Poetry and Death

Random thought number 1.

When I want to be vague I write poetry.
In my head there are a million words spinning, swirling, taking up space.
But poetry is 5 card draw.  Reach in.  Take one from the deck and place a bet.
I was looking for a power adjective and grabbed a pronoun.  Damn.
Even better if I can grab words that rhyme.
The couch they kissed upon was orange.
It felt cold and sweaty and.....sporange.
Damn.

Maybe I will write a cookbook instead.

    

Random Death thought #1.

Death stood in the doorway.
Together.  Hand in hand.
Because death is too frightened to be alone so it comes in twos or threes.  This time it was two.

Death stood in the doorway, waiting.  Not wanting to intrude on life's final moment.
Despite what people think, death has impeccable manners.
Death can wait for months or even years.
It is life who decides how quickly death will come.
    
Death stood in the doorway, like Adam and Eve.  Tempted by the apple.
Even barely rasping breath, and body ravaged, life's beauty mesmerizes.
If death is peace, it is so in the way water is peaceful in its stillness.  In the way a room is quiet with no children in it.  It is not the peace of a full belly or a picnic blanket after a bike ride.  Death longs for the bike ride.

Death stood in the doorway, ready as life frolicked away.  They walked hand in hand and covered the place where life had pulsed with wavelessness.  They held each other as sadness fell into them.  When there was no more heartbreak flooding the space where life had been, the three of them left.

Inside this Life

we live
love
write
forget
remember
start over.

days
weeks
generations
all of us intent on being something
we already are.  

American Morning Snapshot

I wake up at 4am because I have spent most of my life being a slacker.   This morning I have to get Helen to school by 7:15am so I am too stressed about missing it to sleep any longer.  This is choir practice for God's sake.  If she misses more than one because slacker Mom did not get her ass out of bed, she is off the bleachers.  No 'Texas our Texas' coming out of Helen's little mouth at some future PTA meeting.

I get up, gathering necessary sundries from the dryer and drop them on the stairs for the trip up.  I head to the fridge and gather the ingredients for lunches.  Okay, this makes it sound like I did something.  On stressful mornings I make a deal with the food devil and give my kids lunchables.  I can never in good conscious brag about cooking organic, non-gmo, non-processed real food because at least once a week my kids get a lunchable.  They are kids and they celebrate those days like I have taken them to the other food devil, McDonalds.  Oh yeah, I guess that is another reason I can't brag about our food habits.

I take up the assorted clean clothes items and let the kids pick through until they find the right mix of comfortable.  Thank God they are not yet into stylish, non-rumpled and comfortable.  I am dreading that day.  Everyone is excited it is jacket weather finally so they put on their jackets and hop around outside for a few minutes.  They spot me pulling shoes out of the closet so they hop back in.  It is the last day of the shoe drive at school.  The last day I can pull old shoes out of the closet and let my children donate them to children on the other side of the planet who don't have shoes.   I have had at least three weeks to do this.  Slacker.  Particularly since I know my children.  Breakfast and putting on their own shoes is now of very little interest.  Not to mention the negotiation process with Lauren who will someday be on a tear jerking episode of hoarders where she will not let go of the same pink cowboy boots she demanded we keep today.  "Mom, these are from my old school.  These are my memory boots from Katelyn.  They are the only reminder I have.  You can't give away my memory." The pink boots stay.  The tap shoes, rain boots, cinderella "glass" slippers, dilapidated crocks and perfect sketchers that only fit Lauren for about 10 minutes go.  The carnage is left on the floor in the hall to deal with later.  Time wise we are still okay, which is a miracle.  Of course the children are not eating their breakfast, they are writing notes to the children and sticking them in the shoes.  I can't complain.  I brought this on myself.  Slacker.

Helen has become a pro at inhaling food.  She is the slowest eater but when push comes to shove, she can cram an entire waffle with 4 inches of Reddiwhip into her mouth.  I kid you not.  Gone are the days of cutting up grapes, the ultimate toddler choking hazard.  The new normal is watching this process and thinking "Good, that will hold her over until lunch."

