one eye out

I'm trying a new thing and tell me if I'm doing a good job, I'm trying not to know everything.

I'm trying to see if maybe NOT knowing how to do everything and how to be everything would ALSO be a way to live. I'm trying to observe more. I am a king observer in general, I didn't think I could do better, that's how writers steal your essence, but I think maybe observing and not telling you how you're doing something not to my liking

That might be a weird thing not to do

So I'm just spending more time with horses. That helps. They don't talk. My one horse has gotten weird. A few years ago a crazed pony chased us and I fell off and ever since that demon tried to kill us, this mare has had one eye out for the crazy pony. 

So because she has the one eye out for the crazy pony, and she's like 1100 pounds, and I'm on top of her, now I have the one eye out or both or all three of my eyes out for that crazy pony. 

Recently as in today I just got off my horse and said I'm tired bro

I'm tired of looking for crazy. There is no crazy. We've been riding for 8 YEARS on these trails, young mags. We saw one errant pony who is hopefully dead now. Why does one thing have to ruin the rest of our lives bro. 

Hmmm. We do like to hang on to stuff, as an earthly habit of all species.

I got a walk in, anyway. The horses followed along. No crazy ponies. But I didn't wanna fight the anxiety anymore. 

Maybe I sell this mare, if the right place comes along for her. Maybe she mellows back to herself eventually. Maybe I sell all the horses and stop needlepointing and then what, what will my fingers and my thighs do. 

What will we all do if Bess is unhappy. With college looming. 

We will keep one eye out for the crazy pony. We will have her keep learning how to talk to us and that we are here, walking alongside her if she is too scared to have us on top of her. I will let go of knowing 

I want to keep observing and see if I can see the detours coming up. There is always a garden path if you unfocus your eyes for a second. There's always a new way to go

The Beautiful Family

How do I feel about all the kids leaving the house? My last one off to college?

Well damn first I feel like 100% I did the most incredible job. Like those kids were my life. I am shoving them out with whimsy, hopefully, most importantly, and otherwise they have all the rest you know book learnin and knowhow and such. 

When we lost that last game we LOST that last game and part of me was relieved I never have to sit through another game worrying about whether they will win but then sitting through those games and watching how a girl can fiercely rip a ball from another girl and that's in THE RULES, and the winning and the losing and the fighting and the comraderie and the laughs and the hair braiding and feeding and listening to and comforting and crying

Basketball is the same as making a life. Raising the kids. I think that's why seeing them lose that last game was like oh no

I was so liking them all

They were my life

Nathan and I went to Blowe's to get some chain and hook n eyes and somehow in the planetary space that is Blowe's, in the same aisle we pass a guy who drops his cane and Nathan stoops to pick it up and give it back and then we're standing looking at hardware and this lady says hi and it's this lady from Stonehurst, the mom that was ahead of me in the line of moms, she lives on our street, her husband had had a stroke years ago, and there he was, the guy with the cane

She's the reason my kids went to local schools and had good teachers and helped me make sure my kids grew up happily at our Verdugo High School. I told her all these things. She said we always call you the Beautiful Family. Oh that's the Beautiful Family.

The next day I was walking around doing my chores and thinking someone thinks we're the Beautiful Family. 

There's so much struggle in your own mind, are you doing things right, are you terrible, are you happy enough, is this decision the right one, and these raising kids years, there's no possible way in the WORLD with the amount of things flying at you each day that you can navigate it without occasionally dropping things into the storm drain and watching it wash away. You can't possibly have the right compartments for everyTHING, that's why the garage is its own wasteland, why Bess has a therapist, and then you add in global disasters and dementia and you got a real stew cookin.

But how do I feel about the kids all leaving home?

I feel so happy that I got to be in every brownie batter we ever made. 

I got to be at every game.

I got to be in love with all these girls and with their total commitment to protecting the ball. 

I want to be more like myself. They're just starting out, they don't even know themselves, but I have lived a life and I know what matters. Watching, loving, showing up, not missing a minute. Being there for the team. For the beautiful family.

I did that right, for all of us, me included.

