Short, mostly unedited: Picture

Every year around Thanksgiving my husband and I grab one of our friends and ask nicely, "Can you talk a picture of our family in front of this tree/cactus/flowering shrub?" If our relatives and friends are lucky, this photo ends up as our Christmas card. It may be the only family picture we take all year. We have never had a professional portrait taken of us all together.

This trend started with the wedding. Even then we were not willing to pay a professional. A friend of my sister's offered to take both the engagement and wedding pics, and we gladly accepted. The pictures were not bad at all, but they were not the glossy, perfectly-staged, marvelously-lit, photo-shopped masterpieces of so many other couples.

Not movie stars, but very happy

And so it continues, not a single perfect family portrait. Not one couple's picture that makes us look like stunning, impossibly perfect movie stars.

Yeah, sure, we've gotten school pics of the kids - but not both fall and spring. We've gotten sport pictures, but not a whole portfolio. We've gone on vacation and caught cute moments, but often we've gone to capture those sweet stills of time and realized we forgot our camera. That has been a chronic problem.

One time when coming home from vacation, I told the kids not to worry. If they wanted to see pictures of themselves, they could always ask Aunt Vinca. We know she takes lots of pictures of her loved ones.

Alright, that was a joke. It's not as bad as that. We usually take 10 or so pictures on birthdays and five on Christmas morning. But we, regrettably, never even thought to take the month-by-month-baby-growth snapshots. And just this year I realized that I didn't perform that essential mommy task of capturing my little angels as they flitted off back to school that first morning. I mistakenly thought that tradition ended with kindergarten.

This awkward list of my deficiencies in camera manipulation could get me kicked out of certain Mom's clubs, I'm pretty certain.

But, still, I regret I didn't get those back-to-school pics this year (and I felt guilty as heck when I realized I was maybe the only mom who didn't post such adorable time-keepers on Facebook). I also wish I had more photos of me and my man making out for the lens in a field of wildflowers (if we were ever in a field of wildflowers?) or just smiling and clasping hands on a beach. And I certainly wish I didn't have to tell my dad that, sorry, we don't have any fancy pictures of Daniel, because he's not in school yet.

The only thing I can say in my defense is that all my years of growing up in Tennessee, my parents had the same four pictures of their kids up on the living room shelf. They never switched them out for more recent renderings. They were taken all in the same year, and we were for 11 years frozen in time just outside the kitchen door. I will always see myself as a chubby, golden-brown haired, slightly cross-eyed four-year-old.

Okay, that's not a very good defense in this age of never-ceasing technological advancement. Maybe I'm just not a photographer; it's not my medium. A picture is worth a thousand words, but even five hundred words do more than take a picture.

I love my kids madly, but the proof is in the time playing or conversing with, the discipline of, and the raising up of these timeless treasures known as our children, not in the family portraits. And you can bet that I have grabbed that camera to capture their sweet, silly, messy, outrageous and candid moments - provided the battery wasn't dead when I found it. And, yes, some of my favorite photos are from vacation when I snapped away happily as my family was collecting shells, jumping waves, or standing by exotic animals. But there have been times when a camera felt like a burden and the absence of its demanding weight felt like the freedom to enjoy the moment more thoroughly and more presently.

Still, this October our family will, for the first time ever, have a family portrait taken, and you can bet Danny will have his own glossy headshot.

So if you are a close relative, and I do actually remember to send out these pictures with the Christmas cards, don't ever say I never gave you nothin'. I may even send out the last two years of school and sports pics with them. Never fear, though, we won't let the professional photography go to our head. On Thanksgiving we'll still have our picture taken in our friend's backyard by some cypress tree or rose bush - just for old time's sake.

Just cook, dame! Cook? Damn!

Yeah, I know. I know. I'm being redundant....

Every time I stand in the kitchen around mealtime, I should start singing Adam Lambert's song, "What do you want from me? Uh, what do you want from me?"

It should be my culinary theme song. Because cooking a messy meal at the end of a busy day when the house looks like orcs pillaged it? It's like purgatory at the end of a hard life.

Have I said that before?

