A Southern Girl Takes A Southwestern Turn

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

And this:

Okay, and maybe this:

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

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

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

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

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

In Arizona.

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

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

Okay, no? Too much? Well, perhaps. But I already have the hat. Matthew bought it for me on our honeymoon:

But that is my hat....howdy..uh, cowgirl!

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

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

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

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

A window into the past, with a Park Ranger keeping guard.

Down a darkened hallway (with ancient roof still intact)

The black from ancient fires burning...

We actually were permitted to wander around the lower cliff dwelling. Certain rooms we could not enter in the name of preservation, but we were able to gaze closely at the blackened walls (while avoiding touching them, of course) and the ancient tools such as the mano and metate that were used for grinding corn. I craned my neck to view the surviving timber of their roofs and the notch in the cliff where they rested their ladder once upon a time, the only entrance to the community back then and an easily defensible one.

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

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.

Reel Me In

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

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

But, well, there you are.

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

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

The Story and Song Inheritance: Eagle's Eye and Kelven's Riddle

I had a dream a few days back that I had to finish writing the Kelven's Riddle series, finish Books 4 and 5.

For those of you who have read Dad's books, you're thinking, Wow! That is really arrogant of her. Why would she dream that she could do such a thing?

That's just it, though. It was a dream; I couldn't help it that my brain cooked up this devastating scenario while I was unable to check it. Anyway, listen: that's not the point. The haze of emotions I felt in this dream reached their climax when I had the terrible thought, Man, I hope Dad finished the story in rough draft. I hope all I have to do is flesh it out or revise it a little. Otherwise, there's no way. I'll let him down. I'll never do it justice!

I think I may be Dad's number 1 fan. This would, of course, be hotly contested by my mom and at least one if not all of my siblings and possibly the fans of his Kelven's Riddle fantasy books. But, hey, they're not writing this, so it stands for now. I am Daniel Hylton's number 1 fan!

And it's not just this story, the story of Aram in Kelven's Riddle, though of course I must take this moment to boast that I have read the first three books in that series at least two times apiece and that my dad gave me the great honor of reading them before they were quite done. Still it's more than my dad's ability to tell a great story that gives me such immense respect for his talent; it's his music, too.

Songs I've sung to my children since they were babies - many of them Dad wrote. I have my definite favorites, Runnin' From the Devil and Nebraska, neither of which I play well on the guitar, Hot Summer Sunday which I do. There are others that are my favorites, too, just not suited to be sung to little children, like Dark Streets, Dirty Old Town and Eagle's Eye which contains some of the most brilliant lyrics my dad ever wrote.

I have a colossal fear that my dad will not write down the lyrics to the dozens of songs he wrote, and so they will be lost to his descendants. He does not play them as regularly as he did when we lived near Nashville; he already forgets them at times when he's playing at family gatherings, his voice faltering on a line and his fingers pausing at the strings of his guitar. Usually, Mom, Vinca, and I remind him of the right words. Then we all sigh and chorus, "They're your songs!"

I don't want to lose these songs. I don't want to forget the lyrics to Where's the Little Girl, the song Dad played for me on my wedding day and the greatest father/daughter song of all time. I want to have the lyrics and tablature to Gone in a Whirlwind and Chris and the Boys, so that I can raise my children on their rich song inheritance, plucking away at memories as well as instrumental strings. I've begged for them at Christmas a few times, but Dad has never been able to find the time and energy to invest in going through the catalogue of his music he keeps stowed away in his head. I just hope he has them written down somewhere, some place.

I have The Mountain at the Middle of the World, The Walking Flame and The Sword of Heaven; my children will get their story inheritance from the man they call Paca, their grandpa. But they deserve his music. And certainly, such things of brilliance, whether popularly known or not, should never pass away.

Here's Your Humility (and may God Bless you)

Being a mother is a humbling experience. Maybe it's because you know it's a miracle if your patience makes it to dinnertime, or maybe it's the memory of your little girl asking, "Mama, why won't your bottom fit on the toilet seat?"

