M.O.T.S.

"More Of The Same" This was our assignment for the last four days. I spent four days watching the sky over the Gulf of Thailand, the clouds taking turn forming dragons, apsara dancers, long boats, wats and a few poodles. Funny, how the clouds took on the shape of those things engrained in the culture of the place. Yesterday afternoon, The Girl pointed out a band of clouds near the horizon were the demons and gods churning the sea of milk. I promise, the clouds did at times look like Angkor Wat. My favorite cloud was the dragon being ridden by a Siamese warrior. And no, I haven't been nipping the Mekong Bug Juice. I think we are leaving Cambodia in the nick of time, the rainy season is starting. We had a night long deluge and both of us awakened at the same time, with the same thought: what about the road. There are low parts of the road and low bridges, our journey might be made even more interesting by having to ford standing water. We just made a pit stop about an hour outside of PP (to the north) and it was raining cats, dogs, pigs and water buffalo. Of course, my rain jacket is in my backpack in the luggage hold. But the bus driver almost pulled under the restaurant patio so we didn't get wet. TG finally ate a bug, brave thing that she is. The cricket she sampled was sweet. It was courtesy of the cutest kid, about 13 who shared his snack with her because she bought an older woman trapped beneath a sleeping toddler some water. I had thought all this spider eating, bug imbibing stuff was for the benefit of the tourists but it isn't: people really do eat the bugs. TG's new friend demonstrated one must pull the wings off the cricket first and then eat it in one big bite. She compared the coating to the sesame flavoring Spider Rolls have. All day, our little world rolled through the countryside, honking at cars, cows and bikes along the way. The ditches around the houses were filling and it's fortunate they are on stilts. I can't imagine what this country looks like in July. I'm almost phobic about muddy water (read the leeches episode in On The Banks Of Plum Creek too many times) so I would be hard pressed to venture in such a country during rainy season. Snakes and leeches and pointy stuff to cut me. I sound like such a pussy. If there had been mud puddles in PP, I wouldn't have left the bench in the waiting area.

PP wasn't as overwhelming today as it was a few days ago. TG ventured into the Russian Market across from the station and bought some local fry. I stayed put and made friends with a Buddhist nun. That is, I shared bread and grins with her. I know we both prayed for the obviously demented old woman begging. The woman approached me and I shook my head several times as she was persistant. Tried to kneel before the Buddhist nun but couldn't and instead bowed three times in prayer while holding her hand out. The nun shook her head and pushed her away. This woman had a handbag with her and despite her thin and frail build she looked cared for. It was also obvious she was lost and probably confused. I felt the hackles on the back of my neck raising--why was she alone, didn't she have family?--when a worried young woman rushed into the station area and gently led the woman away and casting back an apologetic look for the people her mother had begged from.

On the way into PP, I had put away the camera and missed Best Picture Of All Time. We had just entered the outskirts of PP and all the sudden we come to a dead stop in the middle of the road; horns are tooting and honking around us. TG stands up and looks over the tops of the seats: "No one's moving big traffic jam.: Our very game and brave bus driver inches his way to the left and begins to make a turn when suddenly everyone who speaks Khmer (that would be everyone except four of the passengers) are furiously screaming at the bus driver. One woman, obviously from the country with a leathery sun darkened face and an assortment of missing teeth, marches down the aisle and is admonishing (?) the driver, pointing and exclaiming when everyone else joins in and the bus is alive with voices no doubt telling the driver what to do. Usually at home, when there is a problem on public transit, the passengers become quieter so the driver can concentrate. I started to laugh because it was just so hilarious, we had busses and trucks and motor bikes and bicycles in this mass of wheeled vehicles going every which direction when all the sudden an ox cart pulling two stunned farmers is coming toward sthe bus as we were making a left turn. Priceless. Worth the cost of the ticket here. Pulitzer material.