Supper? From mwah? Here are the options:

Tuna, pickle and hard-boiled egg (crackers instead of bread on special days)

Oatmeal and scrambled eggs

Pancakes and scrambled eggs

Blueberry muffins (homemade!)and scrambled eggs

Eggs....fried? with oatmeal, pancakes or blueberry muffins

Spaghetti

Chicken noodle soup

Nachos, multiple ways

Bagged salad with Mystery Meat


How about dessert? Would you like some? Your choices:

Sliced apple (without skin)

Whole apple (with skin)

Orange, sliced

Orange, peeled and sectioned

Carrot chips

Carrot Sticks


I roasted a chicken a few months ago, a whole chicken. I even took out the organs and showed them to my kids for an impromptu science lesson. When my husband asked that evening what we were having for dinner, I answered somewhat briskly, "I made a chicken." Couldn't he smell it? Uh, yeah.

"But what are we having with it?"

"I don't know," I replied as I bustled off to address laundry. Then realizing he didn't grasp the enormous effort involved in removing the innards of a bird, slathering its cold, clammy skin with olive oil, butter and spices, and shoving vegetables into its business end, I called back emphatically,"I made a chicken!"

What do you want from me?

Traveler's Tale

This story did not occur around the holidays, but it may as well be a Christmas morality tale. It is a reminder to be kind, because your kindness will last longer than you know, far beyond those few moments you invest in showing compassion for others.

A young couple waited in the airport terminal with their two-month-old son. It was an evening flight, and their baby was fussy. The tall, very lean father with a newly cultivated mustache spoke calming words to his wife as she bounced their child in her arms and made shushing noises, her long hair swaying and occasionally getting caught in the baby's fist. The babe was tired and wanted a nurse, but they would board at any moment and the new mother was uncomfortable with nursing in public. She hoped to nurse him beneath his blanket as the plane took off, helping to pop his ears during the pressure changes.

Around the young couple were gathered other travelers, mostly business men and women with compact luggage on wheels. These professional people were antsy in their own way, anxious to get home or on to the next place of business, looking at e-mails and schedules on their phones. The young couple with their colicky baby was out of place, and the noise of the child was making other passengers fidget in a new way - increasing impatience to get on the plane to their assigned seats, fervently hoping they would not be the unlucky ones seated next to the family.

A stocky man with sleek gray hair and an immaculate white dress shirt took particular notice of the infant as he paced with his jacket thrown across his shoulders. Every new wail or whimper from the babe brought a fresh look of irritation. The mother noted the man looking at her child with distaste, but she was truly embarrassed when her son's cries increased, and the stocky man gave a loud grunt of disgust, threw a last dirty look and moved to the opposite side of the terminal.

What did he expect her to do? Her son was just a little baby.

It was a relief when boarding began, and the young couple could find their seats. The mother wanted to nurse her son immediately, and her husband wanted her to have the window seat. When they got to their row, however, there was already a dark-haired young man in slacks and a leather jacket reclining in his rightful seat by the window, head back and eyes closed as he adjusted for best comfort.

"Excuse me," said the husband, "but do you mind if my wife sits there? She needs to nurse our baby, and it's more private."

The young man's eyes flew open. "Oh, sure. Of course."

He edged out, and the mother slid all the way in and began to adjust the blanket over her and her son. Her baby badly wanted a nurse but had become so frustrated that he wasn't latching on properly. Her husband bent over them to offer more protection from curious gazes as the child kicked and fussed beneath the blanket. The mother was near tears as she tried to pacify her child. The father felt he needed to say something to this man who had forfeited his seat only to be accosted by an infant's shrill wails.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is our first time flying with him. Hopefully, we'll get him calmed down soon. I know this isn't pleasant for you."

The gentleman shifted in his seat. "Listen," he said, turning his kind, handsome face toward the couple. "If that's the most I have to worry about in life, I'm good."

The husband smiled a million-watt smile. "Well, thank you,"

Gratitude did not tumble from the mother's lips, shocked as she was by this response after the other man's stark unkindness, but it expanded her heart. Her stress fell. The baby felt his mother relax, and he too calmed down presently and settled into his nurse. He slept at last as the plane navigated the black sky.

