I'm taking this opportunity to say that these pies, the ones in this story that caused me such grief, turned out to be some of the best Thanksgiving pies I ever made.
The past two days I've been in a hot place with pie pastry...and I don't mean the kitchen.
Yesterday it was bad, very bad. Daniel, my baby, was crying from the playpen and I was wrestling with the devil dough on the counter, trying for the love of heaven to get it to roll out smoothly. Finally, as Daniel continued to fuss ever more loudly, and the cold pastry cracked and split beneath my frustrated hands, I sang out maniacally for my husband to, "COME HOME! Just...COME...home! Get yourself HOME...RIGHT NOOOOW!"
The kids were outside, and they came to the door, "Where's Papa? Is he home?" Then they saw my wild eyes, the pastry stuck to the rolling pin, and the flour monsoon in the kitchen and retreated, giggling and keeping a good distance.
By the time Matthew got home, it was all over. The pies, for better or for worse, were in the oven. And they weren't even the Thanksgiving pies. They were my test dummies for the real pies.
I was trying this new pastry recipe that's called Foolproof Pie Pastry. I wanted to compare it with my usual nightmare butter dough - that demon dough that tastes like heaven but gives you hell to roll it out. Well, this foolproof recipe called for part butter/part shortening and, of all things, vodka! You use the vodka in place of part of the water - makes the dough moist so you can smooth it out into a perfect geometric circle, but then the alcohol evaporates in the oven and voila! Flaky yet tender pie dough.
Well, that recipe ain't foolproof, and I'm the fool that proved it.
Because as I was rolling it out, I was still muttering at it and insulting it and threatening all kinds of demises for it that didn't involve a sweet filling and a nice warm visit to the oven. Yes, yes...it was technically easier than the butter pastry, but the dang dough still flaked and chipped, cracked and ripped. Stupid thing!
In light of the foolproof recipe defeat, I began looking for excuses: It's this dang desert climate - too dry! I said. I don't have a food processor like all my friends! I whined. My kitchen's too small! I cried.
But then I thought I knew the problem: I hadn't cut the butter small enough with the pastry cutter. I'd rectify it, and the dough for my pies would be perfect. Just perfect, I vowed.
Today was another day. I combined the ingredients, cut the butter just so, and tried to flatten them gently into the perfect "four-inch diameter" discs the recipe calls for before I placed them in the fridge to cool. An hour or so later I drew them out, and I knew with my first glance the battle would be the same as the day before. And if I wasn't careful, this time the pastry would win.
The mumblings began anew as I blanketed the dough with parchment paper, caressed the dough with floured fingers, and did my best to placate the dough with the careful push-push of the rolling pin. But, no - NO! The stupid thing couldn't be reasoned with, and I had to take it and literally plop it off the parchment into its pie pan, shoving tattered bits and pieces into the holes that mocked me. I didn't want to overwork it. Heaven help me, I know the bitter revenge of overworked dough.
Thank God Matthew was home today. Still the kids tried to bug me during the process, and many times I cried out in desperation, "Don't come in here! Don't talk to me! Can't you see I'm battling with pie dough?"
Berto commiserated.
"Wow, Mama. That does look hard!" he said, as I huffed and puffed over the monster I had created. "It is hard!" I wailed. "It's the hardest thing in the world! And it's stressful, so stressful..."
"Don't encourage her!" Matthew said sharply, bouncing Daniel in his arms. "Nobody encourage Mama in her tirade!"
After a litany of sighs and grunts, I did finally get the fresh pies in the oven, laying the top crust on in chunks. But, hey, the dough wasn't overworked (I think), and I covered its many imperfections with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar. I also remembered to put all the ingredients in the filling. Too bad I baked them at the wrong temperature, though. Nothing like flaky crust and undercooked fruit in a Thanksgiving pie!
Why does she bother? you ask. Don't they have prepared pie crust in the grocery store? you say. Okay, so they do, but I want to be the Pie Lady, the Pastry Queen. I want my sons to propose to their girlfriends someday on bent knee, and say, "Before I give you the ring, there's something you should know: my mom makes the best pie. Just the best. Yours can never compare. Not ever. And mom says you can't have the recipe. But I love you anyway, and we'll go to my parents' for Thanksgiving."
Alright, so that's not right of me. Maybe that's why every time I go to make a pie, I find myself eating the humble variety. But I still want a solid pastry recipe and technique to pass down to my daughters. My mom made the best pies, you see, and I want to, too. This Thanksgiving, I'm just hoping they're decent.
More food adventures in Holiday Tales of Horror - Stuffed Couches and Stolen Chocolates
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
All the world's a backyard...and it's full of weeds and mud
I was digging my nails into the soil with brutal determination, clawing at the thatched Bermuda grass to get at the weed stubs while my kids made a splash mud pad beneath the slide with the hose. I only turned to growl at them on every third or fourth weed I pulled, angry that they had yet again turned my yard work into messy, muddy happy hour.
My kids weren't really to blame for my bad mood, to be fair. They had only exacerbated it with their shenanigans. No, my bad mood was directed at the world at large. I was feeling bad about my fellow human beings, which people have the right to do with temporary abandon now and then. Just the day before, you see, I had read the news.
Then right after, I had read celebrity news. That's a little like wandering the sewers for pleasure, grinning like an idiot, sipping on a martini and smoking a fat cheap cigar. In the end, it all just reeks, you're definitely going to feel a little sick afterwards, and you'll never quite feel like you've cleaned off the filth.
So you can see how the pulling of the weeds became an analogy for my worldview. My yard, you see, is rife with weeds. They're choking out the grass and have long since gone to seed. I only managed this Spring to eradicate them from my plant borders. And I comforted myself as I campaigned against them in the wider yard that I was at least aerating my yard with my dogged labor.
Wish I could aerate the world sometimes.
As for my kids' labor of love, the mud bath, it was mostly my eldest son's doing. I should have known better than to take him up on his offer to water the ground, so I could pull the weeds more easily. The ground didn't get watered all that much. The concrete patio did, the slide did, and I did, but the place where I was actually laboring on two-foot tall weeds - not so much. Kids and a hose...well, that's bound to mean trouble. It means there will be running and screaming and terrorizing of siblings, followed by loads of mud, then the removal of caked shoes and browned socks so that bare feet can squelch in freshly dug holes in the yard. Everyone will end up soaked and grimy, and the baby will get in the midst of it all, mud plastered up to the knees on his overalls, his blue eyes wide at the promising prospect of this newly discovered joy.
I was in a foul temper, shouting at the kids to stop their mud slinging, when Matthew came home. I didn't rise from my weed-pulling to give him the kiss he deserved, so he retreated back inside to change out of his work clothes, only calling through the bathroom window, "So what's for supper?"
Supper-schmupper. I hate supper.
I paused, draping a muddy hand over my knee, and called out boldly, "Okay, I'm not going to hide it anymore - I hate making supper. After all that happens during the day..."
I trailed off, but Matthew already had his response ready.
"So when did you ever try to hide it?" he asked with a laugh.
"I've tried before," I answered grumpily. "I've made some good meals..."
I couldn't remember any examples off-hand, but I knew it was true. There had been a few solid meals here and there that didn't involve plopping all manner of stuff out of a can, forking salad out of a bag or shaking cheese and noodles from a box. But, really, people need to understand a fundamental truth for some of us humans - making a meal at the end of the day, it's like Purgatory after a hard life. A messy life where little leprechauns, cute as hell, follow you around and dump just picked-up toys out of the cupboard, unroll miles of paper towels in order to dance on them, dump their lunch on the floor with a what-you-gonna-do-about-it nonchalance, and spill gallons of milk and juice every day.
"I'll start supper," said Matthew, my hero. "I don't mind."
And, after all, why should he? I was pulling weeds. I haul out trash, too, and handle recycling - both typical "man duties". Hey, I prefer doing them myself; I'm a liberated woman (don't know exactly from what...), and I'm only trying to liberate Matthew as well, so that we can live in peace and harmony like a retro Coca-Cola commercial.
Besides, I still had more weeds to wrest from the yard and some little leprechauns to haul out of the mud and bathe. In my way, I was about to make the world a slightly better place. I just hoped there would be a good meal waiting for me when I was done.
My kids weren't really to blame for my bad mood, to be fair. They had only exacerbated it with their shenanigans. No, my bad mood was directed at the world at large. I was feeling bad about my fellow human beings, which people have the right to do with temporary abandon now and then. Just the day before, you see, I had read the news.
Then right after, I had read celebrity news. That's a little like wandering the sewers for pleasure, grinning like an idiot, sipping on a martini and smoking a fat cheap cigar. In the end, it all just reeks, you're definitely going to feel a little sick afterwards, and you'll never quite feel like you've cleaned off the filth.
So you can see how the pulling of the weeds became an analogy for my worldview. My yard, you see, is rife with weeds. They're choking out the grass and have long since gone to seed. I only managed this Spring to eradicate them from my plant borders. And I comforted myself as I campaigned against them in the wider yard that I was at least aerating my yard with my dogged labor.
Wish I could aerate the world sometimes.
