Life, Twisted Trees and Dead Monkeys Get a Clue

The holidays remind me of games. Usually board games, though Dad did initiate a game of charades now and then. He always did the same old thing-twine his arms above his head, wrap his legs around each other, and while trying not to tip over, say, "What am I kids? Well, what am I?"

A twisted tree of course. I've shown my kids that and asked them the same question, "What am I? Can you guess? You'll never guess; Paca taught me this..." They weren't too impressed. But, then again, no one makes a twisted tree like Paca.

One Thanksgiving Mom and Dad bought The Game of Life. We played all day after our meal. Several times, actually, which isn't such a small feat with a game which my husband refuses to play with his own kids (its potential frustration level for the parent is bright red, you see, and he won't play any with a child-parent frustration quotient above a milky yellow). Still, I remember that Thanksgiving of "Life" very fondly. And I personally felt honored to be included in such a complicated game, being the baby of the family.

Nate was excellent at games, and the spark of competition never burned so brightly in anyone's eyes as when my brother was trying to beat his own family at a board game. He started winning at Monopoly when he was eight. That was pretty suspicious, mind you. And Mom and Dad did call him out for cheating once that I remember. But I bet you at least half the time he played square.

Nate and I also went through a card-playing stage where we had an absolute love and devotion for Uno. When we got tired of playing it, we started making up our own versions of the original with complicated variations. But for some reason we gave them names like Native American Uno, Chinese Uno, etc. I don't know why we did that-unless we were trying to make the game more culturally inclusive.

The game I remember the most, however, was one which Dad, Nate, Mom and I invented. On one of the last Christmases Nate was still at home before he left for the military, we contrived a game similar to Clue. We drew out the floor plan of a large manor on a big piece of poster board with far more rooms than that traditional game ever had. Dad used a ruler to draw the rooms and line up the spaces. We meticulously worked on it all day, carefully coloring in the details of the game board and assigning spaces for lost turns and "enter room free" squares. Nate drew corpses in a few of the rooms. (Never mind that they looked more like deranged monkeys and squashed spiders; it was the spirit of the thing.) Finally, we used a deck of cards for our list of weapons, rooms and suspects by writing on the thin labels meant for cassette tapes and affixing them to the cards.The face cards were our suspects, and since Nate and I were complete X-Files fanatics at that time, our suspects were Fox Moulder, Dana Scully, Cancer Man, and such. When we ran out of names we wanted to use from that show, we fixed labels on the cards that read Dad, Nate, Mom, Hillary.

We made the game hard; we wanted it to be a challenging and lengthy game with no quick resolution. It had a lot more spaces, first of all, and some of those spaces gave you sometimes helpful but usually thwarting directions. But once you were ready, feeling smug in your conclusions, it was also hard to look at your family, make a guess and say in all seriousness, "It was you, Mom, with the wrench-in the rooftop observatory. You slew the deranged monkey!" It was worse if your guess was wrong.

My kids like to play games. I have used Uno for all three of my eldest to teach them their colors. And I have great memories already of sitting down to play various games with them. When Berto was four and five, he used to beat me and his Papa at Sorry! regularly. We used to say the Sorry! Leprechauns were with him, aiding him to defeat us. When Ana began playing Uno, every time she laid down a card she'd point a finger and yell out, "Uno...I got you!" And Ella beat her school-age siblings at Memory when she was just two and a half.

Holidays were made for games, in my opinion-games of all sorts that can bring a family together over a table to laugh and share friendly competition. This Thanksgiving I'll draw out a few of our many game boards; I might even convince Matthew to play Life or perhaps Clue (possible frustration level for parent: dark orange).

To all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Holiday Tales of Horror: Stuffed Couches and Stolen Chocolate

It wasn't premeditated, the chocolate theft. And also...you know you love someone when you're willing to stuff your couch for their Christmas visit.

Let's go back in time.

Matthew and I were not married. After talking to each other on the phone for a few months we had met and dated in San Antonio, thanks to my sister Annie. Now I was back at my parent's home, preparing for Matthew to come up for our first Christmas together.