As a mother you get the biggest hugs and the most explosive tantrums. Your toddler follows you around half the day like your own personal Jerry Lewis impersonator, wailing, "Ma-maa! Maa-maaaa!" Your son comes home from school with a special recognition for his "great attitude in class and kindness toward others", and you watch him fume and glare because you won't let him have ice cream before dinner. Your little girl slides in her fake high heels and sprawls crying on the floor, tangled up in her Tinker Bell fairy costume.You comfort her silently, the last thread of your sanity taut. And the answer is no, you won't keep your patience through dinnertime, but as you are only human, that was a given.

No one told me how time consuming child-rearing is. I now understand why every time Matthew and I announced to our respective parents that we were expecting again after that first kid, their tone was always cautionary, like I hope you know what you're getting into. Discipline is especially hard work, or, rather, figuring out how to effectively discipline is hard work, and each child is so different in how they respond. I thought I would intuitively know how to discipline my kids; I didn't. The real funny thing is this: I had to learn how to discipline them and myself. I had to learn not to throw tantrums in response to theirs. I had to learn to sing at them to keep myself from blowing a top and yelling. And I had to learn not to blow excessive steam over those constant germ-seeking missiles they call children's hands. I had to become a better person, in short. And it's still a struggle. I'm a ways better than decent but a bit short of good.

And I missed the Angel of Healing Mommy course every mother is supposed to take. I have no natural instinct for caring for the sick. I often forget to take their temperature when I mean to or to give them their medicine on time or at all. I know when something is scarily awry with their health, but as I said, I am not the mother with the instinct for healing boo-boos and administering to the sick. I am the emotional support - the long, soothing hug, the gentle stroking of the hair. With the many fevers we've been through in this house, I've learned how to bring a child's temp down with a lukewarm spongebath, but when it comes to most practical care, I am sadly deficient. This is evident to my children, I know. When once taking care of a cut on Berto's hand, I apologized for not being as adept as Papa, and Berto looked at me with the solemn expression of a disillusioned but forgiving devotee and said, "You try, Mama. You try."

I do indeed try. And I pray. It does help to know that some day when I'm weeping as the last one takes off for college that I'll have the memories of these days to cheer me - that is, after I bury all remnants of mommy guilt in the backyard and edit out all the frustration. All I'll have left is the recollection of all the funny or cute things they said and did. Like the time Berto, a preschooler, sat on the couch and suddenly had an epiphany. "Look, Mama, Papa!" he called to Matthew and me. "This is my longest finger!" And then we turned to see him giving us "the finger", an innocent smile lighting up his features.

I'll also fondly remember how often Analisa ambushed me as I tried to clean up spilled juice on the floor, scrambling on top of my shoulders from any obliging piece of furniture. I'll reminisce about how my groans as forty pounds of weight assailed my back only brought out her giggles as she chanted, "Piggyback ride! Piggyback ride!" with maniacal glee.

I'll recall how every time my youngest daughter, Ella Belle, was upset with someone, she balled her fists at her side, scrunched her eyes into quarter moon-shaped slits, and growled through her teeth, "Stop it you...You Naughty Pants!"

Or how every time his siblings bent over Danny Sam, our littlest, and put a baby toy in their mouth just so they could spit it out on his belly, our little guy giggled crazily and almost involuntarily until I rescued him, so he could catch some oxygen.

I know I'll miss the times when I danced like a monkey with my children to Elvis, Beatles or Monkeys tunes, being completely unladylike and unattrative in my form, while they jumped around me trying to imitate my crazy kicks and swingabouts. I'll remember the never-ending games of red light/green light in the backyard where I ran handicapped with a baby in my arms and always lost. And all the games of Santa May I, Cupid May I, Easter Bunny May I, and how Ella, a little too young still, always half skipped/half danced several steps ahead of what she asked for while the rest of us laughed.

While I was growing up, my mom reminded me of a promise I made when I was a gangly five-year-old rocking in her arms. "Mama, I'm never going to grow up, " I told her. My older siblings had no urge to make such a promise, but I was content. "Remember, you said you were always going to be my baby," my mother would say every now and then after that when I displayed obvious signs of not being able to keep that vow. I understand now the wistfulness that was in her voice. My little Ana says she wants to live with me forever in our three bedroom house. I know better. If she does stay, though, I hope she'll pitch in for some renovations.

