so I'm in a pickle

Seems like what I do when I have a crisis of feelings, I buy a horse.

I don't actually need another horse, or any more poop out there. The poop is the hardest part about having a horse in the city, you have to scoop and lug and battle dragging two ton trash cans on gravel roads for trash pick up. 

But having the face there. On a daily basis. The little red face. 

Sometimes when I'm changing my mom's diaper, and she's turned over in bed, and she's never mean, she never says anything but I'm sorry, and thank you

But sometimes I'm in the middle of my job with her and I have to go outside and I leave her on her side, she's safe, and I walk right out the door and I go to the horse fence and I stare at the horses. Because I feel sad or horrible or terrible for her and for me, and I take a break right in the middle and stand at the fence to look at horses. And they look up at me, the shape of their faces, the biggest eyes on any land animal, and those eyes are always gazing at me like you're okay pickle.

So I go back in and finish my mom work. And tonight I kissed her all over her face and pretended to bite her chest and arms like you would a baby and she was laughing so much. Her face all lit up. Love matters. Even if she doesn't know who I am. She knows she's loved and cherished. How is that not like the whole red carpet.

So there was this little red horse out near Emma in Colorado. I think I woulda rather had Emma come back and live in the living room and I could keep her in a glass case and only take her out when I needed her but instead she's having a good life, she's having a better than glass case life and I'll see her as soon as I can. In the meantime there is this little red headed horse, and she's one year old, and she could do some damage to our hearts, with her gentle face.

She's coming here. 

I figure Meriwether is almost all used up, now that he's getting ridden a little bit and slowly learning what he'll be doing as an adult horse. As soon as I did the terrifying thing of sitting on him, my first baby horse that I ever raised, for the very first time, a few months ago, I sat on his back and felt suddenly like oh my GOD I can do this! Maybe I'm stupid I'm old and I don't want to break every single bone, but I am learning I can start from the ground up and make a decent, kind, easy family horse. So I immediately wanted to try again. I had lifetime enough to try one more time. But start at a yearling, so it's not so long til they're ready to work. By the time she's ready, in two years, to have a person on her back, Meriwether will be solid on the trail, and ready to have her come along. Dewey and Mags will be getting older and I will have yes too many horses, but what does that even mean. If the work is bringing me joy. I remember as a little kid all I wanted since I was three years old, according to my mom, was horses and babies. 

Seems like all the good stuff in life does come with trash cans full of shit. It is not as clean as it looks on instagram. Life is alot of reckless hell. At times. Although these last four dementia years have been a treacherous muddy swamp of thick shit. 

But I've had her face. My mom's face. That's the whole red carpet.

So I spent the first part of this year reading all about Bob Fosse because his life was funny and broken and his dance the same. Because my heart is funny and broken and my writing the same. And he called his daughter pickle, and he was a bad dad but he still got a pickle and I feel like a pickle most of the time and we will name this horse Jane, Calamity Jane Austen

but we will call her pickle

because we are all in one

and now it will have a face

a little red face with a white star

Girl On Fire

Lately I just feel broken.

Like we were driving after 10 AT NIGHT on the 405 and there was just a car on fire right there, and people were barely even slowing down to look at it. I think cause we're all in our cars going that's me man

I already got that

Living in LA sometimes feels like you can't navigate the city anymore. Like you cannnnn do it, you are capable but the joy of living you have to fight very hard for like one salmon left in the stream and you and thirty bears, and they are built for it. That car was just blazing. And that's not even the first time I've passed something out of control on fire on that freeway. And even though the fire dept guys were scurrying to handle it there didn't feel like any relief there like there's no hose big enough. Frankly.

It might be that I was in the barn earlier cleaning up and resting on my shitrake (little known japanese food) and I felt for once like I'm too tired to keep outrunning my need to be loved. And then that felt funny, like this might be the year I just decide it's okay to allow people to actually love me, and to fuck it up even, and I will get up the next day and still want to eat frozen yogurt at the beach, like I won't be destroyed. I don't know actually how to do this simple thing. Is anyone else like this? Have I made a new little known channel into humanity that no one else felt ever not even like the guy who invented capezios or some dude picking coffee beans in Ecuador cursing his own heart, or some physicist studying the sun at a giant telescope in Hawaii, with a white collared scientist coat, isn't she sometimes squinting at herself and saying this is good but why do I feel so sad

I thought maybe I was just more broken than others, but I look around and there are way more broken than me. People in the paralympics are running without legs

But emotionally broken no is maybe not broken, it is maybe just as B says, so much feeling

I could be a scientist of feeling, I have fallen into that deep end since very small and splashing around in there makes pretty good writing but it is always threatening to drown you because it is VAST and churning. The ocean makes sense. The ocean doesn't care about you but you can't stop thinking about it or wanting it to be part of you. Maybe this is the drawback of being a writer. Immersion in uncontrollable feeling.

When we saw the car fire we were on the way to a bad horror movie, a screening at a theater in the farthest reaches of earth, across the 405. B and I both had terrible anxiety leaving an empty house what if my mom dies the house catches on fire the dogs die of lonely confusion it's dark out we hate people

But his niece needled us to go, the whole family went mostly, his side of the family the one that likes to gather even though they also hate people mostly. We got to this theater in the city one amongst many cities in LA where there were cars not on fire but so many cars and you could smell the beach even though we were about 15 minutes from there, I guess the air doesn't count in mileage, the air just brings the beach right to your nose. The air was comforting even if the cars were not and the marquee had the movie name of the shitty horror movie b had made and Aela had been 5 years old in, and uncle donny had starred in, and little furry balls of hell called critters rolled around eating people's legs off and killing the guy who would later star in Titanic.

