My Daughter Summer

Isn’t this the saddest little flower you’ve ever seen? Kind of reflects my inner life when I think about what day it is. The last day of August. The last day. Indian summer officially starts tomorrow, and frankly it feels like it has started today. I’m on the back porch in a sweater because the breeze is a little chilly. The light golden and the sun more tentatively warm than full on hot. I wish I were filled with breathless excitement over the new season about to come upon me. Admittedly, autumn is sweet here, lovely sunny warm days with a subtext of coolness; fog in the mornings and crisp nights. We do get snow in late October and fourteen years ago we had over three feet of snow in late September. It was freakishly early so we were all in our shorts and sweat shirts by the next week. I have absolutely no romantic memories of that storm because it was Hell when it happened; the snow was so heavy it blew up the electric transformers in our end of Stepford Knolls and we didn’t have power for four days; which was especially fun with a six year old and a two year old. No school for the oldest, the school was in the ‘hood and without power as well. Looking back, I’m not sure how I entertained the little monsters dears. I know I used a ton of babysitting co-op hours so they could hang at friends’ houses that did have power and they spent a lot of time bundled up, playing in the snow. I didn’t go as far as David Sedaris’ mother who locked her kids outside and watched them from the warm kitchen while drinking from a coffee mug of gin. My kitchen wasn’t warm and I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any gin so that plan wasn’t viable at my house. I did weep at the kitchen table because I was losing hundreds of dollars of groceries we could ill afford to lose that fall.

And the first snow always comes as such a terrible surprise. Like I’ve just discovered I live in a climate where it stands every chance of snowing from October until May. Always, without fail, I am all “WTF???” when snow is predicted. In fact, my reaction to snow is more predictable than actually getting snow. I’m never prepared, don’t know where my boots are or gloves…the Beav and Wally don’t have coats that fit them properly so I’m one of those Anti-Uber Moms at the store snatching up jackets while my kids are shivering in the car or at home waiting for me to return with their jackets so they can leave the house. Last year, if you recall, I was the wild-eyed lady who almost crashed her car getting to the tire store on October 28th when we had our first big snow. God was looking out after me because the tires came in under budget and I didn’t kill anyone on the way to the tire store. That sort of blessing bears remembering.

This fall, I have promised myself to just Woman up and have the gloves, hats, boots and jackets ready for winter before she knocks me down like a playground bully. In the meantime, today I will be cutting flowers and deadheading the spent blossoms, beating down weeds and fretting over still green tomatoes. I’ve also scheduled in a session of reading in the sun gather the last bits of Vitamin D before I become like Persephone and pine for my lost daughter and favorite child named Summer.

"If it was completely different, school would be great."

I found the books here

If you read my blog regularly you know Beav is back in school this week and I think it’s insanely early to be starting school. One reason it’s too early is the weather; it’s hot this time of year and most of the school isn’t air conditioned. I don’t know about your but I always found a close and overly warm room most conducive to learning. But The Beav is taking this whole back-to school thing like a man, going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up on time. It seems like yesterday he was the little boy on the kindergarten playground in his jammies. Four years ago he was the kid who looked like he slept in his clothes to save time in the morning. (I let him but the negotiating lynch pin was he had to brush his teeth. I chose my battles with this one) But last year was a magic year, not only did he get up on time without a bunch of drama, he volunteered to shower without being begged. The angels who live with us were able to unplug their noses and sing hallelujah.

Back-to-school also means two other things: forms to fill out and being nickle and dimed to death. Five bucks here, fifteen bucks there, twenty over there. And this is after I shelled out a Benjamin and Grant and Lincoln last week for fees. Fortunately, after fifteen years of this particular rodeo I know to plan for the slow fiscal bleed that marks the middle of August.

One of the yearly forms I must complete makes me cranky. The Reading Permission Slip. Maybe I’m like a crack mom or too lenient or neglectful or something but I trust my son’s teachers to make prudent decisions about the reading curriculum and don’t feel a need to sign a permission slip for my son to read bits and pieces of the European and American canons. It’s not like Screw magazine is suddenly relevant to a high school English class. Ok…not relevant in a scholastic sense. And with Wally? I was just happy he was reading a book that wasn’t a graphic novel. Last year, I embarrassed Beav to death because I wrote a ranty message on the bottom of his reading permission slip. I told her how sorry I was his literature teacher worked in a district which smothered creativity and extolled censorship as a virtue. This year, I asked if he would like me to review his American Literature reading list and pick out the things I thought were boring and useless to high school sophomores for a “Can Not Read” list for his teacher. He chuckled and then assured me this wasn’t necessary. Can you imagine the look on the teacher’s face? Dear Ms. Teacher, James Fennimore Cooper is counter to our religious and soul felt belief literature should be well written and relevant. Yours sincerely, June Cleaver. I also have to give him permission to watch PG 13 films used to support pieces of literature they study. My guess is the parents bitched up about PG 13 films have kids who spend time at their friends’ houses drinking stolen beer and watching soft core porn on Cinamax.

This year the form that induced multiple eye rolls was the standard emergency contact form which also includes who isn’t supposed to pick up your kid. I think this is mandatory information for kids who aren’t old enough to buy cigarettes drive cars or don’t have the intellectual or emotional capacity to say no or whack job Lolita types who favor “older” men. But for this sixteen year old? I mean really, the kid makes better decisions than his parents. But despite my whining about the rules and procedures I do what I’m told. So I’m dutifully and by rote filling in my numbers, Ward and Alexis’ contact information and TG’s numbers when I get to the last line which asks me “who else will be allowed to pick up your ‘child‘?”

I was so tempted to write: “Everyone but creepy guys in vans who promise puppies and candy, Catholic priests or Crack dealers may give my son a ride home. And if he gets a ride home with a creepy guy, priest or dealer makes sure they are going somewhere to watch PG 13 movies and read smutty novels”

I think I may do this his senior year just to see if anyone notices.

Luft Balloon

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Yesterday I was laying in the sun and happened to look up into the flawless blue sky and noticed a white balloon shimmering many feet above. The irredescent white balloon was moving quickly , dancing in the cross breezes with a glittery silver string dangling beneath it. I wondered how small I must have appeared from that distance above the earth and I contemplated what it must feel like to float and fly above the Earth at such a great distance. For the millionth time, I wished I could fly. Just raise myself off the ground floating and swooping with my arms to my sides or out like wings. When I was a child I would have dreams of flying like this and in one particular dream I was flying over the playground propelling myself faster or slower at will, turning somersaults and flips as I went along. The feeling of absolute freedom is still with me when I recall that dream.

A book I cherished when I was that age also came to mind: The Wednesday Witch. A little girl found a tiny witch in her doll house and the witch would come to life on Wednesday's, taking the girl on adventures. One such adventure included riding a cannister vacuum high in the night sky over the girl's neighborhood and across her city. It was an enchanting fantasy for me and the creepy factor of finding a doll that would come alive and kidnap a child never occurred to me until yesterday.

I remember twirlling round and round and falling to the ground, eyes closed for a few seconds to continue the sensation of spinning so I could imagine I was actually flying through the air. My favorite time to do this was night because I wanted to open my eyes and be amongst the stars. It was always greatly disappointing to be bound by stubborn gravity. My next attempt at flying was the whole mind over matter thing. I must have read about Yogi's levitating or some such thing because I spent time willing myself to levitate just a little above the ground. Flying would have been great but I would have been satisfied with hovering a bit over the ground but that even proved more than my brain could muster. Just for the lark of it, I gave it another try yesterday afternoon, closing my eyes and freeing my mind hoping I would feel the weight of the earth drop away from me as I floated up and away from the yard and into the sky so I could grab the balloon and bring it back to earth with me when I was tired of flying. A souvenir of my adventure.

I imagine the visage of a flying middle-aged woman clad only in a bathing suit wouldn't have been as charming a picture as an eight year old on the back of a canister vacuum. Lucky thing I stayed on the ground.

Happy Birthday Mr. Busy!

I warned Beav I would be blogging about his birthday. I’m suspicious he reads my blog because he knows his online name and the other psueds I use…unless he is spying on me and hacking into my computer and reading documents. Which would be sad because my life is pretty boring. His only request was: No infant pictures. So much for honoring his request.

