Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I Forgot to Say I Love You, Mama Darlin'

With every child Matthew and I have added to our family, my respect for my mother has grown exponentially.
Mama Darlin' and her four critters, as she'd call us


Dad tells a story from when he was working for a power line company in these western United States, days when he worked "light to light", leaving at dawn to work on the large structures that spread across the prairies and coming home after most of us kids had been put to bed. During his lunch break one day, he was driving through the town. As he slowed at a street light, he saw a woman crossing the street with a child holding her hand, a baby in her arms, another child gripping her pant leg and a fourth little one holding onto a sibling's hand. Dad had the instinctive thought, "Poor woman!", but as she crossed in front of him, he realized with a shock that it was his own wife and his children.

My mother isn't just extraordinary because she at one time herded children safely with her wherever she went. She's an incredible woman, because she told my dad she wanted no offspring when they first met and yet when she and Dad built their family, she became known to her children as "Saint Mommy" for her sweet, selfless spirit and her gentle words and touch. She's amazing, because as a teenager most thought of her as a hothouse flower, beautiful but not inclined toward outdoor adventures. Yet when we moved to the South, she would spend years of her life hiking through the hills and hollows of Middle Tennessee in order to help provide for the family. She knelt in the dirt to dig valuable roots (ginseng, goldenseal) and rolled grapevine and briar wreaths against her stomach beneath the hardwood trees. She wore flannel as if it were the only natural choice for a lovely woman and carried hand sewn jean sacks with her cold lunch and water bottle slung across her body. What's remarkable is that she enjoyed the experience, relishing not only the exercise and being in nature but the time spent with her husband.

I knew as a child that my mom was beautiful, that she was kind and optimistic. But I must admit I did not realize how resilient she was, how determined, how intelligent, how centered she was until I started to bushwhack my way through life with my own little ones in tow. With each baby I welcomed into my arms and life, the horizon of my understanding expanded until it richly glowed with revelations about motherhood and about Mama Darlin's saintlike attributes.

I have a memory to share. It is not what you would expect, but it is a powerful memory about a Mother's Day a long time ago. First let me say that I do remember occasions when I made cards and paper flowers for Mama at school. I remember times when Annie and Vinca prepared Mama a humble breakfast, and Nate and I clumsily took it to her. There were years when we plucked a profusion of tiger lilys from the creek bank to bring her. I can also still see the sewing basket with roses on the fabric that I insisted on getting her for a gift one year despite the fact that she rarely found time to sew, saving the jean sacks for work. But the memory that is most powerful is also sad, and it recalls a time when we kids neglected to show our mother how much we loved and appreciated her.

That Mother's Day was not what it should have been from the beginning. Our family was struggling financially, and we all were suffering from malaise because of the stress and uncertainty. Dad left early that Sunday to work in the fields of a neighbor, Mr. Wellins, in order to bring in more money. The house was quiet.

We kids kept mostly to our rooms. I laid on the floor in Annie's and my bedroom with sheets of paper spread around me, trying half-heartedly to write a poem for my mother or at least draw a picture. As I balled up rejected attempts at a gift and threw them into the corner, I should have realized I was already way behind the game. Still, being late with a gift is a far better thing than giving none at all, especially when the gift is meant for the most important woman in the world.

The next afternoon I remember vividly, painfully clear. We kids got off the bus to begin a hot, dusty walk down the lane toward home, and Dad pulled up in the car. We were surprised to see him but grateful to have a ride and to skip the exercise. The stern expression on our dad's face should have warned us that something was amiss, but we climbed in with barely a word of greeting and slumped into our respective places on the worn vinyl.

Dad didn't say hello to us either, and he drove very slowly. We had just passed the large beautifully-branching tree at the crest of the hill above the creek when he said suddenly:

"Your mother cried all morning."

I tensed. All of us sat up, apathy gone, no longer bored or disinterested.

"She said none of you did anything for her yesterday," said Dad. "You didn't even wish her a happy Mother's Day."

It was then that I got that burning feeling in my gut, that horrible reaction that is caused by fear - the horror of having done (or not done) what can't be changed, can't be undone or taken back. It's an emotional nausea that roils through one's insides.