As for my kids' labor of love, the mud bath, it was mostly my eldest son's doing. I should have known better than to take him up on his offer to water the ground, so I could pull the weeds more easily. The ground didn't get watered all that much. The concrete patio did, the slide did, and I did, but the place where I was actually laboring on two-foot tall weeds - not so much. Kids and a hose...well, that's bound to mean trouble. It means there will be running and screaming and terrorizing of siblings, followed by loads of mud, then the removal of caked shoes and browned socks so that bare feet can squelch in freshly dug holes in the yard. Everyone will end up soaked and grimy, and the baby will get in the midst of it all, mud plastered up to the knees on his overalls, his blue eyes wide at the promising prospect of this newly discovered joy.
I was in a foul temper, shouting at the kids to stop their mud slinging, when Matthew came home. I didn't rise from my weed-pulling to give him the kiss he deserved, so he retreated back inside to change out of his work clothes, only calling through the bathroom window, "So what's for supper?"
Supper-schmupper. I hate supper.
I paused, draping a muddy hand over my knee, and called out boldly, "Okay, I'm not going to hide it anymore - I hate making supper. After all that happens during the day..."
I trailed off, but Matthew already had his response ready.
"So when did you ever try to hide it?" he asked with a laugh.
"I've tried before," I answered grumpily. "I've made some good meals..."
I couldn't remember any examples off-hand, but I knew it was true. There had been a few solid meals here and there that didn't involve plopping all manner of stuff out of a can, forking salad out of a bag or shaking cheese and noodles from a box. But, really, people need to understand a fundamental truth for some of us humans - making a meal at the end of the day, it's like Purgatory after a hard life. A messy life where little leprechauns, cute as hell, follow you around and dump just picked-up toys out of the cupboard, unroll miles of paper towels in order to dance on them, dump their lunch on the floor with a what-you-gonna-do-about-it nonchalance, and spill gallons of milk and juice every day.
"I'll start supper," said Matthew, my hero. "I don't mind."
And, after all, why should he? I was pulling weeds. I haul out trash, too, and handle recycling - both typical "man duties". Hey, I prefer doing them myself; I'm a liberated woman (don't know exactly from what...), and I'm only trying to liberate Matthew as well, so that we can live in peace and harmony like a retro Coca-Cola commercial.
Besides, I still had more weeds to wrest from the yard and some little leprechauns to haul out of the mud and bathe. In my way, I was about to make the world a slightly better place. I just hoped there would be a good meal waiting for me when I was done.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Red Rocks of Sedona...Red of Road Trip Hell
This post explains my insane and constant yearning to explore Native American ruins, my ambiguous feelings about Sedona, and my fear of small town roundabouts.
These are the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. Pretty, aren't they?
But we had no intention of viewing them on Labor Day. Nor did we intend to go 15 mph down the curvy US 89 A, passing the camera back and forth in an attempt to catch all their glory through the bug-bespattered glass of our car windows. It happened because of bad choices and worse luck.
On a dark and stormy night...no, just kidding! It was a warm and cloudy desert morning, and we were leaving Albuquerque early (but not early enough as it so happens), blazing our way west on the I-40 and thumbing our city noses at the historic Route 66 near Gallup, and all its superior scenery.
I had high hopes for the trip home, because the destination was only home, and Matthew had promised we could stop off at the Homolovi Ruins just east of Winslow, Arizona. Nothing makes my heart pitter-patter like a good Native American puebloan ruin unless there just happens to be an archaeological dig happening at the time we visit.
The kids had high hopes that we would afterwards stop at a park in Flagstaff and run around in the clear mountain air like city folk do-gawking at every flower and hummingbird and kissing trees and small animals as we pass.
Our hopes were too high. This I now know. If we had anticipated nothing more than stinky gas station restrooms, plain sandwiches thrown at us in the car for lunch and stale chips scraped off the van floor and assigned likenesses to various presidential profiles, we would have had a fair day. I shake my head sadly at our impossibly high hopes.
Let me set the scene. There was a teething baby in the car - a sweet-natured baby but a teething one nonetheless. There was a young boy with an often and urgent need to go potty, and a little girl whose best dream was to play in a park on the way home. And there was a preschooler with candy from a birthday party.
I was at times smooshed between my baby and my son in the rear seat, and at other times risking my life and an embarrassing traffic ticket by stumbling over various obstacles and abandoning ladylike posture to climb into the front seat beside my husband. And when I was in that front seat, I turned into the road trip Nazi, shushing every little request for food or water or Scooby-Doo videos in an attempt to keep the baby asleep as long as possible. Meanwhile, Saint Matthew was driving the car.
Fate gave us an early handout at The Petrified Forest National Park before it spent the rest of the time laughing faintly but persistently in our ears.You see, we had to take that turnoff because a. the baby woke up so b. I agreed to finally allow the car to stop moving for a potty break.
Matthew filled up, and I took the kids to the restroom. Afterward, I snuck into the visitor's center with the kids when Matthew wasn't looking. At the Information Desk stood a thin dark-skinned man in a spiffy forest ranger uniform, a long black braid down his back.
"Where do we see some petrified wood?" I whispered, glancing over my shoulder.
The ranger examined me a moment and then decided to answer my idiotic question. His voice had an unusual lilting quality to it, as if he had lately been speaking an ancient Native American dialect.
"Well, we have some out there for viewing, but here's a map of the park," he said, pointing to the large picture on the wall five inches from my face. "There are several hiking trails."
"Oh, we couldn't possibly get out of the car," I said with a shifty glance around me.
"Are you headed to Flagstaff?" He asked. I nodded. "Then you just take the 180 instead. It's only 45 minutes longer."
"And can you see the Painted Desert from there?" I asked innocently.
Again I got that strange unfathomable look. "Yes," he answered slowly, "and the largest pieces of petrified wood are here," he added, pointing to a spot on the map near some public restrooms.
"That's five feet from where we are!" I said excitedly.
"No, we're here," he answered, moving his finger a good several inches. "That's on the other side of the park."
Oh, my husband won't drive that far off the freeway," I told him. "It's a chronic road trip problem."
I studied the map wistfully, and then I saw a marker that made my heart skip - Puerco Pueblo!
"Is this a Native American ruin?" I asked. "I love ruins!"
"Yes," he answered, glancing anxiously toward other tourists poised with equally stupid questions. Then he pulled out a pamphlet from beneath the Information Desk. "There's a map there," he said, pointing to the back of it and then deserting me.
I hustled the kids out into the bright sunshine and beat it out to where large logs of petrified wood lay in a courtyard, glistening in the sun with their jewel-toned ribbons of color. The kids started pounding them. Then I saw Matthew approaching.
"I forgot the camera," I told him. "You want me to go get it?"
"No, it's time to go."
"Ahwww," said me and the kids.
"Honey, there's a Native American ruin here!" I said as we walked. "Let's go see it."
"Is that your stop?" he asked bluntly.
We piled into the car, and Matthew backed out of the parking space.
"Why can't we see both?" I tried desperately. "Two Native American ruins! And the Painted Desert!"
"No," said Matthew. "It's this or Homolovi, but not both. So which is it? Better be quick."
It was too much pressure. I had contemplated Homolovi since the evening before. The site was a complete unknown to me; I couldn't remember reading anything about it. The mystery of it drew me like a magnet. Yet, here we were in the Petrified Forest near the Painted Desert-our first time ever in all the trips made to Albuquerque that we had actually stopped on this spot to use the National Parks Services bathrooms. What should I do?
It didn't matter; it was too late. Matthew had turned left away from the entrance to the park.
"Is that where you pay?" I asked, looking to the right where cars were lined up.
"Yep," Matthew answered. We were pulling out onto I-40.
I felt instant remorse that I didn't take the opportunity to see petrified wood in a colorful desert and a ruin to boot. But I still had Homolovi. It might be great, or it might be...well, a handful of stones scattered around. I spent the next hour imagining what I might find there...until we finally saw the sign.
"It's closed."
I looked up.What looked like a giant rectangle of red tape cut diagonally across the brown park services sign that read Homolovi Ruins, and it said in capital letters: CLOSED.
Fate smacked me in the face and laughed hysterically in my ear. Why do you think the baby woke up and everyone needed to use the restroom at the Petrified Forest? it mocked. You had your chance, silly girl.
I had no response to that, so I threw a tantrum.
"No, nooo! Why...why?" I moaned, pulling my hair with intermittent pauses to shake my fist in the air. Then I threw the Petrified Forest pamphlet on the ground and turned on Matthew.
"Why did you make me choose?" I wailed. "If you had just said it was okay to see them both, then it wouldn't have mattered!"
"I gave you a choice, and you made your decision," he replied.
"I know I made my decision, but I had it in my head we were going to see Homolovi. And now it's closed, and we won't see anything at all. And it's so hard to get you to stop; you never want to go anywhere!"
"I did agree to stop," said Matthew, finally irritated. "I told you we could go to Homolovi, and you had your choice between that and The Petrified Forest."
I railed some more, but it doesn't matter. It didn't help repair my dashed hopes that lay all over I-40.
The baby fell asleep. I climbed into the front seat, my bottom and feet in the air for a few minutes before I could right myself. Then I pulled out the map again to look for something, anything left to me, and while I looked at Homolovi marked by the highway, I had a flashback to another trip home from Albuquerque. I had pleaded, half-jokingly, for Matthew to stop at this ruin just off the highway, and when we had approached it, he had said in mock sadness, "Ahh, it's closed. Look at that."
