Fetal Positions II:beyond the pregnancy chronicles

yoga – a personal history

2012-01-24T07:29:00.000-08:00

I recently started a new yoga class. Restorative yoga to be exact. And it's sent me on a mental retrospective of my encounters with this practice. Oh, won't you join me as we trip through the land of yoga memories?

My very first experience with yoga was at a studio outside of Washington, D.C. A friend and I went to check things out and found ourselves in a light-filled room with a dozen others game for the challenge of twisting ourselves into pretzels – or whatever this class would turn out involving. We did a few classic beginner things – downward dogs, warrior ones and twos – and then it was time to go.

At the end of the class, as we relaxed on our mats, eyes closed, the teacher spoke in a sing-songy voice about releasing this and that, ending her speech by calling our attention to our toes which she suggested were like “little stars.” “And now they are twinkling!” she gushed. This would make the whole hour worthwhile. I dared to lift my gaze and found, as suspected, my friend shaking almost uncontrollably on her mat, attempting not to burst out in raucous laughter. Of course, I joined her, both of us straight as twigs in a violent wind storm, sniggering and snorting in the back of the room.

It was the kind of place that had lots of free merch – magnets and such. White on black bumper stickers that read “I'd Rather Be Doing Yoga” with their website address underneath. We went to a couple more classes, but the twinkling toes only sustained us so far before other things like happy hour filled in the space.

There were more unnoteworthy classes over the years before I landed at a quiet little studio in Pacific Grove, California. Isaac was 10 months? 11? Something in that range of major separation anxiety and in order to attend, I'd first have to pry myself out of his clutches, shouting “I love you!” and slamming the door while he screamed on the other side. It was helpful. The yoga, that is. It was a “gentle” class I took with another friend, also post-partum, with lots of personal attention from the serious woman who owned the place.

Sometimes the instructor wrote a column for the local paper that she'd copy and hand out to us. They said what any newspaper column in 700 words by an “expert” says, which is to say, they said nothing.

Much later I'd go back to the same instructor when my back was so f-ed up I needed to do something and so I tried a private yoga class from the serious woman. It was around that time that she warned me away from another yoga studio I'd later attend, much closer to where I had moved to. They wouldn't know how to take care of my back, she warned.

This woman had many environmental allergies and when they started air-spraying the county for the “plague” of the brown moth because Schwarzenegger's friend owned the planes, she informed us she was leaving town and didn't know when she could return. I'd have to find someone else to force me to stand in tree pose, it seemed. But time does funny things and later I saw she was back in town and working at the studio she'd warmed me about.

I took yoga classes in tiny, beautiful studios where everyone whispered and instructors would wander around while people reclined under their eye pillows saying things like, “I'm just going to adjust you slightly, Kathryn.” Then, Invariably they'd say, “There, is that better?” And invariably, it wasn't.

I've been to a prenatal yoga series where extra time was built in so we could talk about how we were feeling. This never worked well for me and I always left feeling like I'd revisited middle school and I still wasn't popular.

I've also taken many yoga classes here and there at the local sports center where instructors come and go with more frequency than help at the fast food counter. It's like taking a survey class in college where there is a huge room of people a few of whom know something about what they are doing, many who are checking their watches regularly, and several who just showed up because it fit in their schedule.

One of the instructors there was a woman who was fond of yelling out “If you aren't breathing, you aren't doing yoga!” If you aren't breathing, you probably have bigger problems than whether or not your sun salutations are smooth and flowing, but who's keeping track?

These classes are always a blend of a Madonna concert, with the chick up front bounding around on her headphones, and Psych 101, where the professor and the girl in the front row discussed Skinner and the rest of us 100 peons are ignored whole-heartedly.

I spent time in each new scenario trying to describe or support my claims to past yoga experience. I'd admire the pretty candles, trying to remember that “this is my practice” and if it doesn't feel good I shouldn't do it...except the one and only one time I tried out hot yoga. At that one the teacher, who was dressed in something like spandex fatigues, told us all we could do every pose fully, today if we just wanted to. I left wondering why she hated us so much.

I once took yoga in a filthy gymnasium at a closed school. There was a stage filled with old props and sets from high school theater productions and lots and lots of folding chairs folded along the sides of the room. It was run out of the city's rec department and consequently cost almost nothing and went on for weeks and weeks. It was heaven. The woman leading it often sent us to beaches and mountains on guided meditations. Isaac was a toddler by now and my need for relaxation was at such a level and my selfishness so highly developed that I once stayed on in class though Mike was home trying to take care of him while vomiting copious amounts of bile. I was glad I did. Palm trees, baby. White sand and the sound of waves washing over pebbles. You were good until your arm would stretch off the mat and hit the cold, grimy gym floor.

But my all time favorite was a restorative yoga class given in Seaside, California.

Now, your average yoga instructors tend to have certain features in common. Their hair is perfectly smooth and framing clear green eyes, mascara perfect, skin unblemished. They are petite and slim. My instructor for restorative yoga was probably four and a half feet tall and quite charmingly plump. I never noticed her mascara, probably because she didn't wear any. Two or 3, or at most 4 people would show up to class and she would greet us each every time like it was our birthday. There was no talk of “challenging ourselves” and every pose was held for at least 20 minutes and pretty much designed to put you to sleep. I'd routinely come to my senses in a puddle of drool, hugging my bolster. Jeanni knew what she was doing and I loved her for it. She spent her time bouncing among us offering extra blankets. It was like a class in sleep. Pure magic.

The studio was located on a busy street and it was impossible to completely block out the sounds of the real world. Maybe that could even be another reason why it worked for me. No one was pretending that we were sitting on top of a mountain in India, or that we'd rather be doing yoga above anything else in our lives, or that pregnancy was bliss, or that pressing our heels into the ground more deeply would save us. We were just tired.

So pass the eye pillow and elbow me if I snore. And if, as I'm drifting off, I can still hear a low rider driving by screaming the wail of Mariachi music as it zooms through the intersection, maybe that's not such a bad thing. It may not be palm trees, but the lights dancing in a bright blue pattern around the license plate that I just know are there, those are pretty, too.

situational narcolepsy

2012-01-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

It's winter. I know, I'm a little late with the admission. It snows here. I know, again...

You may not be aware of this fact, but the weather here in Western Massachusetts has everything to do with my husband. Mike grew up around here, goes my logic, and so, consequently, he must be responsible for all this slushy gunk. Conversations in our house go something like this:

Me: (said with malice, the tone implying an explanation is expected pronto) “It's snowing...”

Mike: (said with determined nonchalance, the kind that can only be cultivated if you are as steadfastly nonplussed as my guy is by most everything and married to me for the last decade) “Yes, it is.”

Me: “Fine!!” (stomps off)

I'm getting practical in my old age. I exchanged the stylish, semi-if-I-don't-step-into-a-serious-puddle-water-resistent boots I had bought and instead got hard core bootage insulated down to -25 degrees Fahrenheit. The man who sold them to me told me they looked great with my outfit, which I thought was kind, if not a bit pushy.

I thought I was well on my way to recovering from my childhood, throughout which I never had the proper attire to – as they say -- “enjoy” the snow. However, I've discovered that my feet are still cold in my new boots. Perhaps I am a vampire. Or perhaps, what they meant was that until it gets below -25 you won't die or require that your foot be amputated after walking to the mailbox. They just couldn't fit all that on the tag.

My almost 7-year-old son is still stuffing himself into size 4/5 snow pants. The trick of the thus-far mild winter here is that I didn't feel compelled to gear up on things like that early enough and now most things are sold out. Plus, as far as the retailers are concerned, it's “past season” on things like that – Break out the lawn sprinklers! It's January! There are actually many parenting-in-winter lessons I'm learning the hard way, but sopping wet mittens left in school bags overnight are for future blog posts, so let us soldier on...

Calling around to see who might still have a pair of snow pants that would fit Isaac, at one point I found myself on hold with an outdoor outfitter listening to awful 80s music. Ah, but all the 80s music was awful, you might say. Almost all. It was the decade when being a musician – I've said it before – was about owning a synthesizer and a lot of eyeliner. On hold they were playing “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats. They should really warn a person before just whipping out the worst music available on you. This link back to the formative 80s was another episode of east coast/childhood flashbacks for me.

The east coast, if not here specifically, was where I had to be. And over the having to be t/here, I accumulated a bit of baggage around it.

The west coast was where I chose. Things are easier where the sun shines. California was always just a little on the vacation side. Just a tad unreal. There was a sprinkling of freedom there drawn from the stores that follow you to new and different lands. Vacations are vacations because you don't have your own life's routines to follow. Or, in this case, because you have perspective. You know what else it could be.

I left my routines once before I trekked to California, when I lived in Europe. Life always felt easier to me abroad, freer and more vibrant – it came to you – no need to go planning and gearing up to figure out how to have the biggest, greatest adventure. Pretty much if you just managed to take the bus in the right direction you had triumphed. And if you took it in the wrong direction – adventure!

Having a baby is a bit like being in a foreign country – not the “easier” part, but you barely have to step outside your door to have an adventure. With baby, whatever I accomplish feels huge. Except when it doesn't. Except when it feels like my life has been stolen away from me and may never come back. But again, I veer off track. Baby is both motivator and deterrent for getting outside in this chilly season. I feel extra trapped in a lot of ways, but also off the hook if I don't do much, not to mention distracted from the winter itself.

Yesterday, Rhys and I went out for a short walk. My mission: bank accounts for the boys. It was cold, but not frigid. I have a coat now; I have boots saving me from amputation. The problem was the wind. It was wicked gusty. Like his brother before him, Rhys hates the wind. Even smallish breezes steal his breath and freak him out. After his mother's best efforts to shield him failed yesterday, as I've seen him do in the past, freak out was followed by pass out. He went instantly to sleep. I think it's some deep biological defense. I call it situational narcolepsy. It'd be quite pleased to come down with it myself, but so far I can't even get back to sleep after a 4 am feeding, while the baby snores on.

I do wonder about how my kiddos will remember their childhoods - one that begun in the west, the other in the east; one that knows enough to miss the beach, the other whose tiny little cheeks are actually chapped from wind and cold. What will they choose, when the choosing is theirs?

If the ghosts of my own childhood continue to cast long shadows here in the east coast winter, plowed streets or not, it's going to be a bumpy road.

I say, we can go where we want to

A place where they will never find

And we can act like we come from out of this world

Leave the real one far behind

-- “Safety Dance,” Men Without Hats

In a room where a baby is sleeping

2012-01-17T07:15:00.001-08:00

In a room where a baby is sleeping, there is both an overflow of thoughts and a stagnation of thinking. In this indeterminate period while youth is so extreme, where fragility is named next to frustration, we move in isolation, quiet and bemused in our fortune and our hopelessness. There is a self, forgotten or misplaced that mocks us from its dark corner and we arrive before it desperate and out of breath just as the baby stirs again and on looking back we find the self has vanished into the shadows. In a room where a baby is sleeping, worlds are born and die away in instants, in our minds, in our fogged hours, in a room where a baby is sleeping.

feminism never accounted for homeownership

2012-01-16T07:19:00.001-08:00

I recently walked down into the basement of our house for the first time since we bought it. Like most of what motivates me to attempt anything beyond sleep these days, it had to do with the baby. I needed to tell the guys installing insulation in our breezeway of a house that there was a baby asleep above them. I wanted to sound friendly in a threatening kind of way. It's an art.

For their part, two of the men were trying to convince the third, apparently a transplant from Puerto Rico, that it “wasn't that cold” on this particular day. I would have stayed to side with my compañero, but I don't linger in the basement of our house. The last time I spent any time in my little field stone salon was before I'd signed on the bottom line, when the house inspector was here taking notes on the boiler and shaking his head.

I left that meeting no more the wiser about boilers or anything else down there or in the rest of the house, for that matter. In short, I can't keep up. I have no idea why we need a roof vent or what the chimney in the storage room has to do with the water heater or whether or not our siding is grounded. Where Mike nodded authoritatively at the inspector's assessments of everything from the circuit breakers to the door locks, I tagged along behind occasionally saying things like “Could you repeat that?” as if I'd figure it out if I heard it again.

When Mike headed for the basement door the other day after the tub wouldn't drain mumbling something about “the trap,” I had a vague notion of what he meant, but well, not really, and certainly not enough to go into the basement and find this trap thing, just enough to know it was a crummy job and I was glad I wasn't doing it. I leaned in to him and hooked my arm in his. “Oh, honey! I crooned with mock glee bending one leg at the knee, “We're homeowners!!”

I feel like buying a house has been a major assault to my feminist identity, on the off-chance that any of it was left in the first place. Mike plans projects like installing ceiling fans and dimmer switches while I think about table runners. When I question whether he might electrocute himself while ticking off his to do list, he offers reassurances that only reinforce the divide between us.

“I took classes in electricity stuff in high school,” he shrugs, the confidence pooling at the corners of his mouth like cookie crumbs.

I look over at my husband and blink methodically. “I took Home Ec. where I learned how to sew a bean bag frog. I'm so glad we were equally prepared for the world.” And here I was thinking I'd been super lucky – the semester after ours the class had gotten into a huge rice fight and from then on everyone had to stuff their frogs with boring soft filling.

We never had to carry eggs around to warn us away from parenting, like in some schools, but no egg could have prepared me for the social train wreck that follows giving birth in this country. Since I will never ever learn, Rhys and I stopped in to a couple of parents' groups this past week. At one, where kids of different ages mingled in two huge rooms of complete chaos, a leader gushed to me about how many places you could put your baby down here. Yeah, I thought, if you want him to get a fungus. Another mom revealed to me in casual conversation that she started coming for what she referred to as her “sanity.” Toddlers on tricycles zoomed by us in some kind of pre-school rush hour, somewhere in the distance children were fighting over doll blankets. “I'm not sure this is sanity,” I responded, causing her to curl her lip every so slightly.

At another circle, we were meant to talk about the question of “identity” and what may have happened to ours since having kids. When it's my turn, my five-month-old is cranky and tired, refusing the boob I'm pushing into his face as I'm passed the “talking stone.” Over his crying I blurt out a few bitter-sounding things about the hospital and the snow. “May I offer a brief the reflection?” the overcareful, over-educated facilitator asks me when I'm done. “No,” I tell her and pack my things to go.

Can I tell you that Isaac is currently studying gender bias, by the way? First grade. I can only imagine what I was studying in the first grade. Jump rope songs and choosing games, I think. My mother and your mother were hanging up the clothes. My mother socked your mother right smack in the nose. What color was the blood? Green. G-R-E-E-N. You're it! I wonder if studying something changes it. Or are we all just trapped in a fish tank – blue fins fiddling with gears, pink fins applying lipstick – to be watched with interest by our children?

the post-hospital rant

2012-01-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

When Rhys was born, the midwives looked at him and saw tell-tale signs that he was early – his fingernails hadn't made it to the end of his fingers yet; his nipples hadn't yet popped out; his ear cartilage hadn't hardened all the way...They had a list of checkpoints, none of which I would have likely noticed at all.

What I can tell you is that when Rhys was born his skin was so soft it felt like water. He felt too delicate even to kiss. Though we are fond of possessive pronouns, I would not have described him in most any way as “mine.” I doled out my kisses sparingly, with just the slightest brush of my lips against his cheek. Anything else would have felt disruptive to some sacred process that had yet to complete itself. One must show respect in the presence of miracles.

Even by two weeks old, the magic aura had waned a little and that creamy, liquid skin was already beginning to feel somewhat earthbound.

Home from the hospital, he felt untouchable all over again. Not mine. Though the place he'd been delivered back to me from did not ring to me of magic, here we were at another beginning.

****

Children's Hospital has more than a little in common with an airport for me. There is the bustle and noise in the lobby (which includes a CVS pharmacy, an Au Bon Pain cafe, and an art gallery), with people from all over the world coming and going. The timelessness of your stay and staleness of the air. The luggage carts in the parking garage are simply exchanged for wheelchairs. And there is the sense of entering someone else's world. Journeying in a way that you must trust rather than understand, that you no more have the jargon to ask about than you would have ability to take in the answers if they came, and they rarely do.

As you approach Children's Hospital Boston in the busy Longwood area of the city, there is a banner – utterly enormous – hanging under the name of the place: “Ranked #1 by U.S. News and World Report,” it screams. All of the “Mission Accomplished” banners were taken, I guess.

“You must be so grateful to be so close to the best doctors in the world!” I've heard this constantly since Rhys' diagnosis.

I waited, tempered in my exuberance for western medicine, even the kind that's splashed as big as thunder clouds at the entrance to greatness and “Ranked #1” by a news source that – in this time of hyper-specializations – also ranks cars, law firms, mutual funds and places to retire, and lists the “Five Great College Towns for Winter Enthusiasts” and the “Top 9(?) Political Events of 2011.” Color me conservative.

Essentially, Rhys' surgery was a success. And I am grateful. As I am grateful for many things in my life, such as the fact that I don't live somewhere where I need to hike miles every day for water and carry it home on my back. However, that does not mean I don't have the right to complain when I turn on the faucet in Northampton and lead comes out.

I feel no cozier now with the idea of doctors and hospitals than I ever did.

Perhaps if they were our “last chance,” if I didn't have a beautiful, mostly asymptomatic baby whose condition I had to intellectualize to visualize the danger of. But no, probably not then either. I can't. Sorry. My knees will not bend at the altar of Children's Hospital. The people I met there ranged in skill and sympathetic natures with the same curve as the population at large. A couple were exceptional, most were average, and a few sucked weenies. The information that the doctors left out of our conversations still galls me. This lack has followed us home in our less than straight trajectory to recovery; they like to label things after the fact that “happen-all-the-time” (so why don't you mention them once-in-a-while??). As I wrote to my surgeon, if only information flowed with as pathological regularity as the medical protocols do.

We all have our preoccupations. I tell people that once we left ICU, our roommate was a 5-day-old with a pacemaker whose mother spoke only a little English. They say “Wow! Isn't it amazing what they can do now!” I watch as they call for the interpreter, who is slow in coming, turn over again on my crappy cot that I shudder in thinking is all they provide a woman who just gave birth.

We meet doctors at our most vulnerable. Whether that is dressed in a backless, paper gown in their examining room, or curled, sleepless and unshowered at the bedside of our infant. For their part, the surgeons, who I'm thinking arrive to the hospital via underground tunnels like the members of Congress, likely also frequent phone booths placed discretely on various floors – in order to smoothly change between their suits and their scrubs. They are calm, assured, at work. You are not.

They had told us to plan for a hospital stay of 7-14 days. Expect 10, our cardiologist told us, offering the midpoint as a goal. But we were out in record time. Rhys plowed through all the checkpoints like a prize fighter. Surgery was over around 1pm Friday. The ventilator came out at 4pm on Saturday. The chest tube was gone Sunday morning. Two nights in ICU, two nights on the regular floor. Boom. Done. My baby kicked some medical ass.

I had planned on writing holiday cards, sewing more of the patched, felt hearts I'd been creating to keep my mind out of trouble, listening to This American Life, the long list of distractions goes on, while my son languished in bed sedated. None of it came to pass.

The beginning was incredibly tense and intense, facing the wires, the tubes, that tiny body covered in artificial bits all taped on with horrid adhesives (“Does he normally have this sensitive skin?” Gee, I don't know since I don't normally cover my son in duct tape!!), as the nurse listed the medications that were seeping into my baby in between her other proclamations of expertise (“I was actually in the operating room for Rice's surgery; so that was really cool.” Look, sweetie, you already said that and I was unimpressed the first time. Surgery is not “really cool” and I didn't name my kid “Rice!” Now shut up about the OR and tell me when he'll be off the fucking morphine!)

After encountering a few much more reassuring nurses, (one who even triumphantly advocated for me to get him back to nursing ASAP, skipping the steps of sugar water and bottle) we left ICU and headed to the regular ole cardiac unit. With a broken call button, another rookie nurse and a night crew that were apparently busy elsewhere for the duration, we barely had time to get through the gas pain that sent Rhys screaming awake multiple times that first night, fight off the second sedated echocardiogram and an extra Xray, and host the parade of hospital personnel that swing by (“I'm a nutritionist,” “I'm from lactation,” “Would you like to speak to a social worker?” “I'm the nurse practitioner on duty today,” “I'm a neurological behavior specialist,” “You qualify to participate in a study...”) before we were discharged.

In many ways, the hospital held many similarities to my labor with Rhys – it was over exceptionally fast, which, overall, was a positive thing. However, as my midwives said at the birth, you still have to go through everything, no matter how fast it happens. You're left kind of dizzy and definitely exhausted. And, frankly, there was no time to process. Forgive me if I must do that here.

You'll be happy to know, however, that according to my friends at Children's apparently none of the medicines, even the ones that are so routine they forgot to list them in the OR report, have any side effects! Ever! – AMAZING! And, I was also told –so it must be true (Children's Hospital is ranked second only to the internet in true facts, I'm pretty sure - “Ranked #2!”...) --that each and every situation that arose was, as they liked to put it “perfectly normal.” I tried to assess this most bizarre of all medical terminology while surveying my baby lost in a sea of machinery, IV lines in his hand, his foot, his neck, monitors taped to his forehead, a breathing tube down his throat, two catheters – one dripping urine, the other blood from his chest...and all I could think was that, as inviting as that CVS in the lobby is, as intoxicating as the Ranked #1 banner must feel as they swish by it on their way to their blessed jobs, as fun as it must be to eat lunch every day in that basement cafeteria laced in high fructose corn syrup, these people seriously need to get out more.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

I couldn't have gotten through these last couple months without the support of all my wonderful friends.
Happy 2012!
May you always have a friend to lean on in the New Year! from Rhys and the rest of us.

24 Hours

2011-12-31T10:33:00.001-08:00

Follow Our Family Through 24 Hours! A Multiple-Choice Game Where YOU Decide the Outcome!