The four of us stammered in turns, attempting to come up with an explanation, an excuse. I lamely uttered the fact that I had tried to make something, but it hadn't come out right. Dad was silent, the expression on his face unalterable rebuke. I remember we were passing the creek, that peaceful beautiful stream, when we began to break down one by one with the intense remorse, some of us sobbing loudly.

As we passed the cornfield and approached the turn of the driveway, Dad cut quietly through all the tears, "You're going to apologize to your mother. And you're going to make it up to her. I don't know how you can, but you will."

We tumbled out of the car when it stopped by our little square home. We tore through the front door in a pack and stormed our mother as she stood in the kitchen, hugging her, crying, apologizing continually, and professing our love for her. She held us and received it all with grace.

And that is so like her sweet nature.

But I am still sad to think there ever was a time when I forgot to say, "Mama  Darlin', I love you."

Sunday, April 24, 2011

No Bears Out Tonight and Papas

The game begins quite humbly. I look up from the Sunday paper and suddenly realize that Matthew, my husband, is nowhere to be seen. I call his name a few times, get no answer, and after wandering the house I notice a very odd, long lump under someone's bedroom comforter. I then alert the children that their Papa is missing and they should find him. Once they notice the strange lump, Berto, our oldest, takes a running leap onto the bed, and Matthew springs up with equal amounts of groans and chuckles. Then its somebody else's turn to hide.

Whether my husband is actually trying to play hide-and-seek with the kids or is just plain hiding, the game is a classic. The thrill of cramping oneself into a ridiculously uncomfortable position and being as still as possible while holding one's breath is in my opinion better than being the seeker, but the game in general is a good last bet against weekend or summer boredom.

I was lucky in my childhood to have the opportunity to play it in an enormous cornfield behind our home in Tennessee. It is impossible to be quiet in a cornfield, so mostly you just keep running. You run away like mad from the sibling who's counting until you find a place to kneel with bated breath, looking down the row and listening for the familiar crackle of cornstalks being brushed aside. If the sound approaches your location, you run again - blindly through corn that's two feet above you head. Unfortunately for me, I giggle ferociously when I am terrified, and so the more the cornstalks crackled behind me the more I gave myself away until I collapsed in the dirt, giggling madly and throwing my hands in the air to surrender.

There were other games that filled my childhood summers. My dad used to let the grass grow outrageously tall beneath the walnut trees in our yard, and then he would mow a huge pacman maze through the grass. One of us kids would be pacman while dad and the others were the ghosts trying to intercept.

Dad also spray painted a baseball diamond on the same large patch of yard. Our dog Reuben played outfield during family games; he loved to chase the baseball and always brought it faithfully back to Dad.

The game I associate most with summer, though, is one called No Bears Out Tonight, a game Dad himself once played as a boy in Idaho and one which he taught to his children.

Dad was the bear. He went outside when it was dark, when the glow of the blinking fireflies stretched from the porch across the breadth of the lawn. We kids counted inside the house, Mama helping to pace our counting as our excitement built, until we reached thirty. She opened the door for us, and holding hands, we four kids went outside singing, "No bears out tonight! Daddy shot them all last night!" Slowly, with wide eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness outdoors, we stepped off the porch and ventured out across the lawn. We broke hands until we wandered separately, still singing tenaciously. Then suddenly, "Rooaaarrrrr!" The bear sprang from behind a big tree, and we scattered screaming, trying to make it back to the porch before the bear caught us.

Yes, it was essentially hide-and-seek, only turned on its head, but there is something about wandering a large dark lawn as a child, the fireflies eerily flashing around your head as you try to sing as softly as you can so you can listen for the bear.

I've played the game with my own kids, but I've found the thrill is hard to recreate in our considerably smaller city yard with its one tree, scraggly desert plants and its lack of lightning bugs. Also, Matthew seems to think that having kids running pell-mell across a dark yard is dangerous. And I say, "Pish! So what did you do as a kid? Play chess all day?"

For another story about the games of childhood: Catch is a Contact Sport 

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Best PLace to...

