Saturday, January 29, 2011

Dream Blog: No Bridge at the Old Ruin? What a Bunch Of Croc(odile)!

A new road had been built by-passing the old fort or Native American ruin (I couldn't decipher which it was at first). Unfortunately, somehow I ended up taking the old disused road that ran right along the old place. Part of that road was blocked by a piece of overhang that had once shadowed the front of the ruin and which was now standing perpendicular to the lie of the dirt road. This was simple to get by, and I went swiftly around it.

I didn't stop to examine the place or go in, and I don't know why. I am always drawn like a magnet to anything that reeks of age and abandoned civilization. Here, I only noticed as I drove past that the building materials had crusted into a darkish grey color, almost black, and that the building was essentially a rectangle.

After or just slightly before passing the fort - for so it must have been, being composed of discolored wood - I decided to carry my car in the palm of my hand to make the going easier. I trusted my two legs more on the uncertain terrain.

The scenery opened up, and the landscape was like so many desert environs I've seen. I walked through the sandy soil until I reached an impressive canyon quite abruptly. I gazed across it; I did not look down. Nevertheless, I knew a river lived and moved there at the bottom of its astounding depth; I could hear it.

There was no bridge.

There must have been at one time for the dirt track resumed on the opposite side of the canyon. Stupid old road. Why had I gotten lost? And the sight of this old place was decidedly lonely and eerie.

I spun around and quickly retreated. Not the way I had come but along the back of the fort, and suddenly I was accosted by water. So much water. It was shedding off of huge boulders to my side and rushing through a gorge that lay in front of me. I'd have to get across this water that had sprung up all around the ruin. The way home would not, could not, be the way I'd come. Still, the gorge was not too steep-sided. I could jump from boulder to boulder down through it and to the other side. I tensed my body for the leap, and then I spotted something below in the churning pool. It was gliding through, its long body a pale soothing green in color. My desperation increased at the sight of it, though; that crocodile was going to make the going more treacherous - deadly perhaps.

A few seconds inward debate helped me to conclude that this strange creature in an alien environment would indeed try to eat me if I splashed through that pool. Who knew how hungry it was, and that water had to be very cold. I felt that this fact would make it more aggressive somehow.

I went along a narrow ledge of rock behind the fort and jumped across the gorge to some higher boulders. My mind fast-forwarded this part, so I could get swiftly by that thing that I feared. And then I walked and walked. I came to a Catholic Church that was just concluding mass. People were streaming out the doors of the small church. I wondered at this a second and then turned to find the ranger's station for the ruin I had just journeyed through.

I went directly up to the woman there and said without preamble, "There's a crocodile in the waters by that old fort."

"A crocodile?" she repeated lamely. "I don't think so."

"Oh, yes, there is," I told her. "You better get rid of it before somebody gets hurt."

"Okay, well I guess..."

"Maybe it was somebody's exotic pet, and they let it loose there," I concluded for her.

Finally she seemed to accept that I spoke truth.

"Okay," she said, tossing her tightly braided hair back over her shoulder. "I'll tell someone and we'll get it out of there."

I nodded, satisfied....

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Pretty Little Daffodils

Yesterday evening I knelt by the ground purring, "There you are, my sweet little babies! You sweet little things, you! You are here!"

No, I'm not an old spinster cooing to her twenty beloved cats as they slink about her feet. I was petting daffodil buds.

Ana joined in the the petting and the purring, and Berto said in exasperation, "Oh, come on! Now you're teaching her to do that?"

But they really were so lovely. And soft. New, too-their velvety green buds only recently shot up from the earth. Anyway, at first I didn't see them when I went looking, so my joy was intensified when I scraped away the thatch of dry bermuda grass and found them less than two inches from the ground.

They will grow quickly and bloom soon, the first harbingers of warmer weather to come - which doesn't mean much where I live, granted, but its the memories I relish! - yes, the associations with a relatively small plot of land in Middle Tennessee.