It's 1am. Mike is

a) asleep

b) creating witty statuses on Facebook

c) washing the dishes

d) sweeping the dead bird off the eave outside the bedroom window

It's 2 am. Rhys is

a) asleep

b) crying to be fed

c) wide awake for the hell of it

d) exhibiting behavior that Kitty will undoubtedly twist into something to worry about

It's 3am. Kitty is

a) asleep

b) emailing doctors

c) wide awake for the hell of it

d) writing in her journal in the dark

It's 4am. Emily Cat is

a) asleep

b) throwing up on the new futon

c) wide awake for the hell of it

d) “entertaining” a mouse friend

It's 5am. Isaac is

a) asleep

b) asking how to write five million billion two hundred thousand hundred thirty four

c) wide awake for the hell of it

d) informing us he has to pee

It's 6am. Mike is

a) asleep

b) going for a run in 20-degree weather

c) changing a diaper

d) being kicked by Kitty to get up and feed the cat (since she threw up her dinner and Mike took her mouse away)

It's 7am. Rhys is

a) asleep

b) cooing and smiling

c) downstairs making breakfast with Daddy

It's 8am. Kitty is

a) wishing she were still asleep

b) telling Isaac how to write five million billion two hundred thousand hundred thirty four

c) watering her succulents

It's 9am. Emily Cat is

a) asleep

b) asleep

c) asleep

d) all of the above

It's 10am. Isaac is

a) at school

b) home again for another freaking holiday, good god, how many fucking holidays can there be in a year?? have mercy!

c) playing quietly by himself

It's noon. Mike is

a) working from home without a hitch

b) making his lovely lactating wife lunch

c) thinking about buying snow tires, refinishing the living room floor, and insulating the pantry

It's 2pm. Rhys is

a) asleep

b) at another doctor's appointment

c) eating his Yummy Bear friend with relish

It's 4pm. Kitty is

a) starving

b) sitting in her newly renovated studio office fulfilling her true calling of writing

c) fielding another housecall from some well-intentioned college kid campaigning for an end to all the evils of the planet while really just freezing us all as she holds open the door and thinking maybe it wasn't such a great idea to move to a socially-conscious small town after all because did they see this freaking house, I mean, do they THINK we have any money?? And by the way my baby just had surgery, so stay the hell back and don't infect any of us with any of your collegey germs. And I want to save the world, too, okay, but really, it's been a hard year, so what do you say you just go on your way, back to Trader Joe's where your kind all have carts full of figs, peanutbutter and peppermint Jo-Jos, it's safer for all of us that way, you understand? Now, Buh-Bye.

It's 6pm. EmilyCat is

a) asleep

b) asleep

c) trying to trip Kitty while she carries the baby in one arm and tries to open her food can with the other

It's 7pm. Isaac is

a) asleep

b) complaining that Santa didn't bring him everything on his list

c) deciding he's still hungry after he's already brushed his teeth and that no, he doesn't really have room for any more beans or salad, but what he REALLY could go for is maybe, he thinks, um, one of the candy canes on the tree, but just a bite, just one, okay? One? One teeeeeeeny one? Teeeeeeny bite? Teeeeeeny weeeeeeeny???

It's 8 pm. Mike is

a) reading Isaac the same Captain Underpants book for the five million billion two hundred thousand hundred thirty fourth time

b) sneakily eating all the coconut M&Ms

c) researching by the glow of the laptop something no one but an engineer would begin to understand while the rest of his family is passed out around him

It's 9pm. Rhys is

a) asleep

b) crying to be fed

c) wide awake for the hell of it

It's 10pm. Kitty is

a) asleep

b) waking up since she fell asleep putting Isaac to bed hours ago

c) writing blog entries in her head while she nurses the baby

It's 11pm. Emily is

a) asleep

b) throwing up on the new futon

c) waking up the baby for the hell of it

It's midnight. Isaac is

a) asleep

b) wide awake because he can't sleep with the scary wind blowing

c) wide awake because the baby is crying, the cat is meowing, the mice are squeaking, and is that a dead bird out the window?

memoir titles

2011-12-31T09:43:00.001-08:00

Trying to come up with titles for a memoir to cover this year. Here are a few contenders so far:

Chopping Vegetables on the Washing Machine: A Guide to Home Ownership

My Kid Might Be Allergic to Maple Syrup: How You Too Can Move to New England!

Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned on Craig's List

The Altar In Front of Children's Hospital Was Crowded, So I Threw Them the Bird Instead: When the Diagnosis is Positive

When I Tell You Where I Moved From, Do Not Say “WHY?!”: How To Miss Monterey in 5 Easy ~~Steps~~ Months

Blasting Begins 12/13. Please Expect Delays: Our Travels to Boston

Like Ripping Off A Bandaid: Snow in October and Other Ways to Get the Pain Out of the Way Quickly

My Home Inspector Quoted Rumi To Me: The Trials of a Poet Mama

When Roadtrips Go Bad: How to Fight in Front of Your Child While Eating at a Vinyl-Cushioned Booth in a Diner Somewhere in Pennsylvania

Mommy! The Cat Has More Playdates Than I Do! : Varnish and Varmints of a 110-year-old House

Happy New Year, All!

HOME!

2011-12-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

Wish I had time to write it all out right now, but suffice to say we are home from the hospital! It was pretty much record time. We are now exhausted and starting over on various counts, but home nonetheless. Rhys is smiling again and doing pretty darn well. Will try to post over the next couple days.

post op

2011-12-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie note to say Rhys is out of ICU and doing well. We're on to pain management right now - another hurdle but I suppose considering all he's been through, not terrible albeit more stress on the mama.

my current obsessions / god complex redux

2011-11-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

After 14 years I am still in the throes of learning what it means to be close to an engineer – someone with that kind of precision running through his veins, uber-focus, odd-world-out kind of mentality – and now, due to no choice of my own, I have run into another being so strange as to fill my mind with question after question, so bizarre as to boggle my every fiber and cause me to obsess about why he does what he does. The mysteries of Edward Cullen have nothing on this guy.

I am speaking, of course, about the masked one, who scrubs up to his elbows, the one with the steadiest hands, the beast known as (Say it!...Out loud...) Surgeon. (How long have you been cutting people open? ... A while.)

I am constantly thinking about the man who will perform the operation on Rhys. He is my age. He is personable (I'm told a rarity among his kind) and handsome. When we speak his name among nurses and other doctors, they sparkle like Hollywood vampires in the sun, clearly enamored of this person. When I finally met him I stared hard – looking for the trail of magical pixie dust in his wake, listening for the sound of the clouds parting and hymns of the chorus of angels to begin.

What possessed – and I do mean possessed – him to take up this profession? (I actually asked him and he told me some tired answer about seeing the difference made in people's lives, blah blah blah.) But, really, what is in him that brought him to medicine and then, to the freakish specialization of children's surgery? Is this the result of a happy childhood in which he learned he could do anything? Or a tortured one which taught him he must push as hard as he can to do better, be more perfect, and haunts him still?

What does he do in his free time? Does he have free time? What will he eat for breakfast the morning before he cuts open my perfect baby? What will he eat for lunch afterwards? Will he remember to look at his name on the chart or will it simply be another tiny body he must fix? Why does he think it normal to go to work and pick up a scalpel? Why does he shrug when I ask him details about ideal weights and ages for this to be done? How does he feel when things go well? When they don't?

When I flub my job, verbs fall flat or phrases fail to find a foothold in your mind's imagination. And for him?

Two weeks before Project Insanity in which I offer up my Rhys to surgery at Children's Hospital Boston. Escape is a very necessary tool at this point. And so, if you had told me a week ago that I would reach a time in my life when I would spend what small wakeful free time I have disappearing into a laughable fantasy world where a girl goes to her prom with a vampire, I would have said you were nuts. But thanks to a friend's suggestion (Yes, I blame you, Nicole!), there I go. Werewolves, baseball-playing vampires, armies of the newly undead, I embrace it all, while I place my faith in another kind of creature which to me doesn't seem all that different with regard to his rumored super-human abilities.

god complexes and mothers and doctors and what's in a name

2011-11-15T08:25:00.000-08:00

Two things Isaac is obsessed with right now are world records and looking things up on the internet. As you might guess, these two passions combine to make for hours of entertainment for my son as long as there is an adult to tell him how to spell and read what pops up.

About as skilled as I am with finessing his search language, Isaac sees the computer as a kind of a boardwalk palm reader -- “Ask it 'What is the biggest baby ever born?' Type in, 'Who-is-the-person-with-the-longest-ever-mustache-ever-in-the-whole-entire-world-ever?'”

“Let's look up 'Who is the most important person in the world?'” he pleaded recently.

“Who would decide who the most important person was?” I ask, devil horns sprouting from my curls. “Most important for what? To whom?”

“You know, just most important.”

“But that's a complicated question. To Rhys right now I'm the most important person in his world. Without me, he doesn't eat.”

“No, but you know. The most important person, like, the president or...like that.”

“Rhys doesn't care about the president.”

“Forget it,” my six-year-old says, and, disgusted with me, stalks off.

I can't decide if I should be happy or nervous that our surgeon carries the name of a mythical deity. I can't decide to be grateful or not when our cardiologist squeezes in a voicemail to me “between meetings” and inquires as to my “availability.” Why “between feedings,” dear doctor.

Etymologically speaking, there is this --

doctor = c. 1300 “Church father”

mother = Proto-Indo-European, from “ma,” meaning breast

Latin - mater

Greek - meter

French - mère

German - Mutter

Russian - mate

Icelandic - modher

Sanskrit - mata

Irish - mathair

Welsh - mam

Arabic - oum

Hebrew - em

Swahili - mama

Chinese - ma

Hawaian - makuahine (maka first, beloved < *ma-k Proto-Polynesian, the mother (?) + wahine woman)

I've decided to spare you the ins and outs of how we came to this point, but know it is hard-won: Surgery date - December 9.

the door collector

2011-11-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

Doors red, blue, brown, white standard sizes, white one skinny closet door. one blue with window and glass, I collect doors but can't take them! 10 each

That is an actual line from a Craig's List ad. The person was moving and listing a variety of things for sale. After the hand-painted boogie board and before the list of mirrors was this list. Doors.

Collecting doors? Maybe he or she didn't want to miss Opportunity. It might knock on the beige one with the half-circle of stained glass at the top. Or, it might favor the steel door, impenetrable though it may seem. The screen door, flapping gayly open and closed through summer nights might be where it comes to call, or the one painted white and red with the ornate handle.

The call and the challenge for the writer is to notice. Through this year of chaos, I try. Often anymore, it is the only thing I can do. I can't seem to do anything about things, either because they are out of my control to begin with or because I notice them while walking a fussy baby, or while falling into bed, exhausted.

Before I moved, I had started on a longer work, now temporarily abandoned, that deals with my mom's passing and my tendency to search for and, by turns, embrace or reject what might be signs of messages from the other side. One of the main things I am grappling with in writing it – or should I say grappling with and so writing it in hopes of at least (and this is no small part) laying bare the questions though the answers may never find me – is even if I were to find what I believe with all my being is a sign, so what? A sign of...? The meaning of which is...? Because of it I'm supposed to believe...?

That's where the noticing comes in. For now, I just notice. It is what it is, as they say. What to do with the information, I have no idea.

I just notice, for example, that my mother declined open heart surgery before she died. And that the last time I saw her was in a cardio ICU unit. I just notice that a year after her passing I had a baby that requires open heart surgery. And that I will be spending time with him in a cardio ICU unit.

I also notice that I have bought a house with a lot of issues regarding doors and passage ways. I refer to it regularly as a Feng Shui nightmare. None of the doors to the rooms close right, entrances are obstructed, unnecessarily complicated, blocked. If everything in the world wasn't at the top of my priority list right now, from buying winter boots to scheduling surgery, I'd say I'd have those doors fixed ASAP. My baby, born to this house in so many strange ways – born at home the night we moved in, his middle name meaning “new house...” -- has passages in his heart that are blocked and other spaces that are open where they aren't supposed to be. Just noticing.

I laughed and laughed at the door collector when I first hit upon it. But really, why should this hobby be any odder than any of our other neuroses? French doors teeming with possibility. Barn doors with their two halves swinging independently. We live among closet doors, pocket doors, solid wood doors with see-through key holes. All the while, looking for a way out

just tests

2011-10-27T09:33:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to clarify, since several people asked me...Rhys and I had to stay overnight for some tests, we are not doing surgery yet. Present tense as a stylistic choice and always a lag time in real time vs posts. Thanks always for reading.

the graveyard shift

2011-10-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

It was my first night in a hospital. I have spent the day standing on a cardio cath recovery floor because we are "overflow," the third "high risk" baby of the day. Rhys got to do his echocardiogram and I only had to force feed him foul-tasting medicine that put him to sleep first. Almost like a party. Nine hours after we arrived we got to talk to the cardiologist. It only took the surgeon 8 and a zap to the pager.

Now, Rhys and I are settled into our charming accommodations where his monitors sing to us about numbers on blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation levels.Any time I lift him to nurse, we go code blue. It's not unlike a car alarm - no one pays attention anymore since they are always set off by accident. Beyond the curtain there is a 2-week old and his mom. The little guy has already had surgery for his time in our world and has yet to breathe the air outside a hospital wing.

In place for a night of monitoring, I am thinking of making a leaf rubbing of the springs on my cot. A handsome man breezes into our room around 10 pm or so and introduces himself as Dan. Hi, Dan. He looks like he just walked off the set of one of those medical drama shows. Dark chest hair curls out of the top of his scrubs. He has an easy manner, quick with the jokes.

"I'm the doctor on duty for the night," he tells me, and by way of further jovial explanation: "It's my job to keep everyone alive overnight."

"Mine, too," I say.

"Really?" he inquires, all earnestness and curiosity. "What do you do?"

"I'm a mom."

trust

2011-10-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Explain:

We are a people who, approaching an intersection on foot where 2 or 3 people are already standing waiting for the walk signal, immediately press the button, assuming, one is to believe, that the other people forgot to or somehow did it wrong, thus, their continuing stance at the corner.

However, we are also a people who are perfectly willing to believe that a surgical team can saw through the breast bone, stop the heart, empty it of blood, cut it here and sew it there with the ultimate in precision, presumably repairing, without risk of error, what is already the ultimate in perfection.

Mama Bear Goes to Boston

2011-10-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

Rhys: over it with the doctors, but still trying to stay balanced in the yin and yang of it.

Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning, and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn't happen often, but –and here's the absolute salient point—once would be enough.

- Bill Bryson, from A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

The first 3 out of 4 days we spent in Massachusetts after arriving this summer from our final stop (the lower Hudson River Valley) at the end of our cross-country insanity, the front page of the local paper was splayed with pictures of bears. Bears, eating from people's compost piles. Bears, exiting people's homes through kitchen windows. Bears, just chilling in people's yards.

The animals were beautiful, striking in their bear-selves and the juxtaposition displayed: with an obviously wild nature that challenged everything about their domestic surroundings.

Despite the bear on the flag of California, I have never heard of one wandering into our old neighborhood. Judging by the construction drive that seems set on paving over every sage bush there, we'll be lucky if the skunks make it. The bears? They are long gone, having had to submit to things like the bear and bull fights back in 1800s Monterey with its red-tiled roofs and neanderthal modes of entertainment lit by whale blubber. But enough about our shining past.

The two times we came to see this house when it was on the market, the seller's realtor must have tripped over herself trying to mop up the puddles of drool she left on the floor after salivating about the young couple with the preggo wife who would surely be ensnared by all the charms of a 100-year-old farm house. She saw the belly and knew her marketing tactic immediately.

“Kathryn!” she'd coo to me. “Look at this!”

“This” would inevitably be some stupid-ass thing, like a picture of a laundry shoot window that once existed or her perceived convenience of the washing machine in the kitchen (?!?...coming in another entry...). She thought she'd found the perfect preggo, that sales push-over, the Nesting Mama. Unfortunately, she had me pegged all wrong. She'd found Mama Bear.

“Is that asbestos on those pipes in the basement?” I'd ask narrowing my eyes on her latest dream detail (“There's a light in this closet! And look, Kathryn!...”)

---

“If I can help the other 4 families you'll see this year with a kid with TOF, let me tell you, you need to explain more information up front. Nothing for nothing, Doctor, but that handout you left us with told us nothing and only made us scared.”

“Oh, well, I'm sorry. That was never my intention. My intention was to leave you with enough information to investigate. The name of the condition Rhys has is called Tet-tra-lo-gy of Fa-llot.” (Why, some of my best friends have Tetraology of Fallot!)

Bitch, start with me.

Can you say, fired? She's been replaced. (Why, some of my best friends are doctors!)

The local scene just beginning to show signs of hope with a new cardiologist on board, this weekend we also head to Boston – our first trip to Children's Hospital. We will be consulting with a cardiologist and a surgeon. Rhys will undergo a sedated echocardiogram and then have to spend the night for observation. I will stay with him. I'm packing my honey pots and holding my breath.

And since I don't yet know how to communicate the intensity of the stress we've been under for the last 4 weeks, that's all for now.

...Nothing worries and antagonizes a female bear more than to have people between her and her brood...

rainy thoughts

2011-09-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have been reading emails from friends. And friends of friends. And friends of friends of... Well, you get the idea. I put out a call to my peeps for anyone with information, connections, or personal experience with Tetralogy of Fallot and what I got back has left me dazzled.

So many people went out of their way to try to help us. So many words of encouragement, from all the crazy corners of my life. The poets and the doctors; the lawyers, the teachers, the pray-ers and the skeptics. I love you all. Thank you.

Any of you who've followed this blog over time may have gathered that our Isaac -- from here on out to be known as "our first-born," just because it amuses me and feels charmingly cliche and like something I'd never say, ever -- is a rather intense little person who demands a great deal of our time and attention. And while he is still that and in all likelihood will always be that, ~~Isaac~~ our first-born has been doing a fabulous job of busying himself lately. In fact, he never stops being busy. Ever.

One of this favorite things these days is cutting out snowflakes. You know, the fold the paper and snip holes kind. And while I might object somewhat to this premature winter filling my windows, considering I'll have a real, New England winter on my hands before you know it, I can't help but be charmed by my son's creations which include his very best writing.

Bundled into the center of his snowflakes are conglomerations of the words he can spell without thinking too hard, so that they usually say things like "IsaacMomDadRhysCatLove." And I take them from him and think, yeah, pretty much, that's it.

The authentic snowflakes are still a ways off for now, gratefully, but weather has been unusually rainy here these days. Downpours several days out of the week seem common.

Both my boys were born in the pouring rain. There is a sacredness to rainy days. I have always thought so. There is something to gain from the darkened scenery, the baptism of garden and asphalt alike.

All I can do is just move through this time with Rhys. Move slowly through.

Everything wants to be the rain.
The yellow maple leaves
pinging against the walkway
gather first to fall in a gold sheet
of sound. The dry grasses
bending in the wind
thirst to be like the rain --
how it can calm the most hassled
day, put us softly to sleep.
The traffic on the highway --
especially the traffic -- puts on its best
mimicry, longing as it does
to be instead the beat and whoosh
of contemplation that is the rain.
And as the rain streams now, down
the windshields of rush hour,
it does not mock or scold its proteges,
does not deny them their allegiance
as it might, but simply continues, steady
in its example.

murmurs

2011-09-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you are delicate enough that the quarter-inch square stickers for the EKG they made you do left bruises behind on your velvet skin. Imagine now that you are so delicate that two hours under florescent lights, the ringing of phones, shuffling of folders left you so exhausted you slept the rest of the day and night, waking only briefly here and there to eat. Try hard to imagine it. Do. Because we are all that delicate.

My Rhys has been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. He will require a corrective procedure, likely open heart surgery, before he turns six months of age.

I wasn't surprised somehow when they heard the murmur. Not that part. Not the murmur. A month ahead of schedule he moved down that canal red with blood and love and into my arms, a floppy doll, quiet as I leaned in and whispered my greeting, praying he'd stir, rally in the dark room of hope. And then that beautiful heart had something extra to say.

Metaphors are real and I will not apologize for them. I am a poet for a reason. And it is not to talk prettily about spring. My boy's heart came with a space most of the rest of us don't have; it is more open than the average person's and sometimes, because of this, he cannot catch his breath.

“What a perfect little being,” the barrista says staring at my baby bundled in his carrier. “Yes,” I answer, “Yes, he is.”

It is a new world. Always new. Imagine.

what it means to have two

2011-09-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

The other day Rhys' milk blister was back posing as a perfect tooth dead center on his upper lip. And since I've spent the last two weeks with the baby asleep on my lap reading Captain Underpants books to Isaac, it reminds me of a buck tooth – specifically the buck tooth of Sulu the Bionic Hampster. Not something the average mother normally says about her newborn.

photo could be better, took it on my phone.

I know I'm supposed to be goofy in love and showering everyone I know with photos of the most beautiful being ever produced, and most of the time I'm like all kinds of ready to call up Anne Geddes and be in her face with “Do you have a flower pot?? 'Cause do I have a baby for YOU.” But sometimes I look at my new son and I see Sulu the Bionic Hampster, and I want other mothers out there who spot mutated rodents from juvenile chapter books in the images of their children to have somewhere to put their feelings. I'm here to tell you, it makes you no less of a mother. It just makes you a candidate to write a blog.

peaceful waters

2011-09-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Rhys is four weeks old. Today is his due date. Time is like water -- rushing, rushing.

This morning is one of those mornings when daylight enters the room to reveal two adults completely and utterly defeated by the smallest of beings – barely 7 pounds now – lying asleep on the bed between them, looking all of the miracle he is, any strains of the Midnight Devil we came to know hours before vanished.

Sleep. If only. Our 6-year-old is hungry, and we might have to feed the cat, too, although so far she's caught herself a mouse and a bat (!) for her time in the house.

It's the stage way before smiles and giggles, before clutching toys and eating toes. It is the stage when, if their eyes are open at all, they stare past you and over your shoulder with a great suspicion, tiny brow furrowed into deep gorges, mouth pursed. The question in the air is clear enough: did someone make a mistake? pull the parachute cord over the wrong cloud? Who ARE these people??