Sitting in a theater with your family and two handfuls of weird sci fi horror fans scattered around like popcorn for flair is a good way to remember who you are. It ain't complex like it feels in your head and heart. You show up and see smiling faces and you smell the ocean for a second and the world feels smaller and understandable and you feel relieved that you're not alone.

And the movie was good

The best part was everytime b's brother was onscreen, b would just laugh quietly, like a little kid. Seeing his little brother makes him love the world.

Let's just chalk up the lesson here that writing is your diploma into a lifetime of terror, immersion into feelings that you then can't differentiate between yourself and your work (maybe there is no difference), and living in a big city when you are a tall girl with a large heart is like living at high voltage, battling your surroundings for emptiness in your eyeline you can fill in with yourself, all flooded out and relieved.

This is why we have oceans.

 

Nice Knowin Ya

Kurt and I were leaving the trail one morning, crossing around the big tree at the bottom of the hill that is the last stop before reality, before the street and cars and life moving at a hectic pace. The tree is still peaceful, because you know you have a whole big hill to get your balls up for riding the civilization part that's coming up, you still have those fragments of quiet minutes so it's like a calm breath.

We had the dogs with us, and only our two horses and I could see around the bend behind the tree that there were two riders coming. So trail etiquette is you gather your dogs back in case their horses are afraid of dogs, and you make sure the other riders are safe. So I'm calling the dogs and I see the first rider round the bend of the fat tree and it's a dude, a rather jolly bearded older dude that's probably my age, and someone behind him on a horse so I say, friendly heyyy you want me to get the dogs?

He answered cheerfully, no that's okay! I think they're fine.

Around the corner behind him comes what looks like his thousand year old grandmother on a tall, shiny chestnut thoroughbred. Both Kurt's and my eyes pop out of our heads, alarmed. That's like seeing a blind man about to merge onto the 405 driving a Maserati. 

Uhhh  I say  Are you sure...?

The dogs are always a wild card, you can never be sure how new horses will react. My dogs are tongue slobbery trail wet, poking all around, the younger dog is going happily RIGHT UP to the fiery chestnut carrying the strong but bent over from the weight of time gramma. 

The gramma was calm and unflustered, I don't know if he's ever seen dogs before, he's just off the track

Kurt's and my eyes pop even bigger

The bearded guy is chuckling like he's sitting around a campfire not hosting his gramma's death here, his hands on very loose reins saying yeah this is his first time out!

I need to freeze frame for a second. There are four horses, two going one way into the wilderness, two going home, passing close enough to touch boots with each other, there are three dogs bounding around obliviously, and in the middle of this is an ancient human who looks like King Tut's grandmother with the back shape of a backpack, but whose arms and legs seem to be working correctly, on top of a huge young horse who has never been outside of a stall except to run full speed around a racetrack. Until today. Right this second.

Kurt and I would have been yelling OKAY OKAY OKAY I THINK IT'LL BE OKAY NO PROBLEM JUST LET US GET AROUND THIS CORNER HOLD YOUR DOGS!! HOLD THE DOGS!! I DON'T WANNA DIE JUST FOR A LITTLE FUN!!

I sat on my horse heading past them, Kurt behind me with his eyes as wide as hubcaps but acting cool, admiring the lady who was obviously a lifetime rider just stuck in an old body, with the balls of King Kong but the craziest part was they had the spirit of two people on a Sunday drive. Nothing but a meandering stream and their toes in the water, in their minds, they were laughing and just riding by all casual.

The bearded guy was well past us now and Kurt was just passing the old lady and her hot wired steed and the bearded guy said it's a perfect day to be out and the old lady said glorious

and Kurt looked at her bent over body as he passed and said nice knowin ya

And then we were on the hill and they were gone

I was laughing so hard at what he said, we just kept staring at each other and laughing and shouting  whatthefuckwasthat??! and the whole ride home felt hilarious but in the end it was so inspiring, really because goddammit, that lady was a GODDESS, relaxed, happy and old! Years of confidence, curled majestically in an orthopedic ball on the back of some horribly inappropriate horse, with complete happiness and faith, with the bearded friend who was not even worried, he was just along for the ride because you  know what it was a beautiful day

How was that young horse was just OKAY?! He was so calm. I kept thinking all day, and later at night. Because even though she was the crypt keeper, she balanced herself up there, with knowledge and years of skill. Maybe at some point as a rider you eventually sputter out of the crippling anxiety, and the world just gets funny, and then even though your body is completing the circle of life, the horses are still opening up the whole world of rides in empty wilderness. What a lucky life, I decided, that new horse landed in, in the hands of that talented gnome. Peaceful walks, and dogs and first times are no big deal maybe

It is nice knowin ya

Passing Wave

I had one perfect day at the beach this summer.

I had two regulation other ones, the one with the dogs and the teenagers where I felt like their server and invisible, and the one with the visiting Austrians where I was hosting and making sure they went home loving America. Usually we go once a week. In a normal summer. But 

This summer was too busy for long beach trips and also we never do long beach trips we do beach visits between yogurt, french fries and tacos surrounding the two hours at the beach.