On that plot of land in Tennessee, my childhood home, the beautiful crowns of bright yellow would appear by the hundreds in the yard beneath the Walnut trees in February and March. If one felt like taking a chilly stroll by the creek, they were there, too, between the spring and the main stream. For a little girl this, the earth's first offering of flowers for the year, held pure joy.

My sister Annie and I would pick dozens of daffodils and bring them inside the house to perch on the window sills, shelves and tables in all manner of jars and vases. It was sunshine for our home before real spring had even yet arrived. And when they had languished, both in their vases and out in the lawn and our immediate world, we had the knowledge that their cousins would shortly follow all through the warmer months - the tiger lilys by the culvert near the creek, the regal irises at the curve of the driveway, the black-eyed susans down the whole length of the lane and the honeysuckle languidly draping the fence near the field gate. I can see them all and smell them all still. It is very easy to recall the joy the sight of these beautiful flowers gave me as a little girl.

That is why I was purring to my daffodil buds entrenched in the harsh desert soil of my backyard. I am so grateful each year to greet them in this climate. to recapture the joy they instilled in me long ago with every new year. Alas, I believe they are the only thing I have planted around my home that has survived. And that is truly a gift of nature, for when I first put them in the ground, it was done on a lark, really, because they appeared to be dead. It is now their third year of rebirth.

This year, I will plant more. Many more. In a small way I will try to reproduce that beautiful southern yard bursting with brilliant yellow in the year's infancy. Imagine all the sweet little velvety buds of green each January! And I have no doubt I will purr to them all.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Snard's My Name, Getting a Learnin's My Game (Wish It Weren't)

Once when I was an adolescent, I sat on the couch watching TV and being poked. Mercilessly. By my big brother.

He was using his finger like the force of the Jedi to poke me every few seconds in my side. Being non-confrontational, I just squirmed and kept up a steady chorus of, "Stop, Nate. Just Stop. Stop it! Please stop. Don't Poke me! Stop it NATE!"

After several minutes of this chorus, my mom, who was making dinner at the time, finally decided to do something about the ruckus coming from the other room.

She yelled out in frustration, "Hillary! Be quiet! Gracious sake's, I can't even concentrate in here!"

A slow triumphant grin overspread my brother's face. Snard: 0 big brother: 1

I'm the snard, of course. That was my brother's special invented name for me while we were growing up. I once kept a little notebook to copy down words I didn't know from books I was reading. I'd look up the words and write the definition in the notebook. Natie snatched it from me once and wrote S-n-a-r-d: little sister named Hillary who's in constant need of a learnin.

Nate's propensity for poking people in order to "learn" them was the reason why on all family car trips I was forced to sit between him and Annie. Annie couldn't stand to be touched, and Nate had an urge to poke and harass his fellow passengers. The end result? Annie continually told me over hundreds of miles to, "Move your elbow, Hillary! Are you tapping your foot? Stop touching me!" Then she'd shove me Nate's way, and he'd poke me several times with a diabolical grin on his face. At which point I'd hunker toward Annie's side of the car again, and she'd begin her litany of complaints about the disposition of my limbs before pushing me back to the official "Learner" for a lesson. Frankly, I'm just glad I survived to tell the tale, though I have no doubt that at every rest stop, I emerged from the car wide-eyed and quivering like a jackrabbit ready to flee a predator - two predators actually.

Don't get me wrong. Despite the learnins, Nate and I were buddies. Heck, somebody had to be the little brother he was so wrongfully denied, the gullible one willing to play deer and hunter with dangerous weapons homemade from sticks and rubber bands.