Last night, Mike and I tried to discuss our goals for the long weekend. The project list is too big to write down. The house is too much of a mess to start anything. I wanted to hear about floors being sanded, lamps being purchased.

“I think we should be patient with each other,” Mike says.

“What?”

“Patient.”

“What??”

“I think we should be patient with each other.”

“We're not being patient with each other?” I ask impatiently.

“No.”

Wake me up when you've got some goals, dude.

In the newly installed shower one of the two shower curtains that circle the claw foot tub is printed with a colorful world map – a long-ago gift from my sister, Rita. Due to geographic and stylistic considerations, as I stand in the respite of hot water, I spend no time looking at, for example, Australia or, as it turns out, the Arctic Circle, which is shown in detail in a callout much below its actual latitude. Instead, while I bathe I am regaled with décor such as Greenland and, particularly, the upper regions of Canada where I study the many fort towns with bemused curiosity.

There are Forts Nelson, Norman, Simpson and Smith – your garden variety embattlements. Then Fort Reliance and Fort Resolution that have a bit more to say about the state of things. Among all these is my favorite: Fort Vermillion, which bounds forward in my imagination, its brilliant colors streaming, its watch towers vibrant in wild shades of red. And through it all there is the Peace River, holding down the waters of hope that everyone will quit it and just get along.

Excuse me, but did you just say the word 'casserole'?

2011-09-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

blueberry muffins
homemade ketchup
homemade pesto
and the topper – a brown rice casserole.

This is the current list of things we've been greeted with my our new neighbors. We seem to have landed in some kind of wonderland of friendliness, not to mention, victory gardens.

Also worth noting is that we seem to be surrounded by Californians. The wives on both sides of us are California natives, the diaper service lady called Arcadia home before moving east, the mailman hails from Santa Rosa, the young couple running the groovy farm in the next town just moved out here the month before we did from Santa Barbara, the woman across the street lived several years in Palo Alto. Curious.

In my first couple weeks in the house, which of course were also my first couple weeks with a newborn, I have not been able to get out and about and meet these west coast transplants with good community habits. I am quite secluded in my tiny room filled with a collage of straws, washcloths, ibuprofen, pillows, and a squalling infant they say is mine. My sequestered existence only deepened when Little Guy, being pretty little, was not able to eat so very much, and I ended up with badly blocked milk ducts, near mastitis, that culminated in the precipice of delirium and a 103 fever on my birthday. (This child crowded into August, for goddsakes, when every other event in our lives happens. He knows how to find the party.)

Milk Duds? exclaimed Gerard.

Ducks! I shouted. Milk Ducks!

-- from Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore

When I complained I'd never get out to see anyone, that I felt like a ghost, here but not really here, Mike suggested putting on a long, black veil and walking slowly around the lighted porch at night, just to add to the mystery and mystique, charge up the rumor mill.

There are many, many things I have no memory of in my life. Many, many of those many, many things relate to the early days of being a mom. But there is one thing I remember with keen clarity. It took nine days for my nipples to stop being ripped apart and feeling like they were on fire. Nine. Not eight, not ten. This time was no different. Nine. Though there was a space in which I dreamed of a shorter penance.

I heard through the grapevine that my next door neighbor was a lactation consultant. She was also, as it turned out, on vacation. We waited in great anticipation for her to return.

When did my life turn into an Alanis Morissette song? I moved in next door to a lactation consultant...who was on vacation...in CALIFORNIA.

Obsessed with someone I never met, the days ticked on and my tender nipples scabbed. Until one day, Mike was looking out the kitchen window and, adding on Mike's inability to remember anyone's name, you get this conversation--

Mike: Hey! There's Tim...

Me: You mean Todd?

Mike: Todd is putting car seats in the car; maybe he's going to pick up his family...You should go over and ask him if Natalie...

Me: You mean Cynthia?

Mike: Cynthia's coming home today.

Me: 'Hi, Tim-Todd. I'm Kitty. Is your wife Natalie-Cynthia coming home any time soon? Because I'd really love to show her my boobs!'

Won't you be my neighbor?

The deed to the house arrived in the mail and I set it on the changing table.

The weather added to my insular existence; rain just kept coming. There was nothing to do but wait for it to stop and heat up the casserole.

family portrait

2011-09-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

must update that sidebar.

notice the steps we're sitting on go nowhere. entries on more of such charms of the new house and more baby-related life coming soon. also notice surrounding us are some of the succulents I dragged 5,000 miles on our cross-country trip. they make me happy. those wacky boys pictured have also been known to do same.

Rhys' Birth Story

2011-08-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

Hi, we were just in your store and I think we left a large, neon green rubber snake in your bulk section.

Did you say rubber snake, ma'am?

I'm afraid so.

This is how my labor started. Sort of. But let's back up to the morning of August 4.

I was excited to have just brought over that morning from our temporary Massachusetts accommodations of most of the summer to the new house, our house, what I needed to stay the night. It would be our first night all together there. It was also our 10^th wedding anniversary, one I had always believed we'd celebrate in Monterey with lots of friends.

But things were not where I could have ever anticipated them to be 10 years down the road... The POD was unloaded and sitting empty at the end of the driveway. The correct gas company had been summoned after a dumb misunderstanding that had us paying for someone's gas at this address in a city called Waymouth, MA – not where we live. That morning we'd interviewed a doula about the possibility of staying with Isaac during the birth. She seemed nice, if not ridiculously young and beautiful. Isaac had two days left of summer camp and while Mike attempted a stab at work, sitting with his laptop on the porch, I walked the third of a mile into the small town center, headed for the bookstore and lunch at my favorite cafe.

It was hot, but not exceedingly so by summer 2011 standards. I was having some contractions, but nothing exceedingly unusual by summer 2011 pregnancy standards.

I was happy. This simple walk. Time to myself. Time to try to take in that this was my space now. This unfamiliar neighborhood with the old growth trees and peace flags.

When I returned, Mike informed me that my mother-in-law and his aunt were coming over to wash the windows. As they like, I thought, and toppled over on the couch, exhausted. The women of Windex arrived and conquered, exclaiming all the while about how I walked “all that way!” into town.

Suddenly, it was late already – 4:30 – and I had yet to get to the grocery store. I felt like crap by now, but compelled to work on the shopping list. Isaac decided he was coming with me and so was his green snake.

I think that about catches us up to the opening telephone conversation.

After I got home, I reluctantly mentioned to Mike that the contractions felt different – a little rise to them. He looked downright frightened, but tried to cover it quickly. “You're not having a baby tonight, are you?” “Uh, nooooooooo,” I told him. Still, I thought it best to call the midwives.

When Isaac was born, our midwife, Maggie, barely got there in time. Two weeks early, a day before the home visit that would have saved Maggie from having to search blindly in the middle of the night for our apartment, Isaac shifted into position for exit. Then, an hour after she got there - wham, blam, thank you, ma'am, Isaac was out. Done. “Huh. And I thought you were going to be a pain in the ass,” Maggie marveled at me afterwards. “Thanks, Mag. Thanks a lot.”

Consequently, my midwives here drilled me with precautions about calling early when ANYTHING felt different. So I called. Their advice? Get in the bath and drink a glass of wine. Reason number 904 to hire a midwife and skip the doctor route.

If it's real labor, it won't stop the labor, they told me. If it's not, it will relax things.

I lumbered up the stairs to put Isaac to bed while Mike returned to our former place of residence to retrieve Emily cat. With Isaac was out cold, Mike hadn't returned, so I drew a bath as instructed.

When we first came to look at this house – second on our list of showings we'd lined up the day after crash landing in Massachusetts, I spotted a neighbor outside across the street. Mike was chatting up the realtor about furnaces while I slipped out the porch and over to the woman standing knee high in Queen Anne's Lace. We discussed the area a bit, the ages of the kids on the block and how she used to live in Palo Alto (CA). She seemed quite friendly and I was heartened.

Before I returned to actually look at the house we'd come to see, she lowered her voice and leaned in closer. I hear there is only one bathroom in there, she told me conspiratorially. Ooh. Neighborhood gossip. I liked it.

It is true that our new house has but a single bathroom. But neighbor lady only had part of the scoop – the bathroom had a beautiful claw foot tub...and no shower. No shower. It's an old house. It's a house CHOCK full of poorly orchestrated do-it-yourself projects. Over the last century, it's been added to, half-ass renovated, and (sort of) updated prior to putting it up for sale. But no one saw fit to add a pipe dripping warmish water from above. Mike's comment: “In a hundred years, no one wanted a shower?”

There is now a shower in the one bathroom. It only took a hundred years and one week. Imagine what we can accomplish from here. Anyhoo, let's return to that day – Rhys' day..Oh yeah, HIM! Was I writing about the birth of my son somewhere here? Or actually, let's return to the day before Rhys – OUR day – our damn anniversary...

I got into the claw foot tub that still lacked a shower and waited for my husband to get home. Seemed appropriate for an anniversary protocol. The claw foot tub ROCKED by the way. It was deep and comfortable and even in early labor and late pregnancy, my enormo-belly protruding out of the water like a great volcanic island, felt super.

Mike got home with Emily and a bottle of Riesling called “Relax” and we proceeded to the porch. Like the bath, the wine was great. However, neither seemed to stop the contractions which only intensified and prompted another call to the midwives around 10:30pm.

Mike was still looking wary of this whole thing, worried about how early the little person seemed to want to make his appearance.

By 11pm the first midwife arrived and though she talked about us getting a few more hours of sleep and coming back after setting up a few things “just in case,” she never left.

Now picture, if you will, boxes. Lots of boxes. Not much else besides boxes.

And picture, if you will, Mike and midwife ripping through boxes looking for all the supplies we needed for the home birth while mama sweated and groped for the occasional hand to hold.

Sometime shortly after midnight the second midwife arrived and joined the hunt.

Although just as quick, labor with Rhys was completely different than with Isaac. A different that was indisputable, but difficult to define and no less dramatic. Kind of like the earthquakes that shake vs. the ones that roll. Why do I sense that this metaphor will serve me on a variety of occasions as the boys grow up?

I was getting no relief between contractions because of the pressure of the bag of waters, which had never broken. It was an amebic pain without any clear signals about when to push or what to do at all. I will tell you that, sadly, I had nothing interesting to add to the lexicon during these intense hours. You'd think I'd be coining new expletives or - at the very least - cursing my husband. But my most oft used word was “Ouch” with a couple “Helps” sprinkled in. I was about a million degrees and demanding to be fanned, demanding attention that took my attending trio away from their continual search for more stuff they thought they needed for me to have this baby, but other than that, I was just slightly more whiny than usual as far as I recall.

I never quite found my rhythm with the labor. It was just too fast. The medical term is precipitous. The end came as a surprise to me. I could have had five minutes or five hours to go by then, I had no idea. But on the very same daddy-built bed as his brother arrived six years earlier, at 1:10am, on August 5, just clear of our anniversary date, Baby-baby, aka Rhys, entered the scene.

Mike woke up Isaac just before his usual wake up time in the morning and told him we had a surprise for him downstairs. Having gone from excited about witnessing the birth to (after watching a couple birth videos) unsure if he really wanted to deal with all that, Isaac was not disappointed to have slept through it. He was very pleased to meet his brother, however, whom he (and the rest of us) continued to call Baby-baby.

Who knows what comes ahead of what. Did the walk “all that way” help bring on labor? Or did I walk all that way because labor was already in the works? Did Rhys come early because of all the craziness we endured during the pregnancy, or did I worry from week 18 that he would come early because I intuitively knew something?

Rhys was born at 36 weeks – just at the cut off of when I would be allowed to have him at home. This birth would have majorly sucked in the hospital. Everything about it would have signaled emergency to a hospital staff. My fitful, amebic pain would have had to be contained within a sterile cot and restricted by a monitor – several monitors. They would have taken him away from me. Suctioned him with machines.

And, really, what else would a baby skipping four weeks of gestation need more than just to be held by his mama?

“This is your new uterus,” one of the midwives told me sweeping her arm around the small room we'll eventually use as an office while discussing what special considerations this little preemie would need. I took in the boxes labeled things like “Isaac's books/toaster/Mike's diplomas,” thought about the pantry with its grimy thumb-tacked contact paper put up sometime between Watergate and Flashdance, and swallowed hard.

But as the sun entered the non-shatterproof glass on the window with the broken sash and chipping lead paint and spilled luxuriously across the fake wood vinyl flooring in the dining room just outside the “nursery” door, I knew it was the start of a new day.

1 in 80,000

2011-08-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

Only one in 80,000 babies are born "in-the-caul." That is, still in all or part of the amniotic sac. The caul itself was very valuable through history as a lucky talisman and people who were born in this way were said to have special powers that help them see through the "veil of life," powers of premonition and clairvoyance.

Introducing

...four weeks ahead of schedule...born healthy and perfect...in-the-caul...at home, while his big brother slept...on the first night in our new house...
...just on the other side of our 10-year anniversary...the boy everyone was sure would be a girl...

RHYS XAVIER
5 lbs, 15 oz.
19.5 inches
August 5, 2011, 1:10 am

Rhys = of Welsh origin, meaning "boldness," "enthusiasm"
Xavier = of Basque origin, meaning "new house"

(pronounced Reese ZAY/Vee/Er)

everyone's happy on closing day

2011-08-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

Meet the latest challenge in Emily's life.

Lucy.

As you may be able to divine, Lucy is a ferocious beast, ready to maul my poor girl the minute she gets the opportunity. She's all fang and slober and malice. She's...okay, she's a pile of depressed fluff because her family left her here while they go somewhere in Maine I can't pronounce. She took one sniff of cat from about 10 feet and ran the other way. The problem, however, is that Emily is oblivious to her power over this other animal. We are staying on the second floor, Emily's food and litter pan are in the basement, and in between there's...

Lucy.

And here she was thinking she was queen again. Sure, she smelled the cat that used to live here, up to just a few weeks before we arrived. Oh yeah, didn't I mention in my "the living and the dead" post a couple back that even my poor cat had to live in the shadow of death? Our host's cat died two months before we got here. He's buried in the backyard.

Times are tough, BUT! It's August. It really turned into August, like I never thought it would. Soon, these posts will include news of a house - our house! It's almost too much to believe.

August 1st = Our closing date. And everyone's happy on closing day, aren't they?

Here's the picture I have -- a bar, lots of dark wood, the TV monitors tuned to the Red Sox game but muted, the bartender drying out glasses or cutting lemons, a few couples eating at the surrounding tables. Now, over in the corner, near the waitress station, there are the realtors - ours and the seller's, their arms around each other, swaying. And what's that they are singing? "We're in the Money," I think. Their words are slurred a little, the shot glasses in their hands tilting out some of their moonshine. Before we pan away, several "Iloveyoumans" can be heard exchanged.

Oh! And look! There's the home inspector. He's given up the knee pads and the rubber shoe covers; he's looking sharp in a pressed white collar shirt open to his navel -- is that a gold medallion resting on his chest?? -- and he's leaning in toward the bartender, tracing his finger around and around the rim of his beer glass. I think he just licked his lips.

The loan officer from the bank is looking gooooood tonight. My oh my, I wouldn't have though she had it in her, but damn if she's not got that fishnet thigh wrapped around the pole on the stage in the back of the room. What would the underwriter think if she could see her now??? And she's stuffing hundred dollar bills in her own garter belt! Wow! Where could all that money that have come from?

Our lawyer is there, too, and, aw, gee, this is a little embarrassing, he's stripped down to his boxers and he's climbing up on the bar. He seems to be twirling his clothes around his head and gyrating his hips while occasionally letting out whooping noises and sucking down his vodka tonic."Easiest money I ever made!" he shouts over the jukebox (Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive") and then rocks his air guitar. And of course the paralegal is standing nearby, his right hand man. He just called for another round for the bar on Kitty and Mike!!

Parrrrr-teeeeee, Baby!

So raise a glass tonight, wherever you may be. It's on us.

Maggie

2011-07-29T02:11:00.000-07:00

In most human cultures, birth is a social event not a potential medical emergency... - Geradine Simkins

When I left Monterey, one of the fabulous friends I left behind was my midwife, Maggie. She is an incredibly unique soul -- hilarious, insightful, grounded in layers of experience, politically and otherwise courageous, an amazing artist, an oasis of comfort.

She "caught" Isaac, as they say, and I wish very much she could be here for this baby. I got to spend the first trimester and a half with her.

She is one of the midwives featured in a new book called Into These Hands: Wisdom from Midwives, edited by Geradine Simkins. It is a compilation of the stories of midwives over the age of 50 who have been practicing for at least 25 years, how they came to be what they are and why they do what they do.

I miss you, Maggie!!

the living and the dead

2011-07-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

She has two rhythms now

Another heartbeat

Almost too delicate

To dance to.

-- Taelen Thomas

My friend and colleague, the ineffable Taelen Thomas, wrote that for me spontaneously when he found out I was pregnant with Isaac back in 2004. He wrote it on an index card while we stood off stage together at the performance poetry show I was hosting at the time. I doubt he remembers it. But I always have, and when we were packing and moving I found the card. It's now taped up in the van; it traveled across the country with us, a new dance its purview these days.

As confused as I sometimes become about our decision to have another child, there is a need. It's large and small and touches many circles that don't always touch each other. I think it's safe for me to write with philosophical wonder about some things that have driven me to distraction in the last 5 weeks in Massachusetts because very soon we will actually be in our own house and I won't have to deal with it as my daily reality anymore.

Since we've arrived I feel like we've been infused with the dead. We are staying with someone whose long-time partner is critically ill with cancer. We get updates several times a day after her visits. An understandable obsession of hers these days, death and dying are also what we are regaled with stories of as she sits out the heatwave in front of the newspaper. A couple killed in a car accident. “Isn't it terrible??” A priest who shot himself. “Can you imagine??” A life apart from this black-shrouded barrage of facts? I hope I still can.

Then, amidst other more removed deaths – someone's daughter's husband's father, a guy who used to go dancing with so-and-so... – that we nonetheless hear about often and in detail, a couple weeks ago, Mike's uncle passed away.

We mentioned in casual conversation that we have promised Isaac a bunny for his 7^th birthday next year and he's very, very excited. “We used to have a bunny,” our host started. “A cute, black and white bunny. It lived out by the shed. Until one day a raccoon came – I think it must have gotten in through the top of the hutch...” You get the idea. Isaac and I sat shell-shocked at another blood-strewn tale where once there was just a furry pet.

The apparent “serendipity” of death, if you will, has reached such a fevered pitch that even the most seemingly innocent interactions steer in dangerous directions: “Have you ever seen a June bug, Isaac? Look, it's too fat to turn over again from its back!” “There are ants eating it,” my son informs her, taking a closer look, “It's dead.”

Even when we arrived here was curious timing. It was the same weekend I flew in to Jersey last year for my mom. The one-year anniversary of her death on June 19 came 2 days after we got here and continues to shadow me.

As you may or may not imagine, being pregnant, in a new town, grieving, buying a house, blah blah blah blah blah, has brought on more than one meltdown to this poet's constitution. At one point, Mike said, “Do you think you can ask your mom for help?” To which I snapped “NO! I'm tired of dead people. I've had enough of dead people!”

Of course I want her to walk with me, but at the same time it's especially painful right now. And of course the dead and the living can be in conversation, but even Persephone got to come the hell back from the Underworld for part of the year.

It is time for life. New life. Why do you think I am so addicted to farmer's markets? It's about abundance, a coming to fruition, displaying beauty, Demeter restored.

In a few weeks I get to hold the new. I get to feel brand new life, right there in my arms. And I remember this much, the wave of hope will be bigger than all the rest of this. It's time to clean things up, sweep away the June bugs.

“Don't pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living.” - Albus Dumbledore

Bay-buh-Bay-buh

2011-07-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

If I were to post a wanted ad for friends, which I indeed need in my new home, I might require a quality that I can't quite put my finger on the name of. Rather, let me tell you a story that might illustrate it.

One day Isaac and I were at the children's museum and I happened to run into a good friend of mine, Alicia, with her twin girls who were probably about four at the time. All involved were please by this chance encounter and after the kids had had their fill of playing restaurant and hospital, we headed out together to a taquería close by.

Waiting for our food at the booth, Alicia pulled out of her purse a copy of Gabriel García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I've been trying to read this,” she said simply. “I brought it along in case.” I have always had a deep respect for Alicia; we have fun together; we can talk about all kinds of things; we were friends before we had kids; we've stayed friends after having kids; she has wrapped her mother world into her preexisting one. Unflappable, she acknowledges the changes motherhood has brought to her life while maintaining her interests, her poise, and her personality.

And in that moment, when I saw the book, not only did I again fall madly in love with her, I understood on some level without a name how it was we came to be such good friends. Anyone who carries One Hundred Years of Solitude around hoping to catch a moment when her twin preschoolers are occupied long enough that she might read a line or two? These are my people.

I no longer have the option of having people meet me pre-kid(s). That's an interesting space for me to ponder.

I can remember when Mike and I first arrived in Monterey and I began my graduate program. It weirded me out slightly that everyone meeting me was meeting me as part of a couple. It was particularly odd seeing how Mike and I were very new to coupledom at the time. We'd taken off together after knowing each other not all that long at all and we had no idea where this thing might go, or if it might just die a quick and dirty west coast death.

I am still relatively new to motherhood and now I will become new all over again. Different baby. Different phase. Different rules. But soon, people passing me on the street will just see the ladywiththebaby. The mom. I have yet to reconcile completely with my mother identity, but in some kind of insane apprenticeship, I've decided the best way to get there is to try again.

We call the baby “Baby-Baby.” Since Isaac will always be my baby, the logic goes that this one must be Baby-Baby. Isaac has somehow shortened it recently to sound a bit like Elvis, lip curled: “Bay-buh-Bay-buh,” he'll pronounce. Our Vegas star will be here in another month or so.