Dad and I were laughing hysterically together because I was up to my shoulder in the back of our overturned couch, trying to restuff it to an acceptable point of cushioning. It was well-used, or well-loved, if you'd rather. But I didn't think it had the right amount of oomph, so I was shoving old (clean, mind you) clothes into the back of it, so it wouldn't feel embarrassed when my beau showed up. If I had been smart I would have scented those clothes with lavender spritz from Bath and Body Works. Then while Matthew and I canoodled while sitting on its lumpy but cushy surface, he might suddenly say while staring deep into my eyes, "What is that heavenly scent my nostrils doeth detect in your presence?" I, of course, would answer, "It is me, and you are in love!"

It's funny that that is one of my best memories of those last few months in my parent's home-Dad and I laughing our heads off over the little details that matter so much when you're infatuated with someone, like a well-proportioned couch. That and the drive-by "neener-neener" while driving to church one morning, but that is a story for another day, I think.

Moving on, as Dick Van Dyke said in a certain movie (just guess).

The chocolate. Ah, the chocolate.

It arrived in a Christmas package from Virginia. A package full of thoughtful gifts from my big sister Vinca who always remembered everyone. This year she had remembered Matthew. She knew my guy was coming to Idaho for his first visit with our folks, so she had gotten him the best gift she could think of lacking a background check on him, a list of his childhood hobbies or a network of relatives to report on his daily habits. She had gotten him chocolate, and BRAVO! There is no better gift that says, "I don't know you, but you'd be a fool not to love this."

And I agree. But curiosity killed the chocolate-Dad's and my curiosity, you know. We just couldn't figure out why Vinca would send a gift to someone she didn't know and who wasn't an official part of the family. I mean, really, I hadn't actually married the guy yet...and even then Christmas gifts are kind of probationary for the first year or two.

So, anyway, Dad and I studied the rectangular package beneath the tree for a couple of days until we just couldn't stand it anymore.

"We should see what's in there," said Dad.

"I agree."

I don't remember who did the honors of peeling off the wrapping paper. We figured we'd just rewrap the dang thing anyway. We just wanted to see, that's all....

Oh, no-chocolate! It was a box of chocolates. From that moment I think we both knew what was going to happen, but we tried to be good and ignore our choco-foraging survival instincts.

We laid it carefully by on the kitchen bar. Just so we wouldn't forget it, you know.

"We'll just wrap it back up later," said Dad.

Sure, but until then we'd walk past it several times that day wondering what kind of fillings were in it. A cordial cherry or two, perhaps? Oooh, maybe a few truffles. And who doesn't like those little crunchy nut-flaked centers? Yum-yum. Was there any dark chocolate in the picture on the box?

"Matthew will never know," Dad said to me that evening.

"He wasn't expecting anything!" I responded loudly. "He doesn't even know Vinca. Maybe by name...." But a Vinca by any other name is still the sister of just a girlfriend.

Mom was there.

"Shame on you guys. Don't do it," she admonished. "Vinca sent that for Matthew. He needs presents under the tree, too."

"I got him something," I pointed out.

"I'll get him something," said Dad.

We looked at each other. Then we slid the choclate off the bar, ripped off the cellophane packaging, and while sitting on the newly over-stuffed couch together, pigged-out happily on our purloined chocolates. We had warm feelings for Vinca's thoughtfulness that day.

Did I tell Matthew about his absent gift? Not that Christmas, no. But a few years later when I suddenly remembered and had a good chuckle by our own Christmas tree. Okay, yes it was wrong. But wrong never tasted so sweet.