Every Saturday I get the Explore Arizona section of my newspaper. Talks about great places to hike (no can do; my man won't hike, and hiking in nature with children is considered a special kind of misery), neat places to stay in state for a weekend (no can do; husband won't pay for accommodations within a seven-hour radius of home) and road trips within this region that are well worth the time invested (invested in practising patience with his offspring and his sights-relishing wife, Matthew might say).

The centennial of Arizona's statehood is approaching in February 2012, so there are also articles about its territorial history, the unusual people who shaped its future and other interesting tidbits which I, of course, find very engrossing. Mainly because, much to Matthew's chagrin, I am determined to see every location of historical significance within the state (and I don't mean just moseying down to Tombstone to watch a re-enactment of the shootout at the O.K. Corral), as well as all the oddball towns located along the Mother Road, Historic Route 66.

Lately, the Explore Arizona section has also been rattling off the "best ofs" in this state and its sister states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. I scanned through them and found myself completely disinterested in subjects along the line of : Best Place to Get a Massage on a Slab of Red Rock (Sedona, of course). But one little blurb did indeed catch my eye, and when I found it, I started to laugh it up. Ah, the memories!

The title for the piece was: Best Place to Throw Out Your Car's Suspension

What was that place? Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Why was I laughing? Because after just barely meeting my in-laws on my first trip to New Mexico, I requested that they drive me out to see the amazing ruins at Chaco Canyon. It was a wild ride on a very bad road, but I had no clue at the time that I was asking them to put their Jeep's suspension on the line for their soon-to-be daughter-in-law.

The story of my first and only adventure in Chaco Canyon is told here. The pictures, sadly, do not do it justice. If we risk our minivan and Matthew's sanity to view the ruins again this summer, I'll be sure to post more pictures. Enjoy.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

I Fought the Law; The Law Won

A few years ago, I had a run-in with the law. You'd never have thought it, would you? I have such a nice smile (it's because you can't see the fillings in my back teeth), it seems highly unlikely that I'd cause any sort of ruckus. Well, it wasn't my fault, you know. It was my son Berto, a preschooler at the time, who set me up when I wasn't looking.

On this morning years ago, I was vacuuming in my long john top and flannel bottoms, because in general I see no need to look presentable when I'm doing housework, though I draw the line at wearing any article of clothing with sweat in its description. I entered my bedroom while pushing the noisy clunking machine around and found my son giggling into the phone, his little sister laughing it up beside him.

"Berto, you hang that up right now!" I shouted over the vacuum. "You don't answer the phone without Mama's permission."

I took the phone and hung it up myself before replacing it. Stupid telemarketers.

"Don't touch it again," I warned my son. "we don't play with the phone."

I moved on to the kids' rooms, piling all their toys onto their beds, throwing stuffed animals in the air and stacking legos and blocks out of the way. I was vroom-vrooming along the hideously outdated blue carpet when I heard a loud knock on the door.

My heart stopped and then pumped adrenaline. A sudden rap on the main entrance to my home has always unnerved me; it's all the don't talk to strangers, don't open the door to strangers, don't buy magazines or raw meat from strangers stuff that I've been inculcated with since I was a child. I shut off the vacuum, corralled the children in the hall, and snuck out into my own living room to reconnaissance the situation and try to ascertain what kind of stranger found the gall to disturb our peace by knocking on the door.

I had almost reached said portal when the knocking was promoted to banging and an authoritative voice bellowed, "Open up! It's the police!"

Yeah, right! That sounded too much like what I hear on TV; therefore it must be an impostor who couldn't come up with anything more creative.

I sidled up to the door and flattened my eye against the peep hole.

"How do I know you're the police?" I cried. "I didn't call the police."

"Ma'am," said supposed officer, "I was told a juvenile or unattended child called 911 from this house. Now you can call my precinct to verify it, but if you don't open this door soon, I'm going to bust it down."


Another cliche cop show line? Definitely suspicious. However, my trembling knees assured me my brain understood it was no empty threat. I started to pace in front of my door. What to do, what to do? Call 911? That'd been done apparently. But how the heck was I supposed to locate the number of the local precinct in time? I had to stall for time.

I flicked the curtain back from our big front window, got a glimpse of the officer, but saw no police vehicle. I called out:

"Where's your cruiser? I don't see it."