I wrote so much poetry during the time I was pregnant with Isaac, and I've basically written close to zero in the last eight months. I feel the desire to get some out about this pregnancy before it's over, before the new little one appears. It will be the last time I carry a child like this, from within the intimate space of blood and darkness. I am cautious of what things the power of another being will shift in our lives, just as I am also enamored of him/her, protective, mama-bear-hormone in love. My belly protrudes into the world as a tease to me, a taunt representing the directions out and away.

Soon, Mama, I will have the ability to move out there. I will move away from you. I will leap unprotected and you will be lucky to capture the trail of my laughter as I go.

Matt of Matt's Garage

2011-07-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

Some of my more faithful and astute readers may recall a passing reference I made to a bar in Iowa called Glenn's – the same one where I was harassed by the pig farmer for my dietary choices – in which I state that the owner's name as Jerry. This didn't seem all that odd to me since I had already under my belt the experience of the garage where the majority of work for the Van had been done before we left for our cross-country trip: a place called “Just Andy's,” the owner, none other than Pierre. I was getting used to this trend, until I met Matt.

Our Mazda 3 hatchback was waiting for us at my in-laws' house when we got to this side of the country. It was not a tearful, joyful reunion as I've always hated that damn car. If you have nothing else to do and want to read about how it entered our lives, be my guest. Here's the back story of why we needed to get it. Here's part one of shopping for the new car. Here's the Mazda deal.

I had to admit after some consideration that shipping the sucker rather than selling it was the route to take. But I wasn't going to like it. My best hope was if it got stuck in a snow bank over the winter, never to be recovered. Or its exhaust system choked with some a swarm of bizarre flying summer bugs, known only in the northeast, their infestations coming every 4.73 years. Or something that would completely kill it, forcing us to junk it and move on with our lives.

Spiteful little be-otch vehicle that it is, it was just the clutch that went, and right away to boot. Expensive enough to hurt, but extremely fixable.

We got a recommendation on a place close by called Matt's Garage and headed in. We discussed the problem with someone there and decided on a plan of action. As we turned to leave, I inquired of the man who'd been helping us his name. He gave me a funny look before answering. “Matt. I'm Matt,” he said, all but pointing to the sign on the building behind us. Oh. What was this new and magical world I'd entered where things are in fact what they appear to be??

After our first meeting and during the time the Mazda was at his place, Matt would call me often. Whenever I'd be expecting realtors, lawyers, inspectors, it was always Matt on the phone. He started every conversation the same way. “Hi. This is Matt.” Like we'd been buds for years. It always took me a second or two. “Matt,” he'd repeat. “Matt's Garage.” I hate that car. But I think I like Matt.

Pretty soon the clutch was fixed, and we were back on the road.

Then, at 8:30am my phone rings. Seems a little early even for my relentless realtor. It's my friend, Matt.

“You in possession of that Mazda?” he says, serious as all get out. “Are you anywhere near Easthampton right now??” he prompts. Having taken note of our California plates but deprived our full story, he was concerned. We were all of about a half mile away and as far as I knew the piece of shit was still in the driveway.

“We found a spot of oil on the ground where the Mazda was parked. I gotta put it on the lift.”

A spot of oil? Big flipping deal. Mister, do you have any idea the kinds of cars I've driven? A spot of oil??

“I can be there in a couple hours,” I told him still groggy.

“Okay,” he said, like he didn't really trust me to come.

The scribbles on scrap paper on my nightstand read like an amnesiac's to do list. I need a new everything, from pediatrician to bank account. I have no friends here; I do not recognize anyone around town. I get lost on the way to Isaac's school. I have no idea where to take my son on these empty, hot days before we are fully settled. But I think it's safe to cross “mechanic” off the list.

first impressions

2011-07-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

I am now in New England where they are bringing things like maple syrup, lawn mowing, and the Red Sox to a new art form. Though I can abide only one of these past times, I am trying my best to fit in.

There are other strange things about this eastern land, for example, the weather. The rains in Monterey, wild and fierce as they are, generally contain themselves to their own season, the winter season to be exact, and we do not see them during summer. Here in Massachusetts, they come and go, announcing themselves with thunderous warnings but falling, as you'll have it, straight down for lack of ocean winds. I have not known rain like this – beginning somewhere in the heavens and dropping in vertical lines to the ground. And on those days when the clouds cover the brutal sun, people shiver and say things like “Gloomy weather!” and my thoughts of camaraderie fall away again. By contrast, they step into day after day of 90 degrees and declare it “beautiful.” Perhaps if you're a lizard and not an 8-month-pregnant woman acclimated to 65 degree summer days. Perhaps if your biggest goal is to mow your lawn and watch the Sox game.

Normally, I hate air conditioners – all that mechanical whirring to send out artificial air. But these days they are not only my friend in survival, their noise is like a cocoon blocking out the immediate world. I like it. It's why I wear earplugs on planes – not because it will stop the shrieks of the toddler two rows up, but because combined with the noise of the engine, I can close myself off from the reality in front of me and the sound and the feel become dreamlike, with a bit of the quality of being under water, and I can better imagine the angels whose wings support the metal mystery of physics through these 30,000 feet. Back in my airconditioned room, in someone else's house, hungry and not at all sure I won't get lost again on the way to the grocery store, I do not know what the angels do here yet. I am, in essence, waiting for the angels.

The trees here do not include cypress or redwood, though I'm told they throw a party in the fall. They will wow me with colors, I'm told, and for this I should celebrate them and dispense with the space in my heart for soft red bark, for canopies that enclose me but do not block the sound of waves. Where do I go to grieve this lack? They were my church.

We arrived on a Friday; it was one of those “gloomy” days. We were greeted by family who were thrilled to see us and have yet to ask us a single question about our five and a half weeks on the road. We go to lunch and sprinkler parks, the latter surely anomalies in water-starved California. We pick blueberries. We wait for our own house. We joke with the bored high school student operating the “Kiddieville” train at the park and who collects her two-dollar fare from behind iron bars. “Are the bars really necessary?” Mike asks, and she laughs in that way people do when they've discovered something about their own situation for the first time, perhaps always suspecting there was a way to articulate it.

Northampton, Massachusetts

2011-07-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, enough of this chronicling in an orderly fashion. Here's the live scoop – we've been here for a month. Except, not really *here.* We're staying with Mike's aunt in a town *near* Northampton. I thought my fine readers deserved a quick update, and then perhaps, after this, I can get back to the charming, literary entries you've all become accustomed to. Well, the “entries” part, anyway.

Oh, where to begin?? We have not really processed the trip. We hit the ground running and with any luck may close on a house the first week of August. Just in time to unpack a box or two, rip out the hideous green carpet, then have a baby and let the rest stand in chaos for the following three years.

We have juuuuust a little going on these days: Staying at someone else's house, in the process of buying our own – talking to realtors, bankers, lawyers, home inspectors...I really can't keep up, shopping for lists of things I need for a home birth (as if I have a home), shopping for lists of things Isaac needs for school in the fall, sending Isaac to a summer program, new bank accounts, new car registration, new vets, new doctors, new dentists, new midwives, Mike working at “home,” 90 degree heat, and a dead clutch, to name a couple. (that final bit is not referring to the van, which continues to kick ass and has a twin in town somewhere we've spotted a couple times, but my nemesis, the Mazda, which we shipped and which arrived with clutch ready for the trash – story about Matt the mechanic to follow.)

I feel a wee overwhelmed. If only I were Kramer from Seinfeld and could do everything at once, no sweat. Remember the one about driving the bus and fighting off the mugger? Go here for a blast from the sitcom past: http://youtu.be/otItiZq-S5I

Maybe we'll just move on for now to a few pictures.

My son is still a goofball.

Emily is still clearly traumatized by the trip...

And misses the port o' potty.

found a cool market for my farmer's market habit.

this sculpture was labeled "Birth" - Do I need to tell you the artist is a man?

One of several favorite doctored signs around town.

Indeed. - more amusing signage.

Day Thirty-Eight: Stony Point, NY to Northampton, Massachusetts

2011-07-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

This is it. Our final day of travel. My second cross-country drive and I still haven't made it to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis. Sigh. You don't get everything you want in this world, that's clear.

When this trip/move/uprooting/change/career slaying decision was still just a possibility, people were fond of telling me it sounded like a good idea – if we were in our 20s and had no kids. I wondered at this kind of reaction. Sooooo, the message we want to pass on to our children is stay safe at any cost? If you are unsatisfied, settle. Don't take any risks, and don't do anything hard. When we tell my mother-in-law that Mike can work remotely for his California job through the rest of the year and she says, “And then what??” I expect it. Fear is a mighty and pervasive companion. But, let me put out a mild advisory to the rest of you. Think about what drives your decisions.

As we approach Massachusetts, I grow more and more melancholy. Because trite metaphor follows me like gum on a shoe, there are storm clouds hanging in the sky.

It rained all night last night. Quiet at first, then the trees grew heavy holding too much to themselves and opened their arms to share. And the lightning came.

Isaac, who sleeps on the “second floor” of the van, under the canvas pop up part was not at all in favor of the weather. He and Mike traded places, so I had my little guy with me and in need of cuddles. Hannah – his bedtime lovey – was afraid too, he told me. His tooth was loose and he was afraid of swallowing it in his sleep. So many fears piling up, coming to roost with just this sound of water, the sky giving back.

So often gifts are misconstrued as threats, as if in each of us there lies a Trojan horse waiting to spring terror onto us. Way back in Sedona, when Emily got out and was sitting out of sight on top of the van transmission for three hours and Isaac had to go to bed without knowing if his beloved cat was ever coming back, I told him some secrets of a philosophy I'd been introduced to myself relatively recently. It was time for me to try them out on someone else. I told him that the Universe is kind and wants to help us. That there is more good than “bad” in the world.

He stopped sobbing for a moment and asked me, startled, “There is??” Maybe he believed me. I can hope. Maybe I believed me, too.

I really must thank all the friends that put us up and put up with us along the way -- Christine, Heather, Mark, Sheila & Paul, Lisa & Scott, Barb & Chris, and John. We love you guys and we miss everyone back in MRY!!

Day Thirty-Seven: to Stony Point, New York

2011-07-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

It was in the bathroom at the Spring Gulch Campsite in Lancaster County the morning we left for the Hudson Valley that I realized just how far I was from California.

The cleaning woman began her conversation with me while I was still in the stall. It involved missing handsoap, all the times people have taken it and all the places she's found it. (On top of the light fixtures being one of the more ambitious locales.)

When I emerged, the litany continued briefly before turning toward how the president isn't doing anything about jobs, followed by how she is looking forward to collecting an unemployment check come November when the campsite closes for the season.

Following the natural flow of the conversation, she then shared with me the news about her brother's aneurism and stroke two weeks ago.

Hand soap to aneurism is under five minutes – I'd have had to put on a garage sale in California to get that kind of chit chat out of a stranger. This was another land; this was the east, where people who have never seen each other before and will likely never see each other again have been known to talk easily about birth, death, and when the hell the bus might come anyway. I know this space. This is the crowded east, where towns and people fill in the space as fast as trees. PA, NJ, NY...The familiarity wraps around me, but I am guarded.

We are en route to Beaver Pond Campground in Harriman State Park in New York. It will be our last night out on the road. It's raining and green and Emily is meowing like crazy. The views of the Hudson will surprise us with their beauty; Isaac will get his first campfire night since South Dakota; there will be a young deer continually grazing within 20 feet of our site; there will be singing frogs and the discovery by my kiddo of a rock with impressions of shell fossils we will later find out are likely the leftovers of a traveling glacier from the last ice age; we are full circle; it has been quite the prehistoric-heavy trip. Things have changed a little since then -- the highways here are narrow and fast; we will study the map hard-- if you choose one direction you will be on 287 and if you turn the other you're on 278. Stay on your toes and whatever you do, keep moving. Today, that glacier would be a muddy puddle in the blink of an eye.

Before we began, the motto for the trip was SLOW. Ironically, it was Mike that put this out there, along with how glad he was for it. The van couldn't speed. We'd have no choice but to take it down a notch. But almost six weeks later, we must go faster, faster, longer, like someone who needs to prove something because they are different. Physically, I am hating on these northeast roads, my hands constantly around my growing belly.

But I'm proud of our little van. It made it, All this way. Go, Westy, go!

Mike has done ALL the driving. I didn't expect that. I feel vaguely ashamed. But at a certain point, it's like a pitcher you want to leave in the game so he can get his no-hitter.

The rain cranks up as we fall into our last night's van dreams.

Detour: Howling in The Van™

2011-07-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've started to wonder what our trip would look like to the outside viewer if it were, for example, a reality TV show.

There'd be a lot of shots of the scene out the window from behind my head and just off center to the left. Lots of traffic cones. Lots of red rocks, replaced by grass now. So much grass. “Mowing Ahead” the signs along the highway say. I've started to wonder just how many people are kept employed by the fertile fields of green swords.

There'd be no soundtrack in our reality show since we have had virtually no music. Creeping up on 5,000 miles – number of musical hours might hit four if we're lucky, but only because John in Leesburg, VA hooked us up with some cassettes. Yes, I said cassettes. The van, might I remind you, is 30 years old – it has a cassette player, and only a cassette player. We had a sucky MP3 player and an even suckier hook up to try to get some tunes going and it usually didn't work. The precious battery life of laptops was reserved for other things, and Mike's attempt at a car charger for them almost set my son on fire somewhere left of the Mississippi.

MP3 player/converter connection. Can I please just remind you that my husband is an engineer...

Between Monterey, CA and Leesburg, VA, our only tape was one randomly left in the van – a homemade compilation called “AIDS Ride 70s.” Any guesses at how many times you have to hear “I Will Survive” before you have zero will to survive?

One through line to our show would have to be Isaac in the gift shops of America. Isaac started the trip with his own spending money. It was money his grandparents had given him over time, tucked in Easter cards and such, plus change he'd amassed, etc. It added up to a pretty impressive sum and we told him he was free to use it on souvenirs along the way. Naturally, what I had in mind was after he'd fallen head over heels in love with some place or event, he'd just have to have a small momento – a magnet, or a little piece of petrified wood. Instead, my son walked through some of the country's greatest landmarks asking “Does this place have a gift shop?” Then proceeded to find a truck to buy. Taos: Sandpaintings? Turquoise crafts? Handthrown pottery? Wrong! Mailtruck. Carnegie Museum of Natural History: Dinosaur skeleton? Book on Ancient Egypt? Try a matchbox of a pickup towing an ATV.

And the port o' potty. That would be big. Oh, didn't I mention the port o' potty before? Must have slipped my mind. By day, an innocent plastic footstool; by night, an ugly necessity for the preggo who must pee every 10 seconds, and the boy, when it suits him. Mike, being superior to the other two members of his family in every way, does not use the port o' potty, though in a cruel twist in the hierarchy, he must empty it. There would be the scenes of Isaac almost tipping it over, the ones of Mike dragging the port o' potty bag to the campsite dumpsters; the ones of everyone's facial contortions the time we left it in the hot van for a week while staying elsewhere and then opened it once again. Is this getting too real yet?

In our reality show, which might be called, The Van™ (As in, “I'm goin' across the country in The Van, Bitches!”), I'd have to get in the confessional and talk about how many books I brought with me that I haven't cracked. Some of them I brought under the impression that I would read parts of them and use them to write broadly-based, witty commentaries on human foibles. I brought things like Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Not that I read either of these things on any regular or comprehensive basis, but I thought they'd be good for quotations and springboard material.

Ultimately, however, when I was hot, and bellified, and didn't have lots of open thinking time, I did not reach for the boys of generation Beat. I reached instead for Toni Morrison and her complex worlds of turn of the century African-American women. Who can explain this, except that boys are smelly and have cooties and Toni Morrison, when asked what book she'd bring to a deserted island, responded that she'd bring blank paper and write her own, kicks the hippie asses of Kerouac and Ginsberg combined.

Nonetheless, we have the Howl bumpersticker on the van. For those who don't know, Howl is the name of a book-length poem by Ginsberg that Lawrence Ferlinghetti (poet and founder of San Francisco's City Lights Books) published in 1957, only to be brought up on charges of obscenity from which he was later found not guilty. A recent movie called “Howl” explored the trial and some of Ginsberg's life. I would recommend it, if for nothing else the peek into 1950s American politics, though I found the whole movie interesting. City Lights is super way cool, and often a peek into current American politics.

I wrote a poem about the famous quote of Ginsberg's,“First thought, best thought” - a sentiment which 1) he knew damn well was bullshit when he said it (you should see the drafts of Howl...) and 2) has caused me great distress in working with young poets who get all starry-eyed at the mention of anything connected to the Beats and have been known to insist that their own crap verse is just perfect without any revision because, well, just look at what Ginsberg said!

While grateful to the Beats for putting down some groundwork for poetic movements, I maintain a healthy skepticism about their poetry and their general sense of craft. You can read a review I did of Diane DiPrima's Memoirs of a Beatnik here. (There also used to be an audio link, but I don't think it works anymore.) Or maybe my skepticism is aimed at the new generation of Beat worshippers. Anyhoo...

My poem (called “Redemption”) begins like this:

Damn you, Ginsberg, for ever saying it. / Damn your whole generation of social rebels / and jazzy-improv lyricists.

Later in the poem I suggest he perhaps come back from the other side for a couple days and recant, since surely eternal meditation must have changed his mind...

You could call a press conference, / broadcasting from City Lights, / Ferlinghetti seated at the table beside you, / copies of Howl piled like flapjacks and crowds/ craning to see.

Tell them you take it all back. / Tell them the angels set you straight / and you’re here to spread the word. / Explain how, besides, you’d never advocate / doing the Times crossword in pen. / Comb your beard with your fingers, well-up / for the cameras, release your flock, / Shepherd Ginsberg, to their imperfect / first thoughts, to wander home / stunned and free / to bleed all over their manuscripts, /

rivers of ink...

Who am I kidding? Poetry and reality TV? That would never fly, although those Beats had an awful lot of sex.

We still need a name for the van – please send your suggestions!

Day Thirty-Six: Lancaster, Pennsylvania

2011-06-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Food and bathrooms; bathrooms and food. See that? And here I thought I wasn't writing enough about my pregnancy.

Okay, so things were winding down and Mike was as anxious as ever to arrive at our western Massachusetts destination. He tried several times to talk me out of Amish Country, but I wasn't having it. I wanted to check out the life of the horse and buggy. I also thought it might be a really cool thing for Isaac, aka Rocket Boy, to encounter a culture that was choosing to forgo the modern technology he so dearly loved. (Isaac regularly asks me to look up videos on the computer about new technological breakthroughs, he can tell you anything you'd like to know about rocket lift off, and he starts about every third sentence with “When I grow up I'm gonna invent...”)

After grabbing a map and some advice at the downtown Lancaster welcome center, we meandered through the farms, guided by small, hand-painted signs advertising eggs, goat milk, quilts, bird houses, root beer, mailboxes, and my very, very favorite: “Custom Pea and Lima Bean Shelling.”

We made stops here and there, bought some lemonade, some pretzels. Isaac was not at all thrilled with the stop and start afternoon, he wanted to get to our campsite and be done. His motivations didn't quite mimic his dad's “the destination, not the journey” attitude, as I happen to know what he really wanted was to be released from the van to study anthills and beg us to roast marshmallows. However, he was in fact fascinated by the idea of Amish culture and excitedly pointed out horse-drawn plows in the fields.

I made Mike U-turn for the driveway marked with the sweet potato plant sign. There were only a couple days left of our trip and I figured they'd probably survive. Besides, the succulents we'd brought from California needed some company.

We pulled in and we waited. A couple of mellow bulldogs showed up to slobber on us. Children spied us from the safety of the screened porch, then went running, announcing the arrival of the strange white van. Only the smallest was left. As a sweet-faced boy, about three, stepped out into view in his wide-brimmed hat and suspenders, my hand went into virtual spasms trying not to lift the camera. (Photography is frowned upon by the Amish.)

Eventually, a woman appeared and asked how many plants I'd like. I, in turn, asked how much they cost. Twelve cents each. Excuse me? Twelve cents. ----. I. Uh. I....

Mike had to rescue me. I was speechless. We left with three dollars worth – enough for a whole garden of sweet potatoes should we actually find a house where we can plant them. That's what this was, this stop. An act of optimism. I'd battled pit toilets, pig farmers, and Interstate 80. I'd survived gargantuan RVs, fried cheeseballs, and Nebraska. It was almost over, and somewhere deep inside, maybe I still believed that at the end of it all we'd find a home. That we'd make a place where the food was all-natural, the gardens were priority, and the fucking cars just weren't. Okay, two out of three, then. No Amish in Massachusetts that I know of.

Driving from west to east has more than a little in common with labor. Things tend to move slowly at first – big, square western states that never end. And painful. Then, just when you think it'll last forever, things begin to hurry along – roads get busier, states flying by, the next and then the next.

When I was in labor with Isaac, it actually progressed very fast. When it came time to push, I didn't, really. My midwife told me afterwards that she thought I wasn't yet mentally prepared to see the end of this process. (Hell, yeah! I still thought I might be having a litter of kittens!) So my brain and body were essentially stalling to give themselves time to take it all in.

I am not ready for this trip to be done. Everyone keeps suggesting I must be. My husband was eight states ago. But I am not. I can wait. Maybe I'm just afraid of the next step. Or maybe I just need time to catch up.

Whenever I go hiking with Mike, I am always waiting, journal and trailmix in backpack, for the next place to stop. He wants to go further, go longer, go. Sometimes one manages to convince the other of the benefits of his or her preferred method. This trip has been that dance magnified.

“Do you think you'll become Amish one day?” Isaac asked me when I exclaimed for the fiftieth time my affinity for the lifestyle.

“This place is awesome,” Mike said almost to himself as we passed another buggy.

The next day, I was sorry to go, but camping in the Hudson Valley called, and we all said we'd come back. As we left and headed north to New York, I took note that Virginville, Blue Ball and Intercourse, Pennsylvania were all within a short drive of each other. Things were definitely starting to make sense.

Detour: Open Letter to Michelle Obama

2011-06-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Mrs. Obama:

I am writing to discuss your campaign, surely a worthwhile one, against childhood obesity in our country.

