A favorite Uncle

I was a cute little squirt but a brat sometimes, too

When my family lived in Tennessee, we didn't often see relatives, no regular Sunday visits with grandparents, no holiday gatherings, no large birthday celebrations. Most of our extended family lived in Idaho where my parents grew up, first met, married and welcomed all four of their children.

I loved growing up in Tennessee, but I acknowledge that more time with the many aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents would have been welcome and enriching. However, I also have very vivid memories of the rare, happy occasions when we did have visitors to that 98 acre farm in Tennessee.

Lately, I have been thinking of the good times we had when my Uncle Art, with whom my mother was very close growing up, came to see us and of the special, simple memory I have of my uncle's kindness to me.

Uncle Art's family lived in Florida, and they came up one summer over Independence Day to celebrate with us.

For the most part I remember running around with my cousins - often down the lane to the creek, sometimes in the field, hula-hooping and playing in the huge yard and sloped driveway.

I also remember that I was somewhat of a brat at that stage in my life, a not uncommon ailment of children in general but of the youngest child in particular. Honestly, I was probably past somewhat and fully in the territory of awful.

The memories may not be wholly accurate, but I seem to recall the night of the 4th of July very well. Dad and Uncle Art shot off fireworks from the yard into the field, and Dad did his best to corral our large Labrador Reuben to keep him from chasing after them and burning his mouth when they plummeted and he tried to retrieve them.

We kids watched the fireworks, but we were frenetic, running back and forth between the house - where there was probably food - and the side yard where our parents sat in lawn chairs beneath a starry but now smoking sky.

Now every spring and summer in Tennessee we had to encounter a bunch of creatures, some not very pleasant to look upon. One of those creatures that I hated the most was the slug. They would slime their way across our front porch in hordes it seemed. Though some salt poured on generously would solve the problem, it was a cruel and revolting solution - possibly more disgusting than the large, squishy, slippery slugs themselves.

On that night I was coming out of the house barefoot in a rush, and, though I would typically navigate around them in horror, I stepped on a large slug full force before I knew it.

I began caterwauling, bemoaning my terrible fate on such a beautiful, celebratory night. I shrieked my way around the side of the house where I attempted to tell the adults of my horrendous circumstances and the thick smear of slime which I could even still feel on the bottom of my foot. My parents had very little patience with me, I think; a slug is a slug, and that's the shakes when you go barefoot on a warm, humid night in the South. But I was beside myself with the horror of it all, inconsolable.

My Uncle Art was the one adult who had pity on me. He took me on his lap gently, hugged me and spoke soothingly to remind me that a slug really is just a slug, another thing of the world. He probably assured me that my foot would surely not fall off, that I would survive this night, and that I should watch the splendid fireworks over the field to distract myself. I don't know exactly what he said or what he did to calm me, but I do remember feeling loved and comforted and cared for. My hope for a fun night was renewed.

It's such a little thing, I know, but I still remember what my Uncle Art did for me when I had the misfortune to step on a slug. And I remember very well that though I had not perhaps really seen Uncle Art before that summer and didn't see him again for many, many years after, I took a shine to him very quickly, and he has remained one of my favorite uncles to this day.

Letter to Mama

Letters are intimate things. They are also often more informal. It takes the pressure off to allow myself to write letters here to those I love, and then I can more easily embrace the ideas and memories that are sitting on my brain at the moment. No need to make them perfect. Just let them go.

Dear Mama,

A couple weeks ago I was dreading the approach of Christmas - the shopping, the shipping, the "is this fair, is it all even?", and the constant decision-making. I love the idea of Santa Claus, but I laughed a few days ago wondering if I like the jolly old guy so much, because if he would truly just come around, it would take a load off, you know?

But then I perked up. Matthew came home with flowers one day at lunch. I spoke to my good friend Camille on the phone and now have the hope of seeing her family. And, with the magic that happens every year, I began to think about our lives in Tennessee, our Christmases there. Then I began to sing Christmas carols with Ana and to look at holiday decor catalogs, and my world was righted.

Do you know what I was remembering the other day? I was remembering that one cold night when I was eight, nine or ten. We were returning home as a family from shopping, and the car broke down or the bridge was out...or both...and we had to leave the car and walk home in the dark on the country roads, crunching leaves. It felt like an adventure to trek home in the dark. I was skipping in the cold breeze, because I had on a new pair of black booties you and Papa had bought me for school. I loved them. They had the little tabs on the sides, old-fashioned and charming. I still love those kinds of boots.

Later that night I got very sick, remember? And the space heater in my bedroom didn't work. So you pulled me into your room to sleep between you and Papa. All night you were up and down checking my temperature, very high, and making me drink glass after glass of water, bathing me with cool washcloths, then putting me in warm sweaters. It was like torture! But my fever broke. You took good care of me then and so many other times.

And today I suddenly remembered the time we went over to the Andersen's for a simple holiday gathering. (Perhaps it was the usual cup of cocoa I was preparing to drink this morning that brought back the memory.) We didn't have to go over the river and through the woods to get to them - though in those Tennessee boonies neighbors sometimes seemed like the next frontier - but down the lane and across the creek. I still can recall their little farmhouse quite well, perched precariously on that steep hill above the county road, their tractors and cows roaming in the field behind. I still see the narrow steps climbing from the road to their front door, and from there you could turn to look at our home across the creek between barren deciduous trees. As I remember, though, we went around to the back kitchen door to be let in.

Their home was very simply decorated, and the gathering was a quiet one as Mrs. Andersen stirred hot chocolate in a humble saucepan on the stove. I don't remember whether the cookies she served with it were homemade or store bought, only that they weren't as good as yours. I loved getting the hot chocolate, but for me there was no one to talk with as she had two big boys who liked my older sisters far more than they ever noticed me. I probably stayed around that little farm kitchen to listen to your conversation with that gentle woman. She had a very good heart but few and quiet words. Her kitchen was like her, warm and unassuming.

And Mr. Andersen, if possible, was even quieter than his wife. I think he and Dad mostly sat in companionable silence with every now and then a word floating between them.

I wonder now why that is such a persistent Christmas memory? But it is, and a very pleasant one. Perhaps it just breathes simplicity and purity and a time before Pinterest put so much pressure on celebrations. Ha, I say that, and I'm not even on Pinterest!

This letter didn't quite take the turn I thought it would. I thought I would talk about how I'm beginning to see this first year without my children at home as my "lost year", a time of rediscovery like a backpacking trip across Europe after high school. Maybe talk about my writing disappointments and how hard it is to be a woman. Maybe admit that sometimes I kind of want another baby.

But, no. I will say this, though: I miss you, and I do wish we could sit over fancy coffee or simple tea and talk for a long while. The more I grow in this parenting business, the more clearly I see all that you gave and gave up for our family, Mama, and I appreciate it.

And, boy, do I appreciate the memories! Especially now as Thanksgiving approaches, so many scents, sights and sounds remind me of what you did to make our home a home - all while working with Papa in the woods, too - and I am so grateful.

So rest assured that as I bast the turkey, whip together the sweet potato souffle, knead that dough for the Parker House rolls, and roll out the pie pastry, I'll be thinking of you, Mama Darling.

Love,

Hoodoo

Water for the Navajo Nation

At the little square home in Tennessee where I grew up, our water was pumped to our house from a little, mineral-rich spring that ran at the bottom of the yard beneath some spindly trees and overgrown grass.

The pump required electricity, so if we were unable to pay the electricity bill or a storm came and knocked out power or flooded the pump, we were without running water in our home for days or, on rare occasions, for weeks. At such times we hauled water in five gallon buckets from the lovely creek that ran beneath a culvert halfway down our lane. This water was used to wash clothes and flush toilets. A little way up that creek, on a different path, a more pristine spring gurgled straight out of a ridge, cold and pure-tasting. We used rinsed milk jugs to collect water for drinking, cooking and washing dishes from this precious water source.

