider, then turn the offers down. We drove to Deep Creek outside of Spokane one summer to check out a house as he was offered a position in Spokane as head of the department. We made an offer on the house, and then he backed out last minute, upsetting Mom. Years later I found out it was because Dad could not leave my grandma, and he was in love with the northwest and Okanogan County. Mom, though, was determined to move. I had finished sixth grade and would start junior high in Okanogan, and Mom wanted to be closer to town for work and school.

One day we toured a house for sale in Okanogan, less than a mile from the school. It was gray pumice block with red-tile roof, perched on the corner of Kermel grade overlooking the Okanogan valley on the right and the town of Omak on the left with a spectacular view through connecting, large L-shaped windows. The house was built in the 1950s with two small bedrooms, a master bath the size of a postage stamp, and a smaller sewing room. The house sat on one-half acre with a huge garden with straw flowers, dahlias, and roses. The living room had rose-and-gray colored carpet, built-in glass dining hutches, and bench seats forming an L overlooking the view through the huge windows. There was a huge walnut tree out in front. In back, there was a covered patio with green cement floor, completely filled with junk and about one hundred cats (more like ten). Mom was excited at the prospect of moving off the farm. It was a lot of work, and she was not cut out for that life, she said. Dad did not have a mortgage, so they could buy the Coacher house for cash.

A month later the couple wanting to buy the Malott house had the sale fall through for their own house, therefore holding up the purchase of the Coacher house. Dad fretted about this because he wanted to keep my mother happy after the Spokane debacle.

One day after riding, I unsaddled Lady and put her away. I went into the chicken coop to check on the pet chickens. All were accounted for, and the baby chicks were running around. I went to feed the red hen that I had failed to name yet. Buddy, our springer spaniel, came around the corner, and for whatever reason, the red hen decided to flap away. Buddy ended up running into the barn while I was frantically trying to stop him from hurting her. I shooed him outside, but the red hen flapped out the door too over Buddy's head. Buddy grabbed her by the neck and the chest as I was yelling to stop! There were flying feathers, dust, and straw everywhere. By now, Dad had heard the commotion and came to see what happened. He pulled Buddy off the hen, and we assessed the chicken. She had blood from her right eye, but otherwise seemed to be unhurt. Dad told me to go in the house and he would tend to the chicken.

Dad set up a cage in the mud room and brought her in the house. He dubbed her Blinky because of her eye and kept a close watch on the pet chicken.

A couple of days later, Dad excitedly told us he figured out how to get the Coacher house, and it was all due to Blinky. He was up late at night the night before worried about the chicken and worried about how to get the house deal to go through. He came up with the brilliant idea in the wee hours of the morning to buy the house that the couple wanted with proceeds from the sale of our property and buy the Coacher house at the same time. It was a huge three-way deal that took mountains of paperwork, all due to a half-blind chicken.

*****

We moved later that summer. Clearing out a farm of over forty years' worth of farm equipment, shed stuff, household stuff, and animals was a monumental task. The last load was hauled off more than a month later.

Mom and I handled unpacking and setting up the inside of the house. We spent days cleaning out the garden, cleaning out junk and cats from the patio, revealing a built-in firepit and more counterspace. In the house, Mom loved the glass built-ins with dark blue velvet backing and displayed her old, valuable dishes and dolls from Aunt Laura. I set up my bedroom. They gave me the master bedroom complete with postage stamp bathroom. One whole wall had blond built-in closets with shelves, cupboards, and a built-in desk with glass top. The room was light blue with two windows looking out onto the front lawn and the road.

Valerie was dating Alex at the time. Alex was from a neighboring town and met Val at school. One day he pulled into the driveway in a 1969 Stingray Corvette. Alex was just as blond as Valerie, tall, blue-eyed; both together with the Corvette made quite a sight. Valerie eventually broke up with Alex and moved to California. We never knew why. She would have tales of working for a photographer, meeting Lola Falana, Ben Vereen, and other stars. She was a wild girl, not meant for this earth.

I started seventh grade on the lower floor of the school. Allison and I continued to see each other, riding horses together often. I met Allison in grade school when she stepped off the bus, wearing a blue pinafore outfit, and said, Hi. We were fast friends after that. I would ride five miles to her house, spend the night, playing with Lhasa Apso puppies and sleeping on the floor. I now had a cow horse named Shadow. We rode horses at night in the orchards during apple blossom, one of my favorite memories. It was so quiet, with no sound other than the breathing of the horse or conversations with Allison. The moonlight shown through the apple trees as we rode silently in the rows. It was a warm May evening, and the smell of apple blossoms hung heavy in the air. Beautiful ride.

The year 1978 came, and I turned fourteen. The last day of school Allison and I decided to ride horses to school. I rode Shadow to her house staying on the side of the highway in the gullies and arriving in the evening. Her dad made peanut butter milkshakes for us, and we played with the new cute puppies. In the morning, we set out bareback on our horses to the school and dismounted at the school parking lot with huge, dark, dirty circles on the back of our thighs from horse sweat and dirt. I don't remember if we tried to clean up before school or not. We laughed about this story for years.

*****

That summer, I attended a weeklong camp in Salmon Creek. The camp had a large central building with kitchen and tables for meals and crafts. The long bunk houses were crowded with bunk beds, and a few of us bunked on the floor with sleeping bags. The first