The other priceless shot I missed this morning was one I could have taken but wouldn't have in a million years. We had stopped at a small village outside Snookie and a water buffalo was grazing in a ditch just outside my window. I had my camera raised and was snapping a picture (under exposed, I'm still learning) and had lowered to adjust the settings when I noticed a large group of people coming down the road towards the bus. There were three older adults and a few young women, two had small babies in arms. One young woman, was dressed to the nines, and had a large rice sack with her, no doubt her belongings. She was collecting her things and got on the bus and was seated just behind us. I could hear her calling out to her family and urging her baby to wave at them. I pulled the camera down when I saw each member of her family wiping away tears. She was leaving home. Her sisters wrapped their arms around one another, waving and wiping tears from their cheeks, her father bowed and beamed up at the bus, the babies waved and her mother cried. The young women was excited and knew the boy she was sitting with; he had boarded the stop before. Their conversation was enthusiastic and they laughed at things her baby said. Perhaps this was a wedding trip of some sort for them or they had been visiting their respective villages and were on their way home to PP. He married her despite the fact she had another man's child. Or they had decided it was time to leave home and he spent a few days with his family down the road before leaving home. They were tired of farming and she was promised a factory job and he was going to help in his cousin's garage... I could invent one hundred stories. The sisters were older and had the look of young matrons; soft around the middle but still young, maybe they were crying because they weren't leaving their village, maybe she carried their dreams with them to the big city just down National Highway 4, two hours and one world away from home.

Oxens and Tuk Tuks and Monks? Oh My!

The night air was heavy, diesel scented and most welcome after being inside for almost 24 hours. Our close connection went seamlessly in Seoul and the five hour flight was easy except I was sick of being on airplanes and ready to Be There. Siem Reap’s airport is tiny but extremely efficient or at least seems so since this is the shoulder season and there were four Westerners on the plane. The other passengers were locals returning home and relief workers from Korea traveling to do an annual assignment at the orphanage just outside of town. It was extremely dark, no moon or stars and we tripped our way down the stairs onto the tarmac where the locals all just sort of mingled and stopped for a smoke (!) and a chat before going inside to clear customs, no one was terribly pressed to go inside so their was an air of a cocktail party dwindling down as the last guests are leaving. It was all so terribly relaxed, no one was barking at us to stay in single file and forget about taking a bathroom break because in the Land of the Free and the Brave once you return to home soil you are guilty until proven innocent. Not here, I could have wandered off to the side and bushwhacked my way to the highway. I fought this urge and stood in line to have my visa verified and my passport stamped. There weren’t any heavily armed members of the military (a la Los Angeles) and the scanner missed my 3 oz tube of red chili paste which was not in a plastic bag but rather randomly and accidentally tucked in a crevice of my backpack which resembled a clown car with it’s three days worth of clothing and toiletries. It was nice to be innocent before proven guilty.

Our driver--Kriss--was waiting outside for us and while we had a hard time finding him, he didn’t miss us: how could he? We were the only Western women on the plane. I liked him immediately and has a dry sense of humor which we caught a glimpse of as he told the story of his only trip in an airplane: an old Russian prop jet with faulty landing gear flown from here to the mountains in the NW. And again as we wound our way through a dark jungle on rutted roads to the hotel when he asked: “Where did you hear about this place?” I know we are going to be in good hands because he made sure we would be safe before leaving, checking the hotel and the men in the reception area before leaving and as we were winding around on the dirt roads in the dark he told us it wouldn’t be safe to walk after dark. (OMG, do you think? More likely you run into an oxen than a bad guy but still…DARK…Jungle…)


The hotel is exactly how it was presented on the website. The only things they left out were the lucky geckos and standoffish owner. Laurent. French. Even I can do the math on this one. Our breakfast is included and one thing I’ve learned is sometimes this isn’t a big thing. Our breakfast is a big thing. I had the most wonderful croissants: bite sized morsels of buttery goodness dipped in a delightful honey that tasted like flowers.