We pull up to the school just as I see a student go in with the music teacher.  They disappear.  It is 7:08am.  I have a moment of panic.  Helen has a moment of panic.  We knock on the door like bears are about to attack.  Ms. Gibson comes out and opens the door.  "Were we suppose to be here at 7am?  I am not a responsible adult.  I can't remember if it is 7 or 7:15am."  Yes, I actually said this.  Fortunately Ms. Gibson is a goddess and assures me we are fine.  It is in fact 7:15am.

Lauren and I pull around to the front.  We made it but now have a gap of time where she and I can sit in the parking lot together before she needs to go in, well, and in fact before they will even let her in.  Schools are one of those precise timing things, like trains in Switzerland.  Doors don't open until 7:30am.  2nd graders and under go to the cafeteria between 7:30am and 7:50am.  The first bell rings at 7:50am when kids can head to their classroom.   The tardy bell rings at 7:55am and the doors lock.  After 8:15am your kid is considered partially absent for the day.  I am an ish person.  As in, I will be there around 9ish.  Hence, the reason I was up at 4am worrying.

We sit together and watch the rest of the choir students go in and the people putting up the tables in the cafeteria.  We see the students whose parents drop them off in front of the school before the doors open because they need to be to work early, the kids who volunteer to help in the drop off line.  Lauren has her little notebook and draws me her imaginary tree house.  It is fantastic.  She starts with the ladder.  It has a slide down into a pool and the slide looks like a rainbow.  She draws a pokemon lamp.  The wave of kids starts to swell.  In the middle of the wave is a policeman with his strawberry hair cut whisker short.  He is probably my age or a little older.  He high fives every child as they go by, one at each hand.  He positively radiates good natured fun.  The kids adore this authority figure who squats down to the shortest scholar and raises his hand high for the tallest.  He makes every child he greets feel important, but it is completely symbiotic.  I imagine the dose of adoration sustains him through encounters with grumpy housewives who have been up since 4am doing 50 in a 40 on their way to Starbucks.

I hated getting up this morning but I loved watching the whole morning process unfold.  It had the feel of stop motion photography.  I was sitting still in a whirlwind and watching it whirl.  The earlier risers, the walkers, the little brothers and sisters.  And of course my people, the ish people.  I watched their kids dive into the doors before they locked and gave a little cheer when I saw the last imp make it in.          

A Trip to the Store.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day.  I had put it off for as long as I could after vacation but 3 days with no bread, eggs or milk for my coffee, it was time.  I should have realized as we walked into Kroger's and the alarms went off that this was not going to be a smooth trip.  I stood frozen for a moment anticipating a cavity search when the Starbucks guy waves me in, so off we head to the pharmacy.  It takes about 15 minutes to get the prescription during which time Helen carries her sister around the tiny pharmacy room.  They look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on a drunken Segway.  Great parent I am, I choose to ignore them, if they run into something or someone I will turn around and pretend I did not realize they were being obnoxious and ceremoniously ground them from their ipads.

They tire of this when they remember the last time we were here they begged for the pink digital thermometers on the end cap.  That day I said no.  They are only $2.99 apiece so this time I relent.  I am sure there will be a plot to reprogram them to hot since school starts in less than two weeks.

Sadly this Kroger is arranged in such a way that we now have to cross the entire store and semi-exit to get a cart.  We do this and again set off the alarms, only this time the girls have the thermometers.  "Go back!! Go back! Go back! Go back!"  I say.  "You are holding the thermometers!"  The girls rush back into the store while I hurry in with the cart.  At this point we are feeling a bit criminal.  No one else has set off the alarms.  