Though we didn't mind the topped-off milk jugs, we kids used to hate hauling the five gallon buckets of creek water back up the lane to the house, balancing it between two of us as we shared the handle that bit into our palms as we stumbled along. It was such a chore, especially in the heat and humidity of summer.

Often, instead of hauling water for bathing, we simply bathed in the creek on hot days, taking our soap into the water, not thinking about the microbes we were lathering into our hair and scrubbing onto our skin. It was like swimming....with a purpose...and a more beautiful bathing area could not have been desired.

Looking back now, our family was very lucky to have such a beautiful, sustaining creek just a few minutes walk down the lane from our home.

I thought about this childhood experience yesterday as I watched CBS Sunday Morning, an indispensable Sunday tradition I inherited from my dad. The feature story was about how many people of the Navajo Nation have never in all their lives had running water in their homes. Their water is delivered by a Navajo woman named Darlene Arviso who drives dozens of miles each day in a huge tanker to pour precious water into the plastic storage barrels of homes. 

In the story it points out that most of us use around 100 gallons each day, but individuals of the Navajo Nation get by on a fraction of that - sometimes a mere 7 gallons.

Truly, it's a travesty and an embarrassment that we here in the Phoenix desert flood our grass yards with water, maintain our pristine pools with hundreds of gallons annually and take long, relaxing showers with water sources that were allocated for our needs long ago when the Native American tribes had no say in the rights to water that their people had been using and respecting long before we discovered them. It's astounding that there are people in our own country who would not even have access to drinking water if it weren't for the efforts of a few, dedicated individuals. Even so these people struggle to eek every last drop from their delivered water as long as they can, and what must they give up to do that? Clean clothes? Baths? Refreshing sips throughout a hot, dusty day?

I am a big believer in solidarity, meaning that if we know there are people who go without basic nutritious food daily, we should make an effort to remember them when we crave ice cream and feel like running to the store for such a trivial desire. We should remember them when we want to stuff our faces although we're not really hungry. In just such a way, I believe in remembering the Navajo Nation and so many other tribes and communities on this planet who struggle to have clean sources of water every day, and in thinking of them I choose not to grow a grass yard in the desert summer; I choose not to run the water in the shower as I'm lathering my hair and body with soap; I choose not to just dump "extra" unused water down the drain when I could use it for my plants

Being a citizen of this world means remembering our fellow citizens. I try - though I often fail - to continue to grow in solidarity with others who do not have access to what my family has, and remembering what my family has, I thank God that I have it and try to NEVER take it for granted.

But there is more that we can do, you and I, than merely reflect on the hardships of others. George McGraw, as it mentioned in the CBS story, runs a nonprofit called DigDeep which is endeavoring to dig a very deep well for the people of the Navajo Nation. In contributing to the Navajo Water Project, we can and will support the dignity and right to life of our American neighbors.

Wupatki and the Grand Canyon

I feel badly for my city kids sometimes....often, actually.

During the Tennessee summers of my childhood, I swam in a creek down our dirt lane, explored acres of woods, picked wildflowers, ran through buzzing fields with dogs, picked plump blackberries in Mr. Spann's field while his cows stared, and laid on top of hay bales with my siblings, slowly toasting in the heat while the smell of fresh, green things permeated my hair.

Ah, the life! En mi corazon...I am a country girl. (That's part grammatically-incorrect Spanish/part English, but that's how I think it in my head.)

Don't feel too sorry for my kids, though. They've seen nice city parks and crop islands in the suburbs. They get together with friends far more often than I ever did. We have taken memorable family trips to California, New Mexico, Idaho, Virginia and Hawaii. They have splashed in the Pacific Ocean, surveyed the Sandia Mountains, waded in the Payette River, seen the battlefield of Gettysburg and, incredibly, have shared the sand with sea turtles on a North Shore beach thanks to their Uncle Steve.

You can't take them with you.

But Nature is not their habitat. The concrete jungle with its token, manipulated plants is. And we do not have a cabin "up North". We cannot ship our kids to a relative's farm in the country for a few weeks every year. We have no - I repeat - zero camping equipment. Yet this summer with nary a family trip on the horizon, we had to do something for our city kids who do not know what they are habitually missing.

For days I searched the web with bloodshot eyes, scouring locations and cabins and National Parks' websites, looking for a deal at the ideal spot, and then it hit me as I laid in bed one night: the Grand Canyon.

Only one hitch. My husband has a traveling philosophy: been there, done that. If you have ever been there and done that then you are exempt from ever having to see or do it again. We have a collection of magnets on our fridge, a proud list of our "have beens". We had been to the Grand Canyon with my sister Vinca's family nine years ago, but Berto and Ana were too young to remember, and Ella and Daniel were not born yet. Native Arizonans all, they had not truly been there and done that. Plus, we forgot the magnet. My husband kindly agreed to go for the kids' sake.

And for mine.

Because not too far from the Canyon is another place, one that has been on my list of "to see" for years: Wupatki National Monument. Not only is it fun to say, but it has remnants of several Native American pueblos. I requested we go, and Matthew obliged.

I then exclaimed, "I forgot this yearning I have deep inside of me to see Native American ruins!"

To which statement Berto retorted while rolling his eyes, "Mama, not even Native Americans go see Native American ruins!"

On Matthew's suggestion we invited dear friends, some of my favorite people in the world, to join us. We packed a picnic lunch bursting with fresh fruit that always tastes glorious after a hot hike, and we caravaned north to see Sunset Crater and Wupatki before our family ventured on to the Canyon the next day.

Cool breezes, persistent smell of pine, tall fire-red and yellow wildflowers and gray volcanic rock welcomed us as we began our first hike at Sunset Crater, a volcano that erupted 900 years ago. Per my habit, I hugged a pine and got army ants on my arms. Ah, nature's varied gifts!

I've never liked gray as a color, but Mother Nature wears it well.

The Native Americans viewed that ancient volcanic eruption as a cleansing, renewal. "Now that," I said to my friend Geraldine, "is optimism!"

Wupatki is on the same scenic loop as Sunset Crater, and scenic is an understatement. The high desert is gorgeous, its many and subtle shades of green in stark contrast with the red earth and sandstone. It will knock you out.

Wukoki Pueblo

Geraldine and I were in awe, but I was pulled back down to earth by the need to tell my kids to stay off the walls and not risk their lives on tiny ledges.

We drove on to Wupatki Pueblo, the largest with a community gathering space, a ball court and numerous rooms.

Wupatki

I found a lavender flower growing in a room there.

Berto found preserved tarantulas in the visitor's center. I've always hoped to see one in the wild.

But the greatest thing I discovered was the blow hole near the enormous ball court. It had a grate bolted over it, but it blew cool air up into your face and hair from very deep underground. The Native Americans believed it was the breath of the Great Spirit. To me it was the true scent of Mother Nature without the perfume of vegetation. It was dank, but I loved it. It reminded me of deep, lonely caverns.

After exploring Wupatki we went on to the box canyon ruins and Lomaki Pueblo. When Adolfo, Geraldine's husband, suggested we could all live in these dwellings by a gorge, they taking one ruin and we another, I agreed. It's nice to dream about existing in such a lovely, lonely landscape, completely dependent on our own will to survive and vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

Box Canyon Ruins

Box Canyon

Lomaki Pueblo in the distance

But such a life doesn't exist here anymore. It's a national monument, preserved for us and future generations, and thank God for that.

And thank God for my darling husband who is always willing to take a hike among Native American ruins just to please his wife.