Bess Changes the World

I do not like basketball, I think I have said. There's too much losing and all that running. Could we just sit down and have a conversation

But it's okay because sometimes you get completely mindblown, and yesterday was the time Bess got to blow us all okay wait lemme go back

It's a regular day, an 80 degree day in February, where all the plants are like wait is it summer and the horses are shedding and getting ready for bikini weather, and it's a regular day, dementia mom, dash to costco, love boat

then Bess whose car is broken from recent tragic accident and getting fixed so no car, she's driven home by Rayleen, star of the basketball team and Mya, sister star of the team, the two best women in women's sports if you ask me and no one does cause they're AMAZING like they throw the ball up like it's nothing they plow through thick ferocious players like the muds of Cambodia after a flood and they STILL MAKE THE SHOT, and I still remember that I met Mya in a laundromat when she was 14 and I thought she was nobody, just this basketball player's little sister and now I sit in the stands and watch the ferocity they are and feel wide eyed emoji

In the silent presence of skilled greatness. You know that feeling. Where you're just watching because you can't believe a girl can be so strong. I love learning this every time

Okay so anyway Bess's car broken, the girls bring her over after school, no practice cause there's this big game, this game that will decide if they go on to win the final game and win the city championship. It's Bess's senior year, we're down to the final four, our team and Kennedy, and another game between Chatsworth and George Washington Prep. Whoever wins these two games battle it out for city.

So the girls come home busting in yelling and dogs leaping around and there's suddenly food happening, have to make quesadillas and steak and mac n cheese from yesterday and I made a smoothie cause it's hot and I put spinach in there secretly so they'll have vegetables all the food groups. They have only a little while til their game so they eat and chatter and then Rayleen takes a nap on the couch and Mya lays face down on the dog bed and passes out and Bess is asleep in her room. I put mom away and do horse chores and it's getting to be 430 and suddenly it's time to braid hair and Mya has to have a perfect line in the back or she takes it out cause she's OCD and we tell her she's an asshole and I sit with Rayleen one minute when she's first waking up and she says I couldn't really sleep cause I'm nervous about the game and I say well you played so hard at the last one, was it hard to do? And she said no actually it was easy. I said maybe you could just play like that then. And everyone brings something to each game, we never know how it will go, but there's more than just one person out there. And she says yeah, with her calm thoughtful face, I have a good feeling about this one. 

So Bess and Mya get their hair braided and there is always much cussing and calling each other names and screeching and fumbling with bags and water bottles and yelling you're stupid and talking about finding Rayleen's tickle spot when they're on the court and then they pile into Rayleen's car and she really just got her license and moms like me furrow their brows watching them leave hoping they make it to the gym

Then B and I gather our stuff, waters and an apple and I have tickets on my phone and it's sold out and I worry what if my tickets don't show up I never bought them on the phone before but we get driving toward the gym and B has a bad cold but he just survived a horrible car accident so the fact that he's alive in the car right now is no small miracle 

On the way Bess texts me oh no Mya's hair has a problem when are you coming and I say we are almost there

Because after doing Stonehurst Talent Shows all those years crammed into a tiny auditorium, I never get to any event except twelve hours early because I want to be FIRST in line so I can be in the front row. We get there at 5 and the game is at 7 and there is no one there yet, just the principal and the director of athletics who laughs seeing us, and I say there was a hair emergency

So I quick fix Mya's one side braid back into perfect, and then B and I are just hanging around, putting stuff on our seats to save them, waiting 

Then it's all happening, Emma's friends show up who love Bess and stand in for Emma who is too far to come, and a few of B's tiny fam show up, and Nathan and Brie and Elaine's mom and Kayla's mom  and Ray, Rayleen and Mya's dad who's also their killer coach, then in the first ten minutes of the game star player Rayleen gets kneed in the thigh and goes down hard and then

then it looks so bad like a bad dream she's crying and flat on the floor and we're like the game is over we need Rayleen is this how it ends is t his going to be her last game, losing in pain

She gets back up and goes to the bench and Kayla comes in and we're like wait no this is not good and Mya who shoots deadly 3 point shots from across acres of land, Mya's shots are all missing like 5 in a row and we don't want the other team to see that do they have to be watching they will feel superior and they start getting ahead and we are losing