When I look forward to looking back, I realize that it's all good, and, no, I don't want them to grow up too quickly. The day will come very soon when Berto knows what it means to hold up his middle finger at someone; Ana is already a little too gangly for piggyback rides, and Ella will not always come to me and beg for a match of Memory or call everyone who displeases her a "naughty pants". Danny Sam? Well, if Danny Sam can learn to fall asleep without me bouncing him in my arms while he continuously yanks at my hair, at least before he hits the teenage years, I'll count that a victory. For now, I'll take the poopy diapers, tantrums, sibling wars, and the nights when I just wish, for the love of heaven, that they'd fall asleep. Because soon enough I'll get what I'm wishing for, and then I'll be a little sad.

How to Be Pleasant in Your Own Backyard

I'm seeing the glass half-full right now. It's not like me, and it stinks. It's a stinky, stinky way to be.

But, honestly, I've been slowly gravitating that way for a while.

For instance, I've been known to look into a box of Girl Scout cookies and say suspiciously, "This box seems smaller. Is this box smaller? Man, I think there are fewer Thin Mints in here than last year!" Looking up at Matthew, I conclude with gravity, "Must be the..."

But that's when Matthew cuts me off, "Yeah, yeah - I know. It's the economy. Stupid economy!"

He's endured my complaints for the past few years while I've blamed everything that I perceive as a deficit on the economy. I have a recession-economy conspiracy theory raging in my head. I think every commercial enterprise has cut back the quality or the amount of product they're giving consumers for the same amount of dough. So when I think I see more air than chips in the potato chip bag? Damn economy! Toilet paper seems a little thinner than previously? Grrrr! The economy! Ice cream with more ice than cream? Light bulbs that blink their last in an early death? - Why, oh why are people ripping me off in this economy?

But all that was just conjecture; I had no proof. After all, I didn't think to save the packaging from various products before the economy went sour, so I can't be sure that I'm actually getting ripped off, that my handsoap is less anti-bacterial than it used to be or that my ground beef is something other than cow. I just have this vague feeling.

That feeling stopped being vague within the past couple months.

It began in a very innocent way, my fall into nonsense - my, shamed as I am to say, covetousness. I began driving. Yes, just driving around before picking my older two children up from school in the afternoon. This was necessary in order to get my baby son to take his second nap. It wasn't long before I got thoroughly sick of circling the neighborhood around my kid's school, so I went exploring. That's when I discovered how the other quarter lives.

I say quarter instead of half, because the communities I discovered were not crawling with obscenely rich people. Okay, while exploring I did indeed get lost in one lushly rich neighborhood. I circled around forever trying to find a way out, always passing this same mocking mansion no matter which direction I chose. The fancy-shmance neighborhood only had one outlet, and I was never so relieved to get away from winding driveways, grand facades and perfectly manicured lawns in my life as when I finally found it. Plus I had an eerie feeling wealthy people were standing at their windows as I passed by time and again, pointing me out to their butlers and nannies and laughing at my minivan.

But back on topic. The people in the "quarter" neighborhoods I discovered seemed wholly unaffected by the economy. There was nary a house for sale in either community. In my subdivision, there are ten at least, maybe more.

Their houses, with a few ostentatious exceptions, were modest - bigger than my home, true, but still modest. The only difference was that instead of having a door smacked onto the front of the house with no preamble, these folks had steps and pathways and porches leading one pleasantly to the door which was almost always slightly recessed in the front of the house. I admired this. I grew up in the southern United States; I miss porches. Still, it was their yards that I gaped at, a hand over my mouth to stifle an, "Ahaaaa!" yell of epiphany while the other gripped the steering wheel.