Only Bess and Nathan and I could get to the beach. We thought it'd be cloudy. Or choppy or freezing. Like it was the last time. But this day was like a little triangle prism of light into a busy nonstop summer. 

We wrestled on wetsuits. There were no dogs to worry about. For some reason I had to get right in the water. I even took the huge surfboard. I don't surf. But I do apparently.

I don't like being cold. That water is cold. But I walked in. I like any sport where you're barefoot and you can pee at any time. 

The water tossed us all around, but who cares. This whole summer has tossed us all around. This whole summer we couldn't get our footing, There was no time to sit still. We had stuff to do. 

The ocean was telling me this. As it tipped me over. I got on the huge board. I saw the surfers on the olympics. They made it look they were water waiters. Like walking on glass one second let me refill your ice water. I'll be right back. 

I flopped onto the big board and felt wobbly like I was suspended 3000 feet in the air on a manhattan highwire act. you can't even slightly shift your weight or the board tells you hey you're a shitty surfer. Already. not even standing, just lying here flat. Just sayin

Ok I realized. Just lying on the board is the main step here. For me. At 58. In the ocean. I can lie on a tippy surfboard in these waves. Let's practice that.

So I practiced stabbing my board into the waves and letting them crash me in. I especially liked when the nose of the board would dip down and I'd fly off the front. It's so shallow in Ventura it's like surfing on a slip n slide really, but for some reason just lying on the board and feeling how insecure it is even at this basic level, that felt somehow amazing. Like just getting the very first step - impossibly hard! To feel confident.

But there's no one looking, I'm not in the semi finals, I can just enjoy this weird new thing. I did stand up on a board in my 20s and I did a few years ago for a few seconds. so I'm revisiting a sport that I know by passing wave, like I do with people at stop signs.

The day wasn't about trying to get better, really. It was about feeling released, in that water, with my two kids bobbing  bobfosseing nearby. We were laughing and talking about our frozen hands, and looking for the next wave to surf or bodysurf. We were screaming and making bad jokes and bouncing and it felt like the real summer, like the water was our momma and we were lush in her wide trampoline body. We were safe. There was nowhere to be, until frozen yogurt. No one needed us. We could play, and learn things. This seems like the point of life.

I did get better at hoisting onto the board, tho wobbly, and I did get my knees up but didn't stand up yet. 

We stayed in that water a long long time. The whole time. When we got out, we hung out on the sand only a bit and then made our traditional stacked up pyramid for a picture and then packed up and left. 

I liked feeling like I belonged to some water and some kids, and some new skill. I liked that we were nowhere, and not good at it, and the sky was patient and no one was waiting for anything. We could just be until we were too cold to be being anymore and had to go do. We weren't a whole book, we were just a bookmark. That day. That happiness stayed with me for days. 

I want to go back and I want to feel the water again like that. It's so hard to find the time, to clear the hours for doing something that makes no sense, no practical sense. I think that might be caretaker burnout, when you have a 24 hour job, you think you must always be on the job. Someone is needing you. That day helped remind me. I want to feel free and happy and idiotic. I have been feeling so impossibly lonely, for the life I love, that feels like this, feels like myself and my life.

And I want to try to stand up, even just for a second.

What If

Today I didn't ride with Kurt, I took him out yesterday and he's been having trouble with his body so we had to do a trail that involved no bending under trees or breaking branches to get through. Hmmm, I thought yesterday, I have to do another trail tomorrow to make up for this one.

I probly wouldn't ride as much if I didn't have a little horse to pony out alongside us to get him all trained up. And I barely go out to the creek much by myself lately cause I've been too tired to do a longer ride alone. But I got up early to see Bess off to school, then I'm already up and it's beautiful out there so I say to myself c'mon let's hit the trail.

I take Dewey, the sturdiest ship in the fleet, the tall black commander of our horse army, he is mellow and steadfast. Except don't walk over anything that wiggles he can't stand that. 

We pony Meriwether up over the hill, down into the dam, down into the creek. I saw on instagram how you can retrain your brain when it starts thinking what if I die  what if the horse freaks out what if a homeless rapist pops out of bushes waving a loud weedwhacker  - I listen to my mind and then I say what the lady online said 

what if everything's ok   what if we have the best ride ever   what if your kids are happy   what if you live a long life  what if this is one of your best memories

So as we go through the creek and I have to get down to break a branch out of the way, and I have to try and get back on my huge horse by standing him next to a log or mound of sand, I keep saying what if this is the best ride ever

We go down the deep water way, where it's South Carolina lush like we're in the home of the most secluded and merriest ducks, they paddle along near us so satisfied with the morning. The water is clear and splashy and we duck under branches. I have to get off another time to clear some bushes out of the way for Dewey who dislikes stepping into anything that might, well, wiggle freakishly. I don't mind helping make it a good ride for him. He's making it good for me, with his gentle, quiet eyes watching us, and also mildly studying the ducks and which plants might be good to eat along the water's edge.

I get back on, path cleared and we we go as far as we can up this little section of creek. There's a log jam at the end so we turn around and head back, now knowing what the hazards are since we came this way. I go through the deep water and then say hey c,mon, we're here, let's do it one more time for fun. So I turn them and make them go through the sloshy part once more. I'm videoing so I can look at it later and be proud of Meri's progress. He loves everyplace we go, he generally is well behaved, but he is 3, so there is 20% underlying tension that he will murder us. 