*************************************

The couple had three more children. The mother would experience many more displays of irritation or kindness from strangers, often in the same 10 minutes, while out with her children in stores, airports, or at school. There would always be those who tightened their lips, lifted their noses and gave a wide berth as she passed with her rambunctious brood, but others would come with a smile, a wistful look of "I remember those days", and easy conversation to distract the toddler from crying about candy or the older ones from sword-fighting with wrapping paper.

The woman and her husband often recalled that early sympathy and understanding from an unlikely source on an evening flight many years before, and to their fellow parents they told the tale of a young businessman who gave up his seat by the window and put things in pitch-perfect perspective on a stressful day.

Mow down your sadness, take pleasure in growing things

I was supposed to be somewhere else on Saturday, or, rather, on the way to somewhere else. With my four kids and my handsome man, I was meant to be driving north through Arizona toward Nevada. On Sunday, we were to meet family in Idaho - a whole lot of family including my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles on both side, a slew of cousins, my beautiful sister's family, and my brother Nate and his wife Natalie who would be there from England.

Instead on Saturday I was home thinking about all the family in Idaho. Plans had changed for reasons we could not have anticipated, and we would not be joining my family for this reunion. Though I understood that it was not best for our family to travel, I was sad and restless. I tried to keep busy, My man and I hatched a last minute plan to switch our kids' rooms around. Unfortunately, that whole project only messed up the house and unsettled me more. From that project I leapt into laundry and picking up, vacuuming and sweeping, hauling out trash and recycling, but eventually I had to give vent to my feelings in words. Noises of discontent I had already spread around our home like wicked fertilizer set to increase unhappy feelings. But I wanted the harvest to be clear.

"I hate this day!" I blurted out.

Then I cried.

I know that people used to head west in America a hundred plus years ago, and they would never see family again. That story has played out all over the world all throughout time when families have migrated. If you got news about how loved ones' lives were going, you thanked God for that small comfort, I suppose. But nowadays, if you get along with your family, you expect to see them at regular intervals, and Facebook doesn't count.

There were many things I wanted from this vacation. I wanted to introduce my Ella Belle to my grandparents, because she is the only one of my children they have yet to meet. I wanted to see my kids run around like little rapscallions with my sister Vinca's children, wanted them to experience camping together. I wished to talk with my brother Nate, because I see him now so little I feel that England has a larger claim to him than I have, and I can't remember the last time we had a long conversation about our lives. I hoped to spend plenty of time with my parents. I wanted to laugh with my relatives and eat good food together. And I yearned to raid a storage unit in Boise where tapes of my Dad's music repose in dust and dark, to snatch those tapes and gloat over my victory in salvaging them.

But the practical details of life sometimes crowd out the hopes or, if we're lucky, replace them with new ones.

I found an opportunity to make peace with my disappointment that evening. I concentrated on one of those practical little details of life. I got into holey jeans and tight, sundried sneakers that had been left on the patio too long, donned my sunglasses, and went out my back door to mow the lawn.

And that's when my sadness and I settled things. We mowed that grass together. It was work, but all things are better when you can see the green world. Better yet when you can smell, see and touch it. We began awkwardly but soon found our rhythm - pacing to and fro, backing up over stubborn clumps of vegetation, and chasing over small lowlands of dirt and patchy places more populated by pebbles than Bermuda grass. We squinted at the lawn to look for strips we'd neglected while the sun shone straight into our pupils from the west. And we smelt the sweet smell of freshly cut grass with each new swath of shortened blades. That smell was like balm, the incense for my meditation with disappointed hope.

When my job was done, not too exquisite but fine, I brought out my toddler son to walk on his little bare feet through the lawn with me, pointing out what Mama had accomplished.

Then we took a picture of our sumac tree's beautiful branches struggling beneath the August sun, and we went to inspect my pots of mini roses that are among the elite few flowers that I have succeeded in keeping alive and blooming.   My sadness didn't leave me as I roamed about my yard. It didn't fall away to nestle in the fluffy piles of grass clippings, content to decompose and grow into something new. But it did settle down and find peace, no longer struggling against reality. And that's a blessing.

African Sumac and Maple Tree-Hugger

This tree reminds me of Tennessee. I sit in the glider beneath it of a morning and I look up, up, up into the tangle of its branches, and I feel a little closer to that ninety-eight acres in Tennessee where I grew up. I can just about imagine I'm there again. After all, when I'm peering up at the great blue sky between those boughs, I do not see my neighbors' houses just across the fence, do not hear the traffic on all the streets that surround me, and I don't contemplate what I need from the grocery store a mere five minutes' drive away. No, I see green, and in Tennessee there was so much green; there were so many trees.