As for the Grand Canyon? It is what it is, an incomprehensibly huge and beautiful hole in the ground crowded with people. You wish you could free fall and then rise up from its depths on beating wings like an eagle, going off to explore secluded, mysterious places. We walked away from the crowds on the paved path, venturing to stand near the edge several times, clasping Ella and Daniel's hands as we peered across this great divide. Berto, Ana and I did a little rock climbing there, descending onto a big finger ledge. While we scrambled up boulders, an enormous orange butterfly alighted first on Ana and then on me. People pay to go to butterfly wonderlands for just such an experience, and we found it amid the surreal scenery of the Grand Canyon.

Truly, amazing things happen when you get out in nature.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

I hit the sauce three Sunday nights ago. After upending an entire box of ornaments on the floor, I knew the wrong Christmas spirit had gotten to me. Normally a family tree-trimming party wouldn't drive me to drink, but it just so happened that this one took place without ornament hangers, and those ancient, taken-for-granted, rusty ornament hangers - wherever they may be, God rest their souls - refused to show up for the occasion, like the Van Trapp family singers in "The Sound of Music".

I ended up in high dudgeon, ferreting through closets, cabinets, and storage boxes with increasing negative energy. The more I searched futilely, the more my heart shrunk a few sizes too small until I was tempted to tell my kids to grab some glitter, stale cookies and silly string and have at the tree.

With all the insanity that I heaped upon myself just within those first days of December, I - very predictably - began to reminisce about the "good old days", the "simpler times" of yore: my childhood Christmases.

How lovely those tree-trimming days were, how organized and how traditional in rural Tennessee! I thought. But as I watched Matthew and Berto, my oldest son, wrapping and unwrapping and rewrapping out artificial tree in lights, fussing all the way, I had similar visions of my dad uttering choice words under his breath as he battled strings of old lights and a metal tree stand with a profound preference for a tilted tree.

Most years in my childhood, we walked across the field behind our house and into our own woods a couple of weeks into December, Dad's loyal Lab Rueben carrying an ax in his mouth. Mama was the evergreen aficionado, so she had no qualms about turning down cold our suggestions for trees with "character", instead marching us through that forest until we found the fullest, tallest, most evenly branched tree that would fit into our humble living room. Hauling it home was a snap; Dad did all the work while we kids crowded behind, trying to jump over its tip-top. When we reached the porch, we stood back - except for the poor kid assigned to keep the door flat against the wall - while he and Nate shoved that big tree in the house and leaned it in the far corner.

Next we ascended up to and then rummaged through that dimly lit lair of poisonous spiders, our attic. Mom and Dad did most of the reconnoitering while we kids supported them by digging industriously through boxes of abandoned, broken toys. When they finally found the Christmas boxes, Dad hauled them down the rickety, fold-up stairs.

That evening he wrangled first with the temperamental tree stand, sometimes nailing it loudly to the floor, and then with the bunched lights, muttering sweet nothings under his breath at every tangle and busted bulb while we kids giggled into our sleeves, sometimes using those sleeves to wipe our mouths of the hot cocoa Mama had made.

Every year there was the same debate between Mom and Dad: to flock or not to flock. I'm pretty sure Mom kept hidden canisters of flocking in the dark recesses of the attic to conjure up when she got her way. She loved a white tree. It must have reminded her of  growing up in Idaho. Dad was against anything unnatural, and a snowy tree was hardly likely in Tennessee - even in winter - indoors. Plus like all of us, I think he hated the fake-snow initiation, for as Mom busily flocked that poor tree with a wicked smile of delight upon her face, the rest of us were standing twenty yards back, coughing and waving our hands in the air to move the cloud of chemicals off to our neighbors. It was a toxic holiday experience. Sure the tree looked nice and snowy, but when we had adorned the tree with miscellaneous decorations, white residue abided on our fingers for weeks, evidence of Mom's dastardly deed to that poor evergreen tree...

Finally, when prep work was done and Dad and Mom sat on the couch, reconciled, they began to pass out the decorations to us kids. The colored balls came first, and a color was assigned to each child.

"Blue for my firstborn," Dad said to Vinca as he handed her the first ornament.

"Gold for my golden-haired girl," he said to Annie with her long, blonde hair.

"Red for my only son." That one for Nate, born on Dad's birthday.

Lastly, he handed me a green ball. "And green for my nature girl." I was his only bonafide tree-hugger.

After that we each took turns coming to the couch for the next ornament, treasured ornaments like Natie's little baseball player and my felt snowman and a suncatcher unicorn of Annie's. I guess it was because of that yearly ritual that I remembered our Christmases being calmer, more traditional. Our ornaments were always the same year to year, the only additions being any baubles we made in school, like clothespin soldiers. Our tree topper never varied and was always welcomed excitedly each December. She was a smaller paper angel with short, gold curls and a plastic hoop and face, humble like our home. We four kids took turns putting her atop that tree, her little hymnal bent in her tiny fingers. She had blonde hair and had been purchased after Vinca was born. Vinca and Annie both were towheaded as babies and toddlers, and the angel reminded my dark-haired parents of their first baby girl.

Ah, those were the days! And yet I think that perhaps - just perhaps - those days were simpler because we were poorer; we had less to fuss over and about. Nevertheless, as my parents hunted with four rowdy rascals for a tree, dug through a dirty, spider-infested attic, and wrangled with lights and an heirloom stand, they probably had some stressful Christmas moments. But - God bless them - they were good at keeping traditions, even the tradition of arguing over flocking.

As for my family? After replacing those AWOL hangers with a package of flashy fresh gold ones for a whopping 79 cents, I practically threw my kids' special ornaments at them the moment they woke up; whoever awoke first got to attack their ornaments in mass before school. It was a race to see how quickly in spare moments we could deck the tree, because all the boxes piled in my tiny living room were freaking me out and causing me to OCDrink. There was no rhyme or ritual, I'm afraid. And, yet, my children's excitement over favorite ornaments, many from Aunt Vinca, was not abated by my slapdash approach to decorating.

And this year my son Berto just happened to find our first angel for the top of the tree. For years I've looked for her. She had to be simpler and considerably smaller than many I saw in stores with elaborate and wildly different attire. Berto found her one happy Sunday afternoon in a discount store as we waited for takeout pizza. Unlike the angel of my childhood, she is fragile. But as our lights reflect off her simple white porcelain, she has, along with our abundance of eclectic ornaments, helped me to reclaim that good, old-fashioned Christmas spirit I sometimes think I left behind with that little girl in Tennessee.

Ghost of Behavior Past by Daniel Hylton

Throughout the late '70s and into the early '80s, while my marriage was new and my children were young, I worked for a large Southeastern construction company.

I was good at my job and I made a lot of money.  A lot of money - especially for those years. There were times when I would have two or three thousand dollars worth of un-cashed checks in my wallet.

By 1984, however, I had apparently tired of being successful and making prodigious sums of money.  I wanted something less.

I decided to leave my high-paying job constructing transcontinental power lines and try my hand at - of all things - songwriting.  So, I moved to rural Tennessee, about an hour west of Nashville.  Now, because one needs free time to pursue songwriting, it is very difficult to maintain steady employment.  As a consequence of this fact, I odd-jobbed, taking temporary work where I could find it, gradually descending into poverty, dragging my young wife and children with me.  (Why Karen did not leave me for a man with a job and a fully functioning brain, taking the children with her, I will never fully understand.)

Desperate to combine my inexplicable need to be creative with my obviously explicable need for cash, I began to enter the various songwriting contests hosted by the nightspots around Nashville.

And I won a few, sometimes winning ten or twenty dollars, enough for milk, bread, and maybe a pair of shoes for one of the little ones.  Usually, though, the prize was something insubstantial, such as getting your name written on the wall in magic marker, or a free bottle of beer.

Then I heard about this contest on Music Row itself, at a more upscale joint called The Dive.

The winner would get one hundred dollars.

One Hundred Dollars!

Now, I know that doesn't sound like much now, but back then a hundred bucks paid for most of a month's rent or bought groceries for the family for a whole week.  And the contest, at the time, was being held weekly, so there would be a continuing chance to win.