I'm videoing him and we go under a big leafy branch so I have to duck and then Meri stops but Dewey doesn't and my rope is running out as Dewey keeps walking and I have no hands to grab it, it's like a fat kite string unraveling I try and grab it hard with my upper arm against my ribs but because I have a camera I don't have the hand to stop Dewey and I drop the rope.

This is never good because you don't want to unleash the 700 pound toddler in the creek, but I just have accidentally. I cram my phone away and turn Dewey around back under the heavy branch and there is no Meriwether. 

We are in the creek, everything is the same and beautiful, but Meriwether is invisible, crashing around up on the bank, disappeared into the dense trees and brush. Dewey holds his head up a bit alarmed by the disappearance of the world's biggest brat, and I aim him over to the opposite creek bank, and get off, in case Meri comes busting out of the bushes like superman. I stand next to Dewey. I'm scanning the woods across the water, hearing him, my mind is running ahead as a good rider's does assessing the odds here  well there's nowhere he can go   he won't leave Dewey   Dewey's his mom  those woods go for miles  I can call a ranger  

In my body though, I use my eyes looking for him, I use my voice calling him like I do when I'm at  home at the fence with a carrot  Cheerfully "Meriwether!"

My mind is looking at the woods still hearing him in there somewhere and I'm thinking I can't go in there, it's so thick, what am I gonna drag Dewey in there we'd be tangled in an instant I can't leave Dewey here then I have two horses loose, Dewey doesn't tie well, he's a free spirit

I do what I always do in emergencies. I think all these things. But I do what my body says

I wait. 

I stare vigilantly at the woods, I stand next to kind Dewey, I call happily out for  "Meriwether! Come on Meriwether! Where'd you go? Come on boy!" But what else can I do really. I'll wait. 

After listening and listening and crashing tromping underbrush noise I finally see his white head. He is so happy. It's SO COOL up here, he's saying. He is a thinker, though. He comes to the edge of the brambly woods, but can't see a good spot to get down to the creek. There's sort of a bushy tangled ledge to get back down. I call to him happily. "That's a good boy. Good boy Meriwether. Take your time. Be smart."

He picks along the bank, and decides to try and go down in the worst spot, where there are three skinny fallen logs that look like an excellent spot to put a leg in and then break it half in three places. "I don't think that's the right spot there buddy" I'm saying happily. Meriwether stops to reassess. 

Dewey is just standing next to me, happy for the nap. He trusts that the little fella will come back, he never gives Dewey a moment's rest, why should this be any different. I'm watching Meri, I'm counting on that bond, and all the time and carrots we've spent nurturing it. 

I think  He's RIGHT THERE I could go over and grab his rope, but I don't think I could climb up through that giant mess of brush easily and I don't want him to go farther back into the woods. 

So I wait. 

I wait and hope that he wants to be with us more than he wants to not be with us. He likes adventure. But he loves us.

Meriwether slowly doubles back and finds the safest spot to angle down the creek bank, carefully through all those bushes and shitty loose footing, and he dips back into the water, and comes walking right back through the creek, all the way up to us, all the way up to my hand. He hands me back himself. 

that was awwwwwesome, he grins, shaking his head happily. Dewey looks at him like you're a fucking idiot

I get back on my horse. I decide maybe not to video on the way home. Maybe just be glad I'm going home with two horses just like I left with. 

I feel very good on the ride back. I realize that I've been stressing about where I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to be doing next, what do I do about money or working, where do I go next, from this bog of sadness and dementia with my mom, and the honorable yet daily work to make her and our lives and days as gentle and satisfying and peaceful as they can possibly be

And I realize Meri and Dewey showed me very accurately, today, exactly what to do. When you're in fear, or panic 

Just wait

and think

what if this is the best ride ever

what if it's all gonna be okay 

in the best way

So many changes happening, people coming and going, babies getting bigger and planning next steps, of course I start looking at baby horses.

It's only because I have enjoyed so much learning how to grow a baby horse and seeing that everything you teach you do in tiny steps, maybe it's reminding me of being a mom, when I was good at it, when they were tiny. I liked that everything slowed down to little person pace, that time stretched out and that the achievements were so small that no one except me and the baby horse or person could see it. It's like if ants built a towering two inch condominium, they would stand back in awe but then someone would step on it because they weren't looking. You have to be looking to see the prize.

Nathan starting new job. Emma starting PhD program in another state, one requiring a crossing of the rockies and me with no indian guide. Bess starting her senior year in high school! B doing his thing. And my mom is slowly turning into a circle, rolling forward into the universe eventually but for now she still requires apples and cheerios and petting. 

What does a mom do with herself? After no one needs the care? I mean I STILL need a mom's care, so maybe there's no stopping it, but society tells me I must function and bring in money. What shall I do? What am I good at?

Who cares? I want to raise another baby horse. I'm pretty good at it. I thought I could run a boarding/training stable and have some land, but I can't move away from my family here unless they went with me on my dream. Also I'm a writer. Is there work for comedy writers with horse sense?