The officer was speaking on his walkie-talkie thingy. He looked up at the window and said in an exasperated tone, "It's parked around the corner, Ma'am. I don't park in front of the house."

Well, that could be true, I supposed. There was only one thing to do. If I was going down, someone had to know. If he was an impostor, I could rattle off eye and hair color with approximate height before it was too late, so I ran for the portable phone, made twitchy reassuring faces at my bemused kids and dialed a number.

As soon as I heard a voice on the other line, I overrode it frantically with, "Hi....honey? There's a guy who says he's a policeman at the door. What do you want me to do?"

"Open it," said Matthew.

Huh.

Well, if that's the way it had to be...

I unbolted and opened the door. The officer looked up in surprise, said, "She let me in," into the walkie-talkie thingy and stepped inside. Instantly he surveyed the living area while asking brusquely, "Did you call the precinct?"

"No, my husband," I said lamely. "Gotta go," I whispered into the phone and hung up.

I picked up my little girl while Berto gazed with fascination at the man in uniform. The policeman began walking quickly toward my laundry room door while saying, "Someone called 911 from this house. Do you know who that was?" Shoving the door open, he examined inside, then moved off down the hall without glancing toward me.

"It must have been my son," I said, trailing the officer. "I was vacuuming, and he got a hold of the phone. I though it was a telemarketer, so I hung it up."

There was no response. Each of the bedrooms and bathrooms, including showers and closets, was investigated with precision as the officer strode through my home, his hand hovering near the hip.

"Uh, sorry about the mess," I mumbled. "I had just started my morning cleaning. And like I said, I was vacuuming, so I didn't know who my son was talking to. I really thought it was a telemarketer."

Awkwardly, I followed him back out to the living room. There the policeman appeared to visibly relax.

"I hope you'll answer the door next time a policeman knocks," he said. "I'm just doing my job."

"Yeah, of course. I'm really sorry about that. I just didn't realize my son had dialed 911, so it took me by surprise."

The policeman looked at Berto hovering by my side with wide eyes and a fascinated expression, and spoke gently but firmly, "Now you know not to play with the phone, right? You shouldn't touch the phone without your mommy's permission, and you don't want to call 911 unless it's an emergency. So you're not going to play with the phone again, are you?"

There was a beat of silence while my son stared back blankly at the man, and then Berto stretched out his arm with a big grin, pointed to a spot near his elbow and shared a shocking piece of information, "Look!" he exclaimed, innocently excited. "I have hair on my arm!"

The officer let out a loud laugh, and all the tension of showing up at an unknown house, meeting the resistance of a lady who obviously had issues and needing to be alert to possible lurking criminal behavior obviously dissipated as his body lost its tense posture.

"I'm sorry," I said, and then aside to my son, "Berto, be respectful."

"No, no. It's all right," said the officer. "I'm leaving now. Have a good day."

"You too."

He was still smiling as he exited my home. He wasn't leaving empty-handed. I had given him indelible evidence about the strange and inexplicable behavior of people. Oh, and a loopy story to tell his wife, all his buddies at work and a few acquaintances at that summer's barbecues. I'm probably famous and don't know it.

As for me I learned to always hold the phone up to my ear when I discover it in one of my children's hands. That's how I knew when my youngest girl had dialed 911.

"I'm sorry," I hastily told the operator. "My little girl dialed by mistake. Please don't send an officer..."

Friday, April 15, 2011

In the Balance

The last post represented here was hardly worth my effort, but it had been so dang long since I wrote something that I shoved it out to meet the world not properly dressed or turned out. Then I went back and edited it five times after I hit the publish button. There's a reason for that.

I have children, young children, and I have to spend time with them, because I gave birth to them. And, well, I love them tremendously. Their very existence trumps my need to write. Things had gotten off balance since I started this blog. I spent my baby's every nap time trying to hash out or revise a new piece of writing, frustration building evey time he awoke early. The fear of his waking early and disturbing my efforts so gripped me that I demanded silence from my Ella as she watched Scooby-Doo or PBS on TV. I barely found time to play a game of Memory with her or sit and do a puzzle.