We proceed to the produce section.  Maybe the kids have not gotten out much this summer but they set upon the fruits and vegetables like a virus.  Lauren goes off in the direction of the apples.  "Mom I want apples.  I am going to get 4 apples, one each of my favorites."  I hurriedly get her bags for each apple.  The checker is going to love us.  Helen decides we need to attempt cooking our own beets.  They discover purple cotton candy by the melons.  We are only a third through the store and I am hungry and beaten down.  We are putting every bad choice in our line of sight in the cart, powdered donuts, pink iced sugar cookies, frozen fast food french fries,  purple cotton candy and candy orange slices.  I have to get those, Grandma Reddy use to keep those in a lovely little candy dish.  Maybe I can find a lovely little candy dish.  Maybe the beets will offset some of the sugar.  

Around the luncheon meat the kids are suddenly done with shopping and start farting on each other.  Now I am done shopping with them.  I smile thinking, oh boy, this is the last trip before school starts.  Hoorah, my Happiness Happens moment of the day, no more shopping with the banshees for the rest of the year.

We head to the checkout where I escape into the People magazine, thankful I am not married to Ben Afflick who appears to have been boinking the Nanny.  How cliche.  Poor Jennifer.  Why can't 40 something year old men just be happy with their 40 something year old wives, especially when they look like Jennifer Garner.  Oh crap, I am up, the children are being obnoxious again and this time I really did not notice.  I better swipe my card before I hold up traffic, can't wait to get home and break into the candy orange slices.  

"Ma'am, your card has been declined."  I look at the checker blankly.  This is impossible.  John got paid Friday.  He put money in.  I haven't spent any money yet.   "That is impossible." I say.  "Please try it again."  The checker who has just rung up 10 different produce items, one per bag and all the other items tries the card again. "Ma'am, your card is still declined."  

Crap, crap, crap.  I move over to the side isle, start checking my account which is indeed in the negative.  I start looking back, convinced I have been the victim of identity theft.  No, I am the victim of John forgetting to put money in my account Friday and me forgetting to make sure there was money in my account before a $200 grocery trip.  

This is the moment John dreads.  The moment when he is out of town and I bombard him with nasty texts and phone messages.  On about the 6th call (he is in a meeting in Manhattan), his admin. picks up.  I will say that I did a bang up job not saying one curse word while explaining the situation to Yolanda.  I am known in certain circles for dropping uncontrollable f-bombs.  I had lots and lots of Captain Kirk pauses where I said them in my head but none came out of my mouth.  

Yolanda messaged John, about two minutes later he texted that the money was in my account.

During the 20 minutes I was waiting, texting and feeling mad enough to pop, a woman walked over to me and asked if I needed a ride, she offered to buy my groceries.  Lauren was crying by this time and she helped diffuse that.  I was too much in angry mode to acknowledge how kind this lady was.  I thanked her of course but I wish I had said more because I realized this was my real Happiness moment of the day.  Anyone who is willing to approach a situation where another human being is seeping hostility and anger from every pore just because they recognize someone in need deserves to be recognized for their exceptional kindness.  She did help but it was by listening.  I feel guilty, at least I could have paid back the money, there is no payback for listening to a stranger rant.

I stood back in line.  Rechecked out.  This time the card worked.  Yippee! As we exited the store we set the alarms off for the third and final time, this time, we just rolled with it.  

A Blue Deer

If there is one thing I have learned from my 9 years of being a Mom, parenting is not like riding a bicycle.  There is no mastery.  I forget what I am doing and crash almost daily.  Take for instance yesterday.  It is appropriate that we started the school year with a paint party and finished with one.  The first one the kids behaved badly.  At this one, it was me.  I know, I know, I know, after all of my righteous indignation over the little girls walking around judging whose hearts looked like they were “supposed to” and whose looked bad; I sat there being very grumpy that Lauren’s deer did not look like everyone else’s.  What can I say?  I got swept up in the completed piece sitting at the front of the class with it’s sweet little face, standing in the snow, speckled with spots.  It was precious.  I could just see it hanging over her bed.  Alas, we came home with an entirely blue deer since Lauren’s deer was swimming.  No snow.  No sweet face.   