"It's been closed for a while," I said, dazed. "I just forgot. We should have seen Petrified Forest-we were already there."
The only thing left was Wupatki Ruins just north of Flagstaff. But we would have to drive 40+ miles up to it and backtrack again. Even I couldn't ask Matthew to do that. Besides, even though I had seen pictures of those beautiful ruins, you have to hike to get the best view of them, and you can't even enter some of them unless you pay for a guided tour.
While I was contemplating this, the sign for the Meteor Crater popped up.
"You want to go there?" asked Matthew. "If you want to go, I'll take you. Really this time."
Yes, because there was another time when we had pulled off on that gravel road to find some restrooms and eat lunch, and since we were already there, Matthew had agreed to see how far it was to the Meteor Crater. After driving fifty feet, however, he had turned the car around. "It's too far. We better get back on the road," he'd said.
But it was poor consolation. I watched the exit get closer and closer. Matthew would have to change lanes. I couldn't decide; it wasn't what I had wanted...
"Well?" said Matthew. "Tell me now. It's right there."
"Uhhhh...."I responded.
And then a semi sped up between us and the necessary lane change, and we passed the exit.
"I couldn't decide," I said mournfully, looking back.
"Are we at the meteor?" Berto, our son, piped in at this point.
"No!" I snapped. "If we were at the meteor, there'd be a big hole in the ground, and I'd say, 'Look, kids, there's a big hole in the ground.' Do you see a big hole in the ground?"
Berto looked around just to be safe, and Matthew gave me a reproving look.
I was obviously on the doorstep of road trip hell.
And Ella was asleep. This upset me more, because she had asked for lunch before the Closed Homolovi Ruins exit, and I had told her to wait-we'd be eating when we stopped. Now she was asleep with only Tostitos and candy in her belly. I threw everyone else their sandwich.
"Here," I said. "We're not stopping."
And we weren't, because the friends we were supposed to meet at a park in Flagstaff never called us back. No running barefoot through the grass, doing cartwheels in the sun and kissing squirrels and butterflies as they flitted past.
"Look, you want to stop at Montezuma's Well?" said my generous husband. "That's still on the way."
"We'd have to go down through Sedona," I said, not sure if we should push our luck.
"I'm pretty sure there's an exit off the 17," said Matthew.
"But you have to go back north," I replied. "It's easier just to wind down through Sedona and take the exit off the 89."
Never mind that I had no clue what exit that was and whether it was near Cottonwood or Clarkdale. The map in my hands didn't list Native American sights, stupid thing.
"I've got to stop somewhere for gas," said Matthew. "Am I stopping in Flagstaff?"
We were almost there, and the baby was still asleep. I hesitated. For no reason did I want to wake my sweet baby who spent his alert moments crying and reaching out his arms pitifully to me from his car seat. Still, should we really go down through Sedona? Dare we tempt the road trip gods again? I only vaguely remembered the trip we'd taken to see Montezuma's Castle and Tuzigoot for my birthday a few years before. The Well was somewhere around there. It was the one thing we'd missed that day.
"Listen, I promise I'll take you to The Petrified Forest next trip to Albuquerque."
"Really?" I said, my voice lifting in renewed hope. "Thank you."
"Okay, so is that good then? Or do you still want to see Montezuma's Well?"
"I still want to see the Well," I blurted. "Daniel's asleep, and it's easier than taking a separate trip, isn't it? Then we could stop in Sedona for gas instead."
I could almost see Matthew steeling himself, and I felt a twinge of anxiety; I had made the call that would make or break the trip.
Five minutes later we navigated a major intersection with 89 A that had no stop lights, only two stop signs but plenty of impatient cars. The scenery once we hit that road was beautiful, all lush trees and some other greenery that resembled what we city folk term "weeds", but pretty, very pretty in a country setting. We soon came on the famous Red Rocks of Sedona. We had plenty of time to view them, too, because the speed limit quickly dropped to 30 mpr. Then the lines disappeared in the middle of the road, and we traveled downhill smack up against those red rocks that created sharp turns. The speed limit dropped to 15 mpr, and holiday traffic became heavy.
At first I uneasily commented on the lovely scenery, unnerved by Matthew's marked silence and the knowledge of my own bad decision. But as we began getting views of gorgeous Oak Creek and all the luxury cabins and resorts nestled on its banks, my muttered expressions of false enthusiasm were interrupted by the van.
"Ku-thunk..ku-thunk," it said.
Matthew gritted his teeth.
"What's going on?" I asked nervously as we navigated the cars lined up on either side of the road.
"It doesn't like down-shifting right now," said Matthew, braking as someone pulled off (ku-thunk, said the van). "It's been doing that for a while."
Matthew braked down the steep grade often and every time the van protested - "ku-thunk!". We were moving with all the grace and speed of a slug. Meanwhile, wealthy people waved merrily at us from the spacious decks of their luxury cabins overlooking Oak Creek.
"My boss has a time share here," commented Matthew.
"I think I see him," I replied.
"Can we stop and play?" asked Ana.
"We'll see, we'll see," I responded with misgivings in my heart.
"Papa, I need to go potty," said Berto.
There was nary a gas station in sight. We traveled a few more miles, sure we would spot one. We couldn't just park along the road; you had to have an official Red Rock pass to do that. Finally, we stopped at a coffee shop. There seemed to be plenty of those around as if espresso were the bizarre mutant offspring of Oak Creek and its luxury accommodations, and the people of Sedona were doing their darndest to find all those little coffee blends good homes.
The van still needed gas, and I was waiting for my own turn to use the little girl's room. Even when we started off again and approached Main Street Sedona, we didn't see one. That major thoroughfare supported only two kinds of businesses: the coffee shop and the art house.
"How can they support this many coffee shops?" I wondered aloud.
"It's all these roundabouts," Matthew growled as we navigated another one. "They think they can trap you."
He was right. Stop lights are apparently passe in Sedona. Every fifty feet there was another roundabout to slow us down, make us dizzy and allow pedestrians to jog past us gleefully, sloshing their premium coffees and waving their latest abstract paintings at confused drivers. Matthew finally found a gas station; he just had to ride a roundabout the whole way 'round before he could get to it. Then he had to backup to the pump.
"Everybody out," he ordered. "And you," he pointed at me. "Use the restroom."
I'm not usually one to disobey orders, but I wanted to get one clear shot of the famous Red Rocks. While I was snapping the camera with Daniel in my arms, Matthew shoved the kids back into the van and parked in front of the gas station. I quickly turned to enter when a sign posted on the door halted my progress.
I looked at Matthew and pointed: Restroom Out of Order.
Road Trip Gone to Hell.
I hopped back in the car and said to Matthew, "Just get back on the 17. Forget the Well."
"Dang right," he responded, or something in that line, anyway.
Ana sat up. "Aren't we stopping at a park?" she asked for the twentieth time that hour.
"No."
"Well, can we go to one when we get home?" she whinnied like a little heartbroken mare.
"No," said Matthew sharply. "We just need to get home and relax."
"We can go to a crummy city park any old day, Ana. I wanted to see a Native American ruin," I whined.
"You mean we're not going to a park at all?" Her voice had reached the crescendo before the tears. She began to weep bitterly.
"Seriously?" demanded Matthew, jerking around in his seat. "You're going to cry about this?"
"Honey, they thought we were going to a park before we even left Albuquerque," I reminded him. "I'd be crying too."
To make everyone feel better, I proceeded to narrate everything that had gone wrong on the trip thus far. After saying "stinks" and "Native American ruin" and "park" twenty times apiece, I summed up with, "And it's just been a stinky, stinky trip!"
"Finished?" said Matthew.
I was. And soon we were on the 17 toward home going 35 mph, because, of course, every city family was heading home at exactly the same time on Labor Day like some mindless mechanical cattle. I wanted to say, "Stupid city people!", but I could not. To thy own kind be true, they say.
Not long afterwards we passed the brown sign for Montezuma's Well, but none of us had the heart to try and salvage the trip.
These are the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. Pretty, aren't they?
On a dark and stormy night...no, just kidding! It was a warm and cloudy desert morning, and we were leaving Albuquerque early (but not early enough as it so happens), blazing our way west on the I-40 and thumbing our city noses at the historic Route 66 near Gallup, and all its superior scenery.
I had high hopes for the trip home, because the destination was only home, and Matthew had promised we could stop off at the Homolovi Ruins just east of Winslow, Arizona. Nothing makes my heart pitter-patter like a good Native American puebloan ruin unless there just happens to be an archaeological dig happening at the time we visit.
The kids had high hopes that we would afterwards stop at a park in Flagstaff and run around in the clear mountain air like city folk do-gawking at every flower and hummingbird and kissing trees and small animals as we pass.
Our hopes were too high. This I now know. If we had anticipated nothing more than stinky gas station restrooms, plain sandwiches thrown at us in the car for lunch and stale chips scraped off the van floor and assigned likenesses to various presidential profiles, we would have had a fair day. I shake my head sadly at our impossibly high hopes.
Let me set the scene. There was a teething baby in the car - a sweet-natured baby but a teething one nonetheless. There was a young boy with an often and urgent need to go potty, and a little girl whose best dream was to play in a park on the way home. And there was a preschooler with candy from a birthday party.