My horse situation seems vital. Let's get back to it. It's not like I'm trying to outrun death by playing with sleek and comforting barn creatures. Kurt's health is getting worse so he's going to be moving his horse to another doting person and that leaves room in my barn. I could take the space and enjoy it. Or I could get Meriwether a buddy to grow up with. Dewey and Mags have each other. Then I can enjoy the training of a youngster again. I learned so much with Meri. Still learning, but the foundation is solid.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to do with my life. I went to college, I worked, I wrote, I had kidsssssssssssssssss that took up a bunch of time, that was my real goal, lbh, at heart I was just a slightly gay 40's homemaker. Check that box. So now where I am I? I can always sub again. It's easy and nearby, and of course I'll do that sometimes. But the fun wore off it now that the kids are big, I want to see where they're going, not stay back in the past.

I have a pretty amazing life. I look around me every day and I can't believe how lucky I am. I have my mom's face here, there's ice cream with my other mom and dad, there's swimming and dogs and even vacuuming isn't too bad if it's not hot. The house is a little like a youth hostel now, with bigger kids coming through, everyone's in school, or working, but they're still around, they still check in.

I guess I'll just keep thinking. I'm still in post production on this Dementia project. I'm just thinking, do you ever get to that point where you're like what am I here for? in the best way, I mean.

Road Ramblings

Life seems like this jumble like we were on the road we were driving up steep cliffs and seeing huge trees and this was it this was our vacation our car trip and we had planned it so my brother could watch my mom and we had exactly 6 days of freedom

and then B had to be on the phone the whole time because someone went nuts in his life like just jumped off a cliff in her reality and he had to try and patch it all up with a bunch of bandaids and money into a fan and all this while we were dipping our toes into freezing lake water and listening to it lap lap lap  our only day of total rest, we just sat by the lake on a tiny strip of beach with maybe four other groups of families, strangers, and the water was 52 and someone had lost their keys and it cost 3000 dollars to moor a boat here and I thought why are we not in Maryland, the water there is bigger and less expensive but Emma and I did walk a trail in the woods and sat by the lake there too and we had forest

we kept tumbling into different places, a casino hotel where the food tasted like rubber and there were overflowing ashtrays like it was 1974 or Oklahoma or something, and there was a huge pool there and we swam in a river in Yosemite where they might have invented clear water, it was so crystal

And then there were some awkward nights where the beds were too small and we crammed in and I wondered how my life shrunk me into myself so sadly 

And then there was Hearst Castle and so many stairs when you're worried about someone who can't walk them maybe but the stairs seemed to help and sometimes I would be in the car we rented and listening just to the family talking and I remembered I am in something, I'm not just a floating bubble all on my own all the time

Even though I know I am secured by them, I see them everyday and we eat alot of pizza

But still being human is a fragile thing, we pop so easily

there is never enough time I guess is the problem, and the house requires so much cleaning why is there always so much to do and we forget to stop and just float

A Broad

My friend came from Austria who I haven't seen in 30 years. I haven't even been to Austria. I met her on a horse farm in Maryland, of course, where people meet people from Austria.

The guy who owns the 150 acre farm where we met is dead. I still have the kitchen table he got me for my first wedding. Tables last longer than rich Austrians.

I was so worried about them coming here I cleaned slowly for months and then fastly up until 4 o'clock on the day they got here. I sat on the couch at 4 on the day, after polishing my silverware and cleaning cobwebs off the bedroom windows so it didn't look like Fright Night in there and I sat in sweaty silence for half an hour and at 4:30 Bess said was that a knock

So I went outside and then we screamed and there was hugging and some english with german accents and we were old women aged by life but stupid moron maryland horse farm girls still on the inside. 

She said she was only at the farm for 8 weeks. Back then. So I only knew her a few months back then. Our memories overlap those few days we were together, we helped breed horses, we went to a horse show, there was a party in the driveway where I sat on her lap and wished she would marry me, Will and I took her to DC and we took funny pictures. 

We were only two people then and now we are seven. She has two girls and I have three babies. Moms expand, we are never only one person again. And we want our kids to see everything.

The first night she is going to bed and she says don't you ever eat dinner sitting down all together

I said                   no?

I usually eat in my car. 

I went back to the couch to think about that and called several important family members to see if it's weird that we eat whenever and wherever we are. When the kids were little yes, we did all eat together in the kitchen. Her whole family is all out of the house all day so they eat together to see each other. We're always all around each other so we eat to get away from each other. 

As long as we aren't weird, I decide.

Each day we learn a little bit more and weave how we met into this new 2024 branch of meandering earth together. We take them to Venice Beach. We see the canals which I've actually never seen. Little cape cod cottages and sidewalks next to bridges and water, how is this in LA? I would live next to any water. Water always changes every day, my mom would say. 

They have been here only two days so far and now they've seen Hollywood and Beverly Hills and Griffith Park. We learn all the bad German words and teach every American word for boner that we can think of. It is fun to be a tourist in your own town and realize how close everything is, and not even difficult to get to. When you live here full time all you can think is how congested it all is but when your car is full of wide eyed Austrians who just tried their first Wetzel's Pretzel, the roads seem clear of all cars. The cars seem funny even. 

I didn't really get tired until tonight, I think all the change in my distinct routine, or adding a whole tour group on top of dementia care and horse farm management was adding up in my body. They are going to Universal tomorrow so I'm sure I will be confused by the quiet, here on the couch, wondering where my new friends went. 

Happy people change you, flow your system differently, and new language is ribboned around us in this lyrical mystery. I listen.

I didn't even get to write yet about our trip through Yosemite and the comfort and confusion of our own little family, because everything has been crammed on top of each other like the end of fireworks, ever since graduations started happening in May. June exploded with family events and now it's almost my birthday and then it will be quiet and we haven't even been to the beach and it's SUMMER. And then Emma will be just gone, starting a new section in Boulder but we will not be worrying about that yet. 