Thanksgiving by the Sea

When I was a kid turkey used to invade my dreams the night before Thanksgiving. Not that I knew any turkeys I had special concerns about. There were wild turkeys in the woods behind our home, it's true; our Labradors kept themselves amused for hours, chasing them from the field to watch their awkward bodies settle in the bare trees. But, no, it was the store-bought turkey Mom was cooking in the oven all night with its rich aroma settling in one's nostrils during sleep that evoked such dreams. She cooked it at a high temperature for a couple of hours and then turned down the oven to a very low temperature and left the turkey to cook for the rest of the night, tented in foil. My friends, it was wonderful turkey, moist and spicy. My mom would bring my dad a sampling of it for breakfast, sprinkled with salt and black pepper.

What did the children have for breakfast? Pie! Pie! Pie! Mom made apple and pumpkin every year on Thanksgiving Eve, and we kids were granted our first taste at breakfast. Unorthodox, yes, but incredibly scrumptious - and also the reason why I can sniff out a pastry at breakfast like a sweets-loving hound dog.

I have spent several adult years trying to replicate Mom's apple pie in my own kitchen - its creamy filling, its thick and pale butter pastry. I curse my laziness as a child! I was so content to fatten myself with the miraculous food given me but never took the time to actually learn how to make it. I could not foresee then that I would indeed grow up someday and would have to make food for my own family. And I did not marry (as I thought was my natural destiny as a lazy, culinary-challenged teenager) a rotund and jolly gourmet chef named Gerald.

I have many great Thanksgiving memories like those of the one our family spent with my sister Vinca at Topsail Beach in North Carolina when I was fourteen.

Vinca and Dave had a two-month-old son, my nephew Marcus, and they were living in a small bungalow apartment so near the beach that it stood on stilts.

It wasn't a perfect holiday (is there such a thing?). There were minor disasters that year, such as when Mom went to help Vinca take Marcus' temperature, using the traditional method, and the little guy had an exploding poopy all over her and the surrounding furniture. My darling Mama, intoxicated by the joy of being around her first baby grandchild, simply laughed heartily and took a long shower.

The requisite family squabble took place, too, between Dave and my brother Nate. Nate polished off the last of a batch of Vinca's special cheesy mashed potatoes for which Dave had a particular fondness. When Dave made the discovery of the scraped-empty bowl and saw the evidence on the plate in Nate's hands, he gave Nate the cold penetrating stare of a disgruntled Marine while the rest of us squirmed, looked around at each other and thought rather loudly, awkwaard.....

That Thanksgiving held the magic of my first ocean experience. Annie and I walked along the beach every day, encountering its briny smell, the sound and feel of the waves and the pleasure of comparing the contrasting gray blues of sky and water. We even had a short but close encounter with its seagulls. One day we found a woman surrounded by a flock of these birds and the cacophony of their eerie calls. She told us she had spent years enticing them with her bread crumbs, gaining trust. She kindly lent us some bread. They swooped and dived around our heads as we threw our offering in the air, fearing from their aggressive flight that they might drag us off by our hair if the meal train stopped. Annie eventually panicked, dropped her food and ran from the fray. Trying to be brave in the midst of what felt like a possible Hitchcock situation, I held on a little longer before fleeing myself, throwing the remaining crumbs over my shoulder as I ran.

Dave and Vinca had a dedication for Marcus that year in a church that had long windows facing the sea. It was a beautiful setting for their family gathering. I only regretted that our Thanksgiving meal had to take place in that same church's windowless basement where one could not gaze out at the ocean over a plate of turkey, yams and cheesy mash potatoes. What better view to inspire reflections about the pilgrims and their journey to that first feast, after all?

The morning before our meal Vinca took me along to her pastor's home in order to borrow a turkey roaster from the pastor's wife. When she introduced me as her little sister, I felt bashful but proud to be the sister of such a beautiful woman with a husband and small baby, her life full of mysteries which were still so remote to me at that time.

It was a good year, and if I ever get the chance to go back to Topsail Beach, I'll take it. Maybe, just maybe, I'll find the same fearless lady throwing crumbs to her Hitchcockian seagull friends. And if she invites me to share in her labor of love, I just might. But this time I'll wear my hair in a bun and a hat pulled over my head just in case.