Sixteen today, what a milestone. But every birthday he has feels like a milestone because of his rough start. When he was 22 weeks gestation we weren’t sure he was going to even survive birth much less surgery or a NICU stay. Miraculously, he was flawless at birth. Yes, he “crumped” at twelve hours and did indeed require the NICU for a few days and oxygen at home. But that was actually the better case scenario for my little boy. OF referred to the NICU as “the casino” because of the absense of natural light and constant alarms and bells and voices. I do wonder what Beav remembers precognitive about his rough start. Now I tease him that his periodic low oxygen saturation meant his IQ is only 140 rather than 190. But despite the rough start he grew and grew and grew and grew.


Here he is at 1. We knew he would suck his thumb because we had seen every inch of him, inside and out during the troubled pregnancy. Isn’t he sweet? My parents took he and Wally for pictures and Beav had had just enough and needed a nap.


That he was going to take a nap was blessing enough. Beav was one of those baby’s who wasn’t satisfied with the current developmental leap they had made. If he had rolled over, once was enough and sitting up must be obtained instantly after rolling over. He always seemed so frustrated with his body and his mind not moving as quickly as he desired, not doing everything he wanted it to do. Not being able to keep up with his older brother. When he slept, it was with one eye open because he didn’t want to miss a thing. Beav was into everything and extremely busy. Hence his nickname: Mr. Busy. He was a naughty little thing, too. You can see it in his eye and just after the picture was taken he jumped off the chair. His first Parkour move! Makes a mother proud after she recovers from the heart attack and realizes her kid hasn’t broken both legs.


Mr. Busy didn’t have much to say. His brother talked for him so he didn’t see any need for conversation because his basic needs were being met. He still doesn’t talk much. I imagine fishing with he and my dad would be absolutely scintillating except for the silence of two taciturn men. But in this picture his brother is away with my parents, having done a very grown up thing and flown alone to Texas. We took a trip to the mountains and out of the blue I heard this little voice from the back seat:

“Knock Knock”

I turn around stunned. I was about to take this boy to a speech pathologist for a work up. Because he seemed bright enough but he didn’t talk. . .

“Who’s there, Beav?”

“Sheep”

I give Ward a sidelong glance and I turn around and like a CIA operative who is sussing out where the microfilm is I say:

“Sheep who?”

The little mite leans forward in his car seat and gleefully says:

“Baaaaaaa!!!!!!”

After he repeated the joke we were further introduced to the inner workings of Beav’s brain. He had a lot to say and narrated the scene passing outside the car windows until we arrived at our hotel.



I
I worried Beav didn’t have any of his own interests and my mom out and out fretted about it. Fortunately, I knew it would be a matter of time and Beav would find his passion. And he did at the ripe old age of four. Airplanes.

Beav still loves airplanes and is very sad he is too tall to be a fighter pilot. I think I have him convinced being a C130 pilot is way better because they bring troops, letters from home, care packages, food, medicines and supplies. Besides that, they get to “drive” 747’s!

Yes, I used the word “drive” because I was under the influence of his driving when we were having this conversation. And like a big doink I said: “And after your military career you can ‘drive’ a 747!“ The kid loves his Gs. He kept putting his foot into the MINI van like it was a four banger so we would lurch really hard forward and then when he braked it was the reverse process. I finally leaned over and patted him on the leg: “That’s mama’s little fighter pilot, isn’t it!”

And I got a rare belly laugh out of him, too. Sometimes he is like an old man all serious and thoughtful. I guess this is what happens when your parents divorce five years into your life. But maybe he was going to be serious and thoughtful anyhow. He does need to lighten up a little.

Fortunately, I see cracks in his surface and the little boy shines through. We live near a large and SECRETIVE-shhhhh don’t tell anyone but we have top secret airplanes--air force base and at least once a month F-16s fly over. It’s actually pretty thrilling and gives me a rush to watch them zoom over and then disappear leaving a big noise behind. The other day I heard one approach and then I heard Beav leap out of his chair he dashed to his window and came running across the hall into my room. I looked up at him, an excited smile on my face: “Did you see it? Did you see it?”

His own eyes were shining with excitement a smile about to crack: “I got a glimpse, three of them in formation. It was so cool.”

Yeah it was cool. Thanks for showing me the magic in airplanes, Beav. Happy Birthday!

Now for the love of God, don’t kill the gas pedal, the MINI van will move, I promise!

Killer Heels

I’ve been involved with The Girl for about six years now and was pretty sure she had heard all my “stories” at least twice and was past the point of feigning interest and was now at the point of holding her hand up and saying, “I’ve heard this before.” But the other night I surprised us both with a story she had never heard. And I thought my canon was exhausted half way through our second date. It all started when I was getting ready to go out with my crazy nurse friends and she noted I had on high heels.

“They aren’t that high”
“You never wear heels.”
“I know. I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why?”
“Well aside from the fact I look like a big drag queen in high heels. My left ankle is toast.”

She looked at me amazed, not knowing this about me so I launched into a long story about why I don’t wear high heels. When I was twenty I was on a date with a guy. He was a nice guy, uber Star Wars nerd, wicked smart so I wanted to impress this young man with my wit, good sense and grace. We went to the movies, Empire Strikes Back and immersed ourselves into the galaxy far far away. One of us was so immersed she didn’t notice her left foot had fallen asleep and when she got up from her chair she turned on her completely paralysed and numb left foot and crumbled on the floor like a Storm Trooper struck by a light saber. I’m groping around on the floor, trying to recover the contents of my purse and my dignity as he is helping me up. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this and I remember he stifled a laugh and when I saw him laughing I decided to laugh it off, too. Of course, he asked what happened and if I was ok. “Just fine” I lied as I stepped on my left as my entire leg begged me for the love of the Empire just sit down, take those damn shoes off and hop to the car and home. Instead, I continued to walk up the steps to the exit and yes, I would love it if you pulled the car up to the front. Silently, I was sobbing in pain as I waited for him. A sensible girl would have said: “You know Gary, I’m such a klutz and I’m really hurt, can we call it a night, I need to ice my ankle.” Yeah but that girl wasn’t me. I was too self-conscious so I went along for the rest of the evening. Besides that we had reservations at my favorite restaurant: Jennivine. A lovely little room in an old house with a decently priced price fix menu. Frankly, I didn’t want to miss this meal because it was an expensive restaurant and I longed for the food they served. It was down the street from the restaurant I worked and we would trade food so I knew what I missing. I wish I could remember what we talked about and had for dinner. I probably drank several glasses of wine to blot out the eye bleeding pain rocketing up my leg . And then another couple glasses of wine to help me forget just how swollen my foot and leg was becoming. Fortunately, he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go dancing. I probably would have gone just to be polite. It’s so much important to be polite and not draw attention to yourself even if you’re going to be crippled and thirty years later blogging from a wheelchair. After dinner he drove me home and we said good night in front of my building. Sucking back tears, I merrily waved as he pulled away and then crept through the security door, sat on the bottom step to remove my shoes and take a look at my ankle. It wasn’t pretty, either. Swollen roughly three times the size of my right and with blue, black and red streaks climbing my leg. I couldn’t walk at this point and crawled, literally crawled up the stairs. My roommate was in her jammies ready for bed. I limped into the living room and burst into tears: “I think I broke my ankle!” (and I wonder where my kid gets the drama thing?) She took a look at it like she knew what she was looking at and I took a look at it like I knew what I was looking at and we came to the conclusion based on the late hour, the night of the week and appearance and lack of health insurance it wasn’t broken. Ah the resilence of the young. I was waiting tables the next afternoon and dancing a week or so later. Mind you I only wore three inch heels for the dancing. I never saw uber Luke Skywalker again. I’m not sure why. He probably liked his women able to stay upright when they were sober.

So this leaves me wondering what else TG doesn’t know about me. Poor thing is going to have to wade through a bunch of repeats to discover the new bits and pieces.

I love the 'net these are almost the same killer heels

"There Is Never Enough Time To Do All The Nothing You Want"

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“What I heard then was the melody of children at play.” Nabokov

I love summer. Lovelovelovelove Summer. I love how the sun comes up around five and it isn’t dark until nine at night. I like the sound of the cicadas. I remember the crickets and frogs from Texas, a sound rare here. The trees are lush and green; flowers are in full bloom and it is blissfully hot. Everything looks healthy and robust. I like the way wind sounds as it brushes the cottonwood leaves. It’s my favorite time of the year and yet only lasts twelve short weeks. Last summer I discovered rising early every summer day away from the hospital allowed me time to accomplish more “nothing”. Too bad this summer is the exception. Not only am I accomplishing absolutely nothing but I’m sleeping in like a teenager. I did manage to knock back the weeds, deadhead the flowers and plant a few more things after we returned from our vacation. But that was with help and only because the yard, garden and flowerbeds were in rough shape after two weeks of neglect. But suddenly, I’m seized with a complete lack of interest in doing anything other than lying in the sun on the lounge chair and reading. Mind you last summer I did this, too but only after my chores and projects were accomplished. My summer work ethic has flown far far away. I hope it’s landed and someone is putting it to good use.