The Girl didn’t sleep well last night, I slept like the dead and awakened at my usual time. She is a good sport and a hearty soul so she got up with me and after breakfast we wandered around the hotel grounds and down the road. I met the oxen who lived down the road. One smaller oxen was very curious about me and started creeping towards me. I was very surprised to say the least. She was already a few feet behind the others and fell even further behind, thinking it would be a good idea to meet the tourist. I pulled the camera up to my face to snap a picture and with that she stopped in her tracks, long enough to take note her companions were getting further away so she took off running. Like a small child who has been dawdling behind the others and races to catch up before anyone notices she is missing. After the herd went through, a Buddhist monk walked by carrying a bronze vessel. I didn’t take a picture of him because it felt disrespectful and besides that he glared at me. I’m not sure if Buddha would have glared at me but this guy did. I’m thinking not all of the young men who are committed by their families to join a monastery for a couple of years are terribly thrilled with the idea.

It’s terribly hot but we knew this would be the case when we booked the trip last December. But really, it’s not any more hot than SE Texas in August. And we have air conditioning. But seriously? I have sweat like I sweat this morning in many years. Every inch of my body was glowing. One of the shop girls had on a pair of black jeans and a long sleeved cotton turtle neck. I was melting just looking at her. The people in the market and on the streets will speak to you and ask you to look at their things or if you need a ride but it isn’t anything as annoying as the young men in Mexico or Turkey who promise you the sun, moon and stars while exclaiming I am the most beautiful woman they have seen all day! Yeah, whatever buddy.

I even bargained a little. I hate bargaining. It makes me feel like a miserly sort who doesn’t want to pay her fair share. But the bargaining is expected so I played along and ended up getting most of the gifts I wanted to take back with me plus a couple of things for myself.

After shopping we took ourselves to a spa I had read about for a “detoxifying facial”. It was a great way to spend an hour but the treatment was so much more than a facial. At one point, the technician, with her super human hands, had me sit up on the edge of the table and stood--on the table--behind me, her knees on either side of my spine as she pulled by shoulders back. It sounds brutal but it felt amazing.

The highlight of the day was our Eight Dollar tour of Siem Reap from Mr. Sony’s tuk-tuk. He took us all over the place, past the New Market where the locals buy their food and provisions, near the very posh hotels and country club and along the river where the people live in shacks suspended over the dreadfully polluted water, At times it felt like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride but it was at a slow speed and the tuk tuk drivers, kids on motor bikes and trucks all seemed able to read one another’s minds and we didn’t see a single near miss.

Tomorrow is our first day exploring the temple complex.
The Girl is going to eat bugs.
I’m going to let flesh eating fish nibble at the dead skin on my feet.

Good times. Good times.

New Toy

My birthday isn't for about six weeks but The Girl bought me a new toy and begged me to open the box this week. She told me it was something I could use on vacation. Well the box wasn't big enough for a plastic surgeon with a liposuction kit and it was too light to be an invisible head to toe body suit that gives the impression I am without varicous veins, cellulite and am as toned and skinny as I was twenty plus years ago (twenty years ago I was preggers so that doesn't count). I thought it was a new rain jacket because she said it would come in handy this trip and then in June when we go to Angor Wat. My rain coat is fine and dandy for fall/spring rain but it's too hot for tropical showers and June is the beginning of the rainy season so a rain jacket would be just the ticket for The Year We Travel and Avoid Home Improvement. At her insistance, I opened it up and found to my utter amazement a new camera! Wheee! It's a beaut, too: a Canon Rebel with all the bells and whistles. I've made it to chapter 4 in the manual and think this is a huge achievement because I don't usually read the manuals for anything. Digital photography is so forgiving. I've taken 250 pictures today playing with the settings and have saved four of them.

I didn't really need a camera so I'm guessing she gave this to me so she can have a chance with the other camera because I am a camera hog.