Adventure Around the Mines

Did you read Adventure Schmenture, or Discovery? Bah! Whatofery? If you didn't, you're about to be real confused.

We did go to that Gold King Mine and Ghost Town two feet north of Jerome, AZ-just as I said we would (and we had lunch, too-haha!). We saw old tools, old cars, old mining equipment, dilipidated buildings, funny signs...oh, and chickens and goats. Matthew was right about the weeds, though. There were plenty. It was hot as well, and the donkey did not show up to be fed or kissed.

Once we climbed the windy road into Jerome, we felt like we were in a minature San Francisco. Jerome perches precariously on a hill, the buildings on Main Street all lean on each other as they follow the grade of that hill, and people live in houses where their backyards are just a dive off the back patio and down a very long slope.

Jerome started off as a mining community, became a ghost town once the copper and gold disappeared, and then became a village of artists and daredevil individuals who think stilts on a steep hill supporting the backside of your house is an intriguing concept.

The town is tiny, really, to my city eyes. One would think, then, that it would be impossible to get lost or turned around and possibly headed north toward Sedona (honey, are those red rocks? Nooooooo! Turn around-Quick!), but such is not the case. We got lost driving on Main Street which is really just ten feet of Arizona 89A south, and we didn't just get lost once but twice. In our defense the road is dissected by a thin line of buildings in the middle-take the wrong fork in the road by the bright red firehouse, and you could be going north instead of south as intended.

We were headed to see the Gold King Mine the first time when we took a wrong turn on Main Street and ended up going back down the hill the way we had come, passing the turnoff for Jerome State Historical Park on the way out, so we made the decision to see that first.

At the entrance to that Park stands an old mining headframe. Beneath its towering wooden legs a glass windowed/mirror-enhanced mining shaft penetrates the earth for 1900 feet. As a sign informs us that's a greater distance than the length of the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building or the great Egyptian Pyramids.

My kids stepped out onto the glass, and I proceeded after them, creeping inches out onto the steel mesh and then glass surface as if on river ice and hugging the wall to the side for safety. I had one hand on Daniel who was strapped to my front in the sling.

"It's not going to break," an adolescent boy said to me, watching my progress. "It's safe, you know. It's really sturdy."

I made a flippant noise and said, "I know that." He left, and I slowly drew away my hand from the wall and stood erect on the glass. Then I peered down.

Pretty cool. I got addicted to the thrill of looking down that shaft. After taking pictures of the sign explaining the history of the headframe and climbing into a rusty miner's cage, I kept going back beneath those skyscraper wooden legs to gaze into the abyss.

Jerome State Historical Park basically consists of the home and grounds of a man surnamed Douglas who did well in the mining business. There are some neat items there-like line upon line of donated mining cars, but for some reason, the Audrey Headframe at the Little Daisy Mine captivated me so much more. I guess one feels such things are like looking down at your mortality without the danger of confronting it face to face.

We were getting hungry, but there was no parking in Jerome because a little mariachi festival was on in the center square which consisted of ten square feet of concrete by the main road with some concrete step seating above that. We headed past the fire station and proceeded north the forty feet or so until we came upon Gold King Mine. The kids ate goldfish in the car, and I paid the ungodly price for a package of M&Ms in the gift shop to tide me over. Matthew? He's a food camel.

Out we went to view what we could find. Amid the dust, weeds, heat and the noise of a very old, still-operating sawmill we found a collection of vintage cars, motorcylces, trucks, farm equipment and salvaged buildings and signs from western ghost towns. An hour's stroll later we rounded a corner, and a man in a denim shirt, worn pale with exposure to dust and sun over many years, and wearing a hat that he probably slept in most nights halted us with a warning.

"It's going to get loud," he said.

What on earth? Just what was he warning us about?

Some ladies who evidently were regular visitors to the Gold King Mine piped in, "You might want to back up with the baby. It'll frighten the poor little thing."

I backed up but, no, again they walked towards me and said, "Really, it's loud. It'll be tough on the little guy's ears."

I retreated further.