I think my generation is the second generation to enjoy summer, free of gritty hard work. I grew up in the suburbs so it wasn‘t like I had to work on a farm, either. Always the suburbs, the halcyon place of comfort and ease. Especially during the summer: no school, a few chores and plenty of time to wander the wild spaces just on the other side of the fence or swim in the local pool, cruise the neighborhood on my bike, or lounge around the boat dock. The only thing I had to worry about was going to the swimming pool, getting a ride to the library, which trashy reruns was I going to watch and if I was eating dinner at my friend’s house or my house. My father’s generation worked from a young age, either odd jobs in town or on the farm. When I am sentimental about my childhood it is summer I remember. Not winter, spring or back-to-school autumns. Playing hide and seek in the Big Thicket just on the other side of our yard in SE Texas; when it was safe to let your seven year old out of your line of sight, untethered by a cell phone with GPS, barefooted no less. My child’s memory thinks we wandered miles from home but if I were to return to this place I would find it much more compact and nearby. That is, if it were there to explore. The Big Thicket is almost completely gone except for a few acres the Indians managed to hold away from the developers. That wild space in summer taught me the names of flowers and that I must be immune from poison ivy and oak because it was rampant in the piney woods. I stopped wandering around barefooted after a snake bite (in our front yard) when I was eight. But it’s still an act of God’s grace in action OF (oldest friend) and I didn’t turn over a rock and awaken a dozing rattle snake in New Mexico. Blessed be, not even a scorpion sting, only a honey bee sting. Perhaps I had my due with a venomous snake bite? I was almost a teenager when we moved back to Texas and a creek ran close to our home with a marshy bit of woods but I was too old for that and preferred just walking the neighborhood streets with a friend or two. This, and one of my good friends had a pool in her backyard Wandering the creek was for little kids. But once my incarceration at the lake began, I would wander around the fields near our land. I hated going to the lake with my parents; it was made bearable if a friend came along. My two best friends’ parents were convinced their daughters were taking advantage of my parents. Years later, I explained to one of my friends’ mom (the friend with the pool) that T didn’t eat much and it kept me from driving my mother insane. One would think, that my love affair with summer would have made weekends at the lake even sweeter. Or that a lake was way better than a swimming pool. Not so much.

There was plenty of nothing to do that first summer at the lake. For me at least. I certainly wasn’t going to build a retaining wall or help pour cement for the boat dock. Or move dirt from one pile to the other. I was way way too busy being miserable to help with the work. I think by August we had a television in the trailer. If I remember correctly it a miniscule black and white set with a terrible antenna. Maybe. We did have a radio but my father had me convinced the only station it would get was an AM Country station. What, being SO FAR from the city and all. I think I was in my thirties when I figured out he had lied to me so I wouldn’t bother touching the radio to find another more suitable station. That first summer at the lake, I read War And Peace. I was thirteen and I read Tolstoy. That’s freakin’ bored. And I wrote probably the most anachronistic historical romance ever written by a young girl. I found a copy of it when we moved to The Fabulous House In The Suburbs. I very systematically ripped the spiral notebook into tiny pieces, a time consuming task which offered up plenty of time for me to wince and throw up a little in my mouth as I read each astoundingly bad word. Dad foolishly tried to get me interested in fishing. Again. A few years before, he tried to take the family fishing. I was not having any part of it and so noisy no one was catching fish until he rigged my line and for forty years (yes, 40 not 4) I thought I had caught that fish. “Catching” the fish probably only kept me quiet for an hour or so but that’s better than nothing. So he thought maybe I was a grown up enough to enjoy down time, sitting in a boat at dawn staring at the water and a small piece of nylon string. Because, yeah, that is way way more interesting than watching a snowy version of the Match Game or reading Tolstoy at the decent hour of ll:30 in the morning. And to my credit, I tried but I stopped trying because I did have a few minutes of mature, empathetic clarity, and felt sorry for Dad because it seemed like all he did was untangle my line. Is it any wonder the second and third summer we had a lake place, my parents let me stay with my sister in Southern California for a few weeks? I’m sure their ears stopped ringing from the complaints, sighs and whining after about ten days of being blissfully teenager angst free. I never asked them what they did while I was gone that month: I probably don’t want to know.

One of the best summer’s ever was the summer of ‘82. My hours as a nurses' assistant at the hospital had been reduced and I was living with my best friend, her boyfriend and Jack. That July, BF-boyfriend and I camped our way to the Texas coast, with stops in Austin and San Antonio. BF couldn’t go; she was starting her career as a nurse that summer. It was also the summer I read Lolita with Jack. We took turns reading it out loud to each other. This came about because I had been reading Tess Of The d’Urbervilles and was so depressed by it, my three housemates took it away from me, sick of my tears and rants about the injustice of it all. I‘m not sure why Jack thought Humbert Humbert‘s fantasies of a young girl were going to make it all better. I wish I could ask him. That summer was the beginning of Jack’s untimely and premature march towards a senseless and completely preventable death. Because he is gone, the memories are a little sweeter and more precious. I’m thankful the two most painful episodes in my life happened in the summer months because I know they were made more bearable by the simplicity and generosity of the season. Besides that, the painful stuff always seemed to happen just before school started again and the new school year made everything new in one episode and the other episode just gave me courage to start a new life one autumn.

On The Road With Ellie Mae

My inner Hick was showing this morning, She always rears her tow-headed close set eye self in big cities I’ve never lived. The place I live has a bit of a sprawl to it but nothing like Los Angeles. We broke through the clouds and there were rooftops and roads which seemed endless. When ever I fly into a city thinking about how many people each large building houses overwhelms me and makes me realize how small I really am. LAX is one of the few airports in the middle of a large city which adds to my disorientation when I first arrive after having been in the lovely blue void above the earth, having had nothing to see except brown, green yellow patchwork or in this case the ruffled edges of the canyons and desert. This morning I awakened just in time to see the Grand Canyon. I’ve only been to see it once when I was about five and have flown over it several times. Flying above the desert beyond the canyon and into California is peaceful. The topography is varied in ways you can only see from the air and aren’t aware of when you are in the middle of it. I think the art created by the wind shifting the sand is best appreciated from above. That the city of angels was covered in morning clouds added to the abruptness of the change in scene. The weather this morning in Southern California was more like a balmy day in San Francisco; a little humid and coolish. My favorite type. We didn’t have enough time to leave the airport and venture to Hermosa Beach like I had hoped but we had a leisurely lunch and I explored Tom Bradley International Terminal: slack-jawed, with an Ellie Mae Clampett dialogue running through my head.

Oh the places you could go from that airport! Taipei! Dubai! Tel Aviv! Frankfurt! Mexico City! Santiago! It was all so marvelous to think of such places tied together by one--relatively--small place. We were watching the people in line: Israelis speaking Hebrew which sounds beautiful even it‘s a list of the day‘s errands and marketing; , beautiful Middle-Eastern women dressed impeccably in Western dresses (I wondered if they would veil once they arrived in Dubai) , large Asian families as varied in dress as any family at an airport in the Midwest. The Girl astutely noted how the six degrees of separation could probably be played with any number of the quell waiting to go through security. I loved hearing the assortment of languages around me. I remembered the first time that happened to me.

Years ago, my sister lived in Los Angeles, on a hill overlooking the Pacific ocean that featured Catalina
\\Island on clear days. It was breathtaking even for a 13 year old who worked nonstop to hide Ellie Mae under a veneer of distain and disinterest. When it was time to return home, I remember being in awe of the people in the airport. My world was pretty limited to Upper Middle Class White Folks. So seeing Africans and Asians was heady stuff. The day I left LA, my flight was late or we were early and had extra time so we walked to the international area and wandered around the terminal watching the people. I remember it was the first time I had seen a woman in a sari and I thought it was the most elegant thing I had ever seen: a silk evening gown you just wore like a skirt and a blouse. I still sigh a tiny sigh when I see a woman in a sari.

