i cry when i first see them. i cry when they are disappearing. those mountains. my last long look at them as we drive east out of colorado. those billboards and tshirts and bumper stickers that say, “the mountains are calling and i must go” speak to me. they have ever since i was 18 and first experienced them. john denver’s rocky mountains have been a lure for decades now. and i can feel the pull, even from a distance.
if you look past the horizon in this photograph you will see what i last saw as we drove away a few days ago. you won’t know that tears came to my eyes or that i turned in my seat to watch the vista fading away at 70mph. we didn’t even get into the mountains this trip and i could still feel my heart stretching, reaching to hold on.
they are in the distance now. so much so that i cannot see them.
but i carry those mountains with me and know we will one day, again, be there. i will catch my breath when they loom suddenly into view. we will drive deeper into them, surrounded by forest and canyons and soaring beauty. we will hike on adventures and we will sit and gaze in wonder. and then, when it is time to leave, i will crane my neck and watch them disappear. into the distance. no dry eyes here.
the sand was ridged pointy and very hot to the touch, but this is the place we had already chosen to park our flipflops. each time we all walked down to where the waves hit the shore we wore our flipflops through the dune seagrasses, punctuated with sand spurs, trying to avoid the inevitable. the horseshoe crab shell was our marker…the place we would leave off our shoes and venture to the water over sand that had been warmed by extreme-heat-wave-induced temperatures. The Girl said we needed to be zen, as if we were walking on hot coals. and so we scrambled over the blistering sand, all zen-like, as we walked and then, quickly, ran asfastaswecould down to the water or back to our shoes. we became creatures of habit. no matter how far we walked along the beach, this horseshoe crab signaled home.
until.
the feels-like temperature was about 106, the sun beautiful and bright but dangerous. the sand….was brutal. i started to leave my flipflops by the horseshoe crab and make my way again across the pointy-burning-the-bottom-of-my-feet sand when it suddenly occurred to me that we could wear the flipflops further. that we might c.h.a.n.g.e. where we were leaving them. that there may be other places we could all park them. there could be another horseshoe crab parking lot. or some other marker. we could actually wear them across the pointy-burny sand, all the way down to the damp sand cooled by the ocean. brilliant!
The Girl and The Boy immediately followed, no second thoughts for them. change must be easier at 29 and 26 than it is at….our ages. we laughed aloud at this habit, this ritual, that we had created, that we were adhering to, d and i. we wondered aloud why it hadn’t occurred to us sooner to just leave the flipflops on till we were closer to the water’s edge, to avoid the pain.
i’d like to think it was because it was held over, from way-back, when our ability to zen-ly walk across burning coals excelled. and habits were easier to break.
summer is coming. at least that is what the calendar indicates. in recent days it has snowed in colorado. it has been rainy and damp and cold in wisconsin. the spring storms have been devastating the central states. but summer is coming.
and with summer comes a little slowing-down, moments to linger in the sun, sit in lawn chairs and chat, sip iced tea on the deck, have picnics under the canopy of a tree. we pick clover and make necklace chains, count the petals on a daisy, lay in the sweet smell of freshly mowed grass.
i am a list-maker. i come from a long line of list-makers so dna is definitely involved. with the layer-cake of jobs that comes with being an artist – performing, visual, any kind of artist – lists are a necessity. i use paper calendars, old spiral notebooks with kirsten or craig scrawl on them, pa pads that my sweet poppo made, composition books. sticky notes, pencils, highlighters and sharpies rule my office-supply world. i am analog. and i love having all my ducks in a row.
we were on our way to hike late one afternoon when we encountered these ducks. walking the crack in the street, all in a row, i heard in my ever-present-soundtrack-mind, “quack, quack, waddle, waddle, quack, quack, waddle, waddle (from an 80’s mcdonald’s commercial – watch for 0:54).” they seemed unperturbed by our approach. we stopped to let them pass and get safely to the side of the road. i’m positive i saw the last one carrying an office max bag.
the seasons pass. we lurch from lush to barren. we see the fire season lengthening, the arctic ice shelf shrinking, the oceans warming, the atmosphere more potentially lethal. we see the lack of a bipartisan country, divisiveness poisoning our communities, self-serving rule over a democracy based on equity and compassion. we are stymied by what we can do, what we can accomplish as individuals and we speak up, at the ready to be buoyed by support or torn down by scorn. we have traversed the spectrum of built up and trampled.
i hope this season will pass. that the tearing down will yield a new harvest. that we will pay attention to our good earth and its physical struggles. that we will cross the aisle and reach out. that each of us will count, no matter our ANYthing. that sensitivity and humanity and fairness will lead our actions. that we will be kind. that we will build up. that this now barren-in-so-many-ways-land will again be lush. with promise. for everyone.
the dried bones of the cornfield are beautiful. we have watched the field change through the seasons. last summer when we couldn’t see beyond the stalks in front of us, lush and green and full of life. the fall when, as the field browned, we would find cobs on the trail, feed corn for the deer and other gluten-free wildlife. (just making sure you are paying attention!) the winter, when snow charmed the tall stalks. and finally, early spring, combine-blunt-cut-short stalks remain in this no-till field, sharing the rich soil with the promise of spring. dandelions and corn. co-existing. apparently, dandelions are easier to control in the fall than in the spring. they store up moisture and nutrients in their roots and so are pretty hardy in these may-days. they were there all along. co-existing.