And I tried hard to be that little brother for the big brother I loved like a super hero, but there were definite signs that I was but a girl (or snard) at heart. For instance, on warm summer days Nate and I would line up our army men with careful precision in the rich dirt of the garden. Our troops properly deployed, we attempted to devastate each other's armies with large dirt clods we flung across the several feet separating us. I made the girly mistake of taking aim at the tiny green soldiers at ground level; Nate had the more effective strategy of flinging the dirt clods with little pebbles in them toward the opposing general (that would be me). With every "ouch....hey!" elicited from me by such brutal tactics, I am confident Natie was simply trying to teach me a valuable lesson for later in life. Honestly, though, twenty-some-odd years later, I still can't figure out what that lesson was.

Then there was that little mix-up with me about my GI Joe named Lightfoot. I loved him because he was yellow, my favorite color, and because I thought he was named after the Canadian folk singer, Gordon Lightfoot, whose music my dad loved and practically reared us on. It never occurred to me to think he was called Lightfoot as in "fleet-footed", so I took to calling him Gordon. I loved that GI Joe like no other. He was the only one that was officially mine, anyway - the one I played with in all those straw and twig forts Nate and I built beneath the walnut trees. But a tragic problem developed with his "fleet-footed" legs. They kept falling off at the knee. My dad attempted to glue them back on several times, but it never lasted. I finally decided we needed to have a funeral for Gordon, and so we did and buried him near the garden. I have no doubt Nate was mumbling, "snard!", under his breath the whole entire time.

Nate and I eventually gave up those pastimes as well as our creek side wars with micro machines to move on to more exciting games. When we got older we liked to pretend fence, though the risk of serious injury with our pretend fencing was akin to that involved with the real deal - without the protective armor. We tried having sword fights with wimpy plastic coke bottles, but the "POP! POP!" noise every time we made contact was very irritating and the tiny little lips of the bottles made for very poor gripping. So we raided Mom and Dad's closet where there were literally dozens of white, metal curtain rods. I have no clue why they were there; there certainly weren't that many windows in our home. I can only think that if a black market for curtain rods existed, Mom was involved somehow - possibly the ring leader. Of course she forbade us on several occasions to sword fight with her curtain rods. I'm sad to say we were delinquent and didn't listen. Eventually, every single rod in our home, saving those with curtains attached, ended up badly dented and bent from our fierce brother/sister fencing matches.

The strong urge I have to take fencing lessons as an adult can be attributed to the fact that I never beat my brother in our rod fights. Our last duel ended with me backed into a corner by the front door, desperately cutting my rod across the space in front of me in an attempt to stave off Natie's onslaughts as he came at me laughing with eyes blazing. I think he forgot I was just a snard in that moment instead of a real brother. Mom and Dad were out grocery shopping, so I had no contingency plan. I believe I just kept weakly crying "Uncle! Mercy!" until the fateful moment when Nate's weapon smashed against my index finger, and I yelped. As the appendage turned all red and blue, a frantic look of concern took hold of Natie's features; the invincible curtain rod warrior vanished.

"Are you okay? Are you okay?" he kept repeating as he followed me to the bathroom and watched me wash it in cold water.

When I finally mumbled, "I'm fine. I guess..." he promptly added, "Good. Whew! Now, quick! - go to bed before Mom and Dad get home!"

Good old memories of childhood - busted fingers, pop guns and playing fort together in the old chicken coup! Still, we must all do our duty of growing up, so we can change and have the next generation of snards. Soon you find you have to get to know your siblings anew as mature individuals. I confess that since my brother Nate and I live so far apart from each other, I am jealous of the friends and co-workers who must know the adult Nate so much better than I do simply because they are able to spend a greater quantity of time with him. Ah, but I do know they have never built a GI Joe fort with him in the grass, or made tracks with micro-machines in the soft dirt by a creek, or engaged with him in sword fights with Mom's curtain rods. At least, I seriously doubt they have. So, I'm content, because for a large part of my childhood, I got to be my brother's little brother, and that doesn't change no matter how little we see each other now or how great the miles grow between us. After all, I'll always be a snard. At least to him.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A Loving Daughter

Amendment: In this post, I write about telling my children it was possible that they might live until 3010. Upon reflection, I realize that human beings do not actually live to be a thousand years old. I was of course thinking 2110. But it was an honest mistake. I think.