Now I’m seated in Business Class, having just finished my Bi-Bim-Bab that came with a tube of Hot Red Pepper Paste , freeze dried anchovies and boiled pumpkin. Having never had traditional Korean food (outside of BBQ) it was a very good meal. I’m sure the well seasoned road warriors out of Seoul find the food just terrible and say things like we say: “Oh God why do they bother at all!” I passed on the tube of hot pepper paste and the only reason I don’t have a picture of my Bi-Bim-Bab brochure is I can’t figure out a delicate way to actually photograph it. “Lookit lookit, it’s got a pitcher of my food on it. Dang, we ain’t in Colarada no more are we, Girl! Hooo doggies!”

We didn’t book our trip in Business Class and I’m not sure how it happened but what a rare treat. I’m thinking it’s paybacks for the last few days at home. The last night reached a crescendo when I got a call asking if I had a very sweet white dog named Kipper.

Kipper was supposed to be next door. He was three blocks away and when we picked him up, he was terribly proud he had ran so far and wasn’t coughing and panting. My guess is he slept all day today; fresh and tired from his own adventure.

The Invisible Distance

. . .surely grace flowed between us as we flung away certainty, and said yes to the unknown, out at the edge of light, where it ends, or becomes more brilliant. --Andre Dubus

I’m borrowing the title of this blog entry; it’s a title of an unpublished essay written by my Oldest Friend. The Dubus quote opens it and I thought it was fitting for my own story of migration. Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately as I see the end of school years looming ahead on the horizon and we can decide, without a need to consider anyone else, where to live. I was relating this to OF a couple of weeks ago and her exquisite answer was: “Would you really leave. . .after Beav graduates? I don't think you realize how rooted you might be there. No doubt the long winter has worn you down. I remember in Kearney having to cut all the spring flowers in bloom because of a freak late frost. I have read these lines over and over and my answer is simple.

I don’t know but I think. I think I want to find out what it means to migrate rather than run away. I want to see if the light is more brilliant on the edge of the unknown just like my oldest friend has done. Oldest Friend lives terribly far away from me but she is--in these ballyhoo technological times--a phone call, skype or email away from me. OF migrated a few years ago to New Zealand. A big brave move on her part. NZ is so incredibly far away so when I told her we would be visiting Cambodia early June I realized I would only be a quarter world away from her rather than half a world. She feels like people have forgotten her but she is never far from my thoughts. Now she is working on a PhD exploring migration. This process is an academic migration for her to and she is setting out in the wilderness of different disciplnes vastly different from the comfortable enclave of Creative Writing. We met when I was nine and she was almost eight. OF’s family migrated all over the world and now she herself is one prone to migration. Both our families had reluctantly moved to Albuquerque for the sake of Dads’ career. It’s just what you did in the 60’s and 70’s if you were climbing the government ladder. OF lived across the street from us and I’ll never forget the day she came over to see if I would like to play. Her mother had sent her over and when I look back on this; how ballsy of her to just show up. What if I hadn’t been interested in books and ballet and dolls? What if I had been some sort of Tomboy or a psychopath who tortured kittens? If that had been the case, our migration story would have never unfolded. She would have stayed at her house avoiding her mother’s vodka infused wrath, reading books and writing stories; while I played ball with the boys or hid in my closet safe from my sister’s mood swings, venturing out only to torture kittens. Divine providence for me, I loved to dance and make up stories and use my imagination over and above toys; as did she! OF made those three years on that wind swept and naked mesa bearable. Later, she made my early days of motherhood bearable and the last year of my marriage survivable. Once my sister and I were laughing about Albuquerque---that fake laugh-so-you-don‘t-cry-laughter--and Mom stepped into the conversation: “Oh girls, I think those were the best years of our lives! Your dad and I felt like we had made it!”
“Where the Hell were you living? Dad worked all the time, Sister suffered her first major depression and we lived in the middle of a terrible desert that was either too hot, too cold and always without fail, windy.” My mother’s cluelessness took my breath away. Since that time, one of my beggy prayers is the boys let me know just how crappy their lives are, if they are crappy.

I spent half a semester in a writing class exploring those years and how and I spent a year in therapy trying to figure them out. I remember telling my therapist it was like someone had taken an atom bomb to my family; Sister--in her defense--found herself dropped from a fairly backwards small town school in the South into a progressive school in the West. A recipe for rebellion that had the added flavor of the social upheaval of 1970 sprinkled all the way through it. But over and over again, the one thing that surfaced in both my writing and my therapy: OF was the anchor that tethered me. Rather, she helped offer me an escape from the terrible arguments between Sister and Mom; Mom’s own depression, Dad’s necessary absence, my own feelings I had been dropped into the wrong family. I know I was her life line as well; her family was in a greater disarray than my own. When I look back on those years, it makes me cry to think about OF’s own Mother and the losing battle she had with alcohol. J was such an intelligent and talented woman but she was sick and her sickness became the fulcrum of the family’s malaise. Being so young I was only becoming aware something was deeply wrong with her shortly before we moved back to Texas. A few years ago, I wept over the memory of an afternoon at OF’s house and J’s unspeakably humiliating behavior towards her children. I can’t remember what happened afterward this particular episode but I’m sure we left in a confused rush and tried to lose ourselves on the mesa: a place I hated because of its emptiness but loved for its refuge. The winter of 1971-72 was particularly difficult at my house: the arguments between Sister and Parents were at a fevered pitch; mom spent a lot of time on the couch. It was dark and snowy. One afternoon, I’m not sure why, but me and OF decided to walk into the mesa and were going to see if we could get lost. We walked away from our back wall (we were still the last street in the city at that time) and into the mesa towards the foothills. I remember stopping almost a mile from the houses, at the base of a road which ran from one side of the mesa to the other--Tramway Road--and still, despite snow that was blowing and swirling, I could see that stupid house. It was hopeless, I couldn’t leave them, and they would always be there in the distance.

Years later, I purposefully moved away from Them and yet I could still see and feel them in the distance. Always. That’s the amazing thing about migration. You take bits and pieces of that first family with you, no matter how intact or fractured it might have been. Just like the people who have migrated from us via death, they live with you. That home lives in you. I have a mesa that lives in me. Whenever I’m stressed or overwhelmed I dream about the mesa. Sometimes it’s the prairie outside of Lubbock and other times it is the mesa in New Mexico. As an adult I have learned to appreciate and embrace the inherent spirits of those vacant mesas outside Albuquerque and love the sage filled mesas of Taos County which have become almost a spiritual refuge for me. Hindsight has taught me it was a gift to live on the edge of suburbia because we had that magnificent wild place to spin our stories and create separate different lives for ourselves. We spent entire days in the mesa, exploring arroyos, catching horned toads and shouting into the wind. Before Albuquerque, my wild space was the Big Thicket near Houston Texas the antithesis of the vacuous mesa. I believe William Gass wrote an essay many years ago about the importance of wild spaces in children’s lives. I feel like a poster girl for such theories because I know spending the day in the woods or on the mesa helped my imagination fly. As much as I hate to admit it, rediscovering the mesa, albeit in Northern New Mexico, taught me there was a lot of there there. So much that I can’t stop writing about it or thinking about it or finding new ways to frame the experience of discovering the first member of my tribe: the woman who helped me mold my imagination; challenge the exploration of my gifts; and make me think about and learn from the Big Medicine lessons in our lives. Migration is Big Medicine.

I contemplate and dream about migration whenever I feel stagnate in some aspect of my life and sometimes its my children or my career that throws me into a rant about selling everything we own and leaving without a forwarding address to just get the Hell away from this place; ninety nine percent of the time I am that Thing blocking my path. Travel serves as migration away from the things which frustrate me about my life which is probably why “re-entry” is hard for me. Because when I get back: the same things wait for me. A career that no longer delights me and teenagers which are threatening to bleed my soul through my right ear. I have only myself to blame for these two things which makes it all the more teeth grindingly difficult to face all over again after two measly weeks away from my daily routines.

Sometimes migration, forced or voluntary, physical or psychic takes us to ourselves: our true selves; not the person Mommy or Daddy or society wanted us to be. That happened to me years ago as a young adult. But usually, migration is simple movement because in the immortal words of Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Mother's day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I had to work which really wasn’t any big deal because it wasn’t like Ward had thought to take Beav out and help him find something for me and Wally doesn’t have any money. Beav was busy all weekend with his Ultimate Frisbee tournament and Wally was just busy being nineteen. So yeah, there wasn’t a brunch missed or presents that had to wait until late last night. But they did call me while I was at work and even Wally’s friend--I’m electing to nickname Eddie Haskell--wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. Despite a lack of boy prezzies, the Universe gave me the gift of an unscheduled morning as Beav spent the night at Ward’s while Wally was at Eddie’s.