Faded Photographs

Even though I have a lot of blog worthy ideas swirling around in my head; I promised myself this week, before I launch back into the world of nursing, I will finish Wally’s scrapbook. It’s about time isn’t it? I thought it would take maybe six months of diligent work but it took me eighteen months! I kept hitting creative or emotional walls and then came summer with the advent of my other writing project and gardening. The picture on the blog is the last image in the album. It was a very weird picture of him standing next to my dresser in my messy bedroom when he was two. Why I took his picture at that moment I’ll never remember. What makes this picture strange is it is triple exposed and in the shadows you can see Christmas as well as a fragment from an image on a deserted highway outside of Taos. Even in the 90’s with point and shoot cameras it was hard to double expose film. This film was exposed three times. I remember talking to the guy at the camera store who told me chances are the film didn’t advance in the camera and it was a small miracle any images were visible.. Much less a collage of images which capture our busy life, and at the time, happy life as a family. The Beav came downstairs Tuesday night when I was laying out the last pages and asked me if this was Wally’s Christmas present. I laughed the idea off because, please, would a 19 year old really want a baby book and scrapbook of their school years as a gift? Beav assured me that Wally has changed so much over the last two months that he would probably think it was “cool” I had finished the book. When I finished this afternoon, I was a little choked up like someone who had finished their first marathon. It was a relief to have completed the task but at the same time I was really saying good-bye to the little boy.

One boy album down, one to go.

I think Beav is secretly hoping I start on his book this winter but I’m a tired of looking at little boy pictures so I think the next project will be to put the very old and very fragile family photos Dad recently gave me in an album. Just a simple acid free album, no embellishments and the journaling will be limited to identifying (if I can) people in the photographs. Some of these photos are unspeakable funny and sweet: my cousin and Sister playing with Hula Hoops, baby me pulling Sister’s hair, my mother and her sisters over the years grouped together, the body language apparent which sisters had just fussed with one another. Many of the photos I’ve seen over and over again but one picture was a surprise. It’s a candid snapshot of my father and mother standing together, he is standing behind her and his face is almost shadowed by her hair blowing back. They are bundled up and probably huddled close against a chilly Kansas wind. Their hands are gently intertwined one with the other making this beautiful candid photo sweetly intimate. I love stealing glimpses at the past before I was born. I also have a set of photos from a particularly rowdy party my parents had when I was about two. Who knows where I was that night, probably locked in my room with my eight year old sister supervising me, giving me Kool-aid and animal crackers when she wasn’t trying to convince me to stick my head between the very wide slats. I’m kidding I was probably not in a playpen but playing with a screwdriver and an electrical outlet [wink]*) Anyhow, those crazy kids were having fun, drinking their very strong cocktails and smoking their strong cigarettes. Those were the days, weren’t they when you could put your two year old in a play pen, get drunk and smoke. Damn, I was born too late.



*for the record, I was at my grandmother’s house and was no doubt being indulged by her and teased by my older cousins.

Memorials

We walked the National Mall today. The whole thing. From the Smithsonian to the Lincoln Memorial down and around the Jefferson Memorial and back to the Smithsonian. It was a big walk for these old legs and it was rainy, windy and cold. I'm so glad I did it, too because it was one of the most humbling and moving days of my life. Beav and I saw all of the memorials and I cried at three of them. Which is sort of melodramatic and ridiculous because I've never lost a family member to war. My late uncle was a decorated WWII soldier, my cousin was married to a medic in Vietnam, I have multiple cousins who were in the service, my ex brother-in-law ran the officer's club in Germany in the late sixties (Hooah!). So it isn't like my loss is extreme. I can't imagine the emotions running through people as they saw this and there were people looking for their loved one's names and they wept and prayed over them. There were too damned many names:


If that wasn't enough we stumbled onto the Korean memorial and the artist explicitly depicts a look of betrayal and loss in each of the statue's eyes.

But more evocative is the wall running along the statues with faces which aren't visible until you are very close. At first I wasn't sure I was seeing faces and I thought it was an optical illusion but then I stood very close and I could see the faces which still weren't really clear until I reviewed today's pictures and they are very clear. You only notice them later in the form of memory. Which is exactly how we have noticed the Korean veterans. But they are from the generation that survived the Great Depression and later watched older brothers march off to WWII so it wasn't like them to speak up and say they suffered in Korea and didn't come home whole. It is perhaps the most poignant statement I've ever seen in a work of art. Our shadow veterans.