Trees are the stuff of life - literally for us humans - and in a very poetic sense for me. One of my earliest memories of loving a tree in Tennessee is of my dad lifting me up into the branches of a maple's canopy. This maple stood just outside the yard fence on a small slope above a hollow. It was the focal point of the view from the north-facing window in the living room, and it has been the focal point of some of my dreams since we left that little square house. My siblings, of course, were more than tall and strong enough to grab and climb the lowest branch of this tree and swing themselves up. For so long I never could quite get myself up behind them, though I always attempted it. My dad pushed me up, and Mama came, too. Then we spread out in that maple's boughs, the six of us, as Dad told us a story. I don't remember the tales he told on our picnics in that tree, but I can hear his baritone voice and hear Mama telling me not to venture out any farther on my chosen branch.

I haven't told my kids stories beneath this tree, but we've whispered and pointed from the glider at the sudden spying of a lizard, dragonfly or hummingbird. We've fled laughing beneath it from the spray of the sprinklers in the yard. I've lifted my oldest ones up countless times into the crook between its branches, or sat my kids in a row on its lowest limb, and I've held my babies and toddlers aloft to feel its sticky leaves. I've even dangled my own self, arms and legs limp, across a low-lying branch, pretending that I had been deposited there by a storm the night before. It hurt my tummy, and I'm sad to say, I got few laughs for my efforts and at least one definite rolling of the eyes.

You can see from the picture that the tree is sick. We've been advised to cut it down, because a fungal infection or some such thing is killing it slowly, splicing the bark from its limbs and opening it up to more disease. I won't let it go; it's the only tree in our backyard, and a backyard without a large tree in it is nowhere I want to be. We paid to thin its branches, so it wouldn't break so easily in the monsoon winds, and we've paid to have it fertilized and trimmed again, so we could invigorate it and shave off its lifeless extremities. This summer, it's been valiantly marching on. Except for its bark that scales off with any rough touch like sunburned skin, its branches are full and leafy, and if it doesn't look exactly healthy, it is still present and looks as if it means to be for a while.

And I mean to sit beneath it of a morning...as I always do.

She Went to Paris...and I Went, too (guest post by Dad)

I had a phone conversation with Dad earlier this week. While we were talking I began to have insane cravings for European dark chocolate, stuffed croissants, cheese, fruit and good wine. Why? Because Dad was telling me about his and Mama's time together in Paris. Today, knowing I would be publishing his piece about those magical three days, I went to the one bakery in town I know of where the pastry chef was actually trained in Paris and can make an excellent croissant. The bakery, Essence Cafe, was closed. I shook my fist at its dark and empty interior as we drove away. My perfect chance to celebrate my dad's Paris post was denied me.

Still, here it is - perfect for Sunday daydreaming. I hope that Dad's posts will become a regular thing here, but at the present time he is working on his fourth book, and that is more important.

Enjoy! (But if you find you start craving pastries, don't blame me.)



My beautiful wife Karen on the Pont Neuf

You've read it, or heard it – Paris is filled with Frenchmen who hate Americans, Parisiens, in general, are rude, Paris stinks, Paris is full of pickpockets, Paris is expensive, Paris is not as wonderful as you've been told, on and on and on and on – some truth, yes, but mostly nonsense.

Paris is like any other very large city, anywhere in the world, in essentials; it has its rough neighborhoods, raucous traffic, graffiti, squalor, etc. It is, however, completely unlike any other city in essence. In essence, it is something quite special and wonderfully rare. At its heart is an ancient environment, a living monument to a glorious and beautiful past, where every building seems to have been constructed with an eye to form rather than function. I have recently come to understand that my wife, the lovely and gentle Lady Karen, belongs there, in that city, more than she belongs anywhere. You see, I'm the man – the astoundingly fortunate man – that accompanied her on her first trip to that marvelous place in June of 2011. At the first, I admit, during our passage on the RER from CDG airport into the city, I was as cynically critical as any imperialistic American. It took but one evening to soften my attitude and but one day further to transform it utterly...