I sat there, watching as everyone else went from the sky, to the outline of the deer, to the inside of the deer, the ground and the final touches.  Lauren had wanted me to sit right by her, giving her confidence and protection from any outside forces that might hamper her mojo.  Instead, she got this.  “Don’t forget to put the blue lines where you want the sky to end like the teacher said so the blue doesn’t go down too far.  Go ahead and outline your deer so you don’t loose it honey.  Do you want the brown on your brush for that? “  I was a constant stream of suggestions.  Soon, she had become timid with her brush strokes and was chewing her hair.  I hate people standing over me when I paint.  It is a process, one that often looks stupid while I am in the middle of it.  I wouldn’t want over suggestive Mom hovering over me.

Soo, I went outside.  I made the mistake in my foul mood of saying I had to leave because I couldn’t take it.  Of course I got the subtle tisk-tisk from the Moms who were in full-blown Zen mode with their kids painting whatever and however they wanted (of course for every single one of them that included a brown deer with a sweet face, a blue sky and solid ground).  I understand, I too have been the tisk-tisk Zen Mom.  I have looked at high strung women and thought, “Life is too short to get all worked up over what your kid is painting.  What is wrong with you?  Lighten up.  Let them have fun, that is what this is all about.”   But for me, I realized, the fun wasn’t what it was all about.  It was about Lauren being different.  All year long she has struggled with not making friends because she is different.  She struggles because the way she learns is different.  The way she interprets the world is different.  So of course, absolutely the way she paints is going to be different.  But sometimes, I just want her to be like everybody else.  I want everyone to look at her deer and see a brown deer.  Not a blue silhouette of a deer splashing in an endless sea of blue where the sky and the water meet barely distinguished one from the other.

In the midst of my parent pity party, the little boy sitting next to Lauren looked at her picture and in complete earnest said, “I really like your sky.  It isn’t like mine but I really like how you are doing it.”

I hate to admit I left the party still sulky even after that little boy poignantly delivered the Mom lesson I needed to hear.   By the time I got home, I started to get some perspective.  I started to see the beauty in this painting my 7 year old had done with nothing but blue and white.  It wasn’t how I would have done it or how 20 other kids would have done it.  It is totally different but just as beautiful.  It isn’t easy to have a different child.  You worry because the majority of people are never going to get them.  But, some people do and that is worth more than 100 sweet-faced deer with browns coats and white speckles. 

The Top 3 Reasons I love you.

Helen has this brilliant teacher, Mrs. P., she has these great ideas that turn things like reading time into something special.  Friday the kids made towel and chair forts, turned off the lights, then curled up with a good book.   Last week she also had the kids create simple yet thought provoking 3, 2, 1 Mother’s day cards.   The card consists of the Top 3 reasons each child has for why they love their Mom.  Helen listed them as follows.

Number 3:  You take us to do lots of fun things.

Number 2:  You’re always there for me.

Number 1:  You will love me no matter what.

It was such a gift for me to know these three things.  I have just spent a good portion of the school year yelling at them for loosing at least 100 socks, for spending more time getting up from the table than eating at meal time, and for turning their rooms and playroom into the pit of despair.  I could go on and on and on but the bottom line is that a whole lot of parenting is spent in a grumpy state.  I have been particularly grumpy with Helen because she is 9 and now at the Bart Simpson age.  Before I was a parent I had no idea Bart was portrayed at that stage of life for a reason.   9 year olds are obnoxious.  I was obnoxious.  John was obnoxious,……sometimes I think men never really leave the Bart Simpson phase, it just morphs into Homer.

I see how Helen looks at me now when I correct her.  It is no longer the hurt little girl who is sad and remorseful for doing something wrong.  She gets sullen and mumbles under her breath things like “I was JUST trying to be funny.  I was JUST trying to make a point.  I was JUST reading a book and enjoying being engrossed in another world and didn’t notice you leaving Target to go get Lauren from tutoring which is why you had to have the store put in lock down while the book and I were being located.” 

Ah, we are entering the stage where being a parent means spending a lot of time being disliked.  So, to get a card that says “I love you for taking us to do lots of fun things, you’re always there for me,” and most of all, the one I love reading more than anything because it is so true, “You will love me no matter what,” brightens even the rainiest Mother's Day.