I was at times smooshed between my baby and my son in the rear seat, and at other times risking my life and an embarrassing traffic ticket by stumbling over various obstacles and abandoning ladylike posture to climb into the front seat beside my husband. And when I was in that front seat, I turned into the road trip Nazi, shushing every little request for food or water or Scooby-Doo videos in an attempt to keep the baby asleep as long as possible. Meanwhile, Saint Matthew was driving the car.
Fate gave us an early handout at The Petrified Forest National Park before it spent the rest of the time laughing faintly but persistently in our ears.You see, we had to take that turnoff because a. the baby woke up so b. I agreed to finally allow the car to stop moving for a potty break.
Matthew filled up, and I took the kids to the restroom. Afterward, I snuck into the visitor's center with the kids when Matthew wasn't looking. At the Information Desk stood a thin dark-skinned man in a spiffy forest ranger uniform, a long black braid down his back.
"Where do we see some petrified wood?" I whispered, glancing over my shoulder.
The ranger examined me a moment and then decided to answer my idiotic question. His voice had an unusual lilting quality to it, as if he had lately been speaking an ancient Native American dialect.
"Well, we have some out there for viewing, but here's a map of the park," he said, pointing to the large picture on the wall five inches from my face. "There are several hiking trails."
"Oh, we couldn't possibly get out of the car," I said with a shifty glance around me.
"Are you headed to Flagstaff?" He asked. I nodded. "Then you just take the 180 instead. It's only 45 minutes longer."
"And can you see the Painted Desert from there?" I asked innocently.
Again I got that strange unfathomable look. "Yes," he answered slowly, "and the largest pieces of petrified wood are here," he added, pointing to a spot on the map near some public restrooms.
"That's five feet from where we are!" I said excitedly.
"No, we're here," he answered, moving his finger a good several inches. "That's on the other side of the park."
Oh, my husband won't drive that far off the freeway," I told him. "It's a chronic road trip problem."
I studied the map wistfully, and then I saw a marker that made my heart skip - Puerco Pueblo!
"Is this a Native American ruin?" I asked. "I love ruins!"
"Yes," he answered, glancing anxiously toward other tourists poised with equally stupid questions. Then he pulled out a pamphlet from beneath the Information Desk. "There's a map there," he said, pointing to the back of it and then deserting me.
I hustled the kids out into the bright sunshine and beat it out to where large logs of petrified wood lay in a courtyard, glistening in the sun with their jewel-toned ribbons of color. The kids started pounding them. Then I saw Matthew approaching.
"I forgot the camera," I told him. "You want me to go get it?"
"No, it's time to go."
"Ahwww," said me and the kids.
"Honey, there's a Native American ruin here!" I said as we walked. "Let's go see it."
"Is that your stop?" he asked bluntly.
We piled into the car, and Matthew backed out of the parking space.
"Why can't we see both?" I tried desperately. "Two Native American ruins! And the Painted Desert!"
"No," said Matthew. "It's this or Homolovi, but not both. So which is it? Better be quick."
It was too much pressure. I had contemplated Homolovi since the evening before. The site was a complete unknown to me; I couldn't remember reading anything about it. The mystery of it drew me like a magnet. Yet, here we were in the Petrified Forest near the Painted Desert-our first time ever in all the trips made to Albuquerque that we had actually stopped on this spot to use the National Parks Services bathrooms. What should I do?
It didn't matter; it was too late. Matthew had turned left away from the entrance to the park.
"Is that where you pay?" I asked, looking to the right where cars were lined up.
"Yep," Matthew answered. We were pulling out onto I-40.
I felt instant remorse that I didn't take the opportunity to see petrified wood in a colorful desert and a ruin to boot. But I still had Homolovi. It might be great, or it might be...well, a handful of stones scattered around. I spent the next hour imagining what I might find there...until we finally saw the sign.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It's closed."
I looked up.What looked like a giant rectangle of red tape cut diagonally across the brown park services sign that read Homolovi Ruins, and it said in capital letters: CLOSED.
Fate smacked me in the face and laughed hysterically in my ear. Why do you think the baby woke up and everyone needed to use the restroom at the Petrified Forest? it mocked. You had your chance, silly girl.
I had no response to that, so I threw a tantrum.
"No, nooo! Why...why?" I moaned, pulling my hair with intermittent pauses to shake my fist in the air. Then I threw the Petrified Forest pamphlet on the ground and turned on Matthew.
"Why did you make me choose?" I wailed. "If you had just said it was okay to see them both, then it wouldn't have mattered!"
"I gave you a choice, and you made your decision," he replied.
"I know I made my decision, but I had it in my head we were going to see Homolovi. And now it's closed, and we won't see anything at all. And it's so hard to get you to stop; you never want to go anywhere!"
"I did agree to stop," said Matthew, finally irritated. "I told you we could go to Homolovi, and you had your choice between that and The Petrified Forest."
I railed some more, but it doesn't matter. It didn't help repair my dashed hopes that lay all over I-40.
The baby fell asleep. I climbed into the front seat, my bottom and feet in the air for a few minutes before I could right myself. Then I pulled out the map again to look for something, anything left to me, and while I looked at Homolovi marked by the highway, I had a flashback to another trip home from Albuquerque. I had pleaded, half-jokingly, for Matthew to stop at this ruin just off the highway, and when we had approached it, he had said in mock sadness, "Ahh, it's closed. Look at that."
"It's been closed for a while," I said, dazed. "I just forgot. We should have seen Petrified Forest-we were already there."
The only thing left was Wupatki Ruins just north of Flagstaff. But we would have to drive 40+ miles up to it and backtrack again. Even I couldn't ask Matthew to do that. Besides, even though I had seen pictures of those beautiful ruins, you have to hike to get the best view of them, and you can't even enter some of them unless you pay for a guided tour.
While I was contemplating this, the sign for the Meteor Crater popped up.
"You want to go there?" asked Matthew. "If you want to go, I'll take you. Really this time."
Yes, because there was another time when we had pulled off on that gravel road to find some restrooms and eat lunch, and since we were already there, Matthew had agreed to see how far it was to the Meteor Crater. After driving fifty feet, however, he had turned the car around. "It's too far. We better get back on the road," he'd said.
But it was poor consolation. I watched the exit get closer and closer. Matthew would have to change lanes. I couldn't decide; it wasn't what I had wanted...
"Well?" said Matthew. "Tell me now. It's right there."
"Uhhhh...."I responded.
And then a semi sped up between us and the necessary lane change, and we passed the exit.
"I couldn't decide," I said mournfully, looking back.
"Are we at the meteor?" Berto, our son, piped in at this point.
"No!" I snapped. "If we were at the meteor, there'd be a big hole in the ground, and I'd say, 'Look, kids, there's a big hole in the ground.' Do you see a big hole in the ground?"
Berto looked around just to be safe, and Matthew gave me a reproving look.
I was obviously on the doorstep of road trip hell.
And Ella was asleep. This upset me more, because she had asked for lunch before the Closed Homolovi Ruins exit, and I had told her to wait-we'd be eating when we stopped. Now she was asleep with only Tostitos and candy in her belly. I threw everyone else their sandwich.
"Here," I said. "We're not stopping."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And we weren't, because the friends we were supposed to meet at a park in Flagstaff never called us back. No running barefoot through the grass, doing cartwheels in the sun and kissing squirrels and butterflies as they flitted past.
"Look, you want to stop at Montezuma's Well?" said my generous husband. "That's still on the way."
"We'd have to go down through Sedona," I said, not sure if we should push our luck.
"I'm pretty sure there's an exit off the 17," said Matthew.
"But you have to go back north," I replied. "It's easier just to wind down through Sedona and take the exit off the 89."
Never mind that I had no clue what exit that was and whether it was near Cottonwood or Clarkdale. The map in my hands didn't list Native American sights, stupid thing.
"I've got to stop somewhere for gas," said Matthew. "Am I stopping in Flagstaff?"
We were almost there, and the baby was still asleep. I hesitated. For no reason did I want to wake my sweet baby who spent his alert moments crying and reaching out his arms pitifully to me from his car seat. Still, should we really go down through Sedona? Dare we tempt the road trip gods again? I only vaguely remembered the trip we'd taken to see Montezuma's Castle and Tuzigoot for my birthday a few years before. The Well was somewhere around there. It was the one thing we'd missed that day.
"Listen, I promise I'll take you to The Petrified Forest next trip to Albuquerque."
"Really?" I said, my voice lifting in renewed hope. "Thank you."
"Okay, so is that good then? Or do you still want to see Montezuma's Well?"
"I still want to see the Well," I blurted. "Daniel's asleep, and it's easier than taking a separate trip, isn't it? Then we could stop in Sedona for gas instead."
I could almost see Matthew steeling himself, and I felt a twinge of anxiety; I had made the call that would make or break the trip.
Five minutes later we navigated a major intersection with 89 A that had no stop lights, only two stop signs but plenty of impatient cars. The scenery once we hit that road was beautiful, all lush trees and some other greenery that resembled what we city folk term "weeds", but pretty, very pretty in a country setting. We soon came on the famous Red Rocks of Sedona. We had plenty of time to view them, too, because the speed limit quickly dropped to 30 mpr. Then the lines disappeared in the middle of the road, and we traveled downhill smack up against those red rocks that created sharp turns. The speed limit dropped to 15 mpr, and holiday traffic became heavy.