Our son, Nate, and our daughter-in-law, Natalie, live in Bournemouth, in southern England; consequently we see them rarely. You see, my wife and I are not people of means, so we seldom travel. This fact is due mainly to my desire to be a writer of books rather than an earner of wages – a litany of failure that is best left unlisted. We married when we were very young and very poor. From the beginning, there was a wolf at our door, and he is still there. A bit longer (and duller) in the tooth, perhaps, yet he persists in his attempts at entry. Many times, he has nearly succeeded in breaking in and consuming us. He is there, even now, as I write this.

Knowing our continuing pecuniary circumstances, my son and his wife decided to bring us to Europe to visit them. As an added surprise, they insisted on sending us to Paris for three days, in honor of their Mum's birthday. Mum (my gentle wife) was astonished and overjoyed. For my part, I accepted as graciously as possible, muttering to myself that no one needed to spend that kind of money just to put a fish such as myself so abominably far out of water.

Everything went fine at the airport, but the train ride into the city seemed to confirm my belief that Paris was nothing special. The train runs down from CDG through the northern parts of the city – dozens of blocks of squalid ghettos that would easily be at home in L.A. or Baltimore. It was unseasonably hot as well that afternoon. I remember remarking to Karen that, “I don't see anything special about this town.”

We got off at the Gare du Nord station, one of the roughest parts of Paris. Had I done my homework properly, we would have caught the Metro (a magnificent means of getting about town) and gone on to Gambetta station, near our B&B. Instead, I led my high-heeled wife by the hand through several very seamy streets until we came to a main thoroughfare and caught a cab. And there, the transformation started.

Joseph, our cabby on that day, is a native Parisien. He spoke only broken English, but knew exactly where we needed to go, took us there directly for very little money, and along the way educated us in kindly tones as to the basics for enjoying his hometown. At 36 Rue de Boyer (pronounced Vwa-yay), we met Anna, a Corsican woman that grew up in Paris and spoke very good English. After she got us settled, she offered to point us toward any one of several good restaurants in the area for supper. I told her that I preferred to get some wine and cheese and settle in for the night. Surprised, but approving of this decision, she gave us directions to the establishments where she often shopped for these things. We went out and up the Avenue de Menilmontant to Rue de Pyranees where we found Nickolas Wine shop and purchased a very fine Medoc. Coming back toward Anna's, we entered the fromagerie, bought a cheese called comte, then found a patisserie, where I went a little bit nuts – they put dark chocolate in many of their pastries – then on to a fresh-fruit shop where we acquired a small container of cherries.

We were not in “tourist” Paris, but in a real Parisien neighborhood, so in none of these shops was English spoken easily. I speak very little French, but Karen and I are both disposed to be polite, believing that people are essentially the same everywhere on the globe and, in general, will respond to a respectful and friendly attitude. Such is the case in Paris, France. Almost everyone was kind and helpful; other customers, some of whom spoke more English than the shop-owners, aided us in acquiring what we sought. And I have to say that, though fairly reasonable in cost, the quality of our purchases would have commanded outrageous prices anywhere in America – and would have been worth every penny.

That was an extraordinarily pleasant evening. We sat on our fifth-floor balcony, gazing out over the city, and enjoyed our marvelous repast as the sun went down over Sacre-Coeur and left its last fading glint on the heights of the Eiffel. Already, Paris was seducing me. Karen, more clever than I, needed no such seduction. She knew the city's worth instinctively (well, in her distant ancestry, she is, after all, French). [Although, in my most distant ancestry, I am Roman, and as I like to remind her, my people conquered her people – but that has no place here.]

We are no longer young, but on that night we felt like newlyweds. She was lovely as always, we were unconstrained by any inhibiting factors and, well, I must not continue in this vain; there is a risk of imparting too much unnecessary information...

Ah, Wednesday, a whole day to spend in Paris. We breakfasted with Anna, with the Eiffel tower a mile or so away outside her window, then went to Gambetta station to catch the Metro into town. We went to Notre Dame first. And there we found our first rude Frenchmen. You see, Notre Dame is surrounded by places of business where actual Parisiens work. Think about it; if you had to walk to work (and lunch) everyday through mobs of mostly young, uncouth, too-rich, overweight Americans, and hordes of kung-fu cameramen from China and Japan, you, too, might very well sour on the whole idea of tourism as a source of national income.