These people had small fields for yards, an expanse of green that sometimes contained a variety of animals including but not limited to: chickens, horses, cows, mules, sheep and emus. In the city - the city, people! And their front yards! I could not help picturing my kids playing a game of football with their dad there or maybe a crazy game of tag with all the kids in our Mom's Group. Such things would be perfectly possible, you see, because the streets these houses stood on were like quiet prim old ladies sitting by the side at a noisy ball. The streets were so quiet in fact, and so unused to a stranger's passage, that I felt they were muttering against my presence, alerting the driver of every passing car, for I felt the suspicious gazes upon me as if to say emphatically, "Who are you? You don't live here. You're not us!" I wanted to hunker down behind the steering wheel whilst I gazed upon their oddly bucolic lives in the midst of an enormous city.

It must have been a full week before I was able to drop my hand from my mouth. And then I found another neighborhood in an adjacent city with even greener pastures. Only here I did not feel as if other driver's were staring at me suspiciously, and the streets were wider and more open and friendly. I liked this community even better than the last, with its mini-fields of grazing horses and its low-lying homes with their pleasant entryways, with their porches and porch swings. I even took my kids to play in their public park a few times to get a better feel for the place. I had it bad.

Please understand how unusual it is for me to spend afternoon upon afternoon admiring and wishing for what others enjoy. I have always felt it was very foolish for anyone in good circumstances to exclaim, "We need a bigger house!" or whine, "All my friends live in newer homes than me." Very few people need a bigger house or a newer car. Food, clean water, shelter - those are needs. But shelter can be a lean-to in the forest. So I do indeed understand that Matthew, the children, and I could live in this 1240 sq. ft home until the four kids leave the nest. Until this last month I've felt perfectly contented to say as much. It'd be tight, especially during their teenage years, but we would be blessed and provided for.

Unfortunately, I now also understand the "moving up" complex. It was a shock when suddenly I found myself wishing I could live in a bigger home with a porch and a tiny field where my children could play with a family dog, perhaps. I know I'll be in the city - sad to say, I think it's my fate now - but to feel as if I were not in the city while still in the city, well...that would indeed be grand.

My friend Camille told me that I am projecting my own desires onto my children. They have never lived in the country and therefore do not miss it. She's right, of course. Nevertheless, I checked the prices on those homes in the "quarter" neighborhoods, ones that had recently sold, and we cannot even contemplate a purchase. I always under-price things in my head, because I often undervalue money, so I was taken aback by the numbers. Foolish, foolish girl! I was bitten by the covet bug or at least smitten, so next I began scouring for sale signs close to the homes I desired just for the idea that I could live near all their green space and perhaps take a walk on their streets in the early morning light, say hello to their horses as I pass by.

Human folly has no bounds.

So here at last I come to the part where I got a real tangible hit from this bad economy that's been skulking around on my periphery, a black eye really. We started to talk to a real estate agent about possibly putting our home on the market. She was reservedly optimistic at first...then she did the research.

To sell our house, she told us, not only would we take a loss, but we would need to bring lots of loose cash to the table just to close the sale, just to bribe our bank to let us leave our home. So...we'll stay, I think, and we'll plant some more greenery in the yard to help me overcome my city-sickness. We might even improve the kitchen. We won't move - oh, no! But we will know we're blessed to have our comfortable home.

And I am humbled by the fact that a girl like me, so proud of her indifference to mere possessions and finer things, fell under the spell of "Better and More". This is especially true since I came to my computer Friday morning and found that a nation on the other side of the Pacific was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami and could possibly be facing a horrific nuclear crisis as well.

I am well. I am happy. My loved and precious ones are near. And I am thinking about the people of Japan instead of myself and my petty wants.

Don't Mark Me! and No Nose

I hit my husband - smack! - in the eye around 2am last night. It wasn't premeditated. I was trying to be nice.

You see, I woke up with my baby trying to let himself down off the bed by twisting around to throw his legs to the floor. I kept dragging him back up, and he fussed at me like "Darn you woman! I have places to be!". While in the midst of this wrestling match, I realized I had a hobbit-like creature snuggled between my legs. Thankfully it turned out to be my preschool daughter who sneaks into our bed at night and lies across our feet or uses our bottoms and thighs as pillows just so she can sleep in our already overcrowded bed.