I have just completed a cross-country driving trip that took my family and I on a 5,000 mile journey from California to Massachusetts. While I have seen many extraordinary things along my travels, I have also witnessed a plethora of menus that would curl your toes and people sitting behind those menus who, let's just say could have benefited from the type of campaign you have embarked on some years back. It has been no less than a strenuous and continual struggle to eat anywhere close to properly as a 6-7-month pregnant woman also feeding her young child while crossing the (ample) midsection of the United States.

That battle for nutrition was one of the major reasons I was thrilled to arrive in your adopted hometown and former home of mine, Washington, D.C. Thinking nothing of our ability to find a decent lunch while out and about in the city, my family began our day at the Air and Space Museum.

I recently learned that this building is the second most-visited one on the planet (the first being Paris' Louvre Museum). And so, I took my place as one of millions this year that will examine exhibits about the physics of flying, marvel at the bravery and foolishness of those early enthusiasts with not much more than a wing and a prayer, take in the accomplishments of the first African-Americans in flight, wonder about the future of space exploration, and lots more.

And when lunchtime came, we migrated to the food court. There we would make a grave and upsetting discovery: McDonald's. McDonald's, as you may know, or not, has a 100% monopoly on the food options at Air and Space. McDonald's, Mrs. Obama.

Should I have counted for you the number of ice cream stands within the food court? Should I even bother to go so far as to challenge you to find a healthy meal under the (deep-fried) golden arches? Much less a healthy vegetarian meal? The signs posted about McDonald's commitment to the health and well-being of children only caused me to grow more upset. How dare this corporate giant of salt and fat, whose food literally won't even rot, try to school me on health.

I think I know how to eat well, Mrs. Obama. And I think you do, too. It is not at McDonald's. We cannot make people eat well, but the issue is choice.

While clearly, we could go elsewhere for food, to do so was impractical given our immediate hunger and our schedule. We were left to pick at a greasy pizza and some sugared up yogurt. By the time I found myself in the glitzy food court of Air and Space, I had already been a prisoner of poor food options for thousands of miles. My patience was tried. My children deserve better.

Do you sincerely want McDonald's representing a government-maintained, U.S. citizen-owning institution of culture such as the Smithsonian Museums? I would respectfully request that you investigate the issue of nutrition and childhood obesity as it manifests in your own backyard and as it impacts millions of visitors every year in our nation's capital.

Day Thirty-Two to Thirty-Five: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Leesburg, VA & Washington, D.C.

2011-06-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

The earth is a homeless person. Or the earth's home / is the atmosphere. / Or the atmosphere is the earth's clothing, / layers of it, the earth wears all of it, / the earth is a homeless person...

from Sharon Olds' “What is the Earth?”

Our last day in Ohio, the heat broke. We even got caught in a rain storm and took refuge, shivering, in the impressive Hudson Public Library. And then, we were off.

More friends in Pittsburgh and Washington, DC – two places I used to call home. One has the most down-to-earth people I've ever encountered. The other has motorcades that always seem to happen just when you're trying to get to lunch.

Or the atmosphere is the earth's cocoon, / which it spun itself, the earth is a larvum. / Or the atmosphere is the earth's skin – / earth, and atmosphere, one / homeless one ...

Isaac got to go to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, where he encountered the climax of his fossil-laden cross-country adventure...

And he arrived at the much-hyped-by-his-parents Air and Space Museum on the Mall, personally my least-favorite of the Smithsonian museums, but as someone born in the summer of '69, I feel strongly that freeze-dried ice cream is a childhood rite of passage.

Both cities provided some welcomed preggo creds. A woman pushing a stroller at the Carnegie asked me when my baby was due. Oh, to be noticed! (I am consistently told I am small and can hide the belly with the right clothes still. I have very few actual maternity clothes, which adds to the potential for disappearing baby.) She then followed this question with the more than predictable statement: “You look great!” Other women say this to pregnant women all. the. time. It's code for, “You aren't that fat yet!” Consequently, I'm never really sure what to say in reply.

Unfortunately, Andrew Carnegie either didn't warm to great-looking pregnant tubbos, or didn't leave enough of an endowment to put some upper floor restrooms in – two bathrooms, both in the basement. Not. Cool. A preg might be hanging in ancient Egypt on the 3^rd floor and, go figure, need to pee. Hypothetically.

Or its orbit is the earth's / home, or the path of the orbit just / a path, the earth is a homeless person. / Or the gutter of the earth's orbit is a circle / of hell, the circle of the homeless...

Another preggo triumph: At the Air and Space, which now requires bags to be x-rayed and people to be subjected to a full body scan, the guard pointed at my belly. “Bomb in there?” he inquired. When I shook my head, he ordered me to bypass the scanner.

While for its part, the Air and Space Museum has bathrooms in sufficient locales, they were – impossibly – even louder than the din of the museum itself. They could have been their own exhibit with the noise and force of the automatic hand dryers. Have you encountered these dryers? The ones that caution you to remove hands slowly? You may think the warning odd, until you notice your skin rippling and curling away from the flesh of your hand.

Honestly, I can't take the auto-bathroom stuff. Toilets flush themselves, except when they don't, water comes out on its own, if you wave your hand around enough, soap, too, sometimes – although more often I've been caught flailing fruitlessly in front of the dispenser of gloppy pink liquid waiting for it to magically fall into my palm... and paper towels appear with a wave, unless, those trusty hand dryers turn on with gale force winds.

But the earth / has a place, around the fire, the hearth / of our star. The earth is at home. The earth / is home to the homeless. For food, and warmth, / and shelter, and health / they have earth and fire / and air and water, for home they have / the elements they are made of...

Perhaps I am alone in my ability to observe exhibits of early flight, of satellites and moon landers, to see full size skeletons of diplodocus and giant prehistoric sea turtles, and leave with my strongest memories attached to public restrooms. These are the things comedy routines are made of, and really dull blog entries.

Living in the moment may not be my strong point. Writing may simply preclude living in the moment. With the exception of newspaper writing, which comes pretty close to being present in one particular moment since you are constantly on top of dates and happenings. Newspaper writing is different than my other writing in many ways – for example regarding clichés. As a poet, I run screaming from cliché, but in newspaper, its the lifeblood. The best headlines are always clichés. I imagine journalism school must be full of courses on cliché: Cliché 101, Intermediate Cliché, The History and Politics of Cliché, Multicultural Cliché. I am a mere novice here, and defer on this point to the “J-men” as I like to call my editors.

While, in my theater previewing, I am loathe to copy down directors' many clichés regarding things such as the “magic of live theater,” regarding headlines, it's always fun to see if I can make up a cliché good enough to stick. A while back, I wrote a piece about the popularity of genealogy research. I named it, “The family you never had.” I thought it was pretty good! But it got bumped for “Find Yourself.” I had to admit defeat. And then there are the puns. Plentiful and glorious. There is a Broadway show called “Urinetown” that has been produced in Monterey a couple of times in recent years. I was sure I nailed it titling my preview article with “To Pee or Not to Pee.” Just goes to show what I know... “Urine Luck.”

Ah, but again I stray, and rather far this time, I'd say! I find I have less to say about my stays when I stay with friends. Perhaps I am subconsciously protecting their privacy. Perhaps I am just better at writing when disgruntled.

In Pittsburgh, I got to hang out on the porch on a warm summer evening, talking with long-time buddies and watching fireflies. Something I can't say I've done in a very long time. Monterey has no warm summer evenings, no fireflies, and few porches. In D.C., I had dreams of going to bookstores I miss like Kramer's and Politics and Prose, but ultimately, our time was short and our accommodations were far (Leesburg). I didn't get to those places. Instead, I store the unfulfilled desire to go, to browse, to replay this dream, while the impressions I write about must revolve around bathrooms and food courts – oh boy, food courts! Don't get me started. McDonald's, you sly devil, you.

as if / each homeless one were an earth, made / of milk and grain, like Ceres, and one / could eat oneself—as if the human / were a god, who could eat the earth, a god / of homelessness.

Days Twenty-Nine to Thirty-One: to Hudson, Ohio

2011-06-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I imagined more entries like this one back at Mojave.

Maybe that was a lifetime ago. Maybe I just like to complain. Maybe almost seven months pregnant and 99 degrees (or did the bank's digital display just not have a third number slot??) isn't conducive to thoughtful writing. I don't know. And I am torn between wanting to apologize for whining or just relaxing into what is. We so often think we know how something should feel and then when it feels differently we decide we haven't had the experience yet. We wait for the predetermined feeling, which rarely shows up. Maybe I am waiting for my cross-country trip.

Warsaw, Indiana. We are hanging with an international crowd now, baby. And although the orthopedists who didn't appear to be speaking Polish and their convention took all the king-sized beds, and the Bennigan's menu had no fruit, I did manage a spinach salad and a quesadilla and life was looking up.

We had to escape the lovely (not meant sarcastically, it really was minus the weather) Potato Creek State Park with all $17.36 worth of attractions because after one night in which I was pretty certain I'd suffocate in the heat, we once again were hotel-bound.

Life is nothing if not a paradox, and the cheap hotel vs fancy hotel playground of counter-intuitive-ness is no exception. Cheap hotels: frig in room. Fancy: nope. Cheap: free wifi. Fancy: maybe, or maybe you have to go to the “business center” and pay more.

Soon enough we'd be on the road again and clearing another border, where the world was at our feet. Ohio brought us through Delphos, Lima, and Cairo.

Allow me to pause here to compliment you, America, on the dramatic improvements you've made to the state of road stop restrooms since I last drove across your varied and vast terrain. I've even been greeted on occasion with postings of impassioned pleas by managers asking me to inform them should the cleanliness of the facilities fall below my standards.

In other random updates, Emily still somehow doesn't hate us. Claws scraping tracks through carpet – always brown or navy and patterned with colored speckles to disguise godknowswhat – as we drag her out from under the hotel bed, she complains briefly, then takes her place in the centerpiece of our lives, the mobile salon of destiny, home, the van. (By the way, the van needs a name. Thoughts???)

She mostly stays to her upper level space while we're going along, though she still visits me sometimes to stare hard out the front windshield or just for a hug. Nine more pounds pressing on my bladder with the already-accomplished fetal creature doing its best to render me a slave to the above-mentioned sparkly toilet rooms is not really ideal, but I figure perhaps by the time we hit D.C., she'll have shed most of that weight from stress.

Ohio eventually remitted the town of Hudson, where we found sanctuary at our friends' Lisa and Scott's. For me, two very welcomed nights of standing in a kitchen talking, while things were chopped, measured, and tasted, with the vague knowledge of children playing somewhere nearby, while my cat relaxed into the central AC, and my vision for what was ahead didn't steady so much as gain momentum from talking about what had come before and the paths we'd each followed since, to land us here, to this square of the world, to this sip of soup.

Days Twenty-Seven - Twenty-Nine: Illinois & Indiana

2011-06-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Some day this will be more than a chronology of whining. But for now, here is something since I have internet right now and am behind in my li'l storying. Mike said I should. If you don't like it, blame him; it always works for me.

My due date is September 3. In a couple short months, I will be the recipient of an inordinate amount of unsolicited advice. Put a hat on that baby. Take the hat off that baby. When they X, you should always Y. Wait til junior high! It's just around the corner. I know this is coming. So, allow me the honor of bestowing my own unsolicited parenting advice now. Here it is: You must learn to fight well with your partner in front of your children. You will think you are doing them a favor by never fighting in front of them. But then, circumstances will change.

You will find yourself in a van in week five of a cross-country trip.

With a cat in the back, 97 degrees and no air conditioning.

Or you will find yourself in a booth at a restaurant somewhere you thought was Pennsylvania, but turns out to be Maryland, staring at yet another crap menu of deep fried cheese and no fruit where no one, believe me, will ask you whether you want the green salad or the fries with that, because the only option is potato chips, and where the kids on smoke break from the kitchen hanging out by the back door think it's really cool that you're on the road from California and you look at them, pimply and blowing smoke out their noses, their fingers probably stained yellow and wrinkly from washing potato chip grease off all those plates and you think, Yeah, you try it, asshole, you just try it. And you will not have the option of not fighting. There will be no option. And you will be stuck with each other. All of you. And you will have to live with this. So you better know how to do it.

Ah, but I'm getting way ahead of myself again.

Iowa stunk. Now, pay attention. I told you I found good food there and we even got our first “Howl” there.

Hard to say though if he really knew what the heck the bumper sticker was talking about or if he just felt like howling. (more on the bumper sticker another time...)

No, I mean stunk. Like hold your nose those cows are livin' too close together kind of stunk. Ew. So, despite my food triumphs there, despite the local morning show gardening advice segment playing on the TV above another charming hotel “breakfast” (“I have various weeds in my yard. What should I do?”), despite “Cow Appreciation Day” at the Iowa City Children's Museum, despite the fact that it was the first day in forever that the winds died down, despite the wifi at interstate rest stops and the maintenance man in the final one for I-80 that tip-toed around the building with Isaac to show him the baby ground squirrel, we left.

We crossed a by-now rather well-behaved Mississippi River into Illinois.

The Johnson-Sauk State Recreational Area had a lake, trees, a round barn (the devil hides in the corners), and 90 degree weather, 85 percent humidity... at 9:00 p.m.

We bailed. Repacked and drove 6 miles back on the road we came in on to the hotel. I wish I could share with you that it fell somewhere in the list of more amusingly named lodging options. We'd seen the Settle Inn. The Sleep Inn. And, of course, the AmericInn. Alas, it was only a Best Western.

There was a wedding party in town – though we were hard-pressed to figure out where the “town” was. We got the last available room. Small, barefooted little girls in white dresses scuttled around the hallways giggling. This would do fine. I needed sleep.

In the morning everyone checked out but us. I had convinced my husband that we needed a rest day. Let this be a lesson to you - this is what happens when you don't stay longer in the places that are cool. You end up having to hang out in other places.

At the restaurant in town the next day we could spot the other outsider easily. A blonde/grey-haired man in his fifties wearing a Lady GaGa shirt whom we suspected belonged to the Honda with the New York plates parked out front sat eating some of that yum salad bar fare I mentioned in the last post. It was the last day for the “Annawan Fun Days,” though it was announced to us that we'd pretty much missed it, but for the beer garden and the hacky sack contest. Sometimes you just can't win, eh?

The states were starting to come fast and furious for us now, baby. We dove into Indiana and it's 97 degree predicted temperatures.

80 East is a nightmare of construction and semis. It is easily 100 degrees on this highway. We are stopped dead in three narrow lanes of traffic. Emily is panting. We are all ready to join her. I begin to cry out of helplessness. Mike takes the next exit and we drive through random neighborhoods in the general direction of out.

Then, we are 6 miles from our exit. From all accounts, it will be a lovely place called Potato Creek State Park. There will be boat rentals for the lake, shade, a playground. Isaac is asleep, a rarity. He has not done at all the things I thought he would on this trip in the van—draw, create postcards, read, make up games. He has sat, asking how much longer; he has watched some DVDs.

Suddenly, there is a bang from the back of the van, a sound that feels like part of the engine must have exploded. We wobble to the shoulder and thank goodness there is one. The engine is still attached and functioning; it's a blown tire. Mike declines the prospect of lying in the right lane of 94East to change it, and so we need to call AAA or Geico. Oh what the hell, let them race. Mike is on his phone to Geico, while I call AAA. We are “premium” members. This against my better judgment. While it had been known to save us 7, even 8 whole bucks on hotel rooms on this voyage, I remain highly skeptical of these roadside heroes. You can read about my last preggo/AAA adventure here.

I speak to someone named Clark about where we are (eastbound, mile marker 33, approaching Michigan City, Indiana) and what he can do about it. He is tapping, typing, hemming and hawing. Finally: “I think you might be in a different part of Indiana than I can help you with.” Uh-huh. If only I were in a different part of Indiana, the part that was Ohio and less than ninety-f-ing-seven degrees! WTF??!??

“Let me transfer you. It will take two minutes.” Two minutes I will never have back.

Clark, Clark, Clark. You are no Superman. “How's Geico doing?” I call to Mike.

We are in relative shade, though the thistles are lashing my legs. We've brought Emily out with us in the carrier. Isaac is calmly inspecting wildflowers and leaves.

“Thank you for calling AAA roadside service, how may I help you?” And I know immediately. This person knows nothing about my last call. I am starting over again. I rat out Clark and then grumpily start in again – the AAA number, the issue at hand, the location...

“And what might he have meant by a 'different' part of Indiana?? I mean y'all are somewhere random anyway. That was a crock!”

“I'm in Michigan, ma'am.”

“Exactly. That counts as random.”

“Make, model and year of your vehicle?”

“'81 VW Vanagon.”

“Color?”

“White. As opposed to all the other '81 VW Vanagons with blown out tires at mile marker 33 on I-94 East right now.”

An hour later our spare is in place. My hat off to the man who did in fact lie in the right lane of 94 East to change it for us. He, of course, has nothing to do with AAA. He's with the local tow company.

Way too long later we arrive at Potato Creek State Park and find the camping kiosk. “That'll be $17.34...(wha?)... $2.66 is your change.” Did we just pull up to the Wendy's drive through window when I wasn't looking?

I'm thinking tolls in Indiana must cost something like $4.09.

Days Twenty-Five & Twenty-Six Part 2: Eating in Iowa

2011-06-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

Jokes.com

Maria Bamford - Cults

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Joke of the Day

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Any vegetarian, or budget traveler for that matter, backpacking in Europe knows that if you want a decent meal for not so much money, you find the Hare Krishnas. They aren't hard to find; they usually find you. You eat their food, decline their other offers of circle chants and head shaving parties, and voila! You're back in action.

What I've learned more recently is that if you are a vegetarian or a budget traveler road tripping in the Midwest, you follow the university students. May I introduce Ritual Cafe in Des Moines and the Red Avocado in Iowa City. Oh, but don't go running to the pork farmers – I'm sure those crazy kids are just in an “experimental phase.”

Before we left Walnut, Iowa, we were treated to a free continental breakfast where Isaac eyed the Fruit Loops with the little grin that he uses when he knows something is off limits but he'd going to try anyway. I cupped my hand under the dispenser and pulled the lever gently. “Here,” I said, handing him the colored sugar Os, “This is your lifetime allotment of Fruit Loops. Enjoy.”

Looking ahead to Annawan, Illinois – where we bailed to a hotel because the state park we wanted to camp in was 90 degrees and 85 percent humidity at 9 pm – we'd enjoy things like the Annawan “salad bar” that included, in fact, many salads: tuna salad, macaroni salad, bean salad, potato salad, jello salad... Then there were the “fried cheeseballs” which in desperation we ordered from the menu and Isaac wouldn't touch (bless his little California heart). Have these people even heard of leaves?

But before all of that, there was also this...

I got one for ya. No, no, listen. Okay, here goes – a pork farmer and a vegetarian walk into a bar. Pork farmer says...

We were at Glenn's Pub in Walnut, our one and only choice of eating establishment, ordering homemade pizza from the owner, whose name, naturally, was Jerry. “And I'll have a beer,” Mike says. “Bud Light?” says Jerry shooting my husband with his finger gun. It is not a question. Mike stumbles momentarily, “Uh, I...Sure. Bud Light.”

We were pretty much exhausted; we wanted to eat and crash. But the three locals sitting behind Bud Lights at the bar would not let the foreigners off easy. You see, it had come to their attention that we had not ordered any meat toppings on our pizza.

“You ain't veg-e-tar-ians, are you?”

I thought about shouting “Boo!” and seeing if that'd take care of it. These were (GMO) corn-fed Iowans, though, better go for the big guns. Hocus-pocus vegetable stew, bring me some wheat grass or I'll infect you!

The next 30 minutes of my life were dedicated to trying not to ask my pork farmer friend if he enjoyed ramming his fist up pigs' asses. “Wull, whyyy are you a ve-ge-tar-ian?” He'd ask again every so often. But mostly he talked. And talked. Punctuated by the always good for a punchline phrase, “What you hear in the (Ed.'s note: bleeding heart liberal) media is bullshit! It's bullshit!”

Look, I don't preach and I don't pry. Eat whatever the hell you want to. I sit across from friends eating meat all the time. What had I done to deserve this??

“One of my best friends is from Iowa and she still talks to me,” I tell him, desperate for peace.

“Yeah, but not much.”

“What would you do if your granddaughter married a vegetarian?” I ask.

“It'd be okay with me. I just wouldn't pay for the wedding.”

May she marry a vegan.

Days Twenty-Five & Twenty-Six Part 1: Choices in Iowa

2011-06-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

As a human species, we believe strongly in borders. How we can make artificial lines and call one side one thing, the other something else. Kind of like smoking and non-smoking sections of restaurants in the 80s.

We just wanted to get across the border into Iowa. Get away from the wind, the threat of something yet unnamed, cross the Missouri before the flooding found us. Jerry Seinfeld has an old routine about how if your seat cushion “becomes” a floatation device, why doesn't your plane just “become” a boat.

Everything would be better in Iowa. Iowa would be milk and honey and streets of gold, every promise of every mythical city. It would all be different, if we could just get to the other side.

We passed through one city whose large brick high school proclaimed proudly that it was “Home of the Cyclones.” We kept driving.

Naturally, my knowledge of tornadoes comes mainly from the “Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy banging on the cellar doors with her yet to be ruby-slippered feet, flying monkeys, that sort of thing. I have this vague of idea of a stillness involved either before the twisters twist or at the center or somewhere there is stillness. Isaac is reading the Magic Tree House series by Mary Osbourne Pope. In the books, 8-year-old Jack and his 7-year-old sister Annie go on adventures to different times in history in the magic tree house they find in the woods behind their house. At the end of every first chapter, there is the same scene/same lines. The wind begins to blow and the tree house spins. “Then, everything was still. Absolutely still.” Isaac recites the lines with us – or rather blurts them out before we can get to them.