I didn’t bother to sleep in but instead got up after TG left for work at OMGyouhavegottobekiddingme o’clock; puttered around the house and then hit the yard after it was warm enough to forego a jacket and hat. Ms. A has reported to me we are going to have another summer like the last: damp and coolish. I can’t say I’m completely disappointed as it will just mean fewer tomatoes and the possibility of growing giant broccoli. The peas I didn’t think would grow are about three inches tall, too. My hot MILF friend suggested I find a four year old to plant them for me but I didn’t have to go to such extremes after all. Hopefully by the time we are home from Cambodia I will have peas to harvest. Today, I did have radishes, salad greens and spinach to harvest. It was pretty darn exciting to begin separating my little radish plants and discover six ready to eat. It took about five minutes for the serotonin to kick in and a small smile to spread across my face as I pulled the relentless little weeds which have poked their evil little heads up in my garden. I was almost giggling with joy as I separated the radish plants. Usually little jobs like that make me impatient and can lead me down a short path to Frustrationville but today it was satisfying to gently untangle the little plants, which threaten to choke one another, and replant them further apart so they can breathe and grow.

As I was sitting on the ground in the garden, gently pulling apart the plants and contemplating what I was going to do with all that Oregano and delicate French Tarragon, I realized how therapeutic creating my beds and garden had been for me last spring. I think working my hands in the dirt, turning soil, planting and tending my new perennials and shrubs last spring helped me move through the loss of my mother. My gardens aren’t a tribute to her and she didn’t really enjoy gardening all that much. We always had nice flower beds and well tended lawns but that was just what you did. She didn’t spend hours with seed catalogs or plant charts figuring out what would go where. Nor did we have a bounty of flowers to cut and bring into the house or give as gifts or tributes to others. The beds and the lawn were just what you did as part of taking care of a house. I’m not sure where I got this yin to garden and grow things. I’m pretty sure it was born out of the same duty I felt to this house. Only my duty turned to passion. Kismet. And a serendipitous event which probably saved my heart last spring and summer as I moved through the fresh and raw grief of losing a mother. I thought about her all morning as I moved from the garden to the flower beds. She would have enjoyed the salad I was going to make tonight and I know she would have offered suggestions for the tulips I cut and just sort of jammed in small bottles. Twirling her hands over and around them so they were arranged just so because she was gifted like that. Gifted in ways I’ll never be. Thinking about the gifts I didn’t inherit from her made me a little jealous and sad when she was alive. Until recently, remembering them made me feel lonely and a little lost inside. I must confess, when I do sit at the sewing machine if I ask for her guidance the sewing always goes better. Better. Not great. Not even up to a level of Ruth Mediocre. But much better than ripitout and startallover. Perhaps teaching myself how to garden, through trial and error versus classes and reading, has helped assuage the lost feeling because I’ve discovered my own gift, one she didn’t possess. Or even care to possess.

I am a planner but I couldn’t have planned this expansive gift of healing the yard and garden has given me. Nor could I have conceived who happy I would be with a new step-family my father has harvested by simply allowing his heart to grow and open as a result of his own grief.

Once again the Universe has proven to me the heart is limitless and there is always room for one more or three more or in this case about ten more people. Two weeks ago, we went to south Texas for a party celebrating Dad and Marcia’s wedding. What a lovely family he has given us, too. We got to meet, and in a small way, get to know Marcia’s children, grandchildren and her own siblings. It was also a chance for me to get to know Marcia whom my own mother loved very much. We spent most of a day, sitting quietly together in the backyard, a soft breeze cooling the sunshine for us as I asked her question after question about her family and her children and her life. Poor woman must have felt interrogated or like she was having to pass a test or something but really I was just curious and frankly hungry to know this woman who has made my father so deeply happy. I thought Mom’s death was going to be the death of Dad but instead he chose a path of renewal and rebirth. I wanted to become close to the woman who had the ability to do this. Again, hoping this gift of love and inclusion would rub off on me. Dad has become a different person with Marcia. There is a joie de vivre I have never witnessed in him which is what someone who has worked hard all their life should experience in the autumn of life. Another case for the existence of Karma.

The day after TG returned home I accompanied Dad, Marcia and our old family friends on a tour of the Franciscan Missions in South San Antonio. I tagged along behind them snapping pictures and gawking at old stones and icons. Being the only “youngster” on the outing allowed me to observe my father and step-mother. They reminisced about the many other times they had seen these places; each a separate lifetime ago, each respectful of the other’s memory, both secure in the idea they were making a new memory together which neither negates or trumps the past experience. Which made me realize it’s ok to love--and I mean love--Marcia in that place I had my own mother. It’s not replacing my mother or her memory but just adding to my heart.

What My Hands Remember

My hands are mannish and rough. If the rest of me were not visible you would name me as Crone rather than Mother. But even as Maid I had old hands. My hands are wizened by years of hand washing and hand holding and they are not strangers to work or dirt or other hands. They have been the first hands held by countless new humans, fresh from the peaceful lair called womb. Tiny hands gripping my mawkish, oversized crooked index fingers. I hope my hand was the first of many held, for safety, strength and passion. The trust those new humans put into my hands was pure reflex response: put something in a baby’s palm and watch how the fingers close around it. One of the many subtle signs of fully functioning human-ness: you can hold hands at birth.

My hands are care worn, like my heart. My heart and hands are covered with sunspots, wrinkles, finely etched crevices from the burdens they have carried. These Icabod Crane fingers are part of a last hand held. Ugly but strong they sought the hand of the dying to offer up comfort or courage to take those last breaths. A human touch to ease the passage but whose ease is still unknown: mine or theirs? Some have gripped with powerful strength afraid to let go of this familiar plane of consciousness no matter how hostile it has become. Others offered me a quiescent clasp of mottled warmth more to assuage my own regret and sense of loss knowing they must travel to the next place and reunite with near forgotten hands, eager to welcome them and love them once more.



That’s a meditation I wrote as a response to Luis Alberto Urrea’s writing prompt he offered on his fan page at Facebook. What a gift to have a 21st century master respond to my writing. I don’t even care if he tells me to never ever EVER write anything aside a shopping list, my name or a mortgage check again. This prompt: “What My Hands Remember” could be the first step towards moving my life’s work into the right brain place of the metaphysics of Care, and away from the left brain place of tasks and deadlines. The weight of burn out I’m suffering threatens to reduce my patients to disease states rather than fellow human beings who are suffering. I hope this sticks because I am rapidly becoming the nurse I have absolutely no respect for and frankly hold in contempt: The nurse who doesn’t care. Yeah, the job is done, it’s done correctly but it’s done by an automaton and not a flesh bearing warm blooded human with a soul.

“Today's Blessing: ‘I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.’ Neruda”


Naruda always manages to say it just right and I stumbled on this lovely line today which describes how I felt last night contemplating the prompt. Only I’m not a poet and couldn’t frame my emotions in such a beautiful image.

I’m not sure if I’m to the point of “singing through the world” but I’m humming and the tune is catchy.

Watch Out For That Clown Doll Holding The Window Envelope!

Today a conversation started about the fear of window envelopes. Seriously, someone mentioned they were irrationally afraid of these things coming for them in the mail. I share this fear because once upon a time in my more hapless days I would receive them regularly and they were usually asking where the hell their money was or explaining the many ways my credit sucked. Nowadays, I get window envelops and they are usually trying to look important and scary when really they want me to borrow more money or save on insurance. The only thing I owe is a mortgage but my heart still leaps into my throat and I open these envelops quickly with shaky hands. I’m wondering if I can sue those stupid asshats at BOA for causing this phobic reaction. I’m figuring it’s good for a few million of their bailout monies. This whole Fear The Envelope thing made me realize I’m sort of an anxious type because I’m afraid of a lot of ridiculous things.

I’m afraid I’ll be driving on an overpass (one of the crazy high one’s in Dallas Fort Worth or San Antonio) and the road will inexplicably end, hurling me and mine into oblivion where we will be smashed on the road surface below: with only dental records to prove we existed.

I’m terrified to pass a semi truck on the right because the minute I am in the trucker’s blind spot she will fall asleep and swerve into me throwing us into the ditch where we will lay for hours until help arrives.