Wednesday of last week when I walked in to get my kids from school and take their teachers late Christmas offerings of fudge and gift cards, Analisa's teacher stopped me.

"Ana wrote something really special in her journal," she said, her hand on her heart. "You have to read it. I made a copy and sent it home. It's in her folder."

"Oh, wonderful," I said. "I can't wait to see it. Thank you."

"It's very special," she continued. "You have a very special little girl. I would keep it to show to her when she's older. Ana's going to make a great teenager."

This last statement took me aback and made me stutter as I thanked her again. Does any parent expect to hear someone forecast that their child will be a great teenager? Does such a thing exist?

Now granted, Analisa is an easy child, a very loving and sensitive child. Let me illustrate this with a little story.

I was playing memory with Ella the other day for the...I don't know - millionth time, maybe. She was beating me again. Every time she went to turn over a second card, confident in her match, I'd mumble, "I don't think..." But, of course, she'd get it, and her matches were something like two to my one. Looking for the bright side, I said to Matthew, "I hope all these Memory matches help me stave off Alzheimer's when I'm old." (Never mind the fact that a three-year-old was already beating me in my current exercises of remembering.)

"Mama..." said Ana in a chiding tone, but I didn't hear her because her Papa was making a joke.

"Oh, then, you'd better stop right now!" he said.

I turned around to glare in his direction. "Are you saying you want me to get Alzheimer's in my old age?" I asked. "Fine. That's fine. When I do I'm going to start dating other people!"

"Mama..." said Anie again as her Papa laughed. "You know I don't like you guys talking about when you're old."

"I know, Ana," I replied quietly, thinking back to our little conversation on New Year's Eve.

It was about 8:30pm on December 31st. We had just finished reading another chapter of Nancy Drew: The Secret in the Old Clock. We read Nancy Drew every night now - Analisa, Berto and me. Through these second readings with my kids I'm reliving my youth and all the excitement of my first mystery stories for which my love has yet to dim. Anyhow, I closed the book and said to the kids, "That's the last Nancy Drew we're ever going to read in 2010. Tonight's New Year's Eve. Tomorrow it'll be January of a new year."

"3010?" asked Ana.

"Berto!" I said in a warning tone as he began to snicker. Then I turned to Ana. "No, it'll be 2011, right? Because the second number changes, not the first."

"Yeah, you and I probably won't even be alive in 3010, Ana," said Berto with a sneer.

I don't like kids talking about their future demise; it's unseemly.

"You could be," I said. "It's possible. People can live to be that old."

Ana's eyes grew wide and misty. I should have seen the next question swimming in those sensitive pools.

"Is there a possibility you and Papa will still be alive?" she asked with a catch in her voice.

I couldn't think. It was too much pressure to come up with a safe, comforting answer. I said, "Uhhhhh...."

Ana started to cry pitifully.

"Oh, Ana!" I said. "It's okay." I wanted to shrug and say, These things happen! But that didn't seem to be what was needed.

"Look," I said. "If we're all good people, and we help others, and we do what we know our Creator expects of us, we'll live again. Like my Grandmama; I'm going to see her again, because she was a good person."

Ana just kept crying. I wrapped her up in a hug. "Anyway, Jesus may come back before then, right? And when he does come back, he'll call our names, so it's like we're sleeping really - waiting for him."

When the rivulets continued to flow, I took her to see her Papa.

"What are you crying about?" he asked in typical man response. Once I told him, however, he folded her onto his lap with an, "Oh, Ana!" and gave me a look, a twinkle in his eyes. We both know how sensitive our little girl is.

"I don't want you and Mama to get old!" she cried.