I had a heat rash and no ankle bones, and then, before you knew it, there was Walnut. Walnut, Iowa (population 895). The antiques capital of Iowa. With Camelot, er, the Econolodge waiting for us.

And things felt different. They really did. Another border conquered. The wind probably hadn't lessened, but it's like buying something expensive – you have an investment in it being good and so you believe it is better than it may be.

We walked into the Econolodge lobby and said hello to the desk clerk. In that moment Isaac and I turned our heads toward the enormous flat screen TV where someone was just about to fire something explosive at someone else, and BLAM! The dream was dead,

The desk clerk, who was in fact the manager, a San Diego transplant, complained bitterly of his fate stuck in “Hillbilly Hell” and took refuge with his internet access to current movies. “I got 'Kung Fu Panda' on over there, if you want to watch!” This was directed at Isaac. He probably said it 100 times. I viewed him suspiciously – how does one just end up in Iowa – to stay? There is so little we have control over. But, see Iowa? should be one of those things we have total control over.

That night, Mike and I would have enough time, space and air conditioning to review what was going on for us. He explained that he felt a sense of irresponsibility to be doing the trip at all. I always knew there was a term for what I was, and all these years, it had been just beyond my grasp. Ah, yes: irresponsible. How could it have escaped me? He was wasting his time in these Midwestern towns that felt like stuck energy, “fly paper” he called them. Unpaid leave?? Who ever heard of such a thing?? He was going to arrive too late to continue the opportunity his job had given him to work remotely; they'd fire him; we'd never buy a house; we'd all end up destitute. It went something like that.

“So is the key to alter the feeling of irresponsibility, or to avoid doing the things that make you feel irresponsible?” The latter. Well, that puts us in an interesting position at the moment.

We continued to share our little hang ups and dreams in the stale air of room 119 – his fly paper to my fear of routine, his need to provide to my need to create. Until our hearts were fully unresolved but fully exposed. I guess that's why they call it the Heartland.

Detour or Day Twenty-Four (You Decide): Motherhood, Weather and the Unsettling of Minds in the Heartland

2011-06-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

- Ted Koosner

The next day, I woke up in the Stuart City Park in Stuart, Nebraska (population 685). Let me clarify – I was not face down in a puddle of my own vomit or anything. I was in the camper van, camping.

Huge shade trees I could not identify, talked and talked about the wind. I couldn't decide whom I was more angry with about missing the cabin last night – Mike and or myself. Nevermind, though. Same result. I was in a state.

Slights were accumulating. Remember Hot Springs, SD? The lazy river on inner tubes, the happy van? I wanted to stay. Just one more night. We left so fast; we had to leave, according to my husband, to go east. And now, my cabin resort up in smoke. The imperative. Hurry! Go! GO!!

“How come I've only felt the baby move one time?” Isaac asks me.

“Because you're too impatient to leave your hand there longer,” I tell him.

The same goes for his father. It's complicated. No one can be with me in this, and yet, I think I want them to be. I think I do; I spend great swivels of the mind being lonely around my lack of company in it. But on some level, simultaneously, I know it is ridiculous. Others will inevitably fall short; they are not a home to this child. And so I am faced with the question of whether I am enough. Me. To honor it, take care of it, tell my driver when it's time to stop the van.

“You didn't sleep that well last night, huh?” my husband tries. “I wonder why.”

You know the old game of adding “in bed” to the end of every Chinese fortune? My game, the one I have carefully reserved – through desert, the Arizona heat, the Santa Fe cold, the Rockies, the Black Hills, in short, thousands of miles – adds “because I'm carrying YOUR CHILD” to the end of any response. I think it, but don't say it. I will not walk into this trap of my own making. I will remain silent in my righteousness. I hear some preggos have king-sized beds and body pillows.

The boys return from the restroom and report a bird apparently trapped there, unable to find its way out. “That thing's confused,” Mike says dismissively. Later, I will see the bird shoot from the men's room door and notice the nest expertly attached to the crook in the wall just outside of it. She knew exactly how to get out; what she wanted was for them to get out. She was protecting her babies. For this she was dismissed, crazy.

My mother's picture taped up in the back of the van is staring at me. It is almost the one-year anniversary of when she left this planet. Just left. Can you believe it? Left the bowling alleys, the boarded up gift shops, the city parks with their camping spaces and bird's nests. In the picture, she is standing on one of her favorite garden paths next to a sign that reads, “Why Are You Hurrying?”

I am teetering.

Mike has left the radio on for the weather report and then gone out to fiddle with something van-ish. Between books of the Bible, I catch something about a tornado in Western Massachusetts. I think I've made it up. Nonetheless, I switch off the radio so that my overly anxious and imaginative six-year-old doesn't inquire about whatever it was. I text my sister. Yes, tornado. Springfield. Westfield. Four dead. Very close to where we are moving. Westfield is where my in-laws are. Mike returns and I say nothing.

Norfolk is listed as a “major city” along the Cowboy Trail. We find a lunch place and though I am embarrassed of my red swollen eyes, the also-pregnant waitress takes me in kindly. I eat every scrap of my food, and then, we exchange birth stories.

Outside the winds are still blazing hot and strong-armed. I am searching the horizon. I do not know for what.

At the Norfolk Public Library, I overhear two women talking. One has just been to Joplin, Missouri to try to help the tornado victims there. They mention the twister in Massachusetts. The state has been declared a disaster area. “The weather here today feels... (the woman pauses) ... stormy,” she finishes meaningfully.

Someone has an odd-sounding ringtone on their phone and I jump at the siren-like sound.

I discover I will miss poet and native Nebraskan Ted Koosner's visit to the library by less than a week. Why has it taken me 3,000 miles to remember that it's poetry that will help me make sense of the senseless?

I tell Mike about the Massachusetts tornado, and he goes to the van to call home.

There is a rule in metaphor. You never choose a point of comparison that is in reality exponentially more significant than its partner point. Still, I can't shake the desire to recall how after 911, I flinched at the sound of airplanes for months. There was a rootlessness to that time that I can taste now. We are nowhere; this is where tornadoes happen, not the other side of the country where we will try to make a home, a home, how is that done again? my mother is missing, or maybe I am just missing my mother, I will be a mother, I am a mother, how is that done again? The world is upside down, and they won't stop the ride.

More Day Twenty-Three: Ending up in Stuart, Nebraska

2011-06-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the comments, all. I appreciate you reading along as I write towards figuring out just what this trip has to tell me, what it's about which is certainly not the ins and outs of interstates. I appreciate you reading and I appreciate your patience.

We left South Dakota and headed – amazing for people planning on landing in Massachusetts from California, I know, but finally – east. With a small adjustment to our Google directions, we dropped into Nebraska earlier than we originally planned, following li'l Route 20. Hey, I mean, you know what my philosophy has been all along – the sooner we get to Nebraska, the better! We followed 20 East across the top of the state - the Sand Hills, as it would be.

People have asked us if we have a “nav” system. Um. We are driving a 30-year-old van and carrying pay-as-you-go phones. No, we do not have a NAV system. We have stops along the way that happen to have internet access and we have a laptop. Direct any further questions to our technology department.

“Whaddaya got? Mountain lion?”

“No, sir. Regular cat.”

“Then, I suppose that'd be alright.”

I was on the phone with the owner of the Long Pine Resort in Long Pine, Nebraska. “Resort” sounded somewhat ambitious from what I'd seen of the state so far, but what did I know, maybe it really was different. It was some kind of cabin, it was an hour ahead, and it was to be our rest for the night. The first two places I'd called didn't exist anymore. The incredible cross winds had been buffeting us around the roads relentlessly and the landscape had been overwhelming us with its monotony and we were done. Isaac finally fell asleep for the last leg, lulled by our lie of how-much-longer, but Mike and I were wide awake and sniping at each other.

Then: “Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere” a sign, that featured a trifecta of nowhere – Johnstown (population 48), Ainsworth (population 1,870) and Long Pine. Finally! I think. Someone is finally willing to tell the truth!! No more of this crap:

We hit the mile mark where the resort should have been and ...nothing. We went a little farther – nada. I was leaning forward in my seat despite the cramping belly pushing against the seatbelt. No sign of a resort or anything else. We hit the next town 10 miles up the road. “What do you want to do?” my husband asks me. “Jump from something very high and take all of Nebraska with me,” I thought. Repeating even a fraction of a mile in this state was out of the question – we couldn't go back. Calling somehow didn't occur, though we may not have had reception. “Can you hear me now?” No, fucker, I'm in Nebraska!

Something truly desperate happens when you are staring out at nothing for hour number five, knowing that in about 20 miles, things will break out into the next “town:” a car repair place, a bar, a gift shop that closed years ago, the place that sells tractor equipment, and, if things are really cranking - an army tank parked in the main square and a bowling alley. The sun is dropping; you are probably dehydrated again. You bang your head backwards on the headrest and whimper, just audibly. You think you understand how people can just snap. Just lose it. You rub your belly, talk to the baby, because you need something to soothe. It's all lies. “It's okay. We're okay.”

Days Twenty Two & Twenty Three: South Dakota's Black Hills, Rushmore & the Mammoth Site

2011-06-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

After breakfast in Custer, South Dakota (an event with its own inherent adventure, see pictures...), we left our friends whom we'd camped with in the rain for two nights and struck out on our own again. We drove slowly through Custer State Park and the Black Hills, admiring everything from turtles to bison. I was beat and felt like I wanted to move about as much as the wildlife; sunning and chewing were approximately my speed.

Eventually, we ended up at Mount Rushmore. Mike and I had been through these parts in our original drive out to California 13 years ago on a very foggy day. We stared into the distance at cloud trying to make out a nose or a forehead. So, a matter of principal, we were going to see it this time. We'd already cast off the Crazy Horse Monument in the interest of time and energy; that one we'd managed back in the summer of 1998, and Isaac would just have to live with dead white men for his cultural lesson of the day.

So there it was: Washington prominently leading the pack, Jefferson tucked behind, Teddy Roosevelt with the artist's masterful suggestion of glasses, Lincoln with his deep set eyes emphasized in the afternoon shadows. Like so may things, natural and unnatural, even staring at it in person you can't really grasp the scale. Or, in this case, the purpose.

We caught the 14-minute video, where a much younger Tom Brokaw narrated the ins and outs of the monument's inception, the grand plans of those memorialized and those memorializing. There was much talk about men, and the rights of men, and the accomplishments of men, and what men should always remember, and men who should always be remembered, and damn if they didn't talk a bit more about menfolk. If I was weary before all this, I was downright ready to snooze now.

My interest in this little national rally is exactly that. I am interested in who the country is when it decides it will fund a 14-year long, dynamite-blasting art project. It runs through the Depression and into the time of World War II. It is the fervor of America as some kind of goal.

There could be a hundred different faces worthy of carving into a mountain. Or there could be none that warrant such a defacement. Two million people a year go and look and click and leave.

Here is the picture we made Isaac pose for.

And here is the picture Isaac asked us to take. I found it interesting that he wanted his picture taken off to the side, in the trees. He looks considerably more content.

We rolled into Hot Springs about an hour after Rushmore. Cranky from having belly cramped in the van, but jazzed by the lack of rain and cold and enamored of the lilac bush laden little town, I headed into the visitor's center.

There is just one woman who works in all of the visitor centers everywhere. You've met her: Coiffed grey hair, full make-up. No matter what the weather is she is wearing a hounds tooth blazer over a white turtleneck. Clip-on pearl earrings. Her drawn in eyebrows raise in delight as she greets you and asks where you're from. Then, only after you sign her book, she settles in to expertly circle attractions upside down, tells you how much your little boy with enjoy the Pioneer (or, fill in the blank kind of) Museum. And you watch her go on and on and the weariness and the trip ahead and the things behind, it all creeps into your bones until you have to lean hard on her plexiglass-covered map and how can you tell her that what you need is for her to come 'round the counter and clasp you in her arms. To hold you to her hounds tooth breast, right there, next to the displays of Mount Rushmore magnets and postcards of the Black Hills. And maybe that's just what she needs too – to forget for a minute about her kids, grown and flown, who don't call enough. To just be what she's best at being – a respite for the visitor. But she is smiling expectantly at you now and you figure you've daydreamed through something and so try to recover, come to the present moment.

She directs us to a campground just outside of town. What we find is perfect. Doesn't the van look happy by the non-flooding stream under the trees?!

The next morning we left early from our lovely camp and drove to the spot that drew us to Hot Springs in the first place: the Mammoth Site. A giant sinkhole that trapped dozens of Colombian and wooly mammoths some 27,000 years ago, it is now a museum and active dig site.

We did the general tour and then Isaac got to do a “junior paleontology” excavation. He uncovered the skull of a giant short-faced bear – what did YOU do today? The staff was great and I'm happy to say that the excursion with so much riding on it was not a disappointment.

All of the over 50 skeletons of mammoths they've uncovered so far (and they have at least another 45 feet to go) belong to males. After working around journalists for a number of years, I have learned that you just lay down the facts. That editorializing, although the heart and soul of blogging I suppose, is certainly not always necessary. Just lay it down. All male. Sometimes, however, one is still tempted to type sentences like, “Hey, dude. Wanna go check out that sinkhole?” “Rad, yeah, let's go!”

Days Fourteen – Twenty-One: Colorado to South Dakota

2011-06-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

Fifty miles into Wyoming the rain stopped and the fog cleared.

It wouldn't last though. A Hundred miles later we were again in a steady mist. At least it gave us something to look at besides the construction sites (“Pay Attention or Pay the Price!” the friendly signs urged us.) Okay, I'm being unfair. Eastern Wyoming also offered temptations like “Wildlife Management Areas.” Instead of, say, parks, I guess. I imagined these turn-offs lined with men in Wranglers, rifles on their shoulders.

But my favorite were the signs that read “Roadside Table ½ mile.” Pretty much puts the Wy in Wyoming. These were in demand? Travelers floundering about for miles and miles hoping there was somewhere to site down properly and gnaw on the deer leg they'd dragged from the management area perhaps.

Emily had apparently not gotten the memo on how cool the van is or on the stellar attractions of our least populous state. She was in her third steady hour of meowing. After six nights of chilling in houses with friends, we'd had to broom her out from under Sheila's guest room bed to rejoin us on our journey.

The birds scattered off the highway in front of us like kids in a rare moment of disturbance playing on a dead end street. We pulled into Torrington, where the motels felt the need to inform us they had “clean rooms.” Torrington sported a population of 5,776 and a mercifully lower altitude than Colorado had shown us yet: 4,104 feet. Still not so great for the sinuses or the wheezy preggo in need of iron supplements, but something. I was beginning to think my baby would not recognize its mama's voice when it came out – I hadn't heard my real voice unobstructed by cold and cough for weeks now.

Colorado had been cold and rainy, too – an unusual state of affairs by everyone's estimation – but other than the first night when our campsite in Fort Garland was so bad I cried for the first 20 minutes we were there. (“It's okay, Mommy. Look over there. There's a spot of grass!”), we had been warmed by three different friends' hospitality in Denver and then Fort Collins. For a week we got to be part of other people's routines and homes.

Butterfly Pavilion, Westminster, CO

with his buddy Joel at Horsetooth Reservoir, Fort Collin, CO

Creating with Heather in Denver

"Farm Day Friday" in Fort Collins

Our one friend's three-year-old unwilling to buy that my name is Kitty, had renamed me Cupcake, a more plausible monicker by her standards. I figure Kitty and Cupcake likely both work at the same strip joint. There is in fact a dubious looking joint in downtown Denver called Kitty's that we passed on our way to Tattered Cover Books. There is always a Kitty's. It is always dubious looking.

I also saw a midwife in Fort Collins, who checked baby and me and said basically that we are fine. She recommended more iron. More food, more often. More sleep. And more exercise. Maybe pole dancing. I could pick up one of Cupcake's shifts.

Entering realms of normalcy. Isaac gets to hang with Casey and Sam.

We saw Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Dinosaur Ridge. We visited a butterfly pavilion and checked out Horsetooth Reservoir.

We arrived in Hill City, South Dakota to cold and wind and rain for Memorial Day weekend. A flooded creek. A pool we wouldn't get to use. Water, water everywhere and nothing to swim in. Mike and I attempted to plot our next stops, but the nation seemed covered in bright green splotches – flood warnings – when the tornadoes weren't crowding in. It was going to be a trick to cross beyond Iowa for sure.

Dinosaur Ridge - Isaac with his hand in a fossilized Iguanodon track

More kids! Isaac was happy. This miniature camping crew survived cold, wind and rain.

And so we linger in the west and its fossil past, read about possible stops that included saber-toothed deer (wildlife manage that one, Suckers!), proto rhinos, and the long-extinct North American camel. Not many of us likely think that much about proto rhinos in our daily life, which, I suppose is just one more way our little five-week adventure is unique. If you grew up around the places I did, you probably don't think that much about tornadoes either. But here we are, in the elements again. And so, grassland fan or not, we are tied to the spaces between the roadside tables. We are counting on some kindness from the skies, the rivers.

South Dakota

Lower elevation, the lack of flood warnings and tornado watches...could I be looking forward to Nebraska???

Days Twelve & Thirteen: Bandelier National Monument & Taos Pueblo

2011-05-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

So off we went from Santa Fe, headed for a short (and consequently very-popular) sixty-minute drive to Bandelier National Monument. We spent the night at Juniper Campground there, predictably surrounded by juniper trees and a mild smattering of other visitors.

Bandelier is a very cool place. This was my second visit. Mike and I made a trip here probably 10 years ago. Thick wooden ladders take those willing up into abandoned cave dwellings, the ceilings black from ancient smoke. In some places the support beams remain, or, if not, then the evenly-spaced perfectly round holes where they were. Multi-story stone houses once stood in front of the cave rooms.

Bandelier is not in a land hyper-severe where you can easily buy into the centuries between the then of a vibrant community of real people and your water-privleged life of convenience, though it has just enough crag and rock funk to appeal to the exotic. People lived here. Heck, I'd have lived here. Stream, canyon, trees, rock walls willing to give just enough to house your family, shade them or warm them depending. In short, good energy.

I feel like I rushed too fast through the small museum. I often burn out quickly on information presented in this way, and so may have just fallen into old habits of “skimming” the displays. But the ones at Bandelier are well-done and interest me as others sometimes don't. Trilingual translations of key elements. Speculation on what went on and why it stopped.

I must accept that Isaac will have his own experience of this journey, no matter what I attempt. He was bitten by a fire ant. (Very exciting.) He spent a long time conducting scientific experiments on various sizes and states of pine cones in order to determine their viability for a new truck bumper he was inventing. (Very serious.) And at the dwellings themselves, there he was shouting down to me from a window in the rock face: “There's CHINESE writing in here!!” Ah. Yes. Well.

We reluctantly left Bandelier and headed north on US 285, where we encountered the New Mexico Department of Transportation doing their best at cultural awareness. Native, or native-like art – I'm not sure which – lines the highway walls. And the overpasses – I couldn't help but notice the words painted there. “K'uuyemugeh” says one – Tewa for “place of the falling rock” (not to be confused with Tiwa, the oral language of the Taos people.) “Posuwaegeh” comes the next -- “place to drink water.” These are the original names for the villages that stood here.

The story is not just what used to be, but it is a story of overpasses, a story of what might still be trying to be, what would have been, the dispersion of who has access to it now and for what purposes... I could include the transliterations of those Tiwa village names, but from what I've read, they're really just the already bastardized Spanish versions. So many layers to try to see through to the past.

The overpasses as somehow “tribute” to the people who once lived there remind me more than a little of how we have a penchant for naming streets after what was sacrificed for the streets themselves. “Maple Grove,” they are called, “Stag Leap Lane.”

There is it again; our oft-discussed love affair with the road. And yes, I see the irony? hypocrisy? of writing this from my road trip.

And since I never lack for stores of irony, this bit – I think I became convinced with some finality that a move to Massachusetts from California was in order one day back in January. The weather was in the 70s and Mike and I were on a date, driving south on Highway 1 with the top off his Honda del Sol. I was weary of people constantly asking me whether I was “ready for the snow” when I mentioned the move, and the fact that I'd know in more absolute terms that I'd do it while basking in January's sunny splendor is just somehow fitting. Our adult aversion to snow has so much to do with how it affects our ability to ... drive. Think about it.

I consider Bandelier in the snow and I think of beauty. Likewise the Taos Pueblo, which was our next stop.

Continually inhabited for 1,000 years continuing to present day is Taos Pueblo – where a timid college girl toured around our group telling us about life there and the horrors of our government. Afterwards, we explored on our own and shopped around the many craft-filled adobes. I dreamed of unlimited funds and a way to transport delicate pottery I watched being hand-painted, but then came to my senses and bought a small, clay bowl in the traditional Taos style.

There is Red Willow Creek that runs through the Pueblo, its source Blue Lake over the mountains – taken from the Taos in 1906 and returned after a long, ardent fight in 1970. There is no electricity or running water allowed within the walls of the Pueblo where today only 40 people live full-time, though many more have homes they occupy on feast days and many live on the Taos acres outside the walls. There is the Catholic church, complement by now to their nature-based religion, full of saints whose clothes change for the seasons and who were the only things besides the bell tower to survive the US Marshall ordered canon fire that hit the old church in the early 1700s – retaliation for the slaying of the US-imposed Governor Bent. They had hidden the women and children there, thinking it a sanctuary.

I did not pay the extra money to register my camera in order to take pictures. I'm not exactly sure why I made that decision. Maybe forced into the choice, I decided on having the experience as opposed to framing moments I'd viewed through the lens. Sacred mountains, a bloody history, secrets of the kiva... There is so much already between us.

Days Ten & Eleven: Still Santa Fe

2011-05-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

8: am – Curious George

8:30 – Cat in the Hat

9:00 – Super Why

9:30 – Dinosaur Train

10:00 – Sesame Street

11:00 – Sid the Science Kid

11:30 – Clifford the Big Red Dog

In case you need to know the PBS Kids line up and happen to be in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area. It's guilty mode for me. I am exhausted, working on some terrible cold, my little sea-level sinuses suffering a (very dry) elevation of some 7,000 feet. Baby belly is protesting all kinds of things, unhappy again with its position on the priority list. Mike is at his conference all day every day. And meanwhile...