I’m terrified when a semi passes me on the left. See the above scenario.

It freaks me out to come home and the dog isn’t yapping at me from behind the garage door. Because if he isn’t barking-- like someone is pulling his tail--he is certainly dead.

I’m terrified of snakes. I don’t just mean afraid of seeing snakes in the yard or the field. I’m afraid of pictures of snakes. When the kids were too small to go into the reptile house by themselves I wouldn’t take them in because I would have a panic attack the second I walked into the door. I can’t imagine what is going to happen when I inevitably pick up a small grass snake rather than a handful of leaves of mulch in the garden. Two weeks after we moved into the house, a bull snake -- 25 feet long and 4 feet around--was spotted crawling towards our house. We had trash trees, and all sorts of dead stuff back in those days. I called animal control much to the uproarious laughter of my friends and coworkers who told me I should have just tossed it over the back fence. Um…that would mean I actually went into the backyard with the snake. I would attempt to disarm a terrorist before I actually touched a snake. When I was a kid, my terror is what kept up and out of the water when I would water ski because I was sure my father would no doubt put me down in a churning bed of angry water moccasins. I finally stopped water skiing because I didn’t enjoy it and could avoid the whole snake thing. (Please DO NOT leave comments about your favorite snake story and yeah, I probably exaggerated the size of the bull snake)

I’m unreasonably afraid of the dark when I’m alone. I have to have a light on when I walk through a room unless someone is with me. I can’t go through a darkened room. I’m also afraid to sleep in a dark room with the door closed if I’m alone.

I can’t leave my feet out from under the covers. When I was a child I was convinced there were monsters living under the bed and they would snap my toes off in the night. It unnerves me to have my feet uncovered.

Thunder and lightening. It’s loud and bright and electricity that could kill us all.

Encountering a UFO late at night on the highway between here and Texas. No doubt all those unsupervised late nights of listening to this guy rotted my brain and sense of reason.

I dislike clowns but am really afraid of clown dolls. Like the doll from Poltergeist or that awesome USPS commercial where the carrier is supposed to rescue the family from the clown doll. But really who isn’t afraid of clowns.

And if you aren’t afraid of clowns? That’s scary.

Spring Threatens

image found here
This morning, I took Wally downtown for a job fair. It was tricky to find and in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and one of the places referred to as "The 'Hood". It was the first black neighborhood in the city and the houses were all built sometime during the last few years of the 19th century. Once upon a time it was a stop over for jazz musicians, porters and waiters on the cross country trains and then the thrill seeking Beats. Our little city had it's own artsy Harlem. But then the trains stopped running as frequently... Twenty plus years ago, I stumbled into this neighborhood and the once festive store fronts and club entrances were either boarded up or in shambles. The houses had sagging porches, peeling paint and trash in the yards. The cars lining the streets were as dilapidated as the buildings and houses. I had a few co-workers who lived there and they told me I was foolish to go down there and stay there even if it was an accident because any given time you could hear people shouting at each other, gun fire and squealing tires. I’m still naive enough to think a white woman would have only garnered curious stares rather than attracting violence. A few years after that, community groups started a re-gentrification project, the gang violence was under a little better control and a sense of pride had returned to the neighborhood. My co-worker who had once been so negative about the place was now passionate about saving her home and making it something to be proud of. The old jazz clubs re-opened and the soul food restaurants started advertising. The light rail moved in and the neighbors could get work on the other side of town and the white folks from the SE could come and gawk and spend their money. Ward, me and the boys went down there one Sunday afternoon many years ago. It was a chance to ride the train--something the boys loved--and a novel way for me and Ward to see something other than our Fabulous Suburb. Besides the restaurant I wanted to try was one of the oldest restaurants in town.

The train wound its way through the deserted Sunday afternoon streets in the financial district downtown before moving past the train yards and to Five Points. We got off the train at the end of the line. We stumbled off the train a little disoriented; neither of us had been down there on foot. We walked a couple of blocks along the main street and I spied the houses down the side streets, most of them still looked a little shabby but more hopeful with old mass plantings of heavily scented purple and yellow iris, old spirea, snow ball and forsythia heavy with blooms all surrounded by patches of bright green grass. We stood on the raised platform and looked around below us. The street was empty but the businesses had an efficient rather than derelict air about them. There were a few men sitting on the sidewalks in the shades of awnings, some were asleep some sitting on their haunches and staring at us. There was a kid standing near the train stop and he was hunched over with his hands jammed into the pockets of his over ample pants. We stepped off the platform and I started walking towards the young man. Ward was about to stop me but I was too far ahead. This kid didn’t give me a chance to ask him a question before he was questioning me.
“Whatchu want?” He leaned back, took his hands out his pants and crossed them over his chest like some kind of Biggy Small wannabe. I think he was trying to intimidate me but he didn’t realize I had a long history of working with gang bangers, junkies and your average street thug so nothing shook me up too much. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, in a city with the reputation of being more Cow Town than Mean Streets.
“I’m looking for Mamma’s; it’s supposed to be around here.”
“Over der. Good food , too. “ He relaxed a little and continued to size me up, his head nodding up and down, still unsure I wasn’t a cop or a warrant officer or a social worker or a bounty hunter disguised as a white suburban housewife.
I tossed thanks over my shoulder as I walked towards the family and we approached the poorly marked restaurant with a rickety and decrepit door.

We walked into the restaurant and the contrast between the bright afternoon and the dark room temporally blinded us; my guess is we all looked stunned for a few seconds. Once my eyes adjusted I noted we were the only people in the restaurant except an elderly gentleman and an older woman in a smock apron. The room was simple and painted a industrial/institutional green. Each table had four chairs and red checkered oil cloths. Near the back, the only thing on the wall was a picture of Jesus. Predictably, it was white Jesus. The people were sitting at the table under the picture of Christ. The man addressed us after he stood up using a cane for support. He had a suspicious tremor in his voice, and probably had good reason to distrust white people. He was old enough to remember the danger of making eye contact with a white woman or not duck his head in the direction of a white man.
“You folks lost?”
“No sir, we heard about your restaurant and would like to have Sunday dinner here if you are still open.” Ward was respectful but direct and completely nonplussed by this adventure I had taken us on. His parents had been incredibly liberal and politically active in the 1950’s and 60’s. Had they not had teenagers at home, my guess is they would have been registering voters in Alabama and Georgia; marching on Washington, the whole deal.
“We open?” he turned his entire body towards the seated woman who was looking us up and down and up and down again.
“We open.” Was her quiet answer. She heaved herself up and went into the kitchen.

All I remember before we had our delicious food as the kids were thankfully and remarkably well behaved; and the buzz from the window air conditioner was so loud if you had wanted to tell secrets you didn’t dare. I do remember the man coming to our table asking why we had bothered to come all the way across town for dinner. We explained we had heard what was happening in the neighborhood and wanted to see it. His daughter (the chief) came out every few minutes and joined in the conversation, warming up to the idea of white folks coming in for lunch. He told us there were still people living in the houses they were born, some close to one hundred . He was proud of his home, a pretty place with old iris blooming in the yard and big leafy trees along red stone sidewalks. The roasted chicken was smothered in gravy; the greens were smoking hot with cayenne, the mashed potatoes buttery and the corn bread sweet. My then three year old ate a quarter of a chicken and his picky eating older brother had almost that. The food was simple and straight forward but there was enough different about it I felt like I had stepped into another part of the country when I got off the train.

I grew up in Texas but don’t remember eating southern style food as a kid. Years ago, my black co-workers thought it was because I was a racist until they figured out I had never had opportunity to try it. So they would bring crazy things for me to try just to see if I would eat them and then have a big laugh over the white girl from Texas who loved chitins but didn’t much care for the pickled pigs’ feet and gushed over mixed greens. I can still hear one of them saying: “Baby, those ain’t nothing’ but weeds that grows in the ditch!” (I remembered that line when I fixed our collards last summer) So my palate had a bit of a swagger to it that afternoon at Mamma’s.

Today, I drove down that same street and the restaurant is still there. The front has been repainted and the tiny sign has been replaced with a fancy new sign. It cheered me to see one of the oldest restaurants in town was still open. The notorious jazz clubs from the thirties and forties were there, too. I wondered if the now famous jazz names would stop in and jam after their real gigs, like they did fifty years ago. Inviting benches lined the sidewalk and invited people to sit and watch the world go by. It wasn’t terribly early in the morning nor was it cold but their weren’t kids skulking around on the corners or older guys sitting against buildings like there had been in the past. I drove the side streets and the yards were clean, the houses were painted and had many had been carefully restored. The Queen Anne style homes rivaled the one’s I had seen in San Francisco a couple of years ago. All of the yards had shrubs and plants threatening to bloom and there were even a few scraggly and ancient cherry trees already in bloom. Spring was threatening to return to Five Points. I knew I was going back one sunny spring day armed with my appetite and my camera.