I've turned things around, restored the balance. The two-plus hours TV for Ella was the first to go. Next I stopped trying to manic-control my son's naps just so I could have a long bout of uninterrupted writing. Instead of enforcing a no-talking zone in the hall while I wrote and percolated my thoughts, I sat on the living room rug to play Memory and Go Fish and Candy Land with my little girl. We cuddled in the recliner while I read to her. If Danny Sam awoke, I'd nurse him back down and cuddle with him. Ella has even fallen asleep in the afternoon. We all are more restful and a lot happier.

Of course, I still need to write. That is necessary for my mental balance. I have occasionally in my life reached the precipice in my writing cycle when I suddenly realize that I have no present urge to write, that I don't care if I write any time in the near future. It's a scary place to be, to feel a vital part of self has died quietly - no closure, no farewell. Thank heavens, it is always a false alarm, a temporary anemia, that is usually perpetrated at busy times in my life such as when I have recently given birth. And the urge to write slowly builds in that eerie creative quiet like a twister on a Midwestern plain, a funnel of thoughts and observations that overtakes me at last. It's scary and exhilirating, sometimes months in development, but then I know I must write again. And I do.

But writing is work. It's hard, no matter how much I love to do it. And I have a lot of work that requires my attention. As a mom you do learn to let go - let go of the house, let go of your ambition (temporarily), let yourself go (just kidding). But you can't let go of time spent with your kids. The opportunity never comes around again, so I'm easing back from the blog-wrangling; it's bruised my brain and sprained my perspective.

I have a vital occupation right now that requires all of my capabilities. I am a writer, but I am prouder to say that I am the mother of Berto, Analisa, Ella and Danny Sam.

Not the Lady

I'm pretty sure my three-year-old daughter's nickname for me is Naughty Pants. She usually shouts, "Naughty pants!" in an accusatory way when she's angry with someone, but this cannot be true in my case, for just today I said, "Gabriella, come here and comb your hair."

Ella sauntered down the hall, turned the corner and cooed, "Okay - Naughty Pants."

Later when I told her she could only have one more pumpkin cookie, and she replied, "Fine, Naughty Pants," with a matter-of-fact delivery, my son Berto said sternly, "You shouldn't call Mama naughty pants, Ella. That's not nice."

"Yeah," I said in a bumbling, mumbling way. "That's really no good. You've got to stop that."

I'm not cowed; I'm confused. What did I do to earn this misnomer? Is it a term of endearment? You know, like the way folks in the South sometimes call their children booger (apologies to my darlin' Mama for the use of this vulgur word)? Or like I sometimes call Matthew, my husband, Pumpkin Head even though his head does not even remotely resemble a pumpkin? Or is it, dare I say, a case of monkey see, monkey do? I fear the latter. You see, a while ago I jokingly started to say to Ella every time she was being a little bratty, "Oh, stop being such a naughty pants..."

And so it comes back to haunt me. Just another incident to reinforce the rule that if the kids pick up an irritating phrase or bad word, it is without doubt my fault. I can't recall a time they repeated one of Matthew's annoying expressions (trying to think if he has any...). Believe me, I'd be on it in a heartbeat with an Aha! followed by a gleeful grin and some diabolical hand-rubbing. That's usually what happens on the rare occasion when he breaks something; I pounce on the chance to say, "Okay, now listen - don't get mad the next time I break a dish, okay?" That's because I break dishes so often, one might suspect I think it's necessary to ward off evil spirits.

So when I tell Ella we're not going to the park until late in the afternoon, and she replies aggresively with, "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?" I hear the echo of my own stupid utterance. When Berto, just a toddler at the time, said, "That's crazy, Baby!" to another Mom who was trying to tell him something about her son, Matthew knew to blame me as he tried to explain to the woman that his son did not really understand what he was saying. The first time Berto, our oldest, said, "Dammit!" because one of his toys wasn't working, Matthew didn't ask, "Where'd you hear that?" The expression on his face as he looked my way said plainly that he knew. After all, I'm the one who says,  "What the hell?" when one of my children lets out an ear-piercing scream while playing, the one who shouts, "Stupid damn thing!" when a utensil is stuck in the kitchen drawer, and I'm banging it back and forth in illogical spite. It's all backwards. The dad is the one who's supposed to shoot off his mouth in front of the children while the mom pulls nervously at her pearls, cocks her head toward the innocents in the room and dutifully chides, "Now, Honey...the children."