And they reiterated, "It's a big boom and blasts. Frightening, just frightening for the little ones! Make sure you cover his ears! Very, very loud..."

With their dire shakings of the head and serious deadpan faces, it seemed as if they wanted to shout at me, "Woman, run away with your child from this place! It'll...it'll...it'll blow your baby's head off! Run-now!"

Soon the snorts and percolating huffs and puffs of some big machine began to build. I continued to edge backwards, my hands suspended to the side of Daniel's ears, wandering just what it was. Possibly that big blue vintage truck with the hood up? No. The sawmill? No.

Then something fired off several frantic whistle-blasts like a train beset by train robbers. Then BOOM! BOOM! The noise bounced off the hills of the valley, ricocheting like rifle shots in a large battle and probably knocking a few Jerome buildings down their pretty hill.

Daniel rocked his head side to side to figure out what was going on, and I anxiously watched the other three to see if they were scared. They weren't; Berto was, in fact, smiling as if to say, Any day where my eardrums can throb in the fresh country air is a good day!

"What is it?" I called over the noise to the man in the hat who'd first laid down the warning.

"Oh, just an old time generator," he called. "We use it as a noisemaker for visitors."

Uh-huh. Well, it was that. Somebody-one of the ladies, no doubt-said they could hear it clear south in Prescott on a good day.

But it was winding down, and I wanted to ask the gentleman who worked there if I could take his picture. He had long gray hair beneath that lived-in hat. His face was weathered and the beard was not tended; he just looked like the epitome of an old cowboy. He even had the easy-going smile and the slow gait of one. But I didn't want to say, "Can I get your picture for my blog?" So I just stared at him until he wandered off uneasily.

We left shortly after-headed for food but with a fridge magnet souvenir in hand.

Dream Blog: No Julia For You!

Yesterday morning, I was washing kitchen counters a little after 6:20am, and my husband had just got up. So I decided to tell him something important.

"Oh, by the way, I'm mad at you," I said haughtily.

"Mad at me? Why?'

"Because last night I had a dream that you told me you were bored with me and wanted someone else."

"Oh, well, it was your dream. I didn't do anything. Can't be mad at me."

"Not so fast, Bucko!" I said, waving my dirty kitchen rag at him. "When I asked you in my dream who you'd rather have, you said Julia Roberts!"

"Julia Roberts!?"

He seemed really bemused by the suggestion, I'll give him that. Maybe he doesn't go for the older ladies. But I wasn't about to dismiss the idea that I had subconsiously noticed a misty look of admiration in his eye while watching one of her movies.

"Yeah, Julia Roberts! And I'm mad at you for it!"

"You can't be mad at me. It's not my subconscious trying to tell me something."

"Well, why don't you ever have dreams about me running off with Jose Con-ser-co or something?"

"Do you mean Jose Canseco?"

"I don't know who it is-I just know the name!" I retorted. "So, uh...who is he anyway?"

"A baseball player who claimed he didn't use performance-enhancing drugs, and got in trouble because he actually did use them. So then he decided to rat out a bunch of other players, too."

Well, well...seems I like the bad boys. And the rats.

"Okay, but why don't you have any dreams about me running off with somebody else?"

"Because I'm not the jealous kind," he said with the signature Ibarra mega-watt smile.

That made me want to stick out my tongue at him while wiggling my fingers beside my ears. But he's right. I'm the jealous one. I take after my dad.

Dad told me he once had a dream where Mama drove to some other man's house and began fixing the guy breakfast-potatoes and eggs no less! He woke up mad at her, too. And then there's the power of suggestion, because I once had a dream that Matthew drove to another woman's house to eat her food. And that is just not right. You eat the food that's cooked at home and given to you! And you don't complain about being bored.

Oh, I've had lots of dreams about Matthew giving me the cold shoulder for another woman. One time he took up with a big-bottomed gal (and I'm serious: in my dream this woman had a very ample fanny), and he was very snarky about it, too. I was devastated. I kept following the two of them around, thinking, What does she have that I don't have?