Hamburger Gravy

What a glorious spring day! After taking a sleepy Beav to school and working out at the gym, I managed to get Wally out of bed and into the yard this morning and we turned some mulch and raked up multiple bags of needles from the stupid evergreens. I hate, loathe and despise evergreens. They are messy and the acid in the needles is a threat to my lovely lawn and make my ornamental rocks look messy. The only thing I hate more than evergreens (aside from a few politicians and a couple of political commentators) are aspen trees. Aspen trees are stupid unless you live at about 7-8 thousand feet and then they are large enough to tower and quake like…you know…aspen trees. Otherwise at just under a mile elevation, they are small and look like trash trees. Besides looking like trash trees they become trash trees and throw out suckers through out the yard and your neighbors yard and your neighbor‘s neighbor‘s yard. Twenty years ago I was waging war on our next door neighbors‘ aspens and threatened to water kill them with Calcium carbonate. (OMG I didn‘t do it!!!). Give me a big oak tree, a messy cottonwood or a larch any day of the week. Because of my nemesis’ evergreens my yard work warm up was an imaginary tantrum, complete with foot stomping, swearing and genral bitching about the tasks. But as I moved from raking to gathering, the sun warm on my back and defrosting my late winter blood. I could feel the seratonin swell in my blood stream and I didn’t mind it so much. It felt good to be moving and outside without a coat or even a sweater this morning. Once Wally was awake and outside for a few minutes he was actually almost enthusiastic as he started the poop scooping. I was amazed how fast we knocked out the winter clean up and sort of disappointed we didn’t have more to do. When Wally bounced up to me and asked what else there was to do and I was tempted to hand him clippers and tell him to trim the dead stuff from the perennials. But it’s too early for that sort of thing and the tender green stuff peeking out from beneath the spent leaves would suffer when we have our next--and inevitable--snow storm. This evening when I asked Wally to be home at a decent hour his response was: “Sure! we Have stuff to do in the yard tomorrow!” (All I can say is God works in mysterious ways because I have a heck of a time getting this one excited about anything and in view of his enthusiasm I‘m inviting stuff for us to do tomorrow)

After we finished working in the yard and I had retrieved Beav from school I spent an hour or so sitting in a lawn chair, face to the sun, listening to a This American Life pod cast I didn’t finish at the gym earlier today. Heaven.

Until I had to go inside and fix dinner. Yuk to the twelfth power of five thousand and eight.

Fortunately I had planned a quiche for tonight which is the only thing I like to make besides reservations (ba-dum bump) It’s quick, simple and can be cheap. And we need cheap because we are having a “hamburger gravy” week at June’s house. Hamburger Gravy is something we would eat when I was growing up and I referred to it as “Depression Food” because it was sort of greasy and gray and pathetic. Everyone loved it but me. In fact, the other night The Girl and I were having our usual: “What do you want for dinner…“ conversation and I quipped out of the blue and from a long forgotten memory:
“Not Hamburger Gravy. “
“Oh God, I know what you are talking about and don’t worry, I hate that stuff.” was her rocket fast answer. We had a good laugh over the fact her family had their gravy over potatoes and we had it over white bread. (TG’s family was deemed “fancier” in this instance) When I remembered this particular “delicacy” it made me wonder if we didn’t have it when Mom was running a little short just before payday because someone needed shoes or glasses or the dentist. I kind of like this turn of phrase: “Hamburger Gravy Week” and I think it will become part of the family lexicon (along with “too many hands”, “hairplane” and putting a “y” at the end of each kids’ name). Someone asks for a new pair of jeans or a video game? All I have to do is look them dead in the eye and sagely intone: “Dude, Hamburger Gravy Week.” and the inquisitor will know their desire/request will have to wait a few days or longer unless they are naked, ill or starving; something that wouldn‘t happen unless it was Ditchwater Gravy Week.


Gravy isn’t all together a bad thing, it’s usually associated with an abundance of something (like meat drippings and fat) or an additional or superfluous but treasured something or extra money which makes the whole saying extra appealing to me, what with my love for all that is ironic or satirical.

Today really was a gravy day, with the warm sun and youthful enthusiasm for a stupid task coupled with a warm night with windows open, a full moon and one more precious day off:

It’s all gravy.

Barbie Versus The Red Power Ranger or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bombs

I made a commitment to myself to blog every day I’m home. Just at home days because if I blogged on “school days” each entry would read something like: “blah blah…drunk guy…blah blah stupid computer system…blah blah crazy old woman…blah…blah…poop everywhere…blah.” So I’ll spare my readers and just write four days a week. Anyhow, this blogging everyday is going to be a hefty challenge because I’m sorta lazy. But at the same time it is forcing me to think about what’s happening around me and then make it interesting without sacrificing the truth. Telling the truth is important to me. I remember studying reality in nonfiction eons ago at school and it fascinates me because the truth is lost the second something happens. But If I were keeping a blog about my fictive life I would probably regale everyone with stories about new shoes and cocktails with George Clooney and Sharon Stone on my yacht in the South Pacific; Valentino would appear every once in a while with a gorgeous vintage gown just for me and I would be about eight inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter... (Cue up a little Brad Paisley “On Line”)

So I was on the treadmill this morning and reviewing what I wanted to accomplish today; number one on the list was figuring out how to practice forgiveness towards Ward rather than my knee jerk standard white hot anger. I was reminding myself with each step that ultimately my anger wasn’t going to change his behavior or our shared history. The only thing I have control over is me. Trust me, this mantra was not repeated in a soft sing song uber Zen chant but rather it echoed in my head like a DS issuing orders. I was also reviewing all the stuff I’ve learned as a result of mothering sons versus daughters. I’m really thankful to the one hundredth power I didn’t have daughters. I grew up with a sister and we fought with one another a lot. It wasn’t the mix it up, hurl insults at each other in a big whoosh of ten second bad energy, either. Rather, it was more like a slow torturous emotional burn. This past year it’s been great watching Wally and Beav move away from the CONSTANT taunts and physical teasing to a camaraderie of fun, games and secrets siblings often have with one another. I was pretty surprised to learn they were text messaging one another a few times a day this week while Beav was in Texas. So I’ve learned what it looks like to have a brother. They have always mixed it up one minute like mortal enemies and the next minute they are best friends again. I could use a lesson in forgiveness from my kids.

The other thing I realized is my taste in “films” is much different than it was before they came along. I’ve always enjoyed science fiction but not action or war movies until I had boys. Now, I’m the one suggesting we go see the latest and greatest Car Blows Up Bad Guy Dies or post apocalyptic story. The bigger the FX budget the better in my book. I’ve also learned to appreciate inane comedies like Night At The Roxbury and Zoolander. Ten years ago, I had this fantasy we would be going to art films and by the time they were teenagers we would have left behind the pyrotechnics and space ships. Now I’m the one all antsy to see the latest sci fi movie and they are just sort of meh on them. I almost bribed Wally with ten bucks to see Star Trek this summer but in the end The Girl went with me and I was spared laying out extra cash. (sad, very sad, isn’t it?) So this afternoon, we went to the “Sticky Six” (Dollar theater, wish I could say I coined that phrase) for the latest Denzel Washington flick about a post apocalyptic world. Thank goodness we didn’t invest more than five bucks because this movie is right up there with the Pokemon Movie as a“Thing -I-did-with-my-kid-and-hated-every-second.” I have a pretty high tolerance for violence and seedy subject matter but after about fifteen minutes into the movie, I look over at Wally and he is text messaging . So I give it another five minutes and decide this is The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly meets Mad Max and take a big chance on the “wrong” answer when I lean into Wally and ask:
“Are you really invested in this movie?”
“Nah, I can watch Mad Max at home”
Thank God because this movie was a grim and a cheap heartless version of The Road and it was going to be two hours of my life I would never get back. Much like the hours of Barney and Pokemon those two owe me.

After we left, I realized we had never left mid movie before. In fact, the only other movies I have ever left: a film with Kevin Spacey about flesh trading in a concentration camp, Dogville and Reds. (in my defense: we left Reds because we were drunk and it was moving a little too slowly for sloppy 20 year olds. I tried to watch it sober a few years ago and found myself wishing I was drunk.)