At first I uneasily commented on the lovely scenery, unnerved by Matthew's marked silence and the knowledge of my own bad decision. But as we began getting views of gorgeous Oak Creek and all the luxury cabins and resorts nestled on its banks, my muttered expressions of false enthusiasm were interrupted by the van.
"Ku-thunk..ku-thunk," it said.
Matthew gritted his teeth.
"What's going on?" I asked nervously as we navigated the cars lined up on either side of the road.
"It doesn't like down-shifting right now," said Matthew, braking as someone pulled off (ku-thunk, said the van). "It's been doing that for a while."
Matthew braked down the steep grade often and every time the van protested - "ku-thunk!". We were moving with all the grace and speed of a slug. Meanwhile, wealthy people waved merrily at us from the spacious decks of their luxury cabins overlooking Oak Creek.
"My boss has a time share here," commented Matthew.
"I think I see him," I replied.
"Can we stop and play?" asked Ana.
"We'll see, we'll see," I responded with misgivings in my heart.
"Papa, I need to go potty," said Berto.
There was nary a gas station in sight. We traveled a few more miles, sure we would spot one. We couldn't just park along the road; you had to have an official Red Rock pass to do that. Finally, we stopped at a coffee shop. There seemed to be plenty of those around as if espresso were the bizarre mutant offspring of Oak Creek and its luxury accommodations, and the people of Sedona were doing their darndest to find all those little coffee blends good homes.
The van still needed gas, and I was waiting for my own turn to use the little girl's room. Even when we started off again and approached Main Street Sedona, we didn't see one. That major thoroughfare supported only two kinds of businesses: the coffee shop and the art house.
"How can they support this many coffee shops?" I wondered aloud.
"It's all these roundabouts," Matthew growled as we navigated another one. "They think they can trap you."
He was right. Stop lights are apparently passe in Sedona. Every fifty feet there was another roundabout to slow us down, make us dizzy and allow pedestrians to jog past us gleefully, sloshing their premium coffees and waving their latest abstract paintings at confused drivers. Matthew finally found a gas station; he just had to ride a roundabout the whole way 'round before he could get to it. Then he had to backup to the pump.
"Everybody out," he ordered. "And you," he pointed at me. "Use the restroom."
I'm not usually one to disobey orders, but I wanted to get one clear shot of the famous Red Rocks. While I was snapping the camera with Daniel in my arms, Matthew shoved the kids back into the van and parked in front of the gas station. I quickly turned to enter when a sign posted on the door halted my progress.
I looked at Matthew and pointed: Restroom Out of Order.
Road Trip Gone to Hell.
I hopped back in the car and said to Matthew, "Just get back on the 17. Forget the Well."
"Dang right," he responded, or something in that line, anyway.
Ana sat up. "Aren't we stopping at a park?" she asked for the twentieth time that hour.
"No."
"Well, can we go to one when we get home?" she whinnied like a little heartbroken mare.
"No," said Matthew sharply. "We just need to get home and relax."
"We can go to a crummy city park any old day, Ana. I wanted to see a Native American ruin," I whined.
"You mean we're not going to a park at all?" Her voice had reached the crescendo before the tears. She began to weep bitterly.
"Seriously?" demanded Matthew, jerking around in his seat. "You're going to cry about this?"
"Honey, they thought we were going to a park before we even left Albuquerque," I reminded him. "I'd be crying too."
To make everyone feel better, I proceeded to narrate everything that had gone wrong on the trip thus far. After saying "stinks" and "Native American ruin" and "park" twenty times apiece, I summed up with, "And it's just been a stinky, stinky trip!"
"Finished?" said Matthew.
I was. And soon we were on the 17 toward home going 35 mph, because, of course, every city family was heading home at exactly the same time on Labor Day like some mindless mechanical cattle. I wanted to say, "Stupid city people!", but I could not. To thy own kind be true, they say.
Not long afterwards we passed the brown sign for Montezuma's Well, but none of us had the heart to try and salvage the trip.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
that little bit of sadness ever
I'm such easy prey.
"Mama, can we go to the park?"
"Uh..."
Why hesitate? I know I'm going to say yes. It's morning. Or afternoon. There's a breeze. It's not as hot as I thought, and I could use some sunshine for mental health's sake. Besides, the park is green. There are trees. And all that's waiting at home is a kitchen full of dirty dishes, a living room littered with toys and unfolded laundry, and a dining room table that makes me sigh in frustration as I survey the schoolwork, mail, and games that are mounded on its discolored wood.
City parks are a haven, I've learned. I go there for myself as much as for my kids. I jump up the steps, zoom down the slides. I climb the large branching tree after my daughter and feel a puerile satisfaction as I gaze down on the park field from my lofty position. It's almost like the country, with its knolls and its quiet. Well...at least, it's as close as I'll probably ever get again.
"I need green space," I said to Matthew one evening as we prepared supper together. I was talking with relief about the fact that the bermuda grass had resurged in our backyard. "I'm a country girl, after all." He smirked at this assertion, trying to contain full outright mockery. "What?" I demanded defensively.
"That's what you say, but you'd spend a few days in the country now and then say, 'okay, I'm ready to go home'."
Is that true? I ask myself, and I just don't know. I'm accustomed to the city and its conveniences, but the idea that I have evolved away from my country upbringing makes me sad, contrite - as if I've betrayed a part of me that now reclines sickly and neglected in my emotional core, piercing me unpleasantly with moments of sadness when I bother to notice its sorry state. But whatever My Man might think, I do indeed need green space, which is why I scour this city for its parks and let my children run in them two to three times a week though I know they'll be near impossible to round up. And its why I myself linger among their healthy broad trees and short-clipped grass long past time - when I know I should be home starting supper.
Dixie Home
"Mama, can we go to the park?"
"Uh..."
Why hesitate? I know I'm going to say yes. It's morning. Or afternoon. There's a breeze. It's not as hot as I thought, and I could use some sunshine for mental health's sake. Besides, the park is green. There are trees. And all that's waiting at home is a kitchen full of dirty dishes, a living room littered with toys and unfolded laundry, and a dining room table that makes me sigh in frustration as I survey the schoolwork, mail, and games that are mounded on its discolored wood.
City parks are a haven, I've learned. I go there for myself as much as for my kids. I jump up the steps, zoom down the slides. I climb the large branching tree after my daughter and feel a puerile satisfaction as I gaze down on the park field from my lofty position. It's almost like the country, with its knolls and its quiet. Well...at least, it's as close as I'll probably ever get again.
"I need green space," I said to Matthew one evening as we prepared supper together. I was talking with relief about the fact that the bermuda grass had resurged in our backyard. "I'm a country girl, after all." He smirked at this assertion, trying to contain full outright mockery. "What?" I demanded defensively.
"That's what you say, but you'd spend a few days in the country now and then say, 'okay, I'm ready to go home'."
Is that true? I ask myself, and I just don't know. I'm accustomed to the city and its conveniences, but the idea that I have evolved away from my country upbringing makes me sad, contrite - as if I've betrayed a part of me that now reclines sickly and neglected in my emotional core, piercing me unpleasantly with moments of sadness when I bother to notice its sorry state. But whatever My Man might think, I do indeed need green space, which is why I scour this city for its parks and let my children run in them two to three times a week though I know they'll be near impossible to round up. And its why I myself linger among their healthy broad trees and short-clipped grass long past time - when I know I should be home starting supper.
Dixie Home
Monday, May 9, 2011
A Joyful Admonition and An Answer
I have had a prayer answered in a definite way as an adult, despite my lack of confidence in myself and in God's desire to answer. But it was before I knew God would answer my urgent request that a revelation, a communication, came.
I was pregnant with my first daughter. I was praying for her to come safely into the world, yes, but I was also praying that my husband and I would have a safe place to leave our toddler son while I gave birth. We were newly settled in a city where we had no family nearby. Our neighbor, whom we had gotten to know over a few months, grudgingly agreed to watch our son while we were at the hospital, but she had vacation plans during the first part of the month in which our daughter was due. My husband asked his mother if she could cover the week our neighbor would be gone. My parents said they could come just around my due date.
A woman, unfortunately, does not have a sixth sense about the day and hour she will give birth. I was nervous. First, because I did not want to leave our son with our neighbor who seemed so reluctant to watch him and who also did not seem to care about his nut allergies, and second but most relevant: our son, while very attached to me and his Papa, was extremely anxious, fearful really, around almost everyone else (as I said, we had no special people who lived near us then - no family or friends to whom he became accustomed). I desperately wanted one of his grandparents, someone who loved our son, to watch over him.
The particular prayer I was reciting night after night over my son while he slept was becoming more desperate, even angry, as my due date approached. I was losing confidence that God would heed my request. Because of this, my thoughts began to plague me, and I mean that quite literally; I am obsessive-compulsive, and it grows considerably worse when I am worried or weary. I was both exhausted and anxious when I attempted to pray over my little boy one night. I had to begin again and again - my OCD raging, pernicious thoughts riddling my mind. Finally, I gave up in despair. I deserted my sleeping child and went and wallowed in my misery on my own bed, pressing my hands into my forehead and tossing this way and that, as if my physical resistance to the mental turmoil could rid me of cluttered thoughts and distressed feelings.
Quite suddenly, a rush of utter silence, and I heard Someone say stridently, "Stop this! Get up and go pray over your son."