But back to the Julia Roberts dream (or premonition?), Matthew called me after his lunch break yesterday. I asked him if he had had a good lunch, and he said, "It was fine, but guess who was sitting two tables away from us?"

He had me going, because I'm never one to discount dreams. And, really, how unlikely is it that Julia Roberts would be in an Olive Garden somewhere in Arizona? She just lives right next door in New Mexico, I've heard, and everybody knows those movie stars just flit around the country whenever they like.

"Julia Roberts!" I said in the way Jerry Seinfeld used to say, "Newman!" on Seinfeld-through gritted teeth and with fists clenched.

But Matthew just started to laugh, and I landed in reality.

"Haha, very funny," I said. "But if she ever does come around, Buckshot, I'm ready for her."

Dream Blog: I Was a Flying Fist-Fighting Man? What!?!

I'm going to go with the dreams again this morning. Hope you had a strong cup of coffee-or a whole pot.

Lately I've been having extremely action-packed dreams. They're wearing me out. Lots of fighting and dialogue that goes, "You talking to me? I SAAIIID, are you talking to me?" followed by more fighting.

So, anyway, I was in a city at night. Maybe it was Gotham, and I was Batwoman. Don't really know....your mind doesn't narrate for you like, In a galaxy far far away, you're going to encounter an evil ninja. Setting: rooftop. Duration of dream: however long I dang well decide, kid. Beginning...NOW! Rock and roll, Baby!

Any hooby hobby, I started the dream as a woman, and then switched to a masculine version of myself when the fighting started. Pretty sexist of my subconscious, don't you think? And I was at a rooftop apartment or flat or just some big fancy place at the top of a building. The view from it was incredible, but I didn't have time to admire it for long, because the wealthy man who lived in the place showed up, and he was E-VIL! Didn't have proof of that; it was pretty much intuitive, you know?

He wanted a fight, and I was going to have to give it to him. He had some pretty fancy weaponry....numchucks and whatever (don't know the technical names). We went at it. And I was sweating in my dream, getting a little nervous about my chances. Especially when he had a iron grip on my wrist and nearly snapped it (yep, it hurt-must have been lying on it funny in my sleep). Suddenly I had an idea: why not just fly away to a few buildings over, leaving evil ninja man behind?

Sounded good, so my alter-ego, a coward with the superhuman power of flying in order to escape severe bodily harm, took a runnning leap off that roof and whooooshed toward some buildings about half a mile away.

Flying isn't all its cracked up to be by those cute little birdies who land on your bushes and trees during your waking hours. It really does a turn on your stomach. As I sailed down and then zoomed back up toward the roof of a skyscraper, my stomach dropped out and then came back up and did a few back flips. I overshot my landing, too.

I did finally make it, though, but then I heard a loud thud. I turned around, and wouldn't you know? My enemy could fly, too. C-mon! My mind was actually just handing that little skill out like candy on Halloween. Give me a break here! But what could I do? I took off again like a flash on the stomach roller-coaster.

Then suddenly, an eerie noise invaded my dream. It was....it was....a fussin' baby, of course-MY fussin' baby.

I opened my eyes. Matthew had his back turned toward me. Isn't it just like people to desert you when you're fighting an evil rich dude and taking flying leaps off tall buildings? Cruel, cruel man. Still, I was a little bit frazzled by my dream and would have liked to snuggle up against him, but instead I was going to have to make the lonely midnight trek across the couple feet of hall to the baby's room. But first I had to steel myself.

There's no ninjas in the hall. No ninjas in the hall...

I slid out of bed quietly, took a quick survey of the hall and beat it across to the baby's room. Poor little guy; I had to comfort him.

"Shush, Daniel. Quiet now, baby, "I said, picking him up. "Don't worry, son. No ninjas are going to get Mama. Shush now. Shush."

What a guy! Waking up all worried about me. Buy, hey, he was my little savior. If he hadn't snapped me awake, I might never have escaped that mean rich flying ninja of terror.