I knew who was the most uncomfortable person in that room, however, and I turned to him where he lay as straight as a stick trying to keep his body warm beneath a 4-inch wide swath of sheet.

"Honey, do you have any blankets?" I asked.

"No," he answered immediately and clear as a nonsleeping bell.

I started throwing bedclothes in the air toward his side of the bed. He sat up a little to grab them, and bam! my hand that was energetically flinging the blanket in his direction made good contact with his eye at which point he keeled over and hit the pillow with a thud, instantly drawing his knees up in the fetal position.

I rubbed his shoulder, "Honey, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Did I get your nose?"

(I always assume it's the nose; I'll explain later.)

"No, my eye," he mumbled.

Shoot!

I'm always knocking out my husband. Sometimes in the middle of the night like on this particular occasion, sometimes as we're trying to get settled for bed, and sometimes when we're being amorous. It's never intentional. I think it's my depth perception.

So I got out of bed and with one hand attempted to wrest some more of the blanket from under our sleeping preschooler to throw over my husband as a parting gesture of penance.

I could hear the seams in the cheap quilt ripping.

"I've got it; I've got it," my husband said gruffly.

I left to spend the rest of the night in the recliner. That's where Matthew found me this morning.

"Is your eye okay?" I asked.

"Yes. But you're always trying to mark me," he said, goodnaturedly. He then pointed to his neck and eye as he elaborated, "Here and here. I'll show up to work and people will ask, 'What happened there?' 'My wife.' Well, but what happened there?' 'Still my wife'.

Well, the neck - that's because I pretended, or really tried according to him, to give him a hickie. My husband's in HR; he thinks hickies are entirely inappropriate for someone in his position. I do, too - believe me! But I think it's fun to tease him by acting like I'm going to give him one in plain sight above his shirt collar, at which point he always recoils from me and exclaims, "Don't mark me, Woman!"

Still, I was laughing with him this morning, because it was funny now that he didn't seem to have a noticeable black eye, and I was also remembering something that had occurred a few years before.

It happened on one of those nights when we couldn't get comfortable together as we tried to fall asleep. His shoulder felt too bony, and he didn't like me throwing my leg across his middle. I didn't want his arm under my neck, and he wasn't laying straight across the bed like he should be. We were shifting and flopping around as if performing some kind of complicated mating ritual, beginning to giggle like two kids, when at last I turned my back to him and plopped down dramatically, my head landing on something that felt like a sensitive appendage.

I sat up in the dark and turned toward him in concern.

"Oh, sweetheart...I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt your nose!"

There was a beat or two of silence before Matthew answered slowly and suspiciously, "That...wasn't my nose. It was my elbow."

I burst out laughing. It was loud enough to wake up the children, but I couldn't control it if I tried; it was sponteaneous hilarity.

The fact that I had mistaken his elbow for his nose, that anyone could mistake someone's elbow for their nose, was just so ridiculous I couldn't help laughing like a wild hyena. (I mean we both have large noses, and we know it. I always tell people when they're admiring our engagement picture, "That's just two big-nosed people staring at each other", but an elbow-sized nose? I don't think so!)

But the reason that may have sustained the laughter so long was that my mistake smacked of sweet revenge, even if it wasn't actually by design. For all the jokes Matthew'd made about my large feet and clodhoppin' tennis shoes - revenge! About my poor eyesight - revenge! About my crazy dancing! About my prominent, Cleopatra-worthy nose - ahh-hahaha - sweet, delicious revenge!

Eventually, it became embarrassing, my laughter, as it came out in snorts and hiccups, especially since Matthew was asking every little bit, "Are you done yet?" with tolerant self-composure.

I quieted myself and snuggled down by him once more, prepared to sleep the sleep of the revenged and the innocent, but I couldn't help it; the laughter started to wash over me in a fresh sea of mirth, the giggles rising like a cresting wave.

Matthew had had it. Ready to go to sleep, to halt his wife's mirth over his elbow-nose, he desperately uttered a phrase that lives in infamy in our household, the first ever, completely original and absolutely unfathomable Matthewism that will forever be repeated at all opportune moments with fresh laughter:


"If you can't be quiet...Shut Up!"