On the appointed night, I put on my best pair of dark blue Levis, my crispest white shirt, tuned up my guitar, and headed into town to The Dive.

There were a lot of really good songwriters present that night, and I heard many tunes that made me think I might be way out of my league.  I was so nervous that my bladder sent me scurrying to the men's room again and again.  Nonetheless, when they called my name, I screwed up my courage and went up on stage which was occupied by just a stool and a mike.  I sat down with my guitar on my knee and spun to face the crowd.  For a moment, I thought they'd all left the building.  You see, though the stage was fully lit, the patrons sat in the dimness beyond the footlights - and the lights shining on me were so bright that I could barely make out the room, let alone individuals in the crowd, which was the largest group of people that I had ever confronted when armed only with a musical instrument.

I mumbled something by way of introduction and immediately swung into my first song, briskly setting pick to guitar string.

I looked out, opened my mouth -

- and forgot the words to the song.  A song which I wrote.

There followed then a long - way too long - awkward pause while, like the proverbial deer, I gazed into the headlights of oncoming disaster and frantically searched the dark recesses of my skull for phrases that I recognized and might possibly utter in tune-like fashion while strumming a guitar.

And then, as the disapproving silence thickened, the words finally came.

"Alrighty, folks," I stated brightly, affecting what I hoped would be a magnificent recovery, and once again put pick to string.  "Here we go....."

One strum, and - Boing! - the pick slipped from my fingers, ricocheted underneath the strings, and disappeared through the sound hole into the dark interior of my guitar.  I looked down, stunned.

And my brain froze.

Forgetting in that terrible moment that there were two or three spare picks in my pocket, and sadly forgetting that there were also a couple of hundred people immediately to my front, I upended the guitar, holding it aloft, shaking it above my head while I desperately tried to dislodge the pick from the black hole whence it had gone.

Sporadic chuckles arose here and there from among the crowd as I continued to wildly agitate the instrument over my head, willing the pick to appear.  Then, as my struggles continued unabated and my hope for a rescued pick remained unrealized, more chuckles, giggles, and outright laughter swelled from the shadowed gathering.

That awful collection of sound caused my brain to lurch forward for one brief moment.  And in that moment, I remembered the extra picks in my pants pocket.  Turning a deaf ear to the scattered giggles and the occasional rude suggestion, I thought bravely - I can still salvage this.

Lowering the guitar to one side, holding it by the neck, I stood, reaching into my pocket.

And the room erupted.

Gales of laughter beat upon me like the waves of a storm-wracked ocean.

Puzzled by the reason for this obvious - and horrifying escalation - of my humiliation, I stared dumbly out at the shadowy crowd for a long moment; and then I looked down.

And the reason for the raucous shouts of laughter became immediately obvious.

Evidently, on my last trip to the men's room, I had neglected to zip up the fly in my blue jeans.

Protruding from that most private of all clothing apertures, extending stiffly outward for five or six inches, was the crisply starched tail of my best white shirt.

The crowd, by that time, had decided that I was not in fact a contestant, but rather the comedic relief.

I, in that same moment, decided that I was done, finished, my short-lived "career" over.

Turning, I fairly leapt from the stage and ran for it, pausing in the artists' room just long enough to sling my guitar into its case, and then I bounded for the side door.  I was running like a rabbit by the time I reached the parking lot.

Three-quarters of an hour later, utterly dejected, having had forty-five long, miserable minutes to ponder one of the most embarrassing evenings of my life, I pulled into the driveway of our modest home.  Karen met me at the door.  I could do nothing but stand there, head down, guitar case in hand, my heart and my dreams squashed like insects upon the walkways of life.

"How did it go?"  She asked - and then I managed lift my head and she saw my face.  "Honey - what happened?"

The kids were in bed, so I put my guitar away while she made us a cup of cocoa; then we went into the living room and sat down on the couch, where I stared down at the carpet and glumly related to her the events of the evening.

It was about the time that I was telling of the unzipped fly and protruding shirt-tail that I heard the stifled guffaw emanating from the general direction of the love of my life.

Startled, I looked over at her.

You know how it is when you want to laugh but know that you shouldn't?  Like when you're at a wedding, or at a funeral, or in church, or like when your beloved husband is laying out the sad details of his recent and raw humiliation, and something just strikes you as too funny?  And the eruption of good humor is abruptly way too urgent to contain or suppress?

You get a terrible case of the internal giggles, your shoulders shake, the corners of your mouth decide that they simply must turn upward despite your best efforts at maintaining decorum, and your eyes water.  Yeah, we all know what that is like.  It has happened to us all.

Well, that was my gentle and genteel wife as I told my tale of woe.

Apparently, she could see the whole thing very clearly with her mind's eye.

She tried to be sympathetic, God bless her; she really did try.

Alas, the droll aspect of the whole sordid affair was too much for her, and eventually she had to gain release.  To this day, however, I am not convinced that it was absolutely necessary it devolve into her lying back against the cushions, gasping for breath as she pointed at me and giggled uncontrollably.  The only consolation I have is that - though she won't admit it - I'm pretty sure she wet herself.

Oh, well.

There is an epilogue to this sorry tale.  Two, actually.

A week later, I tapped a reservoir of courage, went back to The Dive, sang my three songs - and won.  And they had raised the stakes.  First prize was now one hundred and fifty bucks.  The next day, to celebrate, we took the kids to McDonalds for Happy Meals.

The second epilogue is not quite so uplifting as the first, at least for me.  You see, every now and then - as recently as just the other day, in fact - I will find Karen leaning over a counter or sprawled over the back of a chair, fairly convulsing with good humor.  Looking up at me with streaming eyes, she will tender the question between eruptions of giggles.

"Remember that time you went into Nashville to sing in that contest?"

Yes.  Yes, I do.

And it's still not funny.

One doesn't require ghosts, I guess, when one is haunted by his past.



Daniel Hylton is the author of the recently completed Kelven's Riddle series.

Treasured Spaces

I wish my kids had a tree house. Heck! I wish I had a tree house.

A family friend built one for his daughters. It was quite simple but sturdy, properly made with a rope ladder going up through the floor and with windows on each side. He said he hoped that soon the tree's branches would engulf it, so it could be a hideaway.

We have an African Sumac tree in our backyard, a lovely creature with branches not at all stingy with their shade and expanse. A fungus is slowly stripping the bark from it, however, and will likely kill it, so I wonder if its branches are strong enough for such an abode of childhood.

Every Arizona summer the poor thing suffers in the afternoon sun. Would we dare add to its burden?

But, oh, the memories it does provide and the great potential to provide more!

In Tennessee, my siblings and I had a chicken coop for our playhouse. We didn't have to share it with the chickens, for there weren't any. It was a grey, weather-beaten old thing, a relic of a by-gone time. It stood in a hollow that served as the property's landfill (yes, we were that far out in the boonies). On the path into the hollow was a sassafras tree. I used to love to crush its leaves between my palms and then smell the wonderful aroma of them as I passed. The coop had two levels. The first had a dirt floor and was very boring, nothing to see but four dour walls unless you looked up to your right at the open second floor. The only way to reach this second level was to climb a very knobby support beam on the eastern wall. It was brutal, because your hands and legs would get jabbed and scrapped as you made your ascent, and splinters were a likely souvenir of your efforts. Still, once you grasped the lip of that second floor, you were able to stand and gaze out across the field to the woods or the house from behind a half wall. You still had a roof to make you feel as if you were in a secret space and to shield you from rain.

It took me years to climb that beam by myself. I was either stranded on that boring, bare, enclosed dirt floor, or I was hoisted up the beam with help from my siblings. When the day came that I could scramble up to that open, lovely space all by myself, it was a right of passage; I had achieved equality and freedom. Those were the days when my brother Natie and I would take his pop gun rifle up and play cowboys and Indians. Our imaginations were as open as the view from east to west, the view to the landfill thankfully blocked by the solid north-facing wall. Because the denizens of Nature were playing their games before us in the field, there was always something to inspire.