Right now I'm just thinking about who I was, and who I am in these 30 years since. And how the basic core of the way you laugh together stays the same. 

You stumble across people and then people change you. It's worth cleaning the silverware.

Resign Yourself

My friend Emily was having trouble at work so I wrote her a resignation letter. Feel free to copy and paste to get yourself out of any jam.

Dearest David,

I have treasured our time together. So much so that I don't want to ever do it again so as to spoil the memory. In that spirit I graciously offer my resignation.

But let me digress. I think I realized I wanted to die rather than stay at this job when I found myself in a Pizza Hut bathroom trying to sit down in someplace quiet to answer a few thousand of your emails and it was maybe the closed in walls or the cheese or the ornate and ornery graffiti black on the red greasy tiles that did me in. I read more interesting graffiti that day than I have on any given Thursday morning email deluge from your office.

I can't die here David.

As much as I wish I could care about you and your wife and your cats and your upcoming travels or haircuts or bored meetings, you have to trustee me when I say I'm through dammit.

I've worn out a damn fine set of legs settin outside your damn office for years and do I hear cheers from my thighs for resting so long in one place I do not. I hear tears, David, and not just from all my body parts aching to breathe free, but from every fly who has landed on me and whispered

Dude. Just go. Flap flap get flapping.

So I'm not giving my two weeks notice not that you'd notice I'm giving you til Christmas to meet my demands and there's a plenty. 

First, I shall not be summoned from my bed unless there is an actual fire. I demand all correspondence be delivered to me by a liveryman in topcoat and tails on a little silver tray with gloves and I will probably just letting you know will be waving him away at first seeing him. I am throwing my phone and ordinateur (that's French for computer) in the Puget Sound which is an overnight trip to the shoreline which you will be paying hotel and all the Nathan's hot dogs I can eat as well as any fresh berries I might buy on stands that I pass along small dirt roads.

I don't ask much. I asked for decent work hours, common empathy, solidarity, my own flag denoting my own island country (wheresmyflagdavid.com) a huge raise, way more vacation and the ability to take a second vacation immediately if the first was not to my liking. I desire a 24 hour psychic who doubles as a lite fare Mediterranean chef, a few songs written about my merit, and a performance venue where I have box seats and can pick anything from stand up to Fosse for my best friend and in between.

Really the most important thing I desire is to be noted as being exemplary and for you to award me the lifetime achievement I believe I surpassed four to eight years ago, and this requires immediate honorary dismissal, a sequestering of me by luxury yacht and then limo to a cottage in the British countryside where you have already in preparation planted my favorite climbing vines that are now

gently flowering.

I will allow once sequestered for you to contact me ON OCCASION by gloved livery as specified but in general all my meetings will be held for 25 minutes at tea time in the garden and most of my answers will be no. Unless the question is do you require any more hats.

I am sorry for your loss, of me, David, as I see you have been a great burden to me. I am looking forward to my retirement with benefits as befitting the extraordinary goddess that I have matured into all these incredibly wasted years.

I shall lift my skirts and fart in your office one last time and let me tell you I have filled your office with farts many many times when you were out at a highly urgent meeting elsewhere. And there is nothing I treasure more than listing that particular skill on my résumé's Special Abilities section, as well as carrying that specific good feeling in a basket with me wherever I go. I carry it close to my heart, in a special fart blanket. It's flannel, thanks for asking.

Feel free not to contact me unless it is about more money you forgot to add on, or the wheelbarrows of apologies I see coming my way for which I shall have liveryman dig a trench. Which I shall cover with saved farts.

I love myself.

I regret nothing.

Mine,

E. O. Moon, esquire

Supernatural

Ever since mom had pneumonia she's different, or maybe I'm different. She's seems weaker, or her brain less, more like a haunted amusement park but maybe because we were both affected by that battle for life, her body fought so hard physically, and mine just blown back a step by the sheer battling of a life force.

I wish I could pretend to understand what the fuck is happening. I only raised my hand (with my brother's help, he pushed my elbow up) to say yes I will take on my mom, of course, I'm not leaving her. That was four years ago. It was easy at first because I was young, a child, a dementia care infant.

Now the house has blown off in a tornado and I'm still here holding the applesauce spoon and she is still eating. 

But that pneumonia made her see-through almost. And when I got home from the fair the other night, after having a long chunk of time away from looking at her, I could see that she is not just my mom, she is a very sick human. 

I went to bed that night thinking wait is my mom just a regular human? Like just a person, in a body shell? How could she be so unspecial, to me she is this icon, superhuman, like all my parents, you think they are supernatural which they ARE but then when it comes to dying, I am shocked because how is it that we are all just actually NATURAL. We are all the same planetary beings. 

I don't like this. I feel tricked. Who tricked me? Was it love? Why can we not see love but love takes us by the throat and makes us throw ourselves in front of emotional trains?  What is this LOVE says shakespeare and austen and tolstoy and cummings and l.m. montgomery and everyone worthwhile. 

I was thinking since I had been at the fair that okay we're all on this loud and bright carousel, and some of the horses go up and down and do stuff and we all wanna get on those, and then there's the solid standing ones that don't move and just stay straight the whole time.