we don’t disparage dandelions. we have dandelions in our yard. co-existing with grass. we aren’t pro-active about gaining their presence, but neither are we terribly pro-active about eliminating them. we don’t spray chemicals that would be harmful to either domestic pets walking by or to wild animals that roam our area. we do have neighbors who are deeply invested in their removal, so we try to be good community stewards and pull some out so as to not spread them. but dandelion-removal isn’t a passion of ours and we really don’t mind too much the co-existence of dandelions with grass. besides, we can always blame it on last fall. they’ve been there all along.
coffee is how we start the day. hot bold black coffee. columbus says it’s way too strong, but this is from a man who makes coffee that his son says tastes like ‘sockwater’. our coffee must be an acquired taste.
when we travel we seek out starbucks (and, to be honest, small independent coffee cafes as well) to stop and have a double espresso. now that we are a teeny weeny bit older, it’s not as smart to have huge cups of coffee while driving long distances. there’s a teeny weeny bit of an issue with not enough rest areas now. so we try to be smart.
every single time we stop for a double espresso we take a picture and then we send it to 20. we have pictures of double espressos in illinois and indiana, in colorado and wisconsin, in florida and georgia, in north and south carolina, in kentucky and tennessee, in connecticut and massachusetts, in new hampshire and rhode island, in new york and pennsylvania, in washington and idaho, in iowa and kansas, in montana and north dakota and minnesota, in missouri and california, in amsterdam and brussels, in paris.
coffee has always been one of our touchstones. from the very beginning d and i spoke about and revered coffee, together. i learned early on from my sweet momma and my poppo how to coffee-sit and it is with them in my heart, coffee in hand, we continue the tradition.
as each day ends and d sets up the coffeemaker for the next morning, dogdog listens for all the familiar sounds he knows that signal the end of the day. he waits on the bed for his bellybelly and then time for sleep. and he knows, too, that when he wakes we will sit with our hot black bold coffee the next morning. without fail.
deb said, “you need to go sit in the adirondack chairs. and just breathe.” being a lover of adirondack chairs, any color whatsoever, i immediately agreed.
and so we did.
we sat quietly, in purple, in this very important time, as the sun warmed our faces and we could hear the gentle lap of the waves of the bay on the shoreline. there was nothing else but birdcalls and a bit of wind. it was sans noise. no traffic sound. no sirens. no trains. no loud stereos. just quiet. and the sound that sunlight and blue sky make on ever-greening spring.
i wasn’t sure how it would feel to stay in the car on the ferry. i was leery of the windy, rainy day and how that would play into how rough the crossing could be. i’m not fond of motion-sickness taking over my day, so i was prepared…bonine: check, motion bands: check, ginger chews: check, water: check, salty chips: check, window open: check. i was ready. but still leery.
in the small harbor it was calm, despite the wind. but out there, beyond the jetty…
when people want to impart words of wisdom about motion sickness, they tell you to keep your eyes on the horizon. these words are partially true; keeping your eyes inside the vehicle or plane or boat doesn’t do you any favors. but there’s more to it. and i was worried about out there, beyond the jetty.
we so often stay protected, inside the harbor. predictability and security are seeming keys to our happiness. they are the indicators of serenity. we venture on small protected side trips, curious to see what we might find.
i am guilty of this as well. a homebody in many ways, i love the safety of the familiar harbor, the one near and dear to me. beyond the jetty is unknown, maybe rough waters, maybe difficult to traverse.
but it occurs to me that beyond the jetty it might be calm as well or perhaps more navigable than i thought. serenity doesn’t stay put in the harbor. it comes with us. out there, beyond the jetty.
i did not inherit good teeth. were i to be a horse i would not be running in the derby or any other horse race (which, right now, sounds like a good thing.) anyway, i blame my sweet momma and my poppo; i’m not actually sure who gets the lion’s share of the blame, so i will just blame them both (and all the ancestors before them who did not have great teeth – we might as well make this a class-action-blame-suit.)
when i was a child growing up, my parents were quite a bit older than most of my friends’ parents. this is because my sister is sooooo much older than me. i was born soooo much later and, so, had parents who had some, maybe, backwards ideas.
drumroll, please. my sweet momma – adorable as she was – and my sweet poppo – equally adorable – never ever EVER had novocaine when they got fillings. for some unknown reason, they just toughed it out. now, i am quite sure you are cringing at the very thought. those drills. that hook thing that tries to pull your tongue out of your mouth. the sounds alone are unnerving. anyway, they seemed to reach deep inside, thinking they were getting extra points or something, and they endured the pain throughout drilling/filling procedures.
this brings me to me. because that is what they believed in, i was subjected to the same torture and did not have novocaine until i was well into adulthood and realized it was a thing. having had two children without the benefit of anesthesia, i can honestly say now that i would rather have more children than go through any more dental work without novocaine or some such numbing agent.
so, this is a long preamble to my story.
i broke a tooth during lent. you would think things like that wouldn’t happen during lent, but, alas, it did. my dentist, who is a saint, was out of town and i waited for his return. because of my ptsd from childhood dentistry, i cannot go alone to an appointment like this so david went with me. he always does. we try to be there for each other in each of our doctor/dental appointments; it’s part of the i-support-you-in-everything deal.
my favorite moment when we walk in (my REAL favorite moment is when we walk OUT) is when the dental assistant says to david, “you can sit on the tooth.” it is pretty funny to see a grown man figure out how to sit on a tooth. it’s even funnier to watch him not feel awkward. he handles his tooth-sitting with great aplomb, alternately cracking jokes with dan, the dentist, and holding my foot, since he can’t reach my hand from the tooth.
for this dentist who has all the patience in the world for my terror and for david’s presence there on the tooth, i am eternally grateful. i would totally sit on the tooth for him.
wishing the happiest birthday to my amazing & beloved daughter, The Girl. 