By this time on our long long walk in the rain, I'm trailing behind the Beav because I'm about to cry and I don't want to embarrass or upset him. Again, I've not lost anyone to war and I barely remember Vietnam. We are plodding along the path when I see a cluster of people gathered and it took a minute for me to realize why they were stopped: The Vietnam's Nurse's Memorial. As crazy as my calling can make me, I am deeply proud to be part of this brave sisterhood and I remember how hard women fought for this memorial to be a part of the National Mall after they have been passed over for medals time and time again. I urged the Beav to follow me as I almost break to a run. I was wet and I was cold and the urge to just find a cab and go back to our hotel was strong but I was graced with standing next to a memorial for my sisters who volunteered to fight in a war most didn't understand and many protested. Aesthetically, the bronze statue is unspeakably beautiful and the tenderness of the nurse's touch is unmistakable. The artist gets to the heart and art of being a nurse. I felt the tears well up and spill onto my cheeks, Beav wasn't sure what the statue was all about and I tearfully explained to him it was hard fought but a well deserved tribute to nurses in war. He had the good sense to walk ahead of me while I sobbed on the path behind him. Had I been alone or with TG, I would have sat on the bench and wept for all the lives lost and the disrespect and discount of the sacrifices made. I doubt I would have been so brave to fight in a misunderstood war. Or any war for that matter.



It was a memorable day.

Serendipity

This week the weather finally cooperated on a day I wasn't being held prisoner in the hospital so I stayed outside most of the day. I'm not a big tree hugger and didn't even realize it had even been Earth Day until yesterday so I thought it would be fun to post a few of my pictures along my walk.
We live next to green space which most of the time it is a blessing. The only downside is sometimes the wild life get too close and it sort of freaks me out.

We had buckets of snow and it's thankfully melted and left behind green grass and shoots of things threatening to bloom. We don't always have marsh behind the house. At first I thought it was beaver damage but then I realized it was flooding.

There is a wide paved path but I took the scenic route along the water. Kipper loved it, lots of good smells and interesting scat. The creek is very deep, usually you can hear it over the rocks from the back yard but it's a bit lazy because it's so full.


Once upon a time we lived in south Texas and it was a marvelous place to grow up. I loved playing in the forest and marshes. I especially loved wading in the creeks. As an adult, whenever there is a body of water, like a stream, I am drawn to it and have almost an obsession with crossing them just to see if I don't fall in. I was sorely tempted by this large branch but I weigh more than I did in 1968 and I had the dog with me. Besides, I tested the depth of the water with another stick and it wasn't deep enough to NOT touch the ooky bottom when the branch gave under my substantial weight.
It is actually wider than it appears in this photo. Here it looks like I could just jump across. After leaving temptation behind I crossed the real bridge, and watched the water for a few minutes. Ward was a fly fisherman and when he would fish I would rock hop (again with the obsession) to the middle of the stream and just watch the water. I never wanted to learn to fish, too much fiddly flicking of the wrist and pulling lines and worrying after hooks in my ass to be any fun; but I did want to wade the streams. I regret never having donned waders and just sloshing around.

The view from the path is especially breathtaking on clear days, too. At first the snow covered peaks appear to be clouds. No wonder Kipper likes to take walks along the canal path. Too bad his nose is always to the ground so he misses the view.

I came home to work, lay in the sun and finish reading a juicy Gothic novel which echoes Jane Eyre for creepy phantasmagorical elements. Imagine how happy I was to take the cover off my seedling tray and discover I have a miniature forest of cucumbers and radishes. I love this photo of the cucumber shoot, you can see evidence of it's recent history as a seed on the edge of the tiny leaf.

The plan was to start hardening them off today but alas the weather has turned again and it is damp and cold. An Irish day.

Inspire Me Thursday: "I am"

I'm just under the wire for Inspire Me Thursday's prompt of "I am"






I took this last night in front of our kitchen window. It gives you the feel of our colorful Mexican Fiesta kitchen and the lovely tree I contemplate when I wash dishes.

The Rough Guide

I bet you saw that picture of TG's walking stick and you thought: "Oh my! who knew June would rough it in Mexico" Sure, yeah...roughing it. Between the wifi and the ipod singing from it's little home; it's more comfortable than my house. The only reason TG fashioned a walking stick from a found branch is for protection against a couple of renegade beach dogs--Black and Tan--who have attacked people. Beach dogs are a rough looking lot. Think Oliver Twist in a dog's body. Many are adopted as pets and frankly, the strays who have been passed over are jealous; you can see it in their forlorn expressions as the better tended mutts pass by their wild brothers and sisters.