Each of us kids must have gone up to the old chicken coup by ourselves sometimes, too, seeking escape in solitude, in catching the breeze in our hair, in listening to the sounds of thousands of insects, in surveying our verdant Southern home.

I wish my kids had something like that. I've dreamed of what they might have. For instance, I've pictured a large, airy room with tables, chairs, paints, clay and bookshelves filled with all the great tales of childhood lining the wall - a playroom for them and their friends where the messy, adventurous pursuits of childhood reign supreme or where a quiet read can be had in a charming window seat. Such a space seems so much more likely than an abandoned-chicken-coop hideout in the city. Our house in this city is small, however. There is no such room, no room for such a space when our kids can barely navigate the bedrooms they share. And, really, isn't a place outdoors, in the bright light and fresher air, always better for adventure anyway?

Our enormous eucalyptus trees in the front yard offer some inspiration with their large drooping branches that nearly trail the ground now. Sitting between them you can look up and feel transported to somewhere secret and alone. Often my youngest two will go stand in the midst of their cascade of satiny, burgundy-trimmed leaves after I pick up the kids from school. They try to hide behind the wide trunks with their planks of peeling bark before I can exit the van. It never fails that I ask, "Where's Ella and Daniel?" before I think to look for the peek of tennis shoes there. It's the faintest whisper of a secret place, I suppose, but I wish they had something more.

With nary a chicken coop in sight, I do really wish they had a tree house.

 



Bring Back the Joy - guest post by Valencia Bowman

We can all relate to this one. At one time or another, we have all felt like the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge.

I am very honored to introduce my big sister Vinca for this guest post. May she inspire you as much as she did me.

It's that special time of year- that time of year when you look askance at your neighbor's gaudy decorations, and complain that they brighten your bedroom too much at night; when you swear at the driver who starts backing up at the mall without checking to see if there's a car already in motion; when you go to the mall to find that one extra gift for your kids that you just know they'll love; when you snap at those same kids that "I'll get the decorations out tomorrow, ok?!"- and then you watch their bright little faces fall, and they leave the room because they don't want to be a bother.

Wait...what? Are we talking about the Christmas season? When did this time of year become a time of stress, pressure, anxiety, anger and impatience? When did we stop feeling joy, and hope, and peace? Perhaps a better question would be: Why? In our society today, there are fewer people who go to Mass, or a special church service of some sort, on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I know several families who celebrate Christmas without believing in the Christ Child whose birthday it is. To many, it's a season to give, and get, expensive gifts; to join in the whirlwind of parties; to add to the clutter of our overflowing lives. We have taken Christ out of Christmas. As a result, we have taken the joy, hope and peace out of the season.

A few years ago, I was looking at the newly developed pictures of Christmas morning (back when you had to wait to see if the photos turned out). And there was the picture I take every Christmas Eve- the picture of the tree after Santa has visited, the stockings are filled, and the last toy has been assembled. The tree was worthy of a Macy's window display, with piles of presents beautifully wrapped and stacked under a perfectly decorated tree. I gazed on this picture in shock, and began asking myself some questions. Was the pile of goodies under the tree really that big? Did my children really get that much stuff? Then the big question: Did my children really need that much stuff? That was the year I vowed to cut back- to not buy every little thing I found on clearance that one of them might love, to not buy every item on their Christmas list, to give more to those who are actually in need. That's all well and good, and our family has done pretty well on the present side of things, but then there's the "Time" issue. And that's where I've failed.

This time of year, it's hard to say no to all those little gatherings that people have. It's only natural to want to join with your friends in making merry during what should be a joyful season. But before you know it, your calendar is full, and you are stressed. After all, you really should bring the host or hostess a gift- something not too lavish, but quite possibly more than you can really afford. So you go, and go, and go. By the time Christmas day rolls around, you're too exhausted to enjoy it. I used to love Christmas time. I couldn't wait to get my tree up. I couldn't wait to start baking, and wrapping, and decorating. You can read about my feelings here: Christmas in February...or March...why not April? . But now? Well, now I work a full time job, and I'm tired. My weekends, and many of my weekday evenings, are booked until after the New Year. That person at the beginning of this post snapping at her child that she would get out the decorations tomorrow? That was me, snapping at my daughter just last evening, as I rushed to get dinner done before I ran out to choir practice. That was my daughter whose face fell as she left the room with tears in her eyes because she didn't want to be in the way. It was my daughter who went to bed before I got home, leaving an undecorated tree in the living room. And I'm sitting here wondering when things changed. When did I lose my joy?

When I think back to my childhood, I remember the joy of celebrating Christmas- the smell of cinnamon and vanilla, the lights and ornaments on the tree, the books that Papa read aloud, and the nativity story from Luke that brought a hush of reverence to our home-not really the presents, or the parties, or the concerts. Our family struggled to make ends meet, and we frequently went without more than one present apiece under the tree. But there was joy, and hope, and peace. Joy in being together, hope for a brighter future, and peace in knowing that come what may, we had each other. What presents we got were nice, and I always enjoyed singing in the various concerts. We rarely celebrated the Christmas season with others while I lived at home, though my parents were able to host Christmas parties as their children left the nest and their finances eased. Most years, it was just the 6 of us, and we each might only have had one present, but it was enough to just be together in a house full of love.

And maybe that's the key: it was enough. There’s a pearl of wisdom that I try to remember throughout the year- Enough is as good as a feast. The gist of it is, that if you have enough, just enough- enough clothing, enough food, enough money- then it's as good as having an overabundance of those same things. I do a pretty decent job for much of the year. Indeed, many of us try to live that way throughout 11 months of the year- content with our lives, and with what we have. Then Thanksgiving comes, with Christmas looming large on the horizon, and it's suddenly a race to get the best deal on this year's hot new toy, or that new gaming system that must be better than the 2 year old system we have at home. We fill our calendars with parties, caroling, concerts, and events of one sort or another. We buy gifts, and give them to our families and friends, even when we can’t afford it. We send hundreds of cards to people that we don’t think about the rest of the year. And we do more than is possible for one human to do and remain sane.

So maybe it's time to say no. No, I appreciate the invitation, but I really can't fit in one more party. No, I really can't bake a cake for your event, though I'm honored that you asked. No, I'm not giving up another evening when I could be sitting home with my daughter, my teenage sons, and my husband, sipping wine, decorating and admiring our tree. My children are growing up so fast, and I don't want to be the one responsible for killing their joy in this blessed season of Christmas. So, no, thank you, I'm not going anywhere this weekend. I believe I have a date with a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel who needs her joy restored. You'll find me sitting in front of a lit tree by the fireplace, snuggling with my husband, sipping wine, and watching the twinkling lights sparkle in my children's eyes.  

My wish for each and every one of you is that you take the time to nurture your family’s joy. Read the Gospel of Luke, and treasure the wonder of knowing that this tiny baby whose birthday we are celebrating is the Savior of all. Look at Christmas through the eyes of your children or grandchildren, and remember what it was like to think of Christmas as a Season of Blessings- of Joy, and Hope, and Peace. Peace be with you all. Happy Christmas!

 

 

Tennessee Home

In Joe Versus the Volcano, Joe (Tom Hanks) walks into his dismal, windowless office, lifts his shoe, and, looking at the separating sole, laments, "I'm losin' my soul."

I feel like that sometimes when I sit to write about my childhood. I have trouble remembering the details. Everything is changing color like leaves in the fall. I fear the dull brown that comes after the dreamlike phase, and I'm afraid of the memories dropping to the ground, bit by bit, brittle slivers of organic matter with which I can do very little. The more I grasp, the more they disintegrate.