It was a rebuke, a chastisement, but I sat up with a jolt of pure, electrified joy. And I obeyed immediately. Still I was given no respite; unwanted thoughts clattered and banged around with annoying persistence as I finished my prayer over my resting child, but I did what my Heavenly Father had told me to do, rejoicing that He had spoken so clearly to me for the first time in my life.
A short while later, He would answer my urgent plea.
I was pregnant with my first daughter. I was praying for her to come safely into the world, yes, but I was also praying that my husband and I would have a safe place to leave our toddler son while I gave birth. We were newly settled in a city where we had no family nearby. Our neighbor, whom we had gotten to know over a few months, grudgingly agreed to watch our son while we were at the hospital, but she had vacation plans during the first part of the month in which our daughter was due. My husband asked his mother if she could cover the week our neighbor would be gone. My parents said they could come just around my due date.
A woman, unfortunately, does not have a sixth sense about the day and hour she will give birth. I was nervous. First, because I did not want to leave our son with our neighbor who seemed so reluctant to watch him and who also did not seem to care about his nut allergies, and second but most relevant: our son, while very attached to me and his Papa, was extremely anxious, fearful really, around almost everyone else (as I said, we had no special people who lived near us then - no family or friends to whom he became accustomed). I desperately wanted one of his grandparents, someone who loved our son, to watch over him.
The particular prayer I was reciting night after night over my son while he slept was becoming more desperate, even angry, as my due date approached. I was losing confidence that God would heed my request. Because of this, my thoughts began to plague me, and I mean that quite literally; I am obsessive-compulsive, and it grows considerably worse when I am worried or weary. I was both exhausted and anxious when I attempted to pray over my little boy one night. I had to begin again and again - my OCD raging, pernicious thoughts riddling my mind. Finally, I gave up in despair. I deserted my sleeping child and went and wallowed in my misery on my own bed, pressing my hands into my forehead and tossing this way and that, as if my physical resistance to the mental turmoil could rid me of cluttered thoughts and distressed feelings.
Quite suddenly, a rush of utter silence, and I heard Someone say stridently, "Stop this! Get up and go pray over your son."
It was a rebuke, a chastisement, but I sat up with a jolt of pure, electrified joy. And I obeyed immediately. Still I was given no respite; unwanted thoughts clattered and banged around with annoying persistence as I finished my prayer over my resting child, but I did what my Heavenly Father had told me to do, rejoicing that He had spoken so clearly to me for the first time in my life.
A short while later, He would answer my urgent plea.
*************** ****************
The circumstances surrounding our children's births are variable. At least this is predictable. I was eight months pregnant with Berto, our firstborn, when Matthew and I were crawling through the mountains of Arizona in a U-haul, on the way to our new home. There were no family or friends waiting for us where we were headed, and this lack of special people made it hard when our baby arrived. The fierce love I felt for my son was a shock, so overwhelming that I simply stared in awe at the red, crying creature they laid on my stomach, forgetting to even wrap my arms around him in greeting. Yet there was no one to celebrate the arrival of our first child with Matthew and me. It was lonely.
I feared that loneliness while I was down on my knees each night almost two years later, asking for our daughter to arrive when I knew there would be someone to care for Berto.
My mother-in-law came to stay in town a couple weeks before my due date on Matthew's request. I believe she had the strategy of walking the baby out of me early, because the day after her arrival we spent navigating the nearest monster mall - not shopping, just walking. Our efforts were rewarded; I began having wrenching lower back pain on top of the nagging sciatica I was already experiencing. This is labor pain, I thought. But I didn't go into labor.
It was that evening while praying that I knew for a certainty that my parents wouldn't be coming around my due date. The next day, my own mother confirmed this. My grandmother needed an operation; all my parents resources were occupied with helping her. So my prayer shifted, became more specific. My new request was that my daughter Ana would be born in the following four days, the remainder of Barbara's stay.
The week stretched out, and my hopes wore thin. Barbara, my mother-in-law, got to see a side of me she may have suspected existed but had never been privy to. On Thursday of that week, Berto had blood drawn for allergy testing. I held him, looking into his streaming toddler eyes while a blond-haired nurse attempted to draw vials of blood from his arm. Before she had finished, the chosen vein dried up.
"I'll have to try again," she said stoically.
"How many do you need?" I asked in panic.
"Three," she said bluntly, holding up one partially filled vial.
So, there, in front of my mother-in-law and that no-nonsense pediatric nurse, I had a come apart, an episode of hysterics, complete with sobbing, hyperventilation, and involuntary shaking. I was told that I should leave while they tried to draw blood without my "help", but I refused to abandon my son. So I called Matthew who left work to come supervise the blood-letting, and forthwith I was permanently blacklisted among the nurses at our pediatrician's office. With that blond-haired nurse in particular, I could never again make eye contact without acute discomfort.
Truly, it wasn't a surprise that after such an episode, I woke up at 4:30am the next morning with contractions. I shook Matthew awake, but while waiting for them to grow, I dropped back asleep and was not roused again.
On Friday, over a spaghetti dinner, a series of slight sensations washed over my abdomen like gently lapping waves. There was no pain there, however; all discomfort was concentrated in my back and legs. Acceptance had come, and I was tired of anticipating something that would not come when I desired it. Barbara was leaving the next day. Matthew and I both thanked her for coming, for supporting us by being there. She left, planning to head out early the next morning, and I went to bed.
And then God answered my prayer - in the eleventh hour, and in His way.
I awoke Saturday morning a little after 5am, and the pains were unmistakable. I told Matthew to wait on calling his mother (she probably wouldn't be up yet, I figured) as I began a frenzy of last minute activity around the house in the lapses between contractions, starting laundry, loading dishes, brushing my teeth, packing snacks for the hospital. At 6:30 am when the intense pain prevented me from concentrating on anything else, Matthew called his mom.
She was already on the road out of town. With my labor progressing rapidly, we had to wait for her to turn around.
An hour later, Matthew and I were headed for the hospital, his sporty little car's sun visor clenched in my teeth - the protruding metal from its frame a testament to the strength of a laboring woman. Matthew tried to protest my pain-management tactics, but I gave him a wild look, and the words died on his lips even as his eyes continued to plead for mercy to be shown to his beloved vehicle.
I arrived at the hospital dilated the full 10 centimeters, knowing that my son was safe in his Grandma's care. They wheeled me into delivery as I begged for last-minute intervention, Can't you start an epidural, pleeaaase?, and I got to experience natural childbirth for the first time in all its excruciating glory.
After Ana's delivery at 8:44am, I repeated the L&D nurse's words in amazement to my husband.
"We have a daughter," I said to Matthew in wonder as a rush of feel-good hormones washed over my body, uninhibited by the lingering effects of an epidural.
And there was no loneliness, for Barbara and our little Berto came to the hospital later that day to greet our precious, healthy Analisa and welcome her to the family.
All these years later I still reflect with wonder on the fact that God spoke to me (He has not done so again in such a direct way since that day). For my Creator I had become like the widow who importuned the fearless judge in the parable told by Christ. It was a time in my life when I was seeking my Father's attention continually, asking Him to fulfill a need, and He did fulfill it. He blessed us with Barbara's presence. I am forever grateful for His faithfulness.
I know firsthand the power of persistent prayer.
Luke 18:1-5
And he spake a parable to them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Saying, there was judge which feared not God, neither regarded man:
And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
And he would not for awhile: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man:
Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
I feared that loneliness while I was down on my knees each night almost two years later, asking for our daughter to arrive when I knew there would be someone to care for Berto.
My mother-in-law came to stay in town a couple weeks before my due date on Matthew's request. I believe she had the strategy of walking the baby out of me early, because the day after her arrival we spent navigating the nearest monster mall - not shopping, just walking. Our efforts were rewarded; I began having wrenching lower back pain on top of the nagging sciatica I was already experiencing. This is labor pain, I thought. But I didn't go into labor.
It was that evening while praying that I knew for a certainty that my parents wouldn't be coming around my due date. The next day, my own mother confirmed this. My grandmother needed an operation; all my parents resources were occupied with helping her. So my prayer shifted, became more specific. My new request was that my daughter Ana would be born in the following four days, the remainder of Barbara's stay.
The week stretched out, and my hopes wore thin. Barbara, my mother-in-law, got to see a side of me she may have suspected existed but had never been privy to. On Thursday of that week, Berto had blood drawn for allergy testing. I held him, looking into his streaming toddler eyes while a blond-haired nurse attempted to draw vials of blood from his arm. Before she had finished, the chosen vein dried up.
"I'll have to try again," she said stoically.
"How many do you need?" I asked in panic.
"Three," she said bluntly, holding up one partially filled vial.
So, there, in front of my mother-in-law and that no-nonsense pediatric nurse, I had a come apart, an episode of hysterics, complete with sobbing, hyperventilation, and involuntary shaking. I was told that I should leave while they tried to draw blood without my "help", but I refused to abandon my son. So I called Matthew who left work to come supervise the blood-letting, and forthwith I was permanently blacklisted among the nurses at our pediatrician's office. With that blond-haired nurse in particular, I could never again make eye contact without acute discomfort.
Truly, it wasn't a surprise that after such an episode, I woke up at 4:30am the next morning with contractions. I shook Matthew awake, but while waiting for them to grow, I dropped back asleep and was not roused again.