Thank you Helen and Mrs. P for the rainbow. 

Wild Horses

About once a year I look at my husband and say, “We need to go to Big Bend.”  He looks at me like I am crazy and says, “I am not going to Big Bend.  There are no trees.”  “Trees would ruin Big Bend.” I say.  He counters with, “It is faster to get to Arkansas.  Arkansas has trees, and it is green.  Not to mention it is mostly civilized.”

I get it.  I really do.  Big Bend has that type of terrain that either speaks to you or it doesn’t.  It is rugged, hard, lonely and unforgiving.  I love it.  Just as trees would ruin Big Bend, so would civilization.  I went once with my best friend when we were too young to even rent a car.  Thankfully her Mom signed for us.  We had just enough money to make this our first official vacation after graduating from college and becoming contributing members of society.  Off we went in our rented Jeep Cheroke, borrowed tent in the back, and a hibachi, we were ready to explore the West.

Of course getting to the West takes awhile and since we left after work, we planned ahead to stay at whatever motel was available in 1991 in Big Springs or Sweetwater Texas.  My memory fails me.  The only reason I even mention it is because the town had a pleasant name but a horrible smell.  They say smells stay in your brain and apparently it is true.  Some twenty plus years later, my nose remembers very well the offensive foul egg smell and headache that accompanied our first night of vacation.  The great thing about being young is enthusiasm.  We were simply amused that someplace which smelled so bad would lure us into staying the night because the name was charming; a good lesson at an early age that a town by any other name would smell as……well, not sweet. 

The next morning we were off towards Midland and Odessa.  We needed to stop for socks.   Okay, WE did not need to stop for socks.  I needed to stop for socks.  I am pretty sure all of mine were dirty and I had not gotten around to washing them before the trip.  This is where I should probably mention that my super power is having really responsible friends who get me through life.  Michelle found out all the information about Big Bend.  This was pre-internet.  She had to send off for maps, things to do, park hours, campsite availability through snail mail and actually call on a landline, long distance to make reservations.   She had discovered that you had to be 25 to rent a car and arranged for her Mom to rent it for us (thanks Barb, I never sent you a note but that was instrumental to one of the best trips of my life).  She had reserved our Santa Elena raft trip and horseback ride on the Southern rim.  I am pretty sure she was the one who suggested cooking meals ahead of time, freezing them and storing them in a cooler.  We had a borrowed tent that we practiced setting up in her parents backyard so we would know what we were doing once we arrived in BFT.  My contribution, not washing my socks so we had to make an unplanned stop.  Michelle did not make me feel like an unsocked heel, she turned this into a good thing saying we could get a few more supplies.  Another super power, my responsible friends are extremely understanding. 

The super market we go into amazingly has socks.  Again, 1991, there is no Super Target or Wal-Mart with groceries.   Apparently these Western outpost towns are use to irresponsible travelers.  We get in line and the power goes out in the grocery store.   All 10 people in line with us know each other, which by default makes us the most interesting people to talk to.  They ask where we are from and we answer the Dallas area.  We might as well have said NYC or Hollywood because this knowledge suddenly causes great embarrassment that our encounter with their town involves a power outage.  They simultaneously agree that we must be allowed to go ahead of all of them to the front of the line to offset the humiliation.  Michelle and I reassure these people that we are not upset or in a hurry, we are on vacation and we are simply impressed by strangers going out of their way to accommodate us in the grocery line.  This would NEVER happen in Dallas.  Well, we have said the magic words; we are now like family.  I am sure if this happened today we would all be taking selfies together and becoming friends on FB.  Instead, these women start telling us the story of a friend who lost her giant diamond ring in the produce department.  A few days later when it was found in the lettuce, someone turned it in.  It is not everywhere that a $10,000 ring finds its way back to the rightful finger.  The power comes back on.  We all celebrate and Michelle and I are back on the road with a new found love of West Texas. 