Years ago I could speak Power Rangers and dinosaurs which was invaluable at the preschool snack table. Now I find myself able to speak airplane, car, Parkour and Army. The Beav has turned me onto Top Gearand I find myself watching it even if he isn‘t around. I could probably intelligently purchase a car in England now. A valuable skill for a Semi Suburban-Semi Stay-at-Home Mom in the US, dontcha think? Army is still a language I’m learning and can understand about 75% of what is said to me. Fortunately, the unintelligible 25% no longer elicits an eye roll from Wally. He is a little more forgiving nowadays.

I don’t think I would have done too well with girls. I have a salty mouth and a cutting way with words and I would make her cry every time she was in trouble. I was a girly/girl but now I think toys marketed for little girls are insipid and just perpetuate the stereotype girls need to sit back and play quietly. But denying a little girl (or boy for that matter) the toys they gravitate towards just makes them all the more salient. Years ago, when I was pregnant with Beav and we didn’t know he was Beav yet, I asked Wally what he thought of having a little sister. My very sage three year old told me: “If she had Barbies I would cut their heads off and hide them from her.” And he would have had my full support.

Being daughter free means I don’t have to speak Sparkly Vampire or Jonas Brothers. Nor do I have to deal with daughters leaving the house looking like hookers, which would probably make my head hurt more than trying to understanding Beav’s mumbly speech and gritting my teeth when I see Wally’s saggy pants.

That's Gonna Leave A Mark

source

“Farm Help wanted. Family farm located North West of Goodland, Kansas. Dryland & Irrigation. Housing provided. Salary negotiable. Call for more details. Evenings only and ask for Ed.” ad on Craigslist

That doesn’t sound like a bad gig, it’s a little windy out there but it’s quiet, not a lot going on. Pretty easy to get away from the brouhaha of the new health bill. Along the old highway west of Goodland is an old native stone fence and years ago you could find arrow heads and fossils in the ditches. I wonder if anyone would notice if I just disappeared and sent money in from the farm? I also have a romantic image of the “housing”, I’m picturing a cute little frame farm house with a big Cottonwood tree in the front. The light golden in the evening and blue in the morning as it ricochets off the white washed walls and golden wood floors. Realistically, it’s probably a 1970’s single wide trailer with dirty lime green shag carpeting. I also have a romantic notion of the person who will ultimately get the job. I’m picturing someone like Beau Bridges in Crazy Heart or any of David Straithairn characters in his Sayles films during the 90’s. Maybe a woman like Cher'scharacter in Silkwood. This is the perfect job for a contemplative person with a past who is interested in working their body so hard their mind can’t remind them of what is broken in their spirit. I could dig that. Especially since the salary is negotiable and I could only work on a farm, outside in the elements rain, cold or shine for about eleventy million dollars. However, wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward Angel who said something to the effect of no matter where you go, there you are? So yeah, day in and day out you fuss over the irrigation system, repair fences, spread manure and work until your body aches. But you still have that time just after dark when it’s too early for bed and too late for work that your mind reminds you of what you are running away from and even the stars in that big dark sky aren‘t a comfort or a congenial companion. Actually, someone like me, a semi suburban, semi housewife running away from her children and working on a farm would make for an interesting novel. Because sweaty, dirty work is a hell of a lot easier than raising teenagers.

Wally killed an important member of the family Friday. Mitzy. He hit a patch of ice and lost control of the old Mitz, slamming into the back of another SUV. Airbags deployed, front end destroyed. Car gone. After I discovered no one was hurt and all the paperwork had been taken care of, he was safe and the ticket was simple I hung up the phone and very professionally burst into tears at the nurses station. One. More. Thing. I. Get. To. Deal. With. Visions of hanging out at a café in Goodland were looking pretty good.

Poor Mitzy, this wasn’t her first rodeo, either. I tried to destroy her in 2003. It was at the bottom of my life just before I crawled out of a hole and away from a desperate situation. The only reason we were able to fix Mitzy was because while the radiator was almost in my lap, the airbags stayed securely in the dash and steering wheel. I still dream about those seconds when I realized I was going to hit the tiny car in front of me, praying out loud I wouldn’t kill or maim the driver. My prayer was answered and the car I hit slid up and under my front end. One of the first things I said to the nice young man in the car was: “I can’t imagine how frightening it was to see me barreling towards you.” He gave me a stunned nod.

Wally was able to calmly relay to me what had happened but then he paused and said: “I know how much you loved your truck.“ His biggest fear then spilled forth: I would kick him out of the house for wrecking Mitzy. Well, yeah, if he was using it as a rolling meth lab at the time. Poor kid, he is convinced he is the biggest fuck up on the planet because he is having a time of it finding a job and now he wrecked a car. He’s a little mystified why I’m being so nice to him but I figure there isn’t enough room for me to kick him in the ass because he is doing a great job of it all on his own. The absolute irony of this is he was on his way home from a successful job interview. We will find a way and make a way to get him to and from work. Wally also thinks he is the only member of the family who has wrecked a car. He momentarily forgot how I wrecked the car, how his granddad rolled a car in 1971, and tried to take out a sign in 2007. He probably doesn’t’ realize his cousin wrecked a car when he was in high school. Accidents happen. Some are worse than others. This one could have been bad, too. I am just thankful it wasn’t. And God is really good at putting people in your life when you need them, too. The tow truck driver happened to be in the office when we arrived this morning to settle up on the bill. He was jovial and tried to joke with Wally, asking him if this was the first car he killed and telling us about the trouble he got into as a teenager. The manager was empathetic and extended his condolences for the loss of the old truck and was genuinely relieved to see Wally wasn’t hurt. It was one of those moments which restore my faith in humans as being ultimately kind and benevolent creatures.

The weather was sort of nasty today, hard cold wind under gray skies that threatened snow over the west side of town. Perfect day for a funeral, all we needed was some rain. Poor old girl, the right side looked untouched (Wally had just given her a shampoo and a spit shine, she was looking hawt) but the front end was mashed and the grill was gone, you could see the radiator and her left “eye” was dangling from the socket. The windshield had a shattered spot as if something had been hurled into it. From the inside. I felt my heart leap into my throat.

“What hit the windshield?“

I knew the answer wasn’t “head” because Wally always wears his seat belt and won’t start the car until everyone is buckled in. (hmmm how would I know this?)

“Oh just my hand” was his flippant reply.

I started to blubber, the small burn on the left side of his face was scary enough but the idea he might have broken his right hand was too much too bear. It didn’t get any easier when I opened the drivers side door. Opening the door was sobering. Like a Jack-in-the-Box, the steering wheel had popped open and the air bag was out. The dashboard reminded me of a cardboard cake made specifically for a girl to jump out and sing a randy song or “Happy Birthday”. There were papers and things tossed all over the front seat and floorboards. I was reaching around looking through the documents to make sure there wasn’t anything I needed or wanted when I came across a pristine piece of yellow paper folded around several old photographs. The photos and letter looked as if it had just been taken from the envelope and the letter was in my mother’s handwriting. I groaned, this was all too much and now this artifact. I wanted to run off to the farm. I glanced over the letter and scanned the pictures. I didn’t immediately grasp when it had been written but it was a long time ago. I showed it to Wally and he didn’t remember ever seeing it. After we finished our sad errand and I was at home I put pieces together and figured out it was written in about 1997. Three years before I even bought the car. The letter ends with: “Kiss Evan for me and hug and kiss yourself, too.” The idea of Wally reaching over and kissing his brother made me laugh. Mother wanted us to know she was watching over Wally. Mom died in our house, actually in what is now Wally’s room; me and The Girl hear her voice every once in a while and I have lucid dreams about her. What a comfort it is to know my mother is looking after us. I had suspected as much but now I know it for sure.

I must confess that I am grieving the loss of this vehicle. Not so much because the next few months could be really interesting in a hellish way: sharing a car or chauffeuring him around while I save enough for a beater mobile. It’s because of what Mitzy symbolized for me. She was my emancipation. Mitzy was the first car I bought all by myself and at the ripe old age of 39, too. No father or husband offering input, down payments or anything. I did it all on my own. She really was my first car. And we saw a lot of the country together; hauled a lot of antiques, groceries, dirt and kids. She served us well for one hundred and nine thousand miles. Rest in peace, Mitzy.