The first time Matthew heard me use my favorite swear word, we had yet to even meet. I was in Idaho; he was in Texas, and we were having one of our late-night, nearly all night, long-distance conversations. He knew that I professed to be a lady. I had certainly told him of my mom's high standards, so I'm pretty sure he was convinced that I ne'er let a foul word or hint of slang pass my innocent lips. So on this night of disillusionment, I was rattling on about heaven knows what. When I paused to hear his response, I realized the line had gone dead. We had been disconnected before, and I was sick of it. After jangling the receiver and calling stridently into the silence, "Matthew? Matthew?" I let one fly into the empty void of the telephone line (yes, it was a landline...don't get distracted now). "Dammit!" I exclaimed with whole-hearted gusto and practised enunciation. A stone-cold silence, and I was just about to hang up the phone when I heard a man's voice query uncertainly, "Hillary? Uh, is that you..."

I bonked my head against the wall and said a bad word in my head.

But is it far, far too late for me even now? If only somehow I could swear off swear words and all coarse slang, no longer would I disappoint my mother, The Lady. Mom is possibly the last true Lady on the planet. Her good example drives the rest of us to drink. Drink sloppily. From a keg. I comfort myself she feels guilty about that.

Well, well - if I can't be a lady, I'd like to not be a naughty pants, if possible. So I'll just start saying to Ella every time she behaves properly, "Oh, Ella, stop being such a lady!" If the formula tests true, she'll be addressing me as "Lady" in no time. Sure that makes me sound like somebody's favorite cocker spaniel, but it's better than the alternative.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A Southern Girl Takes A Southwestern Turn

It happened this year. Yes, that recently. It seems very odd to me now that it took so long and that I thought it would never transpire. I fell in love with this:


And this:



Okay, and maybe this:


Maybe it was the beautiful turquoise jewelry or the Native American ruins or the saguaro cacti or the eventual mystical draw of the Grand Canyon. But it happened. This southern girl sank roots into the harsh clay soil of Arizona. Now, I fear, it will be difficult to uproot me. It follows therefore that I will be uprooted. But when?

Understand me, though, my heart still swells to the tune of Dixieland, and I still ache a bit for Tennessee where I grew up. But I married a New Mexico man, and truth is, I've always had some tendrils tenaciously clinging to Western soil, because my nearest relatives on both sides were all in the western United States.

So...Tennessee? The Elysian Fields of my youth, the setting of the stories I tell to my children. You can't go home again.

You make a new home, as I have done. Okay, sure, I thought once upon a time that home would be in Texas. That's where Matthew and I met, after all, in the vibrant city of San Antonio. My sister Annie's there, too, and my parents are settled there at least temporarily. I got attached to the hill country in the middle of that state, and I love the small German town of Fredricksburg where Matthew and I honeymooned. Still...

Well, the spell is broken. This year the ties were snapped. No longer does the smell of Mexican food make me reminisce or the sight of a swaying palm in a parking lot make me wistful. I don't ache for the Alamo. Heck, I don't even remember it. And I no longer pine for a stroll on the River Walk. In short, I'm good - good where I am.

In Arizona.

I have new lifestyle goals because of my adopted habitat. For instance, I now believe there could be nothing better than to live in a house with a saguaro in the front yard. I yearn to travel to every major Native American ruin in the region. In fact, I no longer feel the strong itch to travel overseas; there's so much to see in my own backyard, all these National Parks here. And it's possible that I may start rereading every Zane Grey and Tony Hillerman novel ever written while wearing a dusty cowboy hat and worn jeans tucked into boots, sitting out on the stoop while I feed my loyal mare Wind-in-her-mane sugar cubes.

Yeah, that's not really my horse...

Okay, no? Too much? Well, perhaps. But I already have the hat. Matthew bought it for me on our honeymoon:
But that is my hat....howdy..uh, cowgirl!