It's overcast but warm. This morning, The Girl and I walked into town, foraging for breakfast, fresh tortillas for a few days and fresh chicken for dinner. We found all that we needed.

The first few days in PM, the quarter mile walk into town is an hour long event for me. TG is patient with my picture taking. Today, was no exception. I have about 2000 doorway pictures and added one more to my collection.



After I asked in my pathetic Spanish (a mixture of precognitive gestures and nursery words) to take a picture the tiniest woman led me back through her courtyard to her pride and joy. A magnificent creche, a lovely Christmas tree and a permanent altar to Our Lady of Guadalupe. My patron saint. I think it's the legend which surrounds her. You have to love a woman who descends into the desert and gives you roses.
I was hesitant to take a picture of these things but she turned on the twinkly lights and pushed me forward, pointing to my camera.

not a great picture but you get the idea...

Her attitude was quite different from the lecture I received--after a stair picture--on Santorini a few years ago. I don't have a clue what that Greek woman said to me but I'm sure it would set off a net nanny.

The morning was quiet, little traffic on the street, the work hadn't begun on the condominium project across the street. Now my Beethoven is punctuated by a tile saw and bird calls. The sun threatens to burst onto the scene. The Girl has made a lovely pico and guac snack before we take a bike ride out towards the mangroves to the north.

What a rough life, eh?

Scrapping the Past

Six months ago, I took on the huge task of making scrapbooks for the boys. Huge because Wally is 18 and Beaver is 14 and neither of them even had baby books. They did each have a small box with cards, pictures, mementos. I suppose I could take the easy way out and just scribble their names on the sides of the boxes and call it done. Trust me, this idea has crossed my mind a few times as I play detective and try to remember when a specific picture was taken. The good news/bad news? I simply don’t have that many pictures. When I ran away to myself in 2000, I left the albums with Ward; I was a bad mother and didn’t deserve the albums. (Oh God is that pathetic or what?). It felt cruel to take them with me: I was the one leaving, after all. “Tearing the family to shreds” was one of the many accusations hurled at me. The family pictures must stay with the family. I was no longer in the family according to Ward. The albums proved to be so *important* to Ward, they now languish in a storage shed. Given his propensity to dithering it isn’t worth waiting until 2020 or his death to repossess the albums. Frankly, I have bigger things to nag Ward about than old pictures. What concerns me is from an archival point of view: I just sort of threw pictures into cheap albums which continue to expose the photos to the element. My frustration rests more in the damage being done to the pictures rather than possessing the pictures. I should have taken better care of so many things, these pictures are just a small detail.

Fortunately, I had the foresight to “steal” the extra pictures haphazardly put in yellow envelopes. The B team pictures--you know the ones--heads are half gone and if they aren’t half gone, one or all of us are sprouting poles or trees. If we aren’t maimed our smiles are goofy or nonexistent. I lucked out and have a few gems. When I shared my project with Mother, she gave me all of her pictures to add to my little horde. I’m lucky only one very favorite picture is lost and I discovered several I thought lost. One of the lost treasures caused an explosion of weeping. It’s the only puppy picture of our Kipper-Dog and it captures his goofy personality like no other picture. (insert picture here). I only have three pictures from our trips to Canada. Luckily, I kept trip journals and they are lucid, thorough and without naval gazing so those memories are preserved for my family. I even stumbled across a journal Ward and I both kept when we went to Yellowstone before Wally was born. Sweet gifts all of these.

Looking over these pictures has brought back so many memories but the fact remains there is much I can’t remember. I can’t remember The Beav’s first step (nor do I have a picture of it). My periodic depressions have also muddled my memory, too. Two significant episodes have blocked a lot of memories. Unfortunately, one of these periods is much of Beaver’s first year. Go Team PPD! The other episode was the summer of 1999. But this space in time is easier to remember because I received real and credible help and it was the beginning of my Real Life.

