True Grit

So the biggest thing I had done this weekend was clean out a closet because I discovered a mouse had made it his homeless shelter. And now all that stuff I dragged and threw out is in a bag on my porch so now the homeless shelter has a view.

But then two surprises happened. Our short film won Best Romantic Comedy at the Austin Revolution Film Fest. And after 7 years of having horses and hoping the kids would ride with me -- Emma, on the verge of leaving forever for college, woke up and said "I'm missing trees. Can I ride with you?"

Both insanely remarkable miracles.

In Austin where people wear big belt buckles and then apparently have so many they make them into awards (it is Texas, and yes the award was an actual buckle like we rodeoed), a roomful of people were laughing at words I wrote, and then thought they were the Best in Show.
I wrote those words for a tiny theater back in Maryland, and the play was two people talking in bed about how their relationship could never work. It was called Chicken. Because she's a chicken, and because at the theater we decided there should be a meat in every show. Then years later in LA we shot it and I was sitting on a set in a Sherman Oaks bedroom with a bunch of crew people and cables underfoot and the horror of listening to my most private thoughts about how incredibly bad I am at relationships - my limitations on parade, and MIKED for all to hear -- it became like this terrible ocean of music washing all over us all and none of the crew seemed to care but for me, one vulnerable human. Then slowly the horror turned into gravel, like when you're in a car accident and your windshield explodes and you are alive but crunching gravel in your teeth and realizing it's all windshield fragments. In your mouth. Is that Clint Eastwood? True Grit? After that I thought okay well it's all out now. Might as well let it ALLLLLL out.

So now a roomful of moviegoers, my first solid roomful, maybe a hundred people? All at once, immersed in my voice coming out of two funny actors. This new chapter is, well,....

….hilarious. Brows confused. How is this even possible? And then we win the award.

So I was lying in bed this morning, having not gone to the festival because Austin is far, there would be hotel sleeping and weird people, and my inside me likes to be here in my regular life so much. So I was in bed with Bess next to me sleeping quietly and it was 8 on a Sunday and I had to get up to feed horses but I was listening to Chicken the short movie in my head since I know it by heart, and I was hearing where the audience might have laughed and where they might have seen themselves in the comedy, and I had my own film festival right here in my pjs and I felt happiness. I like that we might be at the beginning of getting money for our work. I like that there were people who were forced, as a group, to quietly listen to the rhythm of my psychotic words and that they saw themselves enough in there to laugh. That is a giddy thing. We are here, now.

Then I was happy to get up and have a day of nothing ahead, and made pancakes and Bess went off to basketball and then Emma says she wants to ride. The last time I put her on a pony I was trying out for the family it bucked her off and ran away. She was 9, I think. So today she got on my big black Dewey and I got on Mags and suddenly we were doing the thing that I do everyday but this time there's this passenger who is like my heart wallpaper, she's all wrapped up in me so much that she's almost invisible, she's just riding along. With her gymnast balance and dance core body, she's a patient, mellow and fearlessly happy rider. She just went along. Splashed through water. Cantered up a hill without falling off. She shrieked with the joy of first cantering a horse. It feels like flying, she said. We weaved through trees in the haunted forest, and crossed the deep sands of dam. We went on a bear hunt. We stood in water while Dewey pawed and took a nap. We came back unharmed, and she worked on her posting trot, learning, and she was there, like she always has been, since I had her. When you make people, and then grow them, they are your trees.

So I knew it was good I wasn't in Austin. It wasn't only because I had a colonoscopy and jury duty. It was because Emma was gonna wake up this Sunday and want to ride, after 7 years. If I had been on a plane, I woulda missed it. I don't wanna miss any mothering.

So now I get to send her out into the world having mastered ping pong, pancakes, sensible in a saddle, strong swimmer, rich with cousins and grandparents, safe driver, polite, solid dad role model, and liking Ellen Page movies and comic dialogue in New Girl. Also her math brain - a whole other wha -- where did that come from.

Anyway, the awards aren't big enough, Austin. I mean, the award is a tiny reminder that this is all a waving immense field of corn, all ripening at the same time. Maybe I do need a belt buckle to hold up these tremendous pants I'm wearing.