He soothed her and held her, and I wrapped it up by saying, "Ana, just remember what Jesus said. It's one of the first Bible verses a kid ever learns. It was one of my favorite when I was a child...For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believes in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life." I was proud for remembering that verse at a moment when it was needed. I said gently, "That sums it all up, and that's why it will be like sleeping, as long as we're good people, okay?"

She was quietly sniffling at that point, and it only took a few more minutes before she was at last ready to part from us to go to sleep on the last evening of 2010. But first she had to give her Papa and me at least five super-squeeze hugs each, the kind that leave bruises on our ribs and foretell her future as a female weight-lifting champion.

"Ana...she is so loving," Matthew said to me when she had gone to bed.

"Yes, she is," I replied.

It was only a few days after that conversation that her teacher told me of the journal entry. It was as beautiful as she said it would be, and here it is:

Friday, January 7, 2011

Potty Times, Nap Times...Good Times

Every day, at least six times a day, I hear my preschooler bellow through the house in a most obnoxious way.

"I'M DOOOONE!" she hollers.

She's in the bathroom, and it is never a convenient moment. "Of course you are," I mumble under my breath before yelling back, "I'LL BE THERE IN A MINUTE! I'm in the middle of something here!"

And it's true. I am always in the middle of changing a diaper, fixing a meal, switching laundry, loading dishes, or feeding a baby. Eventually, I must suspend my work, however, and trudge down the hall to take care of her Royal Princess of the Porcelain Palace.

And my littlest, Danny Sammy, won't sleep like he should right now. According to pediatric sleep experts, he is supposed to need 14 hours of sleep, more than half of the 24 hours in a day. Hah! I am convinced this is a fib invented by pediatricians to keep us desperate for their advice. It is a fib just slightly better than the one circulated by doctors about potty training: the one in which they tell you to simply put your toddler or preschooler in a T-shirt and cotton underpants and let them rove your home diaper-free while giving them only water to drink. Your child will have a few accidents (just a few) before figuring out that they really don't like being wet, and the kid will use the potty henceforth (at which point rainbows should magically appear in your home while Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays).

Let me tell you what really happens, because I've tried this "shotgun" method on three different children, and baby, it backfires. You put your kid in the shirt and special underpants, you give them water even though they're whining for juice, and then you watch and wait for them to cry about being wet. After about an hour, you start splashing through the puddles. That's right. Because they could care less that they're pee-peeing all over the house like miscreant little puppies. I tried this method for two days straight with my oldest, and I cleaned up roughly enough pee-pee to start a koi pond in the backyard.

And the sleep myth is just the same. Has to be, because if babies really needed that much sleep...I mean if they really did...wouldn't they be wanting...in fact, begging to go down for nap/bedtime? Getting you up four to six times a night, wouldn't they just nurse or take the bottle, touch your face and hair and then go peacefully back in their cribs as if to say, Just checking to make sure you're still here Mama. But this is not the way it is for me and my Danny Sammy. He wakes up, has his nurse, pops off in irritation and begins to behave like the Incredible Hulk - arcing his back, thrashing his arms around and growling deep in his throat as if he were going to suddenly burst out of his footie sleeper and start sporting green skin before jumping through the window to go rip a neighbor's car apart. He behaves like this for well over an hour every night while I attempt to bounce, rock, nurse or lie down with him.

And nap times. Huh. Well, I could get him down for a decent nap, I suppose, if I could suspend all sudden noise in our home and had a soundproof plexiglass box in which to put my preschooler with rations of juice and crackers and enough finger paint and play dough to keep her amused for two hours. But these things are impossible...unless you know where I can find a child-friendly plexiglass box? (No? Well, I was just kidding!) And no matter what I do for Ella Belle - turn on the television, give her cookies and muffins, provide her with pounds of play dough or modeling clay, she will without a doubt end up in the hall outside Danny Sam's room with boredom on her mind and a smirk on her face as she slowly increases the amount of noise she's making. I stare pointedly at her and push my finger hard against my mouth, trying my darndest to channel enough miming energy to drive her from the vicinity of the designated baby nap area, but I'm helpless to stop the inevitable. If I yell at her to go away or be quiet, I'll be disturbing Danny Sam myself and only feel more angst-ridden when he aborts his nurse and twists his head with wide-open eyes to examine the activities of big sister.