I do have stacks of self-serving crap masquerading as prose journals and I thought reading them would help jog my memories of the boys and help tell the story; in some cases it has. However because they are my personal journals and I am terribly self-centered, they are simply documentation of inner turmoil vomited into spiral notebooks. If I relied on my journals, my scrapbook journaling would read something like this:

"Isn’t this a sweet picture of you and Daddy? This was taken the week we got the demand letter from the IRS and Mommy had to find daycare for you so she could make money taking care of other people’s babies so the government wouldn't take away our house!”

“A white Christmas for the Cleavers! Gram and GrandDad took you out for a sled ride isn’t that fun? Good thing you were outside because Mommy was screaming at Daddy after she caught him red-handed doing something unforgivable!”

“Ahhh yes, the trip to Texas. Ward certainly was upset when I just loaded the two of you into the car and drove alone all the way to Fort Worth!”

Sometimes the desire to include angry snippets is overwhelming and my jaw hurts from pushing away the unhealthy compulsion. I did manage a sardonic touch on the page featuring the last picture: “Same Life, Different City”. How poetic my mother lopped off the top of my head reflecting how I felt at the time: my brain half gone; Wally tugging at me and Beaver squirming to get away.

Because my glass is sometimes half full, it took me a minute or three to remember the stop we made in the middle of nowhere New Mexico a few hours before the picture was taken. The night was one of those perfect dark nights free of clouds or moon. I was taking a break so I rolled the window down, smelling the twlight lit mesa and listening to the quiet. It was well after midnight and the highway was empty. Wally roused when he felt the car stop so I asked him if he would like to join me in the front seat and look at the stars. He clamored into the front seat and I held his sleepy body close to mine as we hung our heads out of the window, the night air brisk across our faces. He gasped as he looked out at the millions of stars. Then I exclaimed: “Wally! It’s the milky way! A magic cloud of stars!“ We ohhed and ahhed over the view for a few minutes until I felt his head bob and I knew I should finish the first leg of our trip. When I remember things like this; my love for the boys and even the way I once fought for happiness with Ward floods back to me in a brilliant instantaneous joy and peace.

Reading my journals has also been hard because as chance would have it the first entry I opened to was written the day we discovered Beaver was gravely ill--at 22 weeks gestation--and my own health was at risk. April 1994. I hadn’t read those entries since I wrote them and I still hold the cellular grief of hearing the hard news. “We have reason to believe there is a grave chance your baby will not be viable at birth. If he is viable, he will require surgery and at least twelve weeks in the ICU.” Hard news for anyone to hear. Especially a Neonatal ICU nurse, knowing what the outcome can look like and the slim odds of a favorable outcome. (obviously it was favorable, isn’t he a strapping fine boy?)

April remains a hard month for me and because I’m a bit slow, it only took about ten thousand hours of therapy to realize why I greeted spring with a dull sense of loss. I’ve learned to observe April with an extra dose of self-care and to find little ways to show Beaver how blessed we are to have him in our lives. Surprisingly, scrapping these pictures from spring/summer 1994 wasn’t as hard as I thought. I remembered how re-engaged Ward became when there was a possibility he could lose his wife and child; I reunited with my sister and forged a healthy and vibrant relationship with her after years of estrangement.

My memories make me wish I had been a better SAHM. My journals just make me wince over how truly terrible I was at it. The free floating resentment was so unfair to my boys. Staying home out of duty isn’t the way to do it. Had my earning power been on par with Ward’s he would have been home with the boys. Ward may be a lot of things but he is profoundly more patient and easygoing. I’m amazed my kids aren’t more anxious and screwed up.

I sound eaten alive with bitterness when I describe the pictures I include in this blog but after working my way through the bad bits it is easy to remark on what was good and right about the snapshots; and I am lucky enough to experience serendipitous healing. Not that my life is so terribly special. All lives are bittersweet and mine is no more or less than others.

So now I’m scrapping the past, and with each page the bitter is sealed behind the photo. The only thing you can see is the sweetness of two childhoods.