Okay so trees are those things in the natural world, we can be trees and live longer unless we get Dutch Elm Disease or something but no, in general, they breathe air and stay in one place rooted or we can be humans and do stuff and move around and see other things but live shorter, live way shorter, but also we don't get to PICK, no one gets to PICK what they want to be on Earth, we just wake up at like 5 years old in this muscle sack with a fistful of goldfish like what is this miracle

So we're just placed here by random, just long enough to realize that we're not trees and even though trees always seemed boring because they were always just there as you get older you're like damn you trees the joke's on me, I'll never see the end of you but you'll see the end of all of us

but you have never been on space mountain I will yell you have never jumped off a boat with a bikini on into lake water and lost your pants

I wasn't minding my mom being sick because she was still right here, and I could move her wherever I wanted her and she was still HERE, in my vision, and she is my mom. I can't lose my mom. She's the buoy. But last night I was hearing her little cough as she slept and it wasn't a dangerous cough like last time but I was thinking all of a sudden that she is a fleshy human who lived a glorious life the way mostly she wanted to, on her own feet, picking her own paths and fights and happinesses, and then she probably wouldn't have picked this many years to be not able to rack up the memories and the time with love where she could feel it in the conventional sense but she can still feel and still laugh and touch reach out to touch and feel comfort and see faces that love her.  We can't erase the illness, that's why we stand there forlorn with our pockets inside out. Torn to shreds cause we couldn't stop something from hurting our personal heroine.

If people are just bodies and organs and tubes then why do we get so obsessed with what show they're on or if they won an Oscar? Is it because we're curious animals? We like to see how far we can get? But then as you get older you just see how love stole you, and forced you to care deeply about only about a handful of worthy people. 

In reality. What other life can we have, just sitting in a room alone not touching anything and mattering to no one? Or the one as a tree in the woods where we're tied in one spot but reaching for the sky? We didn't even get that option. The only option is (and we don't know it because we're little kids when we're waking up so of course) we roll into that brightly painted room and we fingerpaint on all the walls and we get all wrapped up in hiding in clothes racks in department stores because that's a jungle and in building a sheet fort in the living room and in stealing what we can get away with and grabbing hands dangled down to you and getting jelly on everything and eating our own toes. I guess I'm wondering how you know it's too late to get out now way before you would ever want to get out and then you don't want to get out, you just don't want to realize it's all this feathery illusion on top of the actual physical life, the life without the attachments. 

So there is my mom with the physical life of everyone else, the lifespan of the wingspan of a human, the birthdate and end date, the expiration date, the body failing, the view out the eye windows fading. We know the scientific facts but they can't be justified with the loud carousel going on of EVERYTHING ELSE that makes up a life. How can both the things be the same thing? 

There is alot of shouting going on but what is real?

I know when my mom was coherent (her version of coherent, let's be real here) she would say family is all that matters. She would always guide me back. My dad would be doing fun stuff and making cool shows and I would have work like once some head of a studio called me BACK about a script of mine and I was so excited, I was like 35, and my mom grinned at me and then gently tipped my head back to the two naked babies on my front lawn, the real job I was in at the time, and that I'm still in now, and she was never wrong. I never felt ripped off not even for one moment of one day with these kids. I never felt like I wasn't in the best job in the entire world. Not with the wrong people. The little people and the handful of others, that has been a big enough pool. I don't think you can do the work that I'm capable of in a group bigger than about 11. Maybe 15. That's maybe why I feel so confused in a bigger setting. It was just strictly more than I could handle with confidence and ease. It's good to know how best you can give an authentic you to the world. 

The world is exhausting, my mom would probably say. That's why you have to drive so fast on back country roads and try to get to work EXACTLY on time and not early. Because you don't want to miss out on anything before or after. And then during.

She would say damn jumping off the boat and losing your pants is one of the best things in life. Losing a vest, and eating a sundae with your people afterward, even sad, one of the best things. Saying goodbye to a daughter going to grad school in Colorado, a leaping-in beloved moment. Nothing is actually being taken away from you by loving it. Unlike the fleeting body and the flesh timeclock we all have going on like Logan's Run, love is going to run up and down us and all over the floor and it is going to be a big fucking spilled pile of steaming gigantic mess. Trees are going to keep stoically breathing the air and showing us their flowers. Pointing out the way. But we have to live for it.

The Vest Things Come tothosewhowait

The Friday after the fair.

Get Bess off to school, we have to go tour Santa Barbara campus in a few hours for college preview for her, so I only have a small bit of time til I have to go bust her back out of school and drive north beachbound. 

But I have time to do the dumb treadmill which I hate and I'm dragging myself out there without my vest, with the hole in my heart where my vest used to be, and I think about that green paper the one with all the hope in it, the one stuffed in my bag with the turkey leg receipt, the lost and found green paper. I have a picture of it in my phone and it's only 11:30, how could anyone (if my vest survived) have walked my vest back and turned it in best case in the last twelve hours, I don't think those fair workers are super psyched to do work after hours or maybe they are considering the meth.

I climb on my treadmill which is actually an elliptical but that's like a fancy french word for pretty much the same dumb exercise so I won't use it and I look up the little green paper and I call and put in the extension. I swallow my fear.

Hi I lost my vest last night at the fair and it's blue and it has fake fur and it has no sleeves and I came last night but it wasn't there and they gave me this number and I'm hoping you can check.

Oh! The guy says. Sounding alert. Let me go look? A jacket?