The day got sucked into the realm of weird travel time.  Even though we started off in the morning, we did not get to our campsite until dark.  Part of it is due to the fact we had no idea the scope of Big Bend.  Once we made it into the park and received driving instructions from the ranger, it seemed to take 2 hours to weave our way to the camp spot in the Chisos Mountains.  And, we were not yet acclimated to real darkness.  My apartment was next to a grocery store, right off south cooper.  I don’t think I had seen a star in 6 months.  Suddenly, we were driving on a road, steadily up a mountain where the only light was pouring out of our headlights.  We finally got to the stick that had the number we were given.  We looked at the rocky campsite, lit by our car and walked around figuring out the best location to pitch our tent.  It was windier and colder than we were expecting.  We found what we thought was a pretty protected spot.  The back of the tent set almost against a bolder with thorny scrub trees on either side.  We set to work, confident because of our practice run.  What we hadn’t done was set the tent up in the dark, in the wind, with solid stone to hammer the stakes in.  Crap, we had not even thought to bring a hammer.  We wandered around looking for caveman tools.  Finally the right rocks presented themselves.  It took a good bit of work to drive in the stakes.  We were shivering and sweating when it was finally done.   There is nothing quite like completing a difficult task, the satisfaction, the feeling of woman over nature, the moment where you realize the door is facing the boulder between the two thorn trees.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  There was absolutely no way to get in the tent we had just put up.  Again, thank God for youth and enthusiasm.

There is something about going to a new place, arriving in the dark and waking up to the day.   It is like Dorothy, opening the door to Oz.  That is my exact memory of waking up in the Chisos Mountains.  The day before I had been in modern day Texas, but now I had traveled back in time.  I was in the Texas that most people expect but never see.   Michelle and I looked around.  Apparently this was not the busy season, we seemed to have the entire mountain to ourselves.

Everything Michelle had planned for us to do was perfect.   We went on a horseback ride up the South Rim with a picnic lunch provided at the top.  I have heard that horses don’t go up there anymore because it is so hard on the trail.  I remember thinking that I wouldn’t be so sure footed on those rocks.  The views were amazing.  There is nothing to say when you have a view like that, the guides were telling us what we were looking at but I don’t recall much.  I just remember the feeling of looking out so far that the sky touched the earth and not seeing a house, or a plane or a person.

Probably the best slice of info we got on that ride was from the other travelers who told us about a hot spring that looked out over the Rio Grande.  After riding all day and sleeping on some pretty pointy rocks, a natural hot tub sounded great.  Michelle and I are not known for our navigational skills so I have no idea how we remembered the instructions and found our way to the 2 mile gravel road, parked and walked to the trailhead in the dark.  It was a really bright moon that night and about 10 million stars did give us a hand.  There was the split second where we thought, hmm, we are two young women alone next to the Rio Grande, what on earth are we thinking….but right about that moment we found the Springs, climbed in and all concerns evaporated.  In fact, we regretted being so responsible that we didn’t pack any beer.  We were up above the river looking down on it dappled in the moonlight.  I never knew until then there are a million shades of black.

The next day we took advantage of our jeep cherokee and went cruising across the Chihuahuan desert on a dirt road that would gobble up my mini van whole.  Michelle pulled out a mixed tape she had made specifically for this adventure and popped it in.  Thus began my best non-road trip ever.  Perhaps Jacob’s Staff wouldn’t stand out in a field of wildflowers but in the desert, it seems so defiant against the monochromatic landscape with its red tips blazing, that I have spent years painting that image.   I don’t know how long we drove, at a certain point we knew we had to turn around.  The Chihuahuan desert is not a place to play chicken with the gas gauge.  We headed to a place in the park where you could refuel and shower.  We were staying in a relatively primitive spot.  The ranger had given us a map to the showers the first day and after a horseback ride and the desert, you could smell us approaching.  What we didn’t know is that the showers were coin operated.  This like the hammer had not been planned for.  We started scouring every crevice for quarters.  Let me tell you, the car wash gives you a lot more time than the coin activated showers in Big Bend.  None the less, we managed to get the big chunks off before heading back to our camp site.  Ready for the night in with a gourmet meal of reheated spaghetti.