So I latch on to whatever incites memory. I love any song that even mentions "Tennessee" in the lyrics, like Dave Loggins Please Come to Boston and Brad Paisley's Southern Comfort Zone. Dixie Land, especially when played by my dad, makes me cry; I've left the land of cotton - it seems like forever.

Since leaving at 15, nearly 19 years ago now, I've never returned to my Tennessee home.

I'm grateful I at least dream about Tennessee every few months, but I want to laugh thinking about my gratitude for these bizarre, sad, or joyful returns to childhood. To examine it no one would understand why I miss life in that little square house on 98 acres where I grew up. It had a dank basement, one tiny bathroom, a woodstove poised, it seemed, to burn the house down on any convenient cold night. We had to battle cockroaches and brown recluses constantly, fumigating the house so often I'm surprised we didn't breed our own X Men. One year the water pump from the spring broke, and we hauled water from the creek in five gallon buckets up half our long lane for bathing and cleaning and spring water in milk jugs for drinking. We usually didn't have a washer or dryer and often hand washed clothes in the tub, ringing them by hand and hanging them outside to dry in warm weather, letting them drip all 'round the woodstove on winter days. Some school mornings, my mom dried our socks or jeans in the oven; they came out stiff but toasty.

Yes, I could just laugh recalling it! Wonder why I'm starting to cry, then?

I recently learned from Dad that my brother, my successful, travels-the-world-to-numerous-exotic-places big brother, misses Tennessee, too, wishes he could buy up that property where we used to fight, play, worry, laugh, love, cry, live. It surprised me. My big brother always seemed made for the ambition, energy and vibrancy of a major city, but he misses a plot of earth in Middle Tennessee.

He misses what I do, perhaps: the simplicity, neighbors who would loan you anything - even their pickup truck for a whole month, swims in the creek when the water warmed just (barely) enough, the walks down the lane to school every morning, the tree over the mailbox where we used to hang by our legs, swing and gaze across Spann Road, our old chicken coup turned fort, races in the cornfield and adventures in the woods, especially those December expeditions to get the tree.

Our humble country childhood made us, nourished us, and relinquished us to the wider world.

And however long I live in this vast city of the American Southwest and wherever I may travel from here, I know I'll be whistling Dixie, guarding the memories, dreaming of my Tennessee home.

1...2...Tales of School

My tomboy kindergartener has a couple boyfriends. Well, not boyfriends - boy friends. She's taller than both of them, stronger, too, I bet. They get into shoving matches about who gets to stand behind her in line each morning. I was confused as to why that was the coveted position, but my husband understood perfectly: only if they walk behind her in line do they get to see her all the way to the classroom.

"Ah," I said. "To admire her beauty?" - her tomboyish charm with high pigtails, boy's shorts and high tops.

"Of course."

Yesterday morning I walked her late to the tot lot, and her friend Santiago, the short, black-haired one with an open, cheerful face, was sitting at the end of a slide looking down at his feet. She called out, "Santiago!"

He jumped up and ran toward the fence jumping and crying, "Gabriella! Gabriella! Gabriella's here!" Then he spun around and called to his rival, "Rio! Gabriella is here!"

My little girl has a thing for guys with exotic names. 

When she got into the playground, she and Rio, the short, sandy-haired, temperamental one, embraced while Santiago wrapped his arms around both of them for a group hug. I guess the two rivals could unite, if only momentarily, in their joy over seeing Gabriella after a whole seventeen hours apart.

As I finished telling this to my husband at dinner, Gabriella told another story about the class terror, a little boy who gets into trouble for walking around the classroom during learning time, touching the faces of all his classmates at regular intervals, and drawing Picassos on the tables. He had to go to the refocus chair and draw a picture of himself making better decisions. Then Ella told how the art teacher makes her whole class put their heads on the desk until they can learn to cease and desist with their constant babbling.

"Who's you favorite specials teacher?" I queried.

She named her kindergarten teacher who technically, Berto pointed out, is a specials teacher - the homeroom teacher.

"Ah," I said, smirking, and taking a deep breath in preparation to launch a long-winded tale of my childhood, something I try to do regularly for my children's edification. "I bet," I began, "that I could name every teacher I ever had in elementary school."

An expectant or fearful pause - either way I was encouraged.

"Well, there was Mrs. Weatherford....no, Weathersby? Weatherbin? That's not right....anyhow, she was a really sweet lady. It was in her class that I thought I was locked in the little bathroom between classes, and I kicked the door and screamed. It wasn't really locked, but I got out of there alive; that's all that matters. But, wait...Ms. Crow. I forgot her! She came first, and she would beat you just for missing words on you spelling test. Really. Then there was Mr. Cole, my second grade teacher. He's the one who used to throw erasers at you for talking, and they'd leave a big old chalk mark down your cheek." And I slid my finger across my face. "That's something you don't see nowadays. I dodged one once, and he let me get away with it."

"Then, in fourth grade...well, I don't remember her name, but every time she left the class, I got up and did a dance like this" - here a pause to show them, rewarded with broad smiles - "and then when I heard her coming, I'd run back to my chair like this" - frantic arms, scared expression - "That was fun! In fifth grade I had Miss Hooper, and I loved her, but her class was hard. I made my first B in her class. She had a wooden paddle hanging by her door with the signatures of all the students who ever got a spanking from it." I snorted. "Refocus chair? You guys have it easy. We didn't get no refocus chair! We had to sign our names to a wooden paddle! All the teachers had them. This was the South, people!"

I took a moment to reflect how strange a time and region I grew up in. Strangely, like many a devoted mother with a wayward, but charismatic, son, Miss Hooper's favorite student was a stocky, ginger-haired boy named Michael who got more than a couple paddlings in her class. Remembering that reminded me of something else.

"In fifth grade all the boys in the class called me Wild Woman," I went on. "Probably because I had hairy legs."

Here my story stopped. Berto had snorted gravy up his noise, and I politely waited for him to stop laugh-coughing into a napkin.

Not daunted, I continued:

"Finally, in sixth grade I got up at the Halloween party - I mean a real Halloween party with witches and pumpkins and scarecrows; we had real Christmas parties, too. Can you imagine?  - and sang 'Ding-dong! The witch is dead! The wicked witch, the witch-oh-witch. Ding-dong! The wicked...witch...is...dead!' All while wearing a witch's hat and dancing around, kicking my legs up in a circle. People were pretty annoyed with me for that one. But I also got up and told jokes to the class regularly and had my own little Bible study group in the corner. Boy, you couldn't do that nowadays! That's also the year we got to play on computers for the first time. The Oregon trail. Remember that, honey? Boy, you kids would laugh! And my teacher yelled at me once, when we weren't supposed to be talking, just for saying 'excuse me' to someone."

I was out of breath and out of listeners. Berto's nose still hurt, and Daniel and Ana had both taken up the refrain of "Ding-dong! The witch is dead. The wicked witch...is dead!" I was beginning to feel I shouldn't have taught them that. Perhaps its best in general if they don't know so much about their strange mother. Well, never mind. Next time it's Matthew's turn. He can tell how New Mexico teachers kept their classrooms in order with refocus cages.

Virginia Snapshots

In June I returned to the South for the first time in fifteen years. My husband and children had never been east of the Mississippi. We visited my sister's family in Virginia, hoofed it around Washington, D.C., and wandered through Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. These are a few of the memorable moments I had in that beautiful state of Virginia that belonged to so many of our nation's forefathers. I love the South. I was sure that I would hate coming back home.


Tree-lined lanes, avenues and back roads? Virginia has tree-lined highways like nothing out here in the West. The sun pierces the branches, and the effect is psychedelic, blinding. I'm used to constant shine, never-changing on our roads at home. It was hard to stare down these kaleidoscope highways, narrow, two-lane byways with no shoulders, only vibrant, verdant vegetation and brilliant wildflowers crowding the pavement and the sentinel trees bending the light above.