I know I'm supposed to thank God for the precious time I get to spend with my little ones, and I do! I do! I do! I do! I doooo! Even when I'm trying to push my fingers through my eyelids in frustration. But sometimes a stay-at-home Mom lives on the edge - the edge of sanity, that is. For instance, when, after many minutes of orchestrating ridiculous maneuvers and making plenty of goofy noises and faces, you find yourself pointing at your baby and cackling because you managed to trick him into taking a bite of baby food, well...you know the pressure has gotten to you, my friend.

But, thank God, it's worth it. It's worth it when your baby crawls up to you as you're sitting on the ground and lays his head on your lap and smiles. It's worth it when, after months of jealousy and insecurity in relation to baby Danny, Ella makes her little brother giggle in the car on the way home and then says confidently, "Mama, Daniel's my friend."

Monday, January 3, 2011

Neener-Neener-Neener

On December 26th I had the perfect opportunity. It was nighttime; we were driving away from the scene of congestion. The chances of my being caught were slim, but I didn't have a stupid blow horn handy.

Our family was pulling off the street that led to the Phoenix Zoo's annual Zoolights holiday extravaganza. It was just a bit after 6:30pm, and a couple of our kids were sniffling noisily in the backseat from disappointment. We saw an enormous parade of cars waiting to turn down the street that led to the parking lot of the zoo while off-duty policemen watched from the dirt grade by the intersection. Hahaha! Little did the people in those cars realize what they were about to find - an absolutely enormous parking lot completely awash in roving vehicles circling more than a dozen filled-to-capacity lanes like a pack of desperate hyenas - all of them hungry for kettle corn and lights synchronized to blaring Christmas tunes.

After mistakenly trying to locate a space for our own vehicle at the tardy hour of 6:15pm (Zoolights began at 6pm), we were forced to give up hope of gaining entrance to a magical world of lit giraffes and bedecked desert trees where aforementioned kettle corn is sold to vulnerable families every twenty feet. As we were leaving, I craned my neck to look at all the poor saps entering the fray of aggressive drivers.

"Look at all those cars, " I said to cheer up the kids. "They're trying to get in, too, and they're not going to find a parking space, either." Then I said aside to Matthew, "We should have known better than to come the day after Christmas. Everybody's looking for something festive to do, so they can hang on to the holidays. 'Oh, what can we do? What can we do? Wah-ha....Zoolights!' "

"Exactly," said Matthew in a tone I know well. He lifted his eyebrows and made an exaggerated gesture with the hand he could spare from the steering wheel and mocked, "Mwah-ha...Zoolights!"

"Mwah-ha-ha...Zoolights!" I echoed, giggling at the zaniness.

Mwah-ha-ha.....Zoolights!

(That went on for a while.) Meanwhile Ella Boo whimpered in her car seat and Berto growled at our audacity in making fun of such a dire disappointment.

I wrapped it all up when I laughed as only one can laugh at finding others in the same predicament as oneself and said to Matthew, "Perfect time for a drive-by neener-neener, though." He smiled, but my dad would have laughed outright.

Dad would have understood the joy of imagining myself rolling down the window, balancing half my body outside the car, and yelling into a blow horn with relish, "Neener-neener-neener! No parking at the zoo! Neener-neener-neener! No Zoolights for you!" Then with great exhilaration jerking myself back inside the car, chucking the blow horn into the back of the van out of sight and tapping my finger gleefully on the little button that rolls up the car window while laughing in an unseemly manner at the ridiculous plight of my fellow human beings.

It's all a pipe dream, though, because somehow I never think to pick up a blow horn for just such occasions.