On Friday, over a spaghetti dinner, a series of slight sensations washed over my abdomen like gently lapping waves. There was no pain there, however; all discomfort was concentrated in my back and legs. Acceptance had come, and I was tired of anticipating something that would not come when I desired it. Barbara was leaving the next day. Matthew and I both thanked her for coming, for supporting us by being there. She left, planning to head out early the next morning, and I went to bed.
And then God answered my prayer - in the eleventh hour, and in His way.
I awoke Saturday morning a little after 5am, and the pains were unmistakable. I told Matthew to wait on calling his mother (she probably wouldn't be up yet, I figured) as I began a frenzy of last minute activity around the house in the lapses between contractions, starting laundry, loading dishes, brushing my teeth, packing snacks for the hospital. At 6:30 am when the intense pain prevented me from concentrating on anything else, Matthew called his mom.
She was already on the road out of town. With my labor progressing rapidly, we had to wait for her to turn around.
An hour later, Matthew and I were headed for the hospital, his sporty little car's sun visor clenched in my teeth - the protruding metal from its frame a testament to the strength of a laboring woman. Matthew tried to protest my pain-management tactics, but I gave him a wild look, and the words died on his lips even as his eyes continued to plead for mercy to be shown to his beloved vehicle.
I arrived at the hospital dilated the full 10 centimeters, knowing that my son was safe in his Grandma's care. They wheeled me into delivery as I begged for last-minute intervention, Can't you start an epidural, pleeaaase?, and I got to experience natural childbirth for the first time in all its excruciating glory.
After Ana's delivery at 8:44am, I repeated the L&D nurse's words in amazement to my husband.
"We have a daughter," I said to Matthew in wonder as a rush of feel-good hormones washed over my body, uninhibited by the lingering effects of an epidural.
And there was no loneliness, for Barbara and our little Berto came to the hospital later that day to greet our precious, healthy Analisa and welcome her to the family.
*********** ***********
All these years later I still reflect with wonder on the fact that God spoke to me (He has not done so again in such a direct way since that day). For my Creator I had become like the widow who importuned the fearless judge in the parable told by Christ. It was a time in my life when I was seeking my Father's attention continually, asking Him to fulfill a need, and He did fulfill it. He blessed us with Barbara's presence. I am forever grateful for His faithfulness.
I know firsthand the power of persistent prayer.
Luke 18:1-5
And he spake a parable to them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Saying, there was judge which feared not God, neither regarded man:
And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
And he would not for awhile: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man:
Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Twisters and Monsoons (revised version)
Monsoon storms have rolled through our desert valley since Thursday. (I don't understand why they are called monsoons, since I live nowhere near an ocean or sea, but they are continually acknowledged as such by meteorologists, and so...there you go.)
They were forecasted for this whole week. As the cloud cover and humidity built up, so did my anticipation, and with each day that I saw no rain, I became more and more virulent as I talked to the clouds. And my children became concerned that Mama thought she could have a conversation with the sky.
Just when I had given up on the ability of these clouds to deposit moisture in the desert, the wind began to whip our eucalyptus trees around and drove the rain with such force that it slanted through our main air-conditioning vent and drenched the hall carpet.
By early Friday morning it was a calmer drizzle as my children and I enjoyed it from the patio. I sat in a chair with the baby, watching the birds line the branches of our African Sumac tree. My older three were happy to stand and collect the rain in buckets as it streamed from the roof, because to them rain is almost as wondrous as snow. To me it is a good friend too little seen nowadays.
In Tennessee rain was expected, but there was always the possibility that a storm system could bring tornadoes with the rain in spring and summer. True, we did not technically live in Tornado Alley, but I recall hearing tornado watches come on the television quite often, and we had a few warnings.
As soon as the television began its irritating warning beep, Dad listened intently for the message. When our county was included, he quickly abandoned his chair for the porch. I joined him there a few times. As I stood beside him in my cowboy boots, he would gaze at the sky with such intensity it was as if he expected to receive a secret communication from it, one which I hoped to interpret by carefully watching his face.
A couple times when I was small the television went static while the tornado warning was trailing across its screen. Dad did not hesitate at that point; we were told to grab a stuffed animal and blanket and head for the basement. We would navigate the narrow, rickety stairs and wait for the storm to pass in that musty cellar lit by its one feeble bulb. As we squeezed our teddy bears, we tried not to think about the spiders and various other creepy-crawlies that would not take kindly to our intrusion.
But during one of the scariest incidents of my childhood, we were not at home and therefore had no basement to scurry to.
Mom and Dad worked in the woods, rolling wreaths and digging valuable roots for a living. On this particular summer day, we kids had gone with them to explore a new stretch of wilderness while they worked. Mom and Dad quit early; there was a bad storm brewing.
We kids were hustled into the car. Dad had the radio on soon after we left the woods. The winds picked up, and the sky deepened to an unusual hue of slate blue. As we turned down Spann Road, the last leg to home, Dad was watching the sky, glancing in the car's side and rear mirror more and more frantically as the car's speed increased. I knew he was no longer examining the possibilities; he was searching for the reality of what we could hear building from that strangely-colored sky.
Because a noise which was more than that of a gale had grown out of the storm as Dad sped along the rutted dirt road. I didn't see the twister, though I remember turning in terror to look out the back window as the roar of it amplified. Suddenly, Dad swerved off the road and braked violently by a decrepit barn near the fence line.
"We won't outrun it," he said. Then he turned. "Kids get down on the floor and start praying."
Annie, Nate and I huddled down quickly. Vinca held Mom and Dad's hands in the front seat. We three in the backseat were praying aloud; one often does when desperate, I suppose. As I prayed I longed to be in the front seat with my parents. I thought about climbing the seat, because if I had to die, I wanted at least to be with Mommy and Daddy when it happened.
But in the midst of our supplications, the strange growling suddenly died. The tornado was gone, sucked back up into the clouds that began to lose their angry color shortly thereafter. The twister must have been of the fickle kind that touches ground for a few miles on a lonely piece of earth, thankfully leaving little indication of its passage before vanishing like smoke. In the eerie calm that followed, Dad started the engine, we kids climbed back onto the bench seats in that old car, and we drove the last couple miles home in silence. When I looked back I saw nothing but the rain falling on the fields, stands of trees and fence line behind. The barn which had witnessed our terror stood indifferent and untouched.
I can't help finding tornadoes fascinating because of their power. Perhaps that is because I am removed from their reality here in the Southwest where they are practically nonexistent. It has been a long time since I stood on a porch and gazed with my Daddy at the threat of an angry southern sky.
They were forecasted for this whole week. As the cloud cover and humidity built up, so did my anticipation, and with each day that I saw no rain, I became more and more virulent as I talked to the clouds. And my children became concerned that Mama thought she could have a conversation with the sky.
Just when I had given up on the ability of these clouds to deposit moisture in the desert, the wind began to whip our eucalyptus trees around and drove the rain with such force that it slanted through our main air-conditioning vent and drenched the hall carpet.
By early Friday morning it was a calmer drizzle as my children and I enjoyed it from the patio. I sat in a chair with the baby, watching the birds line the branches of our African Sumac tree. My older three were happy to stand and collect the rain in buckets as it streamed from the roof, because to them rain is almost as wondrous as snow. To me it is a good friend too little seen nowadays.
In Tennessee rain was expected, but there was always the possibility that a storm system could bring tornadoes with the rain in spring and summer. True, we did not technically live in Tornado Alley, but I recall hearing tornado watches come on the television quite often, and we had a few warnings.
As soon as the television began its irritating warning beep, Dad listened intently for the message. When our county was included, he quickly abandoned his chair for the porch. I joined him there a few times. As I stood beside him in my cowboy boots, he would gaze at the sky with such intensity it was as if he expected to receive a secret communication from it, one which I hoped to interpret by carefully watching his face.
A couple times when I was small the television went static while the tornado warning was trailing across its screen. Dad did not hesitate at that point; we were told to grab a stuffed animal and blanket and head for the basement. We would navigate the narrow, rickety stairs and wait for the storm to pass in that musty cellar lit by its one feeble bulb. As we squeezed our teddy bears, we tried not to think about the spiders and various other creepy-crawlies that would not take kindly to our intrusion.
But during one of the scariest incidents of my childhood, we were not at home and therefore had no basement to scurry to.
Mom and Dad worked in the woods, rolling wreaths and digging valuable roots for a living. On this particular summer day, we kids had gone with them to explore a new stretch of wilderness while they worked. Mom and Dad quit early; there was a bad storm brewing.
We kids were hustled into the car. Dad had the radio on soon after we left the woods. The winds picked up, and the sky deepened to an unusual hue of slate blue. As we turned down Spann Road, the last leg to home, Dad was watching the sky, glancing in the car's side and rear mirror more and more frantically as the car's speed increased. I knew he was no longer examining the possibilities; he was searching for the reality of what we could hear building from that strangely-colored sky.
Because a noise which was more than that of a gale had grown out of the storm as Dad sped along the rutted dirt road. I didn't see the twister, though I remember turning in terror to look out the back window as the roar of it amplified. Suddenly, Dad swerved off the road and braked violently by a decrepit barn near the fence line.