Lately I've accomplished part of my goal by visiting some major Native American ruins, Casa Grande and Tonto Basin's lower cliff dwelling. Being as I am a generous person, I'm going to share my photos with you. If you think history and ruins of ancient civilizations is interesting, you're going to love this! If not, you'll be bored to tears.


The Casa Grande is a ruin just south of Phoenix. The Hohokam who occupied it built extensive canals and irrigation ditches across the arid Salt River Valley, more than 250 miles, in fact, and dug by hand. They were "Master Farmers" in this extremely harsh environment, and scientists believe they came from Mexico to this area around 300 B.C. Except for structures like this, few clues remain about their culture. Amazingly, some of our modern-day canals follow the path and grade of those constructed by these prehistoric engineers who had only primitive instruments at their disposal.




Unfortunately because of the work of vandals who have carved their names and other graffiti into the masonry of this ancient structure, no one is allowed to climb inside. So, if you are like me, you plaster yourself to the fence and gaze up and wonder.




The Tonto Basin cliff dwellings of the Salado people were a thrill...that is, after Matthew and I herded our kids nervously up the paved, but veeerrry steep walking path, half afraid one of them might go tumbling down the cliff into the multiple prickly cacti and pretty colored stones waiting for the yielding flesh of human beings. Wish I had taken a picture of that trail, so you would actually believe me. Also wish I had taken a picture of the cliff dwellings from the park services parking lot. That would have been beautiful...oh, well! Too bad for you. You'll just have to come to Arizona or settle for these images:


A window into the past, with a Park Ranger keeping guard.
Down a darkened hallway (with ancient roof still intact)
The black from ancient fires burning...
We actually were permitted to wander around the lower cliff dwelling. Certain rooms we could not enter in the name of preservation, but we were able to gaze closely at the blackened walls (while avoiding touching them, of course) and the ancient tools such as the mano and metate that were used for grinding corn. I craned my neck to view the surviving timber of their roofs and the notch in the cliff where they rested their ladder once upon a time, the only entrance to the community back then and an easily defensible one.



You know, these pictures do it no justice. I cannot communicate the thrill of being near these places, of setting my feet on steps weathered by the passage of hundreds of years since their construction. Nor can I explain the mystery of how or why I fell in love with Arizona. But at last the great American Southwest is in my blood, and I hear the echo of ancient voices...

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Whoopee!


"Mom, if someone were to put a whoopee cushion on your seat in the car, would you lose your concentration and hit somebody?"

Berto had the aforementioned cushion in his hand and a smirk working on his face, trying to break its borders and become a full-fledged grin.

"No, that wouldn't cause me to get in an accident, son."

But now I knew what to expect when I got in the car to take the kids to school. I smiled as I turned away, but shortly afterwards I heard Miss Ana, my little girl, saying to Berto in a soft tone:

"I don't think we should do that. I don't think Mama's going to like it."

"It's okay, Ana," I said, glancing at the cushion that had already wiled away a great deal of before school free time. "I already told Berto he could."

"Now you've ruined it! Thanks alot, Ana," snarled Berto.

"Son, you really don't think I knew what you were up to when you said, 'Uh, Mama....uh, would you get in an accident if...uh...I put a whoopee cushion on your seat? Would you, Ma?' "

The kids and I laughed. Berto was flipping his frown and smile around every couple seconds, still feeling that Ana had given something valuable away.

I gave him every opportunity to still make a go of it. I unlocked the van from inside the house and said, "Guess you can go out and get in the car first, Berto." Then as I was buckling his little sister in and noticed there still was no whoopee cushion on my seat, I said, "Oh, what do I need to do over here?" and I wandered aimlessly around the van, looking up at the clear sky, down at the tires - anywhere save inside the vehicle, so Berto could feel he was taking full advantage of the situation and do what he needed to do. But he still waited until I was inside and seated, my bottom flattening out the bleacher mat I have there. I shrugged and prepared to turn the ignition when he came up with the silly thing. So I pulled up from my seat a few inches, grabbing the side handle over the window (the one you grip as a passenger if the car is taking a turn too fast or if you simply want to inform the driver without actually speaking the words that you think they are really terrible at controlling a vehicle. My husband grabs this regularly while I'm driving, tramping his bravado into dust in order to send a strong message about my vehicular operating skills.)