We decided to ditch the crowds. Before leaving, we got our obligatory photos of Notre Dame, with Karen in the foreground, of course. Well, without her in it, for me it's just a photo of a very impressive church. You see, she came to see Paris – I came to see her in Paris.

We strolled along the Seine westward until we came to the Pont Neuf. There have been so many movies made with handsome men kissing beautiful women on the Pont Neuf; so I wanted to kiss her there. And I did; yes, I did. I may not be handsome, but she is beautiful, so we had at least half the formula down pat.

In the island, in the middle of the Pont Neuf, I spied a doorway, just wide enough for one person to negotiate, beyond which there was the interior of a small cafe. We slipped inside. A few people were seated at the tables clustered along one wall, and none of them were speaking English. It's a family-run cafe, and a very small affair. Because of its situation among residences and places of business, and the distance from all the well-known landmarks, tourists have not found this place.

Between my inadequate French and the waiter's slightly better command of English, we managed to order. Beside the fact that my meal (an open-faced sandwich with ham and broiled goat cheese) contained the word “aveyronndaise” in it, I can say only that it is the tastiest thing I have ever eaten. Really, it's true, the French can cook. Everything that I consumed in Paris was remarkably good; and the wine, fantastic.

About one o'clock, the cafe filled with young professional people on their lunch. Sitting next to us were two men, one of whom, on hearing us speak, addressed us in very good English. He asked us how we found the place (by accident, I told him); and he went on to point out a photo of Georges Simenon on the wall. The great French writer (creator of the Paris police Detective Maigret, one of my favorites) evidently had loved this little cafe and ate there every noonday during the last decade of his life. We ordered more wine, and then coffee. What a pleasant two hours we spent there!

Then it was off to the Eiffel Tower. It was a beautiful day, so we turned away from the Metro station and decided to walk the mile or so along the Seine. Yes, we were scammed by the woman who pretended to find a gold ring on the sidewalk, then asked us, “Is this yours?”, before saying that we might as well have it, but it's good luck to give some money in return. After meeting up with others of her “sisters” further along, we were glad to have the fake gold ring, so that we could just show it to each of them as they appeared to play their little game and then simply move on.

And yes, I foolishly bought two works of art that later turned out to be prints, brazenly signed by the fakers, but Hey!, they came from the banks of the Seine, so they will always mean something to us even if they have no real value.

As we strolled westward through Napoleon's magnificent city, the Eiffel began to rise up impressively on our left. By now, I was completely under the spell of Paris.

Of course, there was still the afternoon and evening to go, and one day more. I hadn't yet endured the Hour of Panic, nor had we met the mugger.....




Continued...She Went to Paris, Part Deux



If you enjoyed this story, click on the link at left to read excerpts from the Kelven's Riddle fantasy series, another great story by my dad, Daniel Hylton.

Summer of Corn

My husband served his family grilled corn and worshtishire/lemon pepper-marinated pork chops for dinner. The pork was very good, but the corn was special. Very special and sweet.

I bit the kernels off the cob with relish, digging my teeth into memories, and then I rested my mouth against the corn as I chewed, breathing in the pungent scent with joy and closing my eyes to see a field of corn behind a little square blue house in Tennessee.

I did this until My Man's odd looks cast my way across the table clutter were hard to ignore.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "It's that good, huh?"

Yes, indeed it was. But as for what I was doing? I was taking my mental raft down a familiar stream to my childhood home, and I was gazing into the wide cornfield just over the yard fence, shimmering in the evening humidity.

For many of the years I spent growing up in that house, Mr. Wellins, a neighbor and farmer, had our landlord's permission to grow corn for his cows in that field, and the stalks spread out like sentinels to the very edge of the woods beyond. The corn grew faster than more traditional varieties, and though it was meant for the cows, it was excellent people food, too.

And people food it had to be. There was one hard summer, our summer of corn, when things were not going well for our family. Money was a precious and elusive commodity, so my dad swallowed his pride and asked Mr. Wellins if we might take some corn from the field for our family.

"Of course. Of course," was the reply. "Take as much as you want."