But just the concept of the drive-by neener-neener has brought me occasional mirth ever since an early morning ride to my grandfather's church on a lonely stretch of freeway between Boise and New Plymouth, Idaho when I was still a teenager. There was construction on the highway, and Dad and I were very worried we'd be late; traffic was so tortuously slow. After making a chorus of disgruntled noises and vainly looking for something to distract us on the radio, we did make it to church just a few minutes late. I slid into a pew as Dad prepared to teach Bible Study.

On the return trip to Boise, Dad and I gazed across the brush between the divided highway to the two lanes of traffic opposite. Cars were nose to bumper, creeping slower than slugs. Dad and I got to thinkin' in the silly way we do when we're together.

"Don't you wish we had a blow horn, so we could call out, 'Neener-neener-neener!' to all those other drivers," Dad said with a chuckle.

I laughed. "It'd be a drive-by neener-neener!"

"Sure," said Dad, and imitating a news reporter, "There was a drive-by neener-neener on the highway today. Several witnesses attested to the savagery of it. Unfortunately, the culprits were never apprehended. The blow horn was never found!"

We laughed a good long time at our own silly joke as we made a smooth commute home and sped passed the clogged cars on the opposite side of the highway.

Of course, I've never heard of a drive-by neener-neener actually taking place. Do I like to think that other people have been tempted by the opportunity to rub life's sticky situations into the faces of their fellow human beings in such a completely obnoxious and juvenile way? Oh, sure. But have I ever heard of the brave individual who actually took the blow by the horn? Sadly, no.

And I should face it: I'd probably never have the courage to do it myself. But I did find the courage to venture with Matthew and the kids back out to Zoolights. This time we arrived a good twenty minutes before it even opened and waited in lines outside the gates while a zoo worker walked up and down shouting at patrons, "There are five lines, people! So figure out which line you're in! Is it the two on the left, the one in the middle or the two on the right? C'mon!"

When the gates opened, we went to member services for a couple of free tickets, because we're members and therefore extraordinarily special. We still had to pay for three more tickets, of course, but then we got to by-pass people giving us dirty looks as they waited in their five lines to purchase their regular tickets from the regular ticket booths.

Saguaros

Inside we compulsively bought kettle corn at the nearest vendor. Then as we walked we encountered a magical world of small lit stands of saguaro cacti, multiple species of monkey made from lights, and a glowing orb of pulsing light suspended over the zoo lake. Then we sat to ooh and ahh over a loud light display set to the melody of the Nutcracker suite and the voice of good old Bing singing White Christmas.

Afterwords we went to gaze at the lazy Komodo Dragons. Then the girls rode the carousel because I had for once succeeded in convincing their Papa to be serendipitous. Meanwhile Berto got to listen to the Ohio State marching band who were in town for the Insight Bowl. After the girls got off the carousel, we stood to the side as the players, cheerleaders and band members passed close by, and Berto, his face alight and eyes wide, got to see all the amazing instruments a college marching band plays at the games.

"What would I play?" he mused.

"Did you see all the drums?" said his papa.

"No, the tuba," I said enthusiastically, and as I spoke my fond wish that Berto would someday be in collegiate marching band grew a little stronger. "I can definitely see you doing that," I told him.

"And you get to go to all the games," said Matthew.

Before we left the zoo, we went down the desert trail, saw some peccarys, and searched in vain for the coyote. I also got this awesome picture of a display of simulated rabbits.


We left with warm feelings rekindled for the Phoenix Zoo. But we had to hustle all the kids into the car and throw the stroller in the back with all due haste because there were at least ten cars waiting for our parking space and the chance to see an animal refuge all aglow. I would have cupped my hands and shouted a hasty, "Neener-neener!" before jumping in the van to snicker into my sleeve, but I didn't want to destroy the Christmas mood that, thanks to a beautiful zoo transformed into a glowing evening oasis, still thrived on that cool desert night.