Anyway, Berto threw the whoopee cushion beneath my fanny, and I dropped down onto it to provide the morning's comedy relief when all that came out was a pitiful, "ptthmp". That in itself was hilarious, and we had a good laugh as I pulled out the thing to return it to my son, inspecting it for damage. I couldn't see any reason why it gave such a sorry performance, and it wasn't until Berto tried to blow it up again on the way to school that he exclaimed, "Mom, you broke it!"

"Oh, does it have a hole in it now? I wondered why it made such a pitiful noise. Man, what must I weigh to break a whoopee cushion?"

"800 pounds," supplied Berto resentfully. "And it was Papa's."

There was a grinding and clinking in my head as I remembered something I'd purposefully forgot.

"No, it was mine, Berto."

"Huh?"

"It was mine. Grandpa and Grandma gave it to me. They always give me something kooky as a stocking stuffer each year."

This was sadly true. This year at Christmas I got Groucho Marx glasses accompanied by big fake plastic nose with nostril hair (see above photo). It had a little tag that said Hillary on it, or I would have felt there surely was some mistake. As I held it up with finger and thumb to examine it, I asked Matthew, my husband, why his parents always insist on giving me these unladylike trinkets for Christmas.

"I don't know," he replied with a hearty laugh, playing contentedly with the Matchbox car from his own stocking.

He gets the sweet little nostalgic toys like a slinky or little yellow Lamgborghini. I get the whoopee cushion, the same that I promptly threw into my son's closet in order to cut all ties of ownership, and Groucho Marx hairy nostrils.

It's giving me a complex really. I ask myself, just what are my parents-in-law trying to tell me? That they can't take me seriously? Or is it meant as a compliment to imply they think I'm really comic? Wait, is that a compliment? The most vital question is this, though, do their other sons' wives get similar gifts? Or am I...dare I say - special?

As I thought bitterly about these things, Berto was still blowing smoke about the whoopee cushion.

"Son, they're easy to replace," I said finally with exasperation.

"Can you go by the store and get one today?" he whined.

Of course I wasn't going to go buy myself a whoopee cushion. Why would I? I'll just wait for my in-laws to send me a new one this Christmas.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Reel Me In

It's the same old sorcery. You're off to bed, or you're tucked away in the corner 'neath the lamp reading a fascinating newspaper article about genetically engineered crops when you hear something that makes your ears twitch. The invisible wire reels you inexorably across the space between you and the witch and plop! you land in front of the television. You're watching a show you despise but you'll be with it til the bitter end - sleepiness gone, newspaper dripping with orange juice from the fruit you're dissecting, because it's impossible to be in front of the eerie blue lights of the TV without some sort of food in your hand.

Matlock. Murder She Wrote. Bonanza. These are a few of the names of the demon shows that are ostensibly boring, but suck you in if you let down your guard for an instant to take in the storyline. You don't want to watch. You can't stand to watch. You hate the plot. You hate the characters. You hate waiting for the old fogey to figure things out. You feel understandable anger against whoever created the premise of the stupid show.

But, well, there you are.

A few nights ago, I was bewitched by American Idol. I swore I'd never watch that show again - oh, about ten or so seasons ago. Okay, so it's not Matlock. There's no plot. There are plenty of characters, all of them singing. But there's no old fogey ruminating, unless one counts Steven Tyler with his nappy hair and thin pursed lip line. Supposedly, American Idol is reality TV, and reality TV is the new sorcery programming of the 21st century. You can't just casually allow it to pop up on the screen or you're doomed, no matter how superior you claim to be to all this crazy voyeurism. Watch even two minutes of any show with "Dance" or "Race" or "Loser" in the title, and you'll be wiling away an hour with a bag of chips and a group of people who are swinging their hips, trampling through horse manure to get a clue or getting brow beaten by a woman I like to call She-Man all in the name of popular entertainment.

And you'll be blotting away at the orange juice stains spreading across your newspaper during commercials, trying to make out the print about real life that really matters - until the next kid starts singing.