And, so, the summer was defined by that early ripening corn. When Dad had gone to work, our mother sent us kids out each day to pluck ears off the stalks. We sat afternoon after afternoon on the decrepit back porch littered with its disused appliances, and we shucked the corn. That job was approached with apprehension, because you never knew what you would find at the end of an ear of corn. You pulled down the husk carefully, and then breathed out with relief when you saw the tip of the golden kernels. If, however, you found a head and silk blackened and gruesome with creeping worms, you screamed and pitched the corn as far as you could out into the grass of the lawn. That is, unless you were my brother Nate; then you would leap to your feet and stick the head of corn under a sister's nose, goading her into running across the grass and shouting in desperation, "Stop! No! Drop it, Nate! Gross!"

Mom stood just inside the back door at the kitchen counter, taking the corn we had shucked and precisely shearing the kernels off their cobs with a long knife. Her mouth tight, the expression on her face determined as she then pushed off the corn into bags to freeze for the fall and winter. I snuck in periodically and grabbed a handful of fresh kernels and shoved them in my mouth. Corn for cows? No, no - it was too delicious, like consuming genuine bursts of sunshine.

What happy cows to eat it fresh like that, my favorite way. We humans had it creamed with toast, sometimes roasted from the cob, in cornbread and often cooked in some larger dish. And we had it nearly every day that summer and often twice in a day. Then we had it come fall, and then in the winter...

And so, you see? It's odd that the simple pleasure of eating corn from the cob should be a pleasure for me at all. One might suppose I would turn up my nose at any type of corn, since it was a tiresome staple of my childhood, one summer in particular. Yet, it brings me joy. Not from the can, of course, but from the cob - oh, yes!

It sticks in my teeth

And it sticks in my brain

And I welcome the stroll 

Down memory lane

Painted in the Desert and...Petrified!

Don't touch or approach wild animals - bubonic plague is a reality!

Whose reality? I wondered. Just how many cases of bubonic plague had Petrified Forest National Park been covering up over the years?  Where were they burying the bodies in order to keep the place open and its reputation as harmless adventure unmarred by such a dire threat? Man, this was serious.

But what the heck! The risk of contracting the plague wasn't about to deter me from enjoying massive brushstrokes of red, purples and blues on huge mesas that rose majestically from desert grassland. Nor would it turn me aside from grabbing the opportunity to view millions-year-old remnants of ancient trees that glistened in the afternoon sun.

You see, my husband Matthew was about to keep his promise, a promise he had made on a previous trip home from Albuquerque when we had rebuffed a chance to see one of Arizona's greatest national parks. Taking that proffered opportunity this time would cost him $10 and nearly two hours travel time off the highway when all was said and done, but it was a sacrifice he was making for me. So damn the plague!

As we gently drove into the Painted Desert at first I wondered, Well, what's the big whoop? This is like driving through the desert in like..Phoenix! Please let there be something to convince Matthew this is really something...but we took a turn on the windy park road, and suddenly I was bouncing in my seat, obsessively clicking the camera and shouting at the kids, "Look, look! Do you see the colors? Do you see them? Isn't it beautiful?"

Our first view of an extraordinary landscape

The farther we went, the more my eyes teared up as I thanked my husband again and again for taking the time to show his family more of the brilliant, wild, incredible scenery of Arizona. Though, granted, sometimes I felt we might have, by some strange tunnel in time, landed on a different world - scanning the horizon for signs of life...

The scenery occasionally collapsed in on itself like the closing of a pop-up picture book for toddlers, leaving us to stare at the simple grass whipping in the wind. As we approached a new chapter in the story called The Tepees, we were astounded to find the book unfolding again with some of the most memorable and vivid illustrations yet.

The colors you see are created by iron, carbon, manganese and more minerals...

I wished to stop at Puerco Pueblo, a Native American ruin, but the hike was just a tad too far. As elated as I was to be seeing massive stricken logs, witnesses to the age of the dinosaurs, strewn mere yards away from the road we traveled, I was not going to make any bones about missing a ruin.

We opted instead to stop at the Rainbow Forest Museum, near the end of the park road, to eat our lunch at a picnic table. On all our road trips I have never eaten at a prettier place. The desert plants graciously encircled us, and ravens glided low on the wind near by, though how they were able to manage navigating the gusts that blew the food from our hands is beyond my understanding.