My boy is pure energy – never stopping. Banging, jumping, cartwheeling, yelling, from the word go. I am unworthy and simply not up to the task. I regularly get lectured in rocket science before breakfast. That is not a metaphor, that is in fact my life. Walking down the street with this child is like walking with a jackrabbit working up a nervous twitch who's already high on caffeine.

When I can manage and I've numbed his mind all I can stand with cartoons, we try to explore Santa Fe. I find myself impatient with its touristy essence, its midweek, deflated balloonishness, the sad clown waiting for the curtain to go up so he can turn on the charm. Empty rickshaws, half-hearted turquoise vendors, the plaza dotted with a few pan handlers. We stand outside the New Mexico Museum of Art while Isaac admires the FedEx truck parked out front. “I just want to wait and watch it drive away,” he whispers with the awed reverence of a teen girl outside in the alley by the stage door after the show.

We go to what I thought was a museum of fossils and minerals, but turns out to be a store. Isaac is unperturbed and we dive into this world of gems and rocks, ancient fish trapped in sandstone. There are pieces in excess of $5,000 next to me. I check my preggo balance and move toward the box of 50 cent shark teeth. I am stunned by my own aptitude with dinosaurs, as I discuss with the store clerk the importance of the discovery of the first archeopteryx fossil while milling around a replica, as if I do this every day. “Guess the original must be in Germany, huh?” I throw out knowledgeably.

The Georgia O'Keefe museum is closed for a new installation, but we go into the gift shop so I can show Isaac her style, talk about another artist. He is mildly impressed, but turns down my offer of a kids' book called My Name is Georgia: A Portrait, with its engaging story of her path and how she did what called to her heart. He wants to know if we can buy the hand-blown hourglass instead. Hey, a giant glass thing in the van for four more weeks. No, love. We can't. Why do I bother? If we head back now, we can still catch Clifford.

I buy the book anyway. I am a total sucker for those things – kids books on the lives of poets and artists – and soon I'll have another captive audience to read them to. I have a gorgeous one on Frida Kahlo. A children's book that I used to read to Isaac when he was too little to protest and ask for “the space one” again, too little to even eat the pages. It's perfect. All those things you want for your child before the child comes. A lesson plan before the students get to it. I will read about O'Keefe and Kahlo while we rock; s/he will know beauty and perseverance and creativity as central to our being. Often, all through my first nauseated tri-mester, and now, when I am feeling not so pregnant glowy, I will admonish my lack of writing: “Kahlo painted with a body cast on! She painted through all kinds of pain!” Then, I roll over and dream my self-pity dreams.

Detour: The More Things Change, The More Things Change

2011-05-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

There is a moment I remember from years ago. I was standing on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, PA looking down at the city lights. I was with my boyfriend at the time; we'd been together a couple years or so. It was a beautiful night and we were having a great time. We were also in the process of breaking up, though neither of us was up to admitting it yet. I was about to move out of the city. I would come back to visit more than once, but by then our relationship would have dissolved. Some part of me knew in that moment all the things I couldn't articulate, things that were moving and changing, things that needed to move and change for growth to happen, things that I myself had a part in setting in motion.

I have been a renter all my life. Another goal in this move: buy a house.

I do not have a particularly good opinion of landlords. And if I reread that sentence I want to laugh out loud. Because the truth is, I am seriously convinced that they all go to Landlord School and take courses in how to be the biggest pricks they can possibly be.

This time, we'll only be screwed out of $250. My landlord decided that the backyard of the house we lived in is overgrown and we are responsible. Nevermind that he told me he would have a gardener come and cut it down after we moved out. (“Yes, but I never said at my expense.” Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.) So he got an estimate and somebody, who's job I definitively need, told the fool that to trim back a pea-sized yard it would cost $350 – that's right ladies and gentlemen, my golden-hearted landlord is absorbing $100 of the cost – say it with me – Out. Of. His. Own. Pocket!

The fact that I will be charged for lack of gardening is so ironic, as to cause me to want to bite down on something like the stump of a giant petrified log and gnash my teeth for a good long time (but that would mean returning to Arizona, so nevermind).

“All I ask is that it needs to go back to the way it was. I'll send you pictures of what the backyard looked like when you moved in!” Mr. Landlord says to me. I don't give a flying fuck what it looked like when I moved in. And here, my friends, we enter the real conflict of thought.

He wants it the way it was. Hmm. Then I will have to try my darnedest to take the thriving passion flower vine climbing the trellis outside the living room window and return it to a struggling upstart. I will have to snap every bloom off the stupid-ass roses he left for us along the front yard wall. I will siphon all the homemade compost from the gopher-proofed garden beds we added and stamp out the wild flowers that moved in to the side yard.

We as humans have completely unreasonable expectations about returning things to the way they used to be. As if that is ever possible. Not to mention, we are also majorly conflicted about growing things. Look at the gardening section of your average store that carries any such items.

Fertilizer. Potting Soil. Round-up. Ceramic Pots. More Round-up. Seed Packets. Some product that means sure death to all bugs good or bad that enter here. Nurture/Kill. Nurture/Kill. We're lost. We're desperate for control. We will do anything to deny that in fact, things grow, and do not return to how they were. Sometimes that's pretty difficult to take in. Sometimes it makes a person a little edgy. Usually, we have no idea just when change begins or exactly how it sprouted. Usually, it takes us a very long time to catch up with the fact that it has happened at all.

We change things before we admit consciously what the full array of consequences to that change will be. Otherwise, we probably would never do it. My heart is still full of Monterey. There is nothing else yet to replace it with.

In an otherwise innocuous discussion about the microwave in the house we stayed in in Santa Fe, I proffer, “I guess we're used to the one we have at home.” A sentence that calls us all to stop short. We exchange shy, sad smiles. “I mean, in the old house,” I correct.

Isaac has been somewhat prone to meltdowns on this trip so far. Moreso than his usual pretty easy-going self. Chalk it up to less sleep, or lack of routine or major life upheavals. One morning, he had come down from his sleeping perch in the second floor pop-up portion of the van to have breakfast, which he wanted to have while curled up in the covers of our sleeping perch. Somewhere along the line, blankets became tangled in a way he disapproved of. Things devolved down a track that was both tragic and ridiculous, as many situations can become when you are six, until finally he was shoutinga bout the blankets, tears streaming, “I just want it back how it was! I want it to be how it was before!!”

And before I knew it, I was crying, too.

Days Eight & Nine: Santa Fe

2011-05-24T01:00:00.000-07:00

We were settled in to our sweet rental cottage with its 12-inch thick adobe walls that blocked all cell reception. We were ready to be in an environment that didn't roll for five whole nights.

on the streets of Santa Fe

Emily says: Just try and get me back in that van!

Other than the kokopeli couch pillows, they seem to have been conservative about their southwest themed décor here, sticking to the heavy, wide-beamed wooden headboard and door frames, carved hutches and formidable coffee table. Folks favoring this style probably didn't move very much, I thought, and if they did, their friends might require a bit more than pizza and beer. Indeed, this style comes from a time before a lot of migration, uprooting, separation from family. A different time than now.

Isaac was engaging me in one of those six-year-old battles of rationale where no one wins and at least one person usually ends up in tears: “But you said...” “No, what I said was...” “But that doesn't make any sense!” “Sorry.” “But you said...” Hold on. It's gonna be a long ride.

He gets it from his dad. No accounting for circumstances.

Mike was due home shortly from, mercifully, just a half day of conference meetings after something like an 11-hour day the day before. I stepped outside to call him and left a message to see if he might find some tortilla chips along his short walk home that we could have for lunch with guacamole – the makings of which we already possessed. A few minutes later I got a text: “Looking for chips.” I felt an oddly familiar twinge, but tried to ignore it.

As it got later and we got hungrier, I had to wonder about the wisdom behind my request. My husband is the kind of person that takes my words very seriously. He is nothing if not literal. On the surface, it's a lovely quality. One could cheer this quality; or, one could starve waiting for chips.

Mike is the guy who arrives three days later, chip bag crushed to his tattered shirt, sunbaked and sweating, beard grown in.

“I had to hitchhike to Texas, but I got 'em!!”

“Why on earth would you spend three days hitchhiking to Texas??!”

A pallor of innocence and exhaustion would cross his countenance. He'd hold up his hands in askance. “You wanted chips,” would come my answer.

Applying logic in these incidents is only like putting water on a gasoline fire.

Just recently I had a dream. In it, Mike and I were on a bus and we were due to be married soon. I told him I'd like to get married right away. Before I knew it, the driver had pulled us over and was beginning our wedding ceremony. “We are here to join Mike and Rhonda in marriage,” he said with a smile. “Is this our wedding?!” I asked Mike. “Yeah, you said you wanted to get married right away.” “What would make you think I wanted to get married on a bus??” “You said right away!” “He doesn't even know my name!”

People were starting to get angry because they weren't getting to their stops. “You said you wanted to get married right away!” Mike protested again in his own defense. “My name is not Rhonda!!”

This is exactly the kind of thing that happens to us. He thinks he is doing all he can to fulfill my every need, never noticing how circumstances may call for adaptation, never stopping to take into account the extraneous and absurd factors making his continuation along the original path impractical or even harmful. If the road to hell really is paved with good intentions, my husband has a pitch fork with his name on it.

Always good to get a refresher course on the old wherever-you-go, there-you-are theme. Patterns do not change easily. Monterey. Santa Fe. Here we were.

Day Seven: Waking up at the Gallup KOA

2011-05-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Seven mosquito bites, one for each day on the road. For those of you unfamiliar with the central coast of California, we have none of these uncivilized bugs. Well, that's not true. They exist, but they don't swarm and buzz and eat you on any regular basis. Just one more of the benefits of living in paradise. Now I must return to the lands ruled by vile insects and I'm none too happy about it.

Painted Desert

As you might imagine, all the hullabaloo at the Meteor Crater took something out of us. Even so, we continued on to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. There were ruins and mysteries and unbelievable mineral colors in the setting sun. We found our first petroglyphs of the trip and wondered about the ancient Anasazi that they say left to join the Hopi or the Navajo. Of course, we'd already encountered their ancestors, whom the Great Spirit apparently implored to go forth and make billboards, to build their trading posts under the Shell Oil signs and sell their inlaid knives in a building that shares space with Dairy Queen.

Runis from a village they believe to be 800 years old.

Entering New Mexico

All this exploring and all this driving – our longest day yet – left us exhausted as we rolled into Gallup, NM. The last 30 miles dragged on and on and my preggo belly, fighting the good fight with my seatbelt, needed to recline immediately. That's how we decided to forgo the final five miles to the campground, worrying that if they closed it at the late hour, we'd end up coming back into town, having to drive at least 10 and then beg a hotel to take Emily. And so, in an overnight that made the Paso Robles RV park look like a naturalist's paradise, we stayed at the Gallup KOA.

“Remember, it's not camping. It's Kamping!”

OMG. I don't think it's in any way an exaggeration to say the Gallup KOA is a parking lot, a soul-sucking slab of asphalt and concrete sandwiched between Rte 66 and I-40. I wanted to cry or wretch or curl up at the gate of the original campground.

We slept like logs.

So maybe I won't get a book deal out of this trip, but I'm thinking Emily could. It'd be just the goofy kind of thing that would work. Make her a Facebook page, thousands of people follow my cat across the country. Just an idea. I'm not above using those near and dear to me to get some press.

Day Six: on the Road to Gallup, NM via the Meteor Crater & the Painted Desert

2011-05-22T01:00:00.001-07:00

I had read online that tears are supposed to help pink eye. If that's the case and if that's what Isaac had, then he should have been completely better this morning.

He'd cried himself to sleep the night before because – did you know? -- our cat is a true Houdini! Point zero seconds to get out of her collar and her harness. Oh, she came back. I like to think our tight little family creates such a vortex of dependency that even our pets cannot escape. It's a longer, not-that-interesting story involving some blood and Bandaids, special treat food provided by the campground office, a raccoon sighting, the transmission of the van, and Isaac wailing at the height of the crisis, “I just want to read a boooooook!!!”

Despite being pained by his distress, the word nerd in me couldn't help but be pleases that this was his refuge. Well, books and the two-inch blue bunny my sister gave him a couple years ago.

So, like I said, he should have been looking spiffy-great, but in fact he looked worse than ever. Both eyes were puffy and bloodshot; he had deep rings under them. We applied cold compresses, warm compresses; we bought some children's allergy medicine, and then, we did what any concerned parents of a sick child would do: We took him to a meteor crater.

That would be THE Meteor Crater... “Experience the IMPACT!” Get it? The impact? You know what this is, don't you? Our first official Kitsch Stop! NOW it feels like a road trip! The cheezy announcer-voice loop recording on the radio (1610am Winslow, AZ), the signs along the road, the need to get off the highway and drive five-miles toward absolutely no-thing but this goofy site – no pretending you were just passing through and so you might as well take a peek...

They trained astronauts at the Meteor Crater in the 60s

The Universe is a kind place, my Buddhist friends tell me. And now I see it. Tens of thousands of years ago, outer space vomited down an enormous and economically viable rock, providing dozens of jobs for the good people of Winslow, Arizona. If I grew up in Winslow instead of Cape May, NJ, I might have spent my summers touring people who were too pregnant to do the Grand Canyon around this place. That is, if I wasn't employed as the “girl in a flatbed Ford,” smiling for photo ops.

It was laughably expensive to get in, though the woman at the ticket window took pity on us and didn't charge us for Isaac. I was much in love with the wicked winds that swept over the crater and stole your breath. If you've ever been down a roller coaster or up a lighthouse (most particularly Point Sur Light Station in Big Sur, CA) you have probably experienced this kind of wind drama. I have to say, though, the museum was pretty interesting. My son was partial to the “Make your own crater” exhibit where you chose velocity, density, radius, angle and planet and see what happens when you unleash a virtual asteroid. First time around my guy managed the outcome of “total destruction of the Earth.” Oops. Well, don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy. Ciao bellos.

Detour Entry: Community and the Dumpster Story

2011-05-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

***A QUICK PLEA: If you are reading along, please consider leaving a comment so I know you were here. Under each entry there is a link called "Dare to Share." Thanks!!***

Isaac was born in a place that calls itself “America's Last Hometown.” We lived there for about two years. It took me about two days to figure out that I do not belong anywhere near America's Last Hometown. Now, I will also tell you that one of the biggest reasons for leaving the Monterey Peninsula is a search for community. One might expect to find community in America's Last Hometown. One might grow old searching.

When Isaac was one, we moved to another town that lacked all of the aesthetic charm of America's Last Hometown. It was better this way, you had no expectation of camaraderie or neighborliness. I could talk on this topic of neighborhoods ad nauseam, but I will spare you for now and get to the story.

I'd lived behind a church for the last 4 ½ years. While packing and cleaning in the last stages before we left, we had a few things that weren't going to fit in our garbage can.

“Put them in the dumpster over there,” my next door neighbor advised. “Charles always says I can use it.”

Charles, I knew, was the groundskeeper and maintenance person for the church. Though we rarely spoke at any length, we'd wave casually across the two-foot chain link fence to the parking lot.

Mrs. Johnson had told me several times in the past about our access to the dumpster, but I never had had need or interest before now. Isaac and I walked around the charming chain link I'd stared at for almost his lifetime with a couple pieces of Styrofoam we'd evicted from a box we needed to pack Isaac's outside truck fleet in. He skipped ahead of me with a fat tree branch he was planning on propping the dumpster lid open with.

Iz's tool worked well, but before I could toss the second piece of foam in, I heard a voice yelling from not too far away.

“Excuse me! Excuse me! You can't put that there! You can't use that dumpster!”

A man was sprinting toward us from the church. I paused, the foam suspended, Isaac still propping open the lid with his stick. I blinked passively and waited while the man, now within a few feet of us exhausted his script a second time (though he could not possibly have been more exhausted than I was in that moment).

“We were told we could use this,” I said with calm annoyance.

“WHO told you that? WHO told you that?” said the man, still agitated in his valiant defense of the trash receptacle.

“Charles.”

“WHEN did he tell you that?”

This was really getting tiresome. “You'd have to ask my neighbor.” I pointed to Mrs. Johnson who was bent over sweeping leaves up in front of her gate at the time.

“Which house do you live in?” the man demanded.

I pointed to the only other house in striking distance of where we stood.

“Oh, oh,” he said, though his blood pressure didn't quite seem out of the woods yet.

At this point, Mrs. Johnson stood up and took in the scene. She repeated for him what I'd already said but in that bitchy, old lady way that commands respect.

“Sorry, sorry,” the man was saying now. “I didn't know.” “'pologize,” he added in my direction. I grunted and started to turn away.

“So, y'all moving?” he tried, suddenly friendlier.

Clearly, no 16-foot storage POD in front of the house was going to get by this guy's keen observational skills.

“Yeah.”

“You lived there, what? 20 years or something?”

“Four.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah,” he said, non-commitally.

Isaac and I took our leave. And thanks for saying hi before, I think as we went.

“How you doin', Mrs. Jackson?” the man calls over to my neighbor, still trying to redeem himself, and really, what's in a name anyway?

Here's how we do community in this country: You live beside someone, or someone's church, for four or 20 years. You notice each other, kind of. You don't really try to make contact unless something of yours is threatened – someone encroaches on your property line with their shed, someone's dog poops on your pansies, or someone dares put something in your dumpster.

At the top of our list for reasons to move – searching for community. One that works. One that is not transient. One where young families are visible, and I don't have to drive 7 miles to take my kid to a playdate.

My sidebar has a link to a book I read recently, In the Neighborhood, an interesting look at how our lives have shut down to each other in the decades following the birth of the suburb. The author sets out to get to know his neighbors. Perhaps when I get to where we're going, I'll ring some doorbells and hand out copies.

Day Five Continued: Otter Pops!!

2011-05-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

Little Orphan Orange

Alexander the Grape

Poncho Punch

Louie Blue Raspberry

Sir Isaac Lime

Strawberry Short Kook

Anyone else remember these frozen pops you squeezed up their little plastic tubes after you'd ripped them open with your teeth?? Major flashback moment in the camp store!!

We'd gone in looking for sports drinks; trying to get some electrolytes into my kiddo.

“No way! Otter pops!” I exclaim.

“What? What?” Isaac wants to know.

Man alive, and they are 25 cents! I look down to be sure I haven't turned into my 10-year-old self, glance at the cars outside to ensure it is not suddenly 1979 and I'm not in some hokey movie where the dog talks or the people trade bodies for the appropriately alliterated day of the week. Otter pops.

I glance perfunctorily at the list of ingredients. I'd be hard-pressed to find any food from my formative years that did not contain high fructose corn syrup, which is, naturally, listed second only to water on the Otter Pops label. HFCS is known around our house as “that 'gredient Mommy doesn't like,” and alternatively, the “not-good-for-you sugar.”

It's only day five on the road and already our nutritional and hygenic rules have bent so far as to be unrecognizable.

“What flavor do you want, Iz?” I call cheerily.

Like the serendipity that surrounds us all if we only choose to look, my boy picks “the green one,” i.e., Sir Isaac Lime.

Day Five: Lo Lo Mai Springs Campground, South of Sedona

2011-05-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

“Why is everything red here?” -- Isaac

I have no pictures of the actual campground, which was quite lovely as a matter of fact. All the state park sites we tried for were full up, so we headed for the private one that brought you around in a golf cart to pick out your site. (Isaac adores golf carts. He had a smile plastered on his face for hours. Maybe he picked up the obsession -- not to mention my own community obsession -- when we went to Catalina Island, in utero.Couple pics here.) I have no pictures because we were all a bit sick there (and super excited to be spending two whole nights in one spot). Pictures were not a top priority.

Isaac, who'd started to get a red, itchy eye a couple days back, now had two red, itchy eyes and a runny nose and just didn't look so hot. Allergies, we thought for the most part. Except in those dark recesses of evening when you are sure your child has a fatal disease and you've done nothing to help him. Are most parents familiar with this surety? Am I off in my assumptions here?

He woke up after our first night in Sedona asking for water and then spewing same projectile vomit style back up. Dehydration. I'd broken my baby. Crap.

And had the cat peed in the last 24-hours? And OMG, my ankles were the size of logs, and Mike's back was barely holding steady at “somewhat strained.”

“We should drive above the valley, get out of this heat today,” Mike argued.

“We should stay put in our shaded spot and not drive anywhere for a day,” I countered. “We all need a break.”

Sedona was somewhere we'd been looking forward to being for long before the trip started. Also, before we blew our cushion day by leaving Monterey so late and spending a night in that charming Paso Robles spot, we'd even considered chilling for a third night here. (We still had to make it to Santa Fe by Monday for a conference for Mike.)

Mike and I had come to the Sedona area years back, pre-kid(s). We'd caught Flagstaff on Flag Day (I have a vague memory of pig races down the main street.), went to Slide Rock State Park, an amazing natural water park, and tumbled further down the canyon to the red towering cliffs of Sedona. We enjoyed exploring the hills, and we liked the town itself – cute and ready with a multitude of cultural crafts.

I bought a beautiful jade ring in one of the shops and made the mistake of asking the proprietor some detail about the Native American history of the town, a question I was forming after visiting the landscape that I guess I was hoping a local could fill me in on. “I do not know,” the woman at the store told me rather haughtily. “They are people of the earth.” She pointed to the floor. “While I (pause) concern myself with things of a higher plane.” She fluttered her hands around her face for effect.

Right. Got it.

In short, we had very fond memories of our time in this town and, in that way that parents sometimes do, we looked forward to sharing this experience with our child, forgetting that, well, we had a child.

Isaac wouldn't care about the quaint coffee shops, he would miss the amusement to be derived from fluttery women not of the earth, he'd probably think the “Pink Jeep Tours” that sped tourists over the red rocks kicking up dirt and scaring away the canyon wrens were cool rather than obnoxious. His Sedona was bound to be entirely different than ours.