It was on the drive from the airport that I expected my kids and man felt like Dorothy: "Todo, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

~

I went with my sister to the church to keep her company as she prepared for a wedding Mass. But I didn't feel I should attend the service, so after sitting in the narthex to hear the homily make sense out of the Sunday readings' non-nuptial themes, I quietly went outdoors. In my tall heels and dress I past the shed, hoping to catch some rabbits, and hiked up the hill beyond toward a patch of woods.

The closer I got to the symphony of insects greeting me from the trees, the more I drifted back home to Tennessee as if I were walking toward my childhood with each spike in the dirt of my silly heels. I gazed into the black-eyed susans and cattails and all the exuberant plant life off the lawn, so familiar, breathing in deeply, and listened to the exotic sound of creatures, and I felt homesick, knowing I was home again and would have to leave it.

On the trek back to the church I surprised two rabbits in the grass not four yards from the door. They stood still as statues with stiff ears when I halted my approach, one lying and one sitting up. We were at an impasse: I wanted to watch them and they wanted to escape my notice. With my next step the one lying down bounded away toward the main road, and his friend hopped a few feet off into the lawn. I sat on the bench, very quietly, and when he had observed me from a safe distance, he grew bold, a curious little fellow, and began to hop a slow zig-zag across the stone before the building, getting ever so much closer each time to my perch. Every little bit he stopped and twitched his nose, flicked his ears and pawed the ground with his front feet. I started to get nervous when he was a mere three feet away, afraid he would use those muscular back legs to jump into my lap, so I stood, and he was off after his buddy. I remembered why rabbits were, and still are, my favorite creatures. He made my Sunday; I told my husband all about him when we got back to the house.

~

"Here, try this," my sister said, handing me a glass of wine, "and tell me what you think."

I wondered why she was watching me so intently, and then I tried it. Suddenly, instantaneously, I had visions of vines behind Mr. Hayes' house in White Bluff, TN, and then saw my siblings and I picking and eating small round fruit on the lane near the creek of our childhood home, by a gate into the field.

"It's like liquid childhood," I said fervently. "What is it?"

"It's muscadine wine. Remember the grapes we used to pick and eat when we were kids?"

I remembered. I also remembered our dad's good friend, Bill Cole, used to make his own elderberry and muscadine wine and bring it to my parents' Christmas party each year. So this was what it tasted like! And this was the reason the adults were laughing so much by the end of the evening. Vinca and I drank through at least two bottles while I was there. Matthew hated it, but it doesn't get better than liquid childhood, and Vinca has her sis' sincere, heartfelt gratitude for finding it already bottled.

~

Small towns, southern hospitality.

My husband and I took a walk by ourselves. As we strolled hand in hand down the quaint lovely streets, people waved and greeted us genially from the windows of their slow-moving vehicles; older folks called out salutations to us from their front porches or from the opposite sidewalk; and everywhere we went, obvious strangers to town, residents treated us like old, seldom-seen friends. We were not in the West anymore, that big sky and lonely hearts country, nor were we in the huge, indifferent city we call home.

~

I had the chance to take all the younger kids to the town park a few times. It wasn't manicured like ones in the city, and the water fountain drained at your feet, but it was a charming playground with nice equipment and great views down Main Street.

The first time we went, I suggested we could all stroll down Main, and my niece said we could get smoothies. I was open to it, an aunt who had not been good about sending birthday money and who rarely had the opportunity to treat my nephews and niece. Plus, I had their assurance it wasn't far. We came to the historic train depot. "Just down here," they said, turning right on another street. I had assumed the smoothies were to be had on Main, but they told me, "Not much farther."

Ah, the humidity hadn't gotten to me before, and the heat had felt like nothing, but as the walk lengthened with my four kids and my nephew PJ and niece Danni as my caravan, I began to feel that this smoothie shop they raved about was a mythical oasis in the humid heat; we would walk for miles - our clothes permanently moist and our mouths dry - and never find it.

But at last! After a few dozen miles, the tiny shop appeared; we got our cold, fruity drinks and took a shortcut home, taking breaks to sip, sit and stare at traffic.

~

I can't hold my liquor; that can be embarrassing unless you're with family.

For a double date Vinca, brother-in-law Dave, Matthew and I went to Barboursville Winery for a wine tasting. The vineyards are beautiful, and the ruins of the Governor's mansion are romantic.

But I had never done a wine tasting before. The tiny stemware has a splash at a time of each new wine, but it adds up. A quarter of the way through, I was giggly. Half way through, and I was rolling my head side to side and trying to smooch my husband as I swung toward him. I became the entertainment on our elegant date. At the end of the tasting, the rest of them deposited me at a table in a safe corner while they roamed the gift shop. I lay my head on my arm, and in a moment saw my sister coming toward me, bearing gifts of artisan cheese, crackers and honey to shore me up for our jog down to the ruins.

The four of us sat under a great tree outside the remains of the octagonal dining/ballroom of the Barbour family and chatted, joking that Dave and Matthew are pretty similar: so even-keeled like their mother-in-law, they could have married almost anyone and done alright. However, Vinca and I, more like our dad, found two of the few, if only, men who could put up with us and our hereditary temperament.

It was a great date, the first for Matthew and me in many months. That we got to spend it in the company of Dave and Vinca was awesome.

~

I saw Marcus B.; that five-year-old mischievous boy I used to watch while my sister worked has grown into a Marine with a wife. He claims to have a bad temper (it runs in the family), and I'm sure he does. But I found him to be the same lovable, smiley guy with a heart of gold like his mom. His wife Jen is a good match for him, and though it cost them some trouble to get to Virginia from where he is stationed in NC, I was honored and very grateful to get to meet the smart, down-to-earth and stable girl he fell in love with.

He brought up the fact, of which I am so proud, that I taught him to tie his shoes when he was a little tyke and, apparently, didn't teach him the right way. Everyone who sees him wrangle his laces says they've never seen anyone tie them like that, and Matthew quickly agreed, "It's messed up, isn't it?" For the life of me, I don't get what's wrong with how I tie my shoes or teach others to tie theirs, but I've surely made him unique like his Aunt Hillary, a true gift, and I trust he is properly grateful.

~

It had taken me so long to get back to the South, the region for which I have an affinity, I dreaded coming back to the desert. I had finally grown to like it, but now I would be dreaming of Virginia highways and history and charming southern manners. Seeing the stately brick homes with their spacious green lawns, porches and abundant wildflowers in my mind's eye, I would scorn the low ranch houses and xeriscaping of our southwestern home.

It didn't happen. We returned to Arizona and settled right back in between the saguaros and Palo Verde trees, watching the haboobs blow in. I married a New Mexico man, and we're home. Our babies were born here.

But I miss my family back east in Texas and Virginia and England. We began in Idaho and Tennessee and have scattered like tree bark in a dust storm. Our children are not growing up together, don't experience the craziness of regular holiday gatherings of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. The visits are few and far between, and will likely remain so, but the memories sustain us.

There's nothing I like better than a snake...except a Tornado

My friend invited our family to go hiking with hers and added as an incentive, "It's rattlesnake season!"

Incentive? you ask. INCENTIVE? Well, it should never....unless like my friend and me, instead of running away from danger, you creep near for a good looksey. Post-hike, I took a lot of flack for oogling that rattlesnake last spring. People I love and trust, persons of good sense, made the perhaps justified assumption that I was temporarily insane or permanently stupid. All I will say in my defense is this: you just don't know how you'll react to a poisonous snake until you see one (though I really do recommend backing away...Quickly!)