The view from our picnic table

After lunch, we were determined to walk the Giant Logs Trail behind the museum which passes Old Faithful, the largest log of petrified wood in the park. Park signs warned about near constant high winds and about the need for sun protection - hats, sunscreen, long sleeves. As we stepped out on the path with our children, the winds buffeted us badly, making me fear one of the kids would be blown away into the wilds to be raised by coyotes. The trail led up and down broad steps that wandered between broken logs of petrified wood such as this one:

The great American flag flying over Rainbow Forest Museum

The sun did indeed beat down on us (this is Arizona, after all), but in order to keep hats on our heads in that roaring wind, we would have needed to screw them into our skulls with some heavy hardware. As it was, we braved it, and I held my baby Danny's hat over his delicate blond scalp as best I could.

With joy my eldest daughter and I pointed out the colors in the wood to each other as she held tight to my free hand. The gratification I felt when we completed the trail was a beautiful thing, but more so because the experience truly was a gift from my Matthew.

My Man driving in our van through the Painted Desert

He fought his road trip killer instinct, the one that pushes him to drive and drive with only stops for gas and restroom breaks, just so he could give his wife an experience she craved, an experience she'll never forget. An experience his kids will remember, too. And so, with love, this blog post is dedicated to him.

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.

***************     ****************



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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Dream Blog: No Where Near Home

I didn't think to plan. I started driving. There was no definite destination, just any place out of the city. But I didn't take anyone with me, or I didn't think I had at first.

It's very unusual for me to just drive by myself. I even want to go grocery shopping as a family. So to take a road trip alone, even just a simple day trip, was huge.

I don't think I got out of the car, though, so it probably doesn't comply with the standards of adventure. Anyway, it was on the way home to the family, when late afternoon was setting in, that things got interesting.

I woke up. Yes, woke up at the steering wheel knowing I had been driving for a while in my sleep. Thank heaven, the divided highway leading to heaven knows where was absolutely empty of other traffic beside my minivan, but I wondered just how much my vehicle had meandered among the lanes while I was out. There were some buildings up ahead. What I could discern as I squinted through the windshield led me to believe they were ruins of some sort. (Why was I always headed toward ruins?) As I got closer, however, I realized they were modern buildings designed adobe-style to fit in with the desert environs, to blend in with the tans and earthy hues of the landscape. Beyond them a mesa rose high above the desert.

That's when I got pulled over, stopped. I didn't hear any sirens. I didn't feel the tightness in my belly from nerves knowing I was in trouble with the law. I simply remember turning to see a black policeman behind me leaning back against the hood of his patrol car as if he'd been there all day observing me. He wore a puffy blue jacket unlike any I've ever seen another officer wear. It crinkled and crunched as he adjusted his arms across it.

He was laughing as he queried amicably, "Where do you think you're going?"

How on earth did he know I was off-track? How long had he followed my van while I slept?

"Back to the city. I don't know where I am," I stated. I didn't say I'd fallen asleep at the wheel for a spell; he knew that, but I wasn't going to admit it voluntarily

Again he laughed. He was so darn likable. He was playing guardian angel.

"You're more than an hour away now," he said. "You can drive on a little ways to Highway 44 (sounded unfamiliar), and take that home. Or you can turn around the way you came and take the turnoff you missed. But, like I said, more than an hour."

That's when I felt the tightness in my belly. More than an hour. Matthew would wonder where I was; the kids would miss me. And this desert was lonely. The buildings looked as if they were about to be swallowed by it, no matter how well they attempted to blend in. I didn't see a single human being among them. And Danny Sammy would be hungry, needing a nurse. Shoot. I couldn't even see the junction with this Highway 44 ahead.

Suddenly I was back inside the van, giving a sippy cup of water to Danny Sam in his carseat. He was, after all, here with me (one of those little adjustments my mind made to decelerate my worry). Should I nurse him? Here, along the edge of the highway at nowhere? I'd rather not. Besides, he wasn't asking for one. If I could just get him home before he got really hungry. I hopped back in the front seat and started to pull away from the gravel back onto the pavement, anxious to be away from this lonely stretch of highway near a modern ghost town.