"We won't outrun it," he said. Then he turned. "Kids get down on the floor and start praying."
Annie, Nate and I huddled down quickly. Vinca held Mom and Dad's hands in the front seat. We three in the backseat were praying aloud; one often does when desperate, I suppose. As I prayed I longed to be in the front seat with my parents. I thought about climbing the seat, because if I had to die, I wanted at least to be with Mommy and Daddy when it happened.
But in the midst of our supplications, the strange growling suddenly died. The tornado was gone, sucked back up into the clouds that began to lose their angry color shortly thereafter. The twister must have been of the fickle kind that touches ground for a few miles on a lonely piece of earth, thankfully leaving little indication of its passage before vanishing like smoke. In the eerie calm that followed, Dad started the engine, we kids climbed back onto the bench seats in that old car, and we drove the last couple miles home in silence. When I looked back I saw nothing but the rain falling on the fields, stands of trees and fence line behind. The barn which had witnessed our terror stood indifferent and untouched.
I can't help finding tornadoes fascinating because of their power. Perhaps that is because I am removed from their reality here in the Southwest where they are practically nonexistent. It has been a long time since I stood on a porch and gazed with my Daddy at the threat of an angry southern sky.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Out, Damn Wrinkles!
When your eyelids look like crepe paper, you have a problem. When you find you can't wear makeup, and heaven forbid glitter makeup, because it settles and draws attention to your "creases", you're in trouble. When you're considering putting a tiny roll out awning on your head to block the sun, prevent wincing, and shield your countenance from your critical fellow human beings, well...
I've foxtrotted with the idea of botox. I've jumped and jived with it. But I couldn't ever do it (until they're offering it for free to random haggard-looking people). People who pay to get botox are vain. And they have too much money. We less affluent mortals must bravely pretend that our wrinkles add distinction to an otherwise bland face.
I blame my proliferation of wrinkles on my kids. It's the sheer magnitude of looks I must give them on a daily basis just to keep them in line. If you're a mom or dad, maybe you're nodding so vigorously right now, you're about to knock your head on the computer screen and add a nasty bruise to complement those warrior wrinkles. So...you know what I mean. And I can classify them, too.
There's the, "Sweet malarkey, Child! What are you eating?!" look. It usually happens when your toddler is about to put something small, black, and from the floor into their mouth. If you have or have had a toddler, you've seen them eat with relish from the great and variable offerings of the floor, but you also know that nothing edible is EVER black. Not one thing. Rotten things, yes. Insects, yes. A washer from the broken kitchen faucet, yes. But nothing meant to be digested by a human. Thence the look of disgust, and the "bleh, blah, bleh!" noises you make while sticking out your tongue, trying to get your kid to copycat, so you can swipe out the nasty object, then twist you face into a look of utter repulsion when you discover the exact nature of the thing.
Then there's the, "The baby is sleeping, so you better cut it out..." look. This one has to be the most powerful wrinkle-generating look known to mankind. It must encapsulate everything that the parent's yell would do without the help of your practiced vocal chords, so you scrunch your face up into the ugliest, most terrifying, eyebrows on the eyeballs, Elvis-sneering look you can muster in order to prevent your older kids from waking up the baby with their shenanigans. Sometimes, you must give this look several times in rapid succession while pointing a finger like a dagger at the perpetrator of the noise. This look is the one that will cause your grandchildren to run from you when you've finally mellowed out in old age, and it is without doubt the one responsible for making your nose look like it's just an overhang of that deep canyon running down your forehead.
A closely related look is the one you employ while you're on the phone. Every child, as parents well know, holds the fundamental belief that a. the phone is their greatest rival, beside any siblings, for their parent's attention, and b. said parent will be physiologically unable to end a phone conversation in order to discipline - no matter how atrocious their kids' behavior becomes while they're thus distracted.
Therefore, children take all phone-parent interaction time as their cue to scream, bang things together, knock each other over the head with wooden spoons, and leap off the furniture - preferably onto a sibling or pet's back. The look a parent must devise in these circumstances is tricky, because it is involves mouthing all kinds of threats at your kids without allowing any actual sound to leave your mouth, preventing said threats from interrupting your conversation. It's rarely works, and it's exhausting.
But, okay, there are some good wrinkles, generally referred to as laugh lines. The look of laughter is one that happens often with children around but is completely unpredictable, sometimes lots of fun and at times a point of contention. It causes the best kinds of wrinkles, friendly wrinkles. This look can burst forth in embarrassment when your daughter catches you and your husband canoodling together on the couch and asks, "Is that how you two rejoice together?" It can erupt uncontrollably when your husband is trying to chide the children, and you find the situation inexplicably comical, so you bust out laughing behind your hands, ruin the lecture and anger your honey. It can happen when you're playing Go Fish with your three-year-old, and she asks for the "rest-a-room star" (you know the one sitting on the toilet with the newspaper?) when what she really means is the "western star".
Well, well. I don't mind the laugh lines, nor the wrinkles on my belly that are the proof of my having provided four tiny human beings with a safe place to grow until they were ready for the world stage. I'm proud, too, of the permanent impressions on my left arm from turning my arm just so in order to support my baby on my hip while I cleaned, cooked, did yard work and walked through stores and parks. As for the crushed silk look of my eyelids and the multiple lines fanning out across my forehead and temples, they're just a hazard of the parenting trade. And they make me look intelligent, a real thinker. Or so I like to believe. But heaven help me during their teenage years! Worry lines...I think I'll just wear a veil.
I've foxtrotted with the idea of botox. I've jumped and jived with it. But I couldn't ever do it (until they're offering it for free to random haggard-looking people). People who pay to get botox are vain. And they have too much money. We less affluent mortals must bravely pretend that our wrinkles add distinction to an otherwise bland face.
I blame my proliferation of wrinkles on my kids. It's the sheer magnitude of looks I must give them on a daily basis just to keep them in line. If you're a mom or dad, maybe you're nodding so vigorously right now, you're about to knock your head on the computer screen and add a nasty bruise to complement those warrior wrinkles. So...you know what I mean. And I can classify them, too.
There's the, "Sweet malarkey, Child! What are you eating?!" look. It usually happens when your toddler is about to put something small, black, and from the floor into their mouth. If you have or have had a toddler, you've seen them eat with relish from the great and variable offerings of the floor, but you also know that nothing edible is EVER black. Not one thing. Rotten things, yes. Insects, yes. A washer from the broken kitchen faucet, yes. But nothing meant to be digested by a human. Thence the look of disgust, and the "bleh, blah, bleh!" noises you make while sticking out your tongue, trying to get your kid to copycat, so you can swipe out the nasty object, then twist you face into a look of utter repulsion when you discover the exact nature of the thing.
Then there's the, "The baby is sleeping, so you better cut it out..." look. This one has to be the most powerful wrinkle-generating look known to mankind. It must encapsulate everything that the parent's yell would do without the help of your practiced vocal chords, so you scrunch your face up into the ugliest, most terrifying, eyebrows on the eyeballs, Elvis-sneering look you can muster in order to prevent your older kids from waking up the baby with their shenanigans. Sometimes, you must give this look several times in rapid succession while pointing a finger like a dagger at the perpetrator of the noise. This look is the one that will cause your grandchildren to run from you when you've finally mellowed out in old age, and it is without doubt the one responsible for making your nose look like it's just an overhang of that deep canyon running down your forehead.
A closely related look is the one you employ while you're on the phone. Every child, as parents well know, holds the fundamental belief that a. the phone is their greatest rival, beside any siblings, for their parent's attention, and b. said parent will be physiologically unable to end a phone conversation in order to discipline - no matter how atrocious their kids' behavior becomes while they're thus distracted.
Therefore, children take all phone-parent interaction time as their cue to scream, bang things together, knock each other over the head with wooden spoons, and leap off the furniture - preferably onto a sibling or pet's back. The look a parent must devise in these circumstances is tricky, because it is involves mouthing all kinds of threats at your kids without allowing any actual sound to leave your mouth, preventing said threats from interrupting your conversation. It's rarely works, and it's exhausting.
But, okay, there are some good wrinkles, generally referred to as laugh lines. The look of laughter is one that happens often with children around but is completely unpredictable, sometimes lots of fun and at times a point of contention. It causes the best kinds of wrinkles, friendly wrinkles. This look can burst forth in embarrassment when your daughter catches you and your husband canoodling together on the couch and asks, "Is that how you two rejoice together?" It can erupt uncontrollably when your husband is trying to chide the children, and you find the situation inexplicably comical, so you bust out laughing behind your hands, ruin the lecture and anger your honey. It can happen when you're playing Go Fish with your three-year-old, and she asks for the "rest-a-room star" (you know the one sitting on the toilet with the newspaper?) when what she really means is the "western star".
Well, well. I don't mind the laugh lines, nor the wrinkles on my belly that are the proof of my having provided four tiny human beings with a safe place to grow until they were ready for the world stage. I'm proud, too, of the permanent impressions on my left arm from turning my arm just so in order to support my baby on my hip while I cleaned, cooked, did yard work and walked through stores and parks. As for the crushed silk look of my eyelids and the multiple lines fanning out across my forehead and temples, they're just a hazard of the parenting trade. And they make me look intelligent, a real thinker. Or so I like to believe. But heaven help me during their teenage years! Worry lines...I think I'll just wear a veil.
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