The wind never seemed to die down in our camp site.  In fact, we gave up cooking every morning and opted to splurge and eat at the lodge down the road.  That place books up months in advance but the café is open to cold campers who can’t keep the hibachi lit, let alone start a fire.  The evenings we muddled through and fortunately on speghetti night the wind gave us a break while we sat at the picnic table celebrating our grand day.  It was about this time that a beautiful deer walked nonchalantly through our campsite, followed by a very large slow moving skunk and finally a smart little fox.  I think we would have reacted better to a rattlesnake than the skunk.  We had both been Girl Scouts, we had been told for years how to react to a snake.  No one ever said what we should do if a giant skunk decided to meander through our campsite.  We actually got the nervous giggles as we tried desperately to be invisible and non-threatening.  What on earth would we do if we were sprayed?  We would be driving 10 hours back in a rented car.  There would be no way to ever eradicate skunk smell from the car.  Poor Barb, she would have to buy a stinky rental car and immediately send it to the landfill.  Fortunately, we were of no interest to these characters.  They walked through twice.  Maybe we actually did make ourselves invisible.

All the essentials of a Big Bend vacation were completed but one.  We had hiked it, hoofed it and 4 wheeled it.  What hadn’t been done yet, was floating it.  Out we headed to spend time on the Grand Rio herself.  Somehow the rendezvous point was reached without missing the boat, or raft as it was in this case.   This was not your Colorado white water rafting trip.  We were in fact passed up by a 100 year old Mexican man, on a donkey, going uphill with a cart attached.  This is not a colorful antidote.  It actually happened.  Once we got our minds around the fact that this was going to be a very, very slow trip powered by the paddling of our guide, we succumbed to the lull of the river and bigness of Santa Elena canyon.  Everything on the river that day felt otherworldly.  The old man on the donkey, the way the reeds swayed as we passed them, what appeared to be wild horses running free on the Mexican side of the river.  Perhaps it was the absence of fences that made the experience so unique.  I have often wondered if I only imagined the horses in the years since the trip; my mind conjuring the freedom that belongs to wide-open land.  At the end of our journey, the river guide who was about our age invited Michelle and I to come see a band at a bar/restaurant called La Kiva in Terlingua.  We went back to the tent and gussied ourselves up as much as possible; I think we even ventured back to the coin operated showers.  I seem to remember going into the bar semi clean and bright red. 

Never before and never since have I walked into a place quite like La Kiva.  It left enough of an impression that I named a cat after the place.  It is exactly the type of bar that should reside in a ghost town.  It feels very much like a dirt dobber hole; a place under the desert where a fox or a snake would reside.  Michelle and I walked to the bar, “What are you having?”  There was only one answer, “tequila.”  

Somehow this bar that felt miles underground actually opened up to a great outdoor patio.  It had picnic tables around the parameter, a large area for dancing and a nice area for the band, which at that very moment happened to be playing a Rolling Stones song with an accordion.   We hung out with the river guide and a few other people and proceeded to have enough tequila to warrant an epiphany.   This was exactly how life should be.   No pretense, no distractions, no veil between us and everything else.   Even the graffiti on the bathroom wall spoke volumes.  I was hovering the normal 6 inches over the toilet staring at the door in front of me.  Exactly eye level to someone whose hinny was well above the seat read, “Don’t bother, crabs can jump up to two feet.” 

There is no hiding from the truth in the desert.

We ended up spending the night in a boathouse.  Our river guide accessed we were too full of tequila to make it back to our campsite safely and gallantly drove us or had us follow him back to the boathouse.  Forgive me, this memory is a bit foggier than the rest.  All I know was there was nothing nefarious in this offer, although I do remember him being rather smitten with Michelle. 

This was the perfect ending to our adventure.  Early the next day we pulled the stakes up from our tent and were shocked to see they were no longer straight.  The Chisos mountains had left their mark.   We left slightly different as well.  Something awakened, a knowledge that had not been there before.  A knowledge that will forever have me wanting to go back to a place where wild horses run free.