No it has no sleeves. It's navy blue. It's the most important thing in my life, I don't say.

He puts me on hold which is weird because that room is so small I don't know why he doesn't look over his shoulder but maybe he's in another room doing recon on some other mission or maybe he has to find his monocle but it takes forEVER and then the phone picks up and I'm dreading

and he say ok yeah?

my eyes freeze

Yeah is it a jacket?

I say no (heart plunge) it has no sleeves

Yeah, here it is. It's here. 

My eyes wide

What

It has like, fur? Yeah.

Are you KIDDING?

I stammer a little bit longer getting the details and I say hey can you send me a picture cause I don't live close I have to drive a long way and I wanna make sure

Sure he says. He says I'll put your name on it and I'll send a picture and we're here 11-11 until Sunday.

I hang up and then my phone is just silent like nothing has transpired and I look at my text messages saying why isn't he sending me a picture did I dream this whole thing and I wait and think I should call him back but we talked about sending the picture like forty times maybe he's setting up the perfect shot and then I say wait you have to wait

You have to wait

treadmill feet bob molasses slowly

the picture comes

It's just my vest, it's just a stupid vest, half hanging off the hanger, next to the other forlorn victims on the rack, it's just hanging there like HEYI'M BETTER THAN THISWHY DID YOULEAVE ME WOULD YOU COME GET ME

and I text back Carlos cause his name is Carlos and not what I would pick in heroic cases like this, like what about Guinevere or at least Slippery Pete or something but it's Carlos so I know it's real and I'll take Carlos I love Carlos 

I say OHMYGOD CARLOS you made my day

to put it mildly. I tell him I WROTE ABOUT LOSING MY VEST. I send him my blog. 

I tell Carlos maybe put my number on the vest in case and I can't come now I have to go to SB but either my son or I will come Saturday but please keep it safe

and Carlos is on it and I can't believe Carlos didn't block my number all the texts I sent him and I can't believe they have my vest like nothing happened.

He is going to take care of it

So then life keeps going with pre-ordained things not involving my vest but lurking there in the corner every hour is that bewildered joy of it's there. It's waiting there.

All Saturday none of us can walk from two straight days of fair walking plus SB campus walking and I'm waiting for the traffic to die down on the 210, all day waiting and watching the map to see when I can go get my vest without taking 40 million hours but I do call and it's Carlos again Oh Good, it's Carlos! I say. I tell him is it still there (afraid) and he says yes and I say I will be there I'm waiting for traffic and he says I'll be here til 11 

And finally the road is all blue so I dash and I have to go in a new gate where it's official not for fun fair parking, for serious parking, no one is carrying any huge stuffed animals or drunk and they squeeze me through a secret official side gate and then I'm loose in the fair and the sun is setting and this is truly dante's inferno, Saturday night, LA County Fair. I'm canoeing my way upstream as the virginal sun is leaving this scene with a dubious look, as fast as it can, all the families with kids quickly covering their heads and streaming for the exits, leaving me with the weekend night people, millions more than on Thursday, people not wanting to get to the strip club TOO early, so this is the place to walk where you can drink while holding on to your girlfriend's belly chain and everyone is in black and has used their arms as a map to write stuff on and I am greased up with purpose, sliding through the gang fight reunion and can I just make it to the beige building, the pool of calm where no one comes

until like me, you lose something

And then the people are gone and I knock on the window and there is cute little Carlos and behind him

there is my vest

I hand him the bag of snacks I brought with his name on it, from home as my currency at this age seems to involve Bugles and sour punch candy where in the past I would have said hey man let's go out and play pool sometime

and he hands me over my vest and it's in my hands like whipped cream, just sloshing over is this what Custer felt right before he saw a machete coming at his head

that sense of victory

and wait I'm on the indians' side, I'll fix that later let's not glorify Custer

I see Carlos for those two seconds where he hands it over and then there's nothing to do except walk away as custom has it, so I am walking back mute with stun into the crowd, back into the open casting call for the gang alley scene of West Side Story and I love humanity

deep barbecue smoke, donuts on sticks sticking out of globs of ice cream

a guy with a tremendous beard

whores on parade

I'm loving them all because Carlos brought me my vest

I stop midstream and take pictures in my pajamas with the lights in the background feeling idiotic but also standing next to a barbecue place that has deep fried captain crunch covered hamburgers so

A girl says oops you dropped your glasses even though I'm wearing my glasses but another pair fell out of my bag and she hands them back, with her thick make upped face but there is glitter and she has happy young eyes and if we were a sitcom in the 80's this is how it would end, me taking a picture of the thing I lost while losing my glasses and a girl handing them back and we freeze frame with a big laugh like it's so ironic, right!?

Instead I leave alone and go back to the McDonald's where we eat after the fair always and stand with my vest there to right history and erase loss and I feel like Jimmy Stewart coming back to life in It's a Wonderful Life throwing his hands up at the end saying Merry Christmas you old building and loan 

and I text Carlos back later because he has texted me saying thanks for the snacks, I'm enjoying a sour punch stick right now

and I tell him I have written his supervisor because he's so kind and he said he was only doing his job proudly he said I like that everything has a story

and I said I know a vest is such a dumb little thing but the fair is my one day off with the kids and my mom's been so sick and losing it was so crushing the loss of comfort

and he said from his lost and found box on the edge of the fair Little things matter, all people care about little things. we're all in this together

Then he said see you next year. Thanks for coming to the fair.