Usually, I am no crocodile hunter. Sure, I might keep a pet tarantula if the rest of the family would consent, but I flee cockroaches. My brother-in-law told me horror stories of centipedes that gave me an absolute paranoia. Every night I diligently check my bed for scorpions. I would never play catch with a javelina, and I don't believe I would ever stoop to pat a Gila monster on the head; if I did a photo of me with a Gila monster in a venomous steel grip on my appendage would be circulated with a caption that read, And this is why you don't play with wild animals! Daredevil, I'm not. No thrill-seeker. So why did I suddenly turn snake charmer? I suppose it is this: put me out in nature and, confronted with the unusual or the dangerously beautiful, I feel inclined to do the darndest things on the spur of the moment.

This impulsiveness is why I am currently fascinated by the show Storm Chasers. These crazy meteorologists stand outside their vehicles oohing and ahing at a twister 10 feet away when most people would be hunkered down with hands on head, eyes squeezed shut and praying.

I have asked my husband if he would consider chasing with me when the kids are grown. Nope! He doesn't think we'd get along. I'd probably be the Reed Timmer of our team, using exclamations like, "It's beautiful! A beast! Look at that rotation!" followed by, "Let's get in the path of this thing!" as I push hard for the intercept of the mile-wide funnel, risking my face getting cut up by my shattered vehicle's window. He'd be the more practical Joel Taylor, weighing the risk of loss of limb or life for a one-time shot. The only difference is, my husband would win the battle of wills.

Like snakes, I have found tornadoes fascinating since my childhood in Tennessee when my family would march down the rickety basement steps as soon as the reception went out on the TV amid the anchors' talk about watches and warnings. That vast cellar, lit by one weak, dusty bulb, had all the welcoming atmosphere of Mordor and could have harbored Shelob in its recesses. Maybe that's why we were each allotted a favorite stuffed animal before the descent. Nevertheless, the adrenaline was rushing as eyes scanned the shadows and the tiny rectangular window and ears strained to distinguish something greater in the whistle of the wind.

Living now in the Southwest, the closest I'll likely get to a twister is by twirling the Tiny Tornado maker on my desk. It was my man's first gift to me as romance blossomed. It cures some of my funnel-lust...it and watching Storm Chasers.

My enthusiasm is tempered each time the show reminds me that tornadoes, in all their ferocious beauty, have the power to do great harm to human beings. The meteorologists and scientists point out time and again the huge emotional swing of being on an adrenaline high while getting a great shot and salvaging data, and then minutes later coming to towns that have just been hit by nature's awesome monster. It's a wake-up call. They have to help the shell-shocked and injured.

Snakes are like tornadoes - dangerous, best viewed from a safe distance. Unlike twisters, however, I am quite likely to encounter them in these parts. Next hike I plan to give them a wide berth. After all, that's why rattlesnakes have their own special warning systems. Just like funnel-generating super cells.

Hobo Potatoes

I remember the potatoes and the woods and the time with my family. The smaller details? I get creative, though I do in fact recall some of the words we spoke.


One evening of my childhood, my family headed across the cornfield to the woods behind our home carrying a sack of potatoes and a large tin coffee can. Dad had matches in his pocket and old paper in hand. Reuben and Mandy, our dogs, trotted by his side.

We entered the woods by a worn path, rustling through the underbrush and crisp leaves in single file, As we journeyed to a small clearing, the sun’s fingertips still brushed the western horizon with a golden-red, fiery hue. We gathered some logs to use as benches around a stone fire pit, built a year or two before. Then Dad started a blaze. Small twigs were added as the flames grew.

The large coffee tin was placed in the middle of our fire. On this went the potatoes for our supper, wrapped in foil and one for each of us.

The last light vanished from the woods, and the glow from the fire spread as twilight descended, enveloping the little clearing. I trembled slightly, but not just from the sudden chill. The woods were eerie in the dark and every little bit there was a rustling of leaves by some living thing on the forest floor. For many minutes our family was silent. Then, as was common with us, we began conversing about our dreams for the future as the fire writhed around the coffee can and cooked our hobo potatoes.

“If I ever make it in this music business…” said Dad, but he was interrupted by some thought of his own and digested it for a bit before continuing, “If I ever make it, what would you guys want from our life here?”

Unanimously, we agreed we would buy that land from Mr. Warf with its fields and woods and lovely cold creek; Dad wanted to build a house on the big hill in the field someday. We talked of helping other people, too - especially at Christmas, but I don’t remember anything else my family said except for my brother’s wish. At the time he was eight, I believe.

“I want a car bed,” he said. “Like a race car bed. Billy had one.”

That may seem funny, but I suppose we all know what it is to be a child and think, I wish I could have that kitchen set Mary has or that big boy bike my friend John just got. The desire does not go away after we’ve outgrown the object we so long for, because we don’t get the chance to outgrow the desire, and we would outgrow it, of course, if our wish were granted.

But my parents listened like friends do and asked what color it would be. Red was the answer. After this there was a small silence that thrilled my little person as I sat facing the fire with my back to the dark forest, turning my head to each side every so often to check for spooks. Then our conversation began to wander like the breeze in the faded leaves of the trees, and Dad told us stories, making them up as he spoke.

When our hobo potatoes were finally cooked, Mom pulled out margarine, salt, pepper, paper plates and a can of pork n’ beans. We sat in the glow of the dying embers, the breeze cooling our potatoes for us, and ate our supper. Our dogs lay by, head on paws or lifted, ears moving in response to the occasional noise among the trees.

When Dad finally extinguished the fire completely and led the way from the woods, it seemed like ages past dark. We crossed the field for home and for bedtime, summer’s cornstalks crunching beneath our feet.

That sylvan autumn supper is something I’ve never forgotten. Maybe we did it once, or maybe it was tradition. Either way, it was my dad’s idea. He often came up with such things. Hobo potatoes and a warm fire in the woods are his inspiration, always having been a man of nature - a woodsman - at heart.

Short, Mostly Unedited: Grapevine

I stood today in Michael's, looking at all the wreaths made of foam and plastic and wondering where the grapevine had gone.

That old friend Nostalgia, popping up suddenly as he so often does this time of year, leaned his elbow on my shoulder, playfully pouted and whispered in my ear. I had to have a grapevine wreath, and I told my husband just that.

We were on a mission to construct our first, very own Advent wreath, and as Advent begins tomorrow, perhaps we were a little behind in the planning. Fake wreaths, too, are expensive. The more artificial but real-looking fruit and flowers are added, the higher the price tag. Add in the candle holders and purple and pink Advent candles and well...

I had suggested I could strip eucalyptus leaves off supple young branches from our trees and make a wreath out of those, but my man Matthew detests the smell of eucalyptus and couldn't stand the thought of any part of that tree invading his home.

The briar and grapevine wreaths my parents used to roll for a living in Tennessee, during my childhood, would have been free - at least for me, their daughter. I could have asked my dad to roll a thick, beautiful, curly-cued 16-inch wreath, and then my mom, so much more gifted with her hands than I, would have wrapped it for me in ribbon and bows, burgundy velvet or bright red/green plaid. It would have been beautiful; it would have knocked Nostalgia's pants off. I would have kept it forever.

But I'm left to roam with my children through Michael's, and when my son says he doesn't like the grapevine look, I tell him that his Paca and Grandmama used to roll up that vine; they used to make those things. Then I choke up as I say to my husband, "I want it to be grapevine."

So we buy a plastic evergreen wreath with fake poinsettia leaves, real pine cones, and red, beady berries, but it has a grapevine base. We find a silver candelabra and taper candles to make it officially an Advent wreath.

For some reason when we purchase the wreath, with its vine jutting out wildly beneath its festive trappings, I think of the enormous briar one my dad made and hung over our porch out in the boonies of Tennessee at Christmas. He lit it up with strands of light. I remember it being all shades of green - vibrant green, thorny briar, neon green lights. Our neighbors on the other side of the creek said they could see it from across dusty Spann Road, the only ones who could see it, but for them it was a beacon of cheer.

Tomorrow when I light that first candle of Advent, I hope my store-bought wreath becomes that beacon of cheer for all who gather at my table.


Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.