Before and after we came to the campground some 12 or so miles outside of town, we worried about having to drive back into the center with Emily in the van and no shade over the public parking and temperatures spiking at at least 95 for no good reason I could see. How would we get to do anything? Meanwhile, we were set up at a site with a river, mature Cottonwoods, a pool, a playground, laundry, and even some limited Wifi.

But, but, what about SEDONA??

“He should get outside and get some fresh air,” Mike said, always good for some stoic, fatherly advice.

“Leave him be. He's resting.”

Had my marriage gone through a time warp and come out in the 1950s? I wiped my hands on my flowered apron, then held one to my boy's forehead.

After Isaac had thrown up more water and the two bites of banana we'd tired to cure him with, he wanted to read a book. He and I settled in on the bed of the van together and I read him some soothing tales of extinct carnivorous reptiles.

“This is what I've been waiting for all night and all morning,” he said, resting his head on my shoulder.

“What?” I asked perplexed.

“This,” he replied definitively, and clasped my arm to snuggle in closer.

Day Four Continued: Nutritional Challenges & More of the Road to Sedona

2011-05-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Emily can be a bit of a backseat driver.

In Seligman, AZ we stopped for lunch. This had been tricky so far – lunch, that is. In preparing for the trip, I'd worried about going places to eat or run around along the way and having to leave Emilycat in a hot van. In fact, what we were finding was that there were no places inviting enough so far along the route to want to slide into a booth over.

Instead, we'd order a burrito to go from a window connected to the convenience store or patchwork together a meal from what we had on hand and the refrigerated cases at the gas marts. There was a bit heftier a selection than your average 7-11 of course. Aware as they might be of their strategic locations, these places were sometimes stocked in things like cream cheese, parfaits, and chopped apples, as well as bungie cords and neck pillows. Still. Baby ain't exactly enjoying an organic, gluten-free ride.

We'd left Monterey just hours before the first peaches of the season were due at the farmer's market, a detail I couldn't reckon with easily. Mocking my craving for fresh California produce were establishments we passed like “Wagon Wheel Restaurant” and “Roadkill Cafe.” These names repeated at the various exits. The issue was not chains and franchises, but simply people who thought they were all the very first to be quite that clever.

As she'd done at the last half dozen stops, Emily would just stay with Mike in the van under the shade of the gas pump ports while Isaac and I tried to find a compromise among the limited choices and use the bathroom. We waited in line with our hard-boiled eggs, banana, pretzels and ice cream bar behind a man talking to the cashier about Obama being a traitor to the Muslim world and blah, blah, blah. He finally turned his body enough that I could throw my pretzels on the counter and did so, attempting the hint.

“I've got a six-year-old by the hand and a cat in the van, pal,” I wanted to tell him. “Save it!”

He faded away still mumbling and we heard the bell on the door buzz.

“Whatever,” the cashier said, shaking her long grey hair and rolling her eyes.

“You're the bartender!” I told her laughing.

“I am,” she confirmed.

We left again for the parking lot where everyone was moving to and from their cars, pretending it wasn't hot enough to melt eyebrows.

We settled in, distributed our provisions, and headed off. The road kept stretching east, more mountains presented themselves, signs read “Elk next 20 miles.” And to think, I was so distracted when we left Monterey, I hadn't even noticed the moment we turned away from the coast.

Day Four: on the road to Sedona

2011-05-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Miraculously for our little troupe, we managed to leave from Mojave by 8:15am. The impetus? Having to drive uphill in the chugger through the hottest spot in the country. We needed an early start.

Across the border in Arizona, we stopped for gas. It was 9:30am, 94 degrees and climbing. The bathroom at the travel stop had three framed paintings – all of ocean scenes. Two beaches with swaying palms and sailboats, one of waves crashing on cliffs. Outside, truckers squeegied their windshields, the backs of their necks as red as the dirt surrounding us. A couple small, white clouds held perfectly still in a blue sky, as if they too were just too hot to move.

This desert was once the ancient sea bed. The bathroom paintings perhaps a nostalgia for glory days gone by, like the armchair nationalists I encountered in Hungary with maps of the old empire on the wall. Something missing that they've lost ownership of. Something that once held a key to their identity, no longer visible to others without props, without protest. I used to be single and childless and could sleep in. I used to speak Russian with ease. I used to teach at a university. I used to live in Monterey. Who will care about these things now?

The past always looks more attractive when you're peering over your shoulder. Be careful not to miss what you have; the road goes on, and on.

Day Three Continued: Mojave National Preserve

2011-05-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

I was reading. The boys were out exploring. It was after six o'clock and the evening had reached its cool, breezy desert perfection.

I kept hearing a rustling. After wondering for several pages if some really cool desert animal was just outside the van and ready for viewing, I sat up to look. The rustling was our trash bag shimmering in the soft wind, but there was something else I could make out now. I heard singing. I was pretty sure I was right about this one.

I looked out the window: the little cinderblock house for the pit toilet was in my direct line of sight about 25 feet away (purposeful site choice). Beyond it, another 80 or so feet to the left was a minivan with something tied to the roof and a man in a red shirt standing near it. To the right, a little further on toward the hills I could see a pick up and an RV.

I listened. It wasn't a radio. It was definitely singing. Pretty, though I couldn't make out the words. The red-shirted man walked to the other side of his van and eventually the tune changed. It was him for sure.

His song warbled and took a dramatic rise.

Not much by way of family camping in these parts. Most people seemed to arrive alone to an already lonely place. I am no expert on desert or landscape or spirituality, but there appears by all accounts to be something spiritual about these places. Some kind of secrets the barrel cactus holds in like spare water. The sage brush not giving it up either as we intruders tromped by their bristly hedges for a few hours, a day or two.

I wondered if the people who came here came because they liked the solitude or because they needed it. I was sitting here alone, too, and I could sit here happily alone pretty much all day. A book, a journal, a pen. I was set. The boys could explore without me. I did not feel cheated by the extra bedrest this pregnancy required. This is what I did often on a regular vacation. But that's different. I knew my family would be back eventually. I knew I wouldn't be the one maneuvering this van out of the sandy paths and back onto the highway. I knew it wouldn't be long before someone would ask me to read a dinosaur book or come look how high he could climb. I did not come alone to sing to the red hills whether or not anyone else witnessed it. Writers like audiences.

This personality is foreign to me, the one where standing alone you watch the Mojave yucca, that is also standing alone and this is enough. This constitution, like the desert itself, is something I can only observe with fascination and know there is something special in it, a magic I do not possess, but am more than grateful exists in the world with me.

Days Two & Three: Red Rock Canyon State Park & Mojave National Preserve

2011-05-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

That's a crazy idea.

Insane.

It doesn't make sense.

You'll do it?

Of course

I replied.

- magnet my friend Trudy gave me that now lives on the van dashboard

Five weeks+ on the road. My friend's 14-year-old looked me sternly in the eye. “Where will you shower?”

I had the urge to mess with her a little, say something outrageous that would confirm every fear and image of horror blown up in her imagination. Kind of like when a woman I will decline to identify, a mother of four, native of Massachusetts who has never traveled outside its tiny borders, asked me with genuine solemnity on a holiday visit there once, “Do they have Christmas trees in California?”

“No,” I wanted to whisper, teary-eyed and trembly-lipped after a pregnant pause. “Nn-Nn-No.”

“They make us decorate surf boards and sing Bob Seger songs. I-I would give anything for a blue spruce. A simple potted pine. ANYTHING!”

Red Rock Canyon State Park was beautiful. Loads of wacky-o hills and caves to explore. We saw some bunnies, some tracks that looked suspiciously road runner-like, and one gorgeous brown and gold snake while still driving around to pick a site which I consequently didn't get a picture of because I was too busy trying to alert Mike from running it over.

We also had our first fellow-Westy encounter (as in Westfalia, as in, the VW camper, as in the van). Mike and the other Westy owner had a predictable conversation that went (I'm paraphrasing, but believe me, I'm not far off), “Nice ride.” “Yeah, yours too.” “They're great machines. “Yeah.” And so, with the male bonding out of the way, we settled in for the night. It was wonderfully quiet and starry.

We didn't go see the petroglyphs nearby and we didn't find the owl pellets on the cliffs. In short, we didn't do any of the magnificent things people recommended to us to do in the area. But we survived, and we were on our way on this crazy trip at last. My final argument with my landlord was over, and, though unsatisfying, calling his sorry ass wouldn't have to show up on my to-do list again. We had a little bouquet Isaac had picked drying on the dash, a healthy supply of water; Isaac had lots of impossibly long trains to watch; the cat hadn't yet thrown up or run away. Life was pretty good.

We headed out toward “Hole in the Wall” campground in Mojave National Preserve for day three. We were on 58E bearing down on Barstow and its hot, empty, why-would-anyone-live-here grandeur. “Flower Street” a sign said. I didn't see any hints of a clear street much less any flowers, but I could smell horse dung, which felt oddly familiar and reassuring after miles of flat red dirt and construction vehicles. The cat and the boy were asleep and I was looking forward to peeing in only another 10 miles or so. Maybe this scene was the “big adventure” everyone kept envying us over?

I'm reminded of when I lived in Hungary teaching English and traveling in Europe on my breaks and as my meager salary allowed. Friends from home marveled at my “adventurous spirit,” my “exotic” journey into international waters. I would often think of their words as I washed my exotic Hungarian dishes, or when I'd get on the wrong train, again, and find myself standing in a weedy lot somewhere in the Slovenian countryside, little boys begging me for gum.

Day One: Paso Robles, an inauspicious start

2011-05-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

We thought we'd never leave. But somehow there we were, staring out the window at the live oaks stuck into the gold hills like decorations on a cake, and the giant metal oil birds peck-pecking for the sludge we all live on.

We pulled into Paso Robles, CA around 8 pm, giving up the drive only four hours short of our original goal. We were not making it to Red Rock Canyon tonight. Even better, after following what initially sounded like decent advice at a local grocery store, we ended up at the “campground,” also known as “Wine Country RV Park.”

Wine Country RV Park consisted of asphalt alternated with concrete, in addition to small rectangles of grass where picnic tables were planted and watered nightly between midnight and 7 am.

It's been quite a while since we've gone south. We are pretty much NorCal people. Whenever I told people we were thinking of visiting the Mammoth Site – a tar pit of prehistoric bones in South Dakota, they'd inevitably bring up the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Sure, I could go through L.A. county, when otherwise we'd have to drive days out of our way to South Dakota, completely mucking up my plan for a southern route and forcing us to travel through Nebraska or Kansas or Iowa, perhaps rain-soaked Missouri.

LA? SD?

South Dakota it is, then.

The RV Park confused Isaac, a seasoned camper. The luxury bathrooms were just beside the pool; both were empty; the token lawn chair display beside the behemoth living rooms on wheels, unoccupied. You think there can't be that many people willing to steer 45 feet of vehicle around, but then you enter their great pueblos and lo-and-behold, it's a far-reaching sickness. Enthographers and anthropologists be forewarned: don't expect much contact with this crew. You will probably just have to catch them walking their dogs – the size of which is in direct opposite proportion to the size of their ride.

There's our little out-of-place van, lost amongst the giants

I have forgotten many, many things from my grad school days. (My grad degree was my original purpose for heading out to Monterey.) But there is a line on of my profs said that I recall often from Second Language Acquisition class. I can't quite remember the context within which it was told to us, but I've used this information on innumerable occasions. I find it to be very helpful to set myself straight when I start to get all freaked out and fear-driven. (MIIS people, if you are reading this and it sounds familiar, please help fill in the background.) What Leo said was, “An organism will not carry with it what it can easily find in its environment.”

The human is one hell of an organism.

It's Mother's Day

2011-05-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Wait

Don't go too early.

You're tired. But everyone's tired.

But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a little and listen.

Galway Kinnell, from “Wait”

The memorial brick for my mom should be installed this weekend at Leaming's Run Garden in Swainton, New Jersey. Here's what it looks like.

I recently found out that I lost two mothers last year. When I was in college, I spent a summer in Yucatán, Mexico. I lived in a small town with a host family that included four boys between the ages of seven and 16. My brothers. When two of them and I reconnected on Facebook, I discovered that their mom, Esther, had passed away last March. I was there, it was that summer, when she first discovered the cancer. I didn't make it back before it took her. She was a lovely woman, a teacher who as a child had to struggle to learn Spanish in school – her first language being Mayan. She didn't marry until she was 30 years old, unheard of in her community. She was fiercely dedicated to her faith. And I was privileged to be her only daughter for a few months a long time ago. I wish I could include her picture, but of course, it's packed.

Now, I will be a mother again myself. In all of the fuss and stress and planning of the move, the pregnancy has sometimes slipped back into the recesses of our days. I don't like this and, apparently, either does my body. I've had some issues with signs of preterm labor that have been worrying to say the least. I've had to stay off my feet as much as possible in these last weeks as time ticks away and the to-do list never seems to shorten. But baby kicks me constantly, letting me know s/he is in there, reminding me that despite it all, s/he's growing, s/he's alive and well, that s/he's exploring, that s/he is pretty jazzed when the ice cream comes, that s/he's firmly here and along for the ride.

Hope s/he likes Nebraska.

Shouldn't we be escorted out

as we are escorted in

to this world? When we go

there should be showers

and ceremony. Stretchy pants

with monkeys and beanies

stitched in hippos. Primary colors.

Cards with balloons. And most of all

our mothers should be there singing Hush

Our mothers, to show us this new

and strange world we will enter.

Our mothers to hold us while we sleep.

dogs, cats, and other hail storms

2011-05-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is what it's like to get old. You just don't care. Certain hesitations and worry over social etiquette, social status, social posturing fall away. Next I'll start farting loudly in other people's homes. Leaving this place with a collage of beautiful friends behind us is incredibly difficult. In addition, I'm proud to say that as I look behind me, over the 13 years here, there is no need to scurry quickly out of range of any towering infernos where the bridges used to be. I'm good. I'm just saying that on a particular level, there's a freedom of movement I can now access.

Like when my landlord brought a young couple through our house. The third such event we've endured. Nowhere near the trauma of our last move and our last landlord, but still. It's a big fat pain in the arse. And that's even before we talk about the fact that after they left, they didn't lock the back door which doesn't latch properly and opened wide leaving my house unattended and my already freaked out indoor-only cat to go explore the neighborhood, which in turn created an stressed out mama in Braxton Hicks and a hysterical little boy who was convinced his pet was lost forever. But, hey, that's another story, right?

The people coming to look at our place, as I raced off to an appointment had at this point only committed the crime of inconveniencing me somewhat and casting doubts on the future care of my lavender bushes. They were 30 minutes early and toted along with them a little mop of a dog. Without making full eye contact, I blurt, “That dog isn't coming inside, is it?” Oh. Did I say that? Um. What I think I meant was, “Oohhhhh! Loooooook. What a sweet puppyyyyyyy! Hi little fella! Hi there! What's your name?”

Moving is also like short hand, then. Saves you words.

Monterey County

2011-05-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

Elkhorn Slough, with its pieces of driftwood sticking up all over the place like some sort of strange graveyard of antlers

the otters, tagged and preening like floating kittens in the bay

the curry-colored house down the street which once or twice a year hosts a huge event in a tent, piles of shoes outside the flap, saris of every color in and out of the rented port-o-potty

the Salinas Post Office, where I once got to cut the line in exchange for translating (Spanish/English) for another patron

the Monterey Post Office, where they turn on jazz music when the line gets too long

the Pacific Grove Post Office, asleep, like the rest of that town

the Seaside Post Office, most multicultural spot per square inch on the peninsula besides The Breakfast Club restaurant

The Breakfast Club restaurant, with their flat screens rotating advertising for tire places, CoffeeMate, where “Anywhere is fine” and I once saw my favorite clerk from the Seaside Post Office.

the 50-degree July days

Marina, where every Mother's Day weekend the snowy plovers have to compete with the hang gliding demo at the annual kite festival

the homeless man who sits at the busstop on the way from my secret parking space to the Aquarium

the cuttings faires, third Saturday in March, where if you want to know anything about the plants you are taking home you have to ask the man in the white beard

the man from Salinas who delivered my storage POD, what was once surely a gang tattoo on his neck now inked over into a black pool

the ones who didn't deliver my storage POD and ended up buried, gang tattoo intact on their young necks

the summer movies at the Outdoor Forest Theater, bring your own picnic, cozy up to the fire pits

the “controlled” burns to rid the old Fort Ord of unexploded ordinances that send ash raining down on my yard on the most beautiful, fog-free days

the tiny airport that fills to capacity with golfers, conference goers, and where the TSA agents give out stickers to the kids

the conference goers, forever lost in the 1 square mile of downtown, their nametags thumping against their overdressed chests as they cross the street by the Chinese restaurant

Monastery (aka Mortuary) Beach each year sweeping someone from its coarse sand into its dangerous currents

Soledad, where the “It's Happening in Soledad!” sign is followed by the exit for the correctional facility

Carmel's art galleries

the cypress canopies

the baby harbor seals on Hopkins beach

the sea lions barking as you climb Rocky Ridge Trail

the gully at Garapata State Beach filled with calla lilies

the jump houses that fill the miniscule lots

the midnight drag shows at Norma Jean's

the coveted right lane at the Naval Post Graduate School on southbound Del Monte Blvd to avoid getting stuck behind the left turners

the National Steinbeck Center pretending to be dedicated to literature and history as if it's not funded by the big ag(riculture) companies

avocados year-round

the man who runs the old time clock shop whom I never got to interview, everything around him ticking, ticking, family photos from the old country shining in sepia tone from the walls

the Castroville Artichoke Festival

Pfeiffer Beach covered in photographers in waders all snapping images of light through rock windows

a charmed life

2011-05-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

We were eating breakfast. Isaac was already late for school. Again.

The computer had seized, its hard drive grinding and gnashing its teeth for several hours before simply refusing to come to life at all. On it, downloads of 50 CDs that were to be our travel music for 5 weeks that Mike had not yet gotten onto an MP3 player.

I was limping around in pain, my back on the lower right side pitched to the point of no return; relaxation not so simple, my couch already disappeared into the storage POD outside my window and the religious peddlers forever pounding on the door while I try to prop myself in bed.

My garden had been ravaged – friends digging up my blooming beauties – better they have them than the landlord's extermo-gardeners mow it all down without discretion after we're gone, though in the latter scenario I wouldn't have to watch.

My son's pretty face was marred by the gashes and cuts of a recent and terrible asphalt tumble that left him trembling like I've never before witnessed, his knees torn up by the same fall and one more two days later when he grated his skin over a climbing wall after losing his grip and sliding the rest of the way down.

Mike was wearing a brace against his wracking cough that threatened to wrench his back out if loading the POD didn't first.

My father-in-law was in the hospital again.

I was showing signs of preterm labor.

We were leaving our life in 8 days, but it seemed already to be falling apart around us.

My husband's '93 Honda del Sol, the very same we traveled across the country in when we came out to Monterey was still not sold or otherwise disposed of. However, he'd had an inquiry, a man who might even pay him $1,000 for the junker – one dollar for every day that bag of chips and salsa have lived in the center console, I guess. We were discussing having to get that deal moving when Mike discovered he couldn't find the keys. The del Sol was down the block, booted from its usual spot in the driveway or in front of the house by the VW van and the POD, respectively. “Sometimes the keys get left in the trunk lock,” Mike offered.

“They do, huh? Just 'get left' there?” I asked, wondering if this was really the time to discuss the social and grammatical implications of the passive voice.

And then, I started to laugh. And laugh. Hysterically. I couldn't stop.

“Why are you laughing?” Isaac asked me half-concerned, half-giggling himself under the pressure of contagion.

I could barely catch my breath to explain. The sound just rolled out of me, on and on, full and maniacal. “Be-B-Be-Be-Cause...Our life...is a DISASTER!”

Mike returned from the car, which miraculously was still there, with the keys. “Yup. Trunk lock.”

Ah, see. No one stole the car. The keys were found. The gods, clearly, have been smiling on us.

From: These United States, an episodic tale. Pre-departure thoughts: Nebraska.

2011-05-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

Though we haven't had nearly enough time to concentrate on planning the fun stops for our drive across country, we have the beginning and the end more or less mapped out. It's the middle that we're still not sure about. How many other treks, real and figurative, must share this dilemma?

As it looks now, we may be crossing the state of Nebraska on our journey east. When this first came to my attention, I of course emailed Megan, our former babysitter extraordinaire. She watched Isaac a couple days a week for us for about two years. Truly, if I thought tying her down or bribing her with riches would have kept her from moving to Portland (along with most of the rest of California), I would have done it. Megan was the kind of person you dream of watching your child. Isaac loved her; and what was not to love? She is fun, creative, responsible, infused with common sense, and dedicated to teaching young children (she left to complete a certificate program in Montessori education). Megan is also a traveler, a vegan, a generally interesting person and, as it happens, a native of Nebraska. I figured if Nebraska had produced such a soul, perhaps there was more than basketball and grasslands there. So I asked her what we should stop and see in her fine state. Her advice? “Just keep driving.”

Damn. But surely... With the determination that comes from an age honed in its futility by mindless hours of internet research, I soldiered on, finding with every Google click involving Nebraska, one common feature: “Carhenge.” Voted America's 2nd "Wackiest Attraction," it apparently just lost out for the top spot to a toilet seat museum in San Antonio. But nevermind the near miss, this is Nebraska's roadside claim to fame. A spot in the middle of nothing where someone has painted cars a silver gray and piled them up to resemble the ancient and mysterious Stonehenge of England. Except stacked cars are not ancient or mysterious, and neither, I was starting to see, was anything about Nebraska.

One more try – The Nebraska State Parks website featured links to their various regions and attractions of each. I chose a region at random and clicked. There were two attractions listed. One was a steak house.

Sometimes you try to give something a fair shake. You shake and shake, but nothing comes out.

some belly progression pics

2011-04-25T07:00:00.000-07:00