I'm watching Bess on the bench, she is watching the game too and we are watching it spiraling down. The team is relying on Bess's bff Elaine, who is fierce but we need Rayleen to plow through people she is a battering ram and she's back in the game but she is dragging her leg she's showing up but she's fading into the background trying to see what she can do on only one leg and then she gets punched in the eye with an elbow and is out again

In the meantime Mya is fouling in weird ways and you can only get 5 fouls and the refs aren't calling our fouls fairly, and their dad Ray gets mad and has to leave the game

But before that it is the third quarter and Bess is sitting on the bench and we're down by 9 and the team is playing on shards of itself. She says I looked at the score and I thought damn somebody has to do something. Somebody has to step this up. I looked around and there was nobody. I thought I guess this has to be me. I want to win.

She went into the game like a dragon. She has none of the fine tune training that Rayleen and Mya have had from the minute they were born to a coach Ray. She has had training because B always knew what she needed but she never liked basketball really, she was 13, 14, 15 and wanted to be left alone, wanted to not try for anything, wanted to be invisible and angry and lost. 

But not today. Today she channeled all that covid isolation and years of confusion and darkness, she pulled the tab and let it all come flooding out. She got a paddle and oared herself into that team stream of hell and she started hitting people in the face with her paddle. She guarded carefully, she used her body like a weapon, she shoved people out of the way. She wanted the ball and she wanted to help her friends struggling and she wanted to put it in that basket and she wanted them to win the game.

It was maybe only 16 minutes total, the last two quarters of the game. Maybe 20 minutes on the clock. This girl was  unstoppable. The showing up, it means alot. Being there and holding your arms up and saying GIVE ME THAT LET ME HELP I CAN DO IT BELIEVE IN ME, I BELIEVE IN ME

That's what did it. Elaine said before Bess came out, Elaine was wide eyed out there, thinking they were gonna lose, whispering under her breath we're going to win we're going to win we're going to win

And then Bess added her whoosh of energy and Elaine passed her the ball and whoosh Bess throws in a 3 point shot that pushes them over the edge and the room exploded in screaming chaos. The whole bench leaped up. The sound was deafening.

Then they're still playing and she has to make free throws and she throws in two more, like it's nothing, like the future of their team doesn't depend on it

She comes in clutch for verdugo hs girls' basketball, changing the course of their lives in this moment, altering the day forever, which is all you can ever do right

Show up and do it

When the buzzer sounded and it was the end they had made it to the final two, they would battle for the championship. Rayleen had gotten her energy back and was her old self fighting again toward the end and Mya had gotten hit in the face and fouled out, but because my little baby who we fought to have back 17 years ago, because she was here there is levity and everyone is screaming because this was a hard won battle. Maybe this is the whole reason B and I met on Critters, just for this moment of this girl, to grow her, to get to be here and see that.

No small thing.

The aftermath of games are always good (if there's no fight club like last time), there's a black night sky hanging over the huge field, the streets are empty, and we're all filtering out floating on the backs of our king's court of daughters, and they are relieved and laughing and back to their pregame selves of cussing and joking and frolicking, and this is why I like the kids, because they know how to play.

Come Aboard

I'm seeing a therapist cause I got one for Bess and it's free so might as well sign up, hell, I can use a helper but wait I don't even want to talk to her she's so young how can she know anything I barely know anything and maybe I don't wanna fix anything I am seriously tired but maybe she is just there to listen and help me figure out what I don't want to fix.

Maybe it feels terrible to have to talk to her because I'm working so hard on everything else and everything seems so tenuous and do I have any real friends and what happened to my life but then the routine of my life is so leisurely (on the flip side of the dementia anxiety), and there was sun out today so I can have tea in the morning and watch the morning dwindle away while learning french and playing word games and then I can go outside and take care of the horses and get my mom up and then I STOP everything to watch the Love Boat even though it's not good it's just the hairstyles made more sense then and the writing was so lame and damn I would KILL now to write a lame love boat because how fun would that be, to be in that writer's room where the bar is set so low it's like a lump under the carpet that you trip over

How relaxing would that be, to be stressing about your love boat dialogue and how many women can Gopher get with on this show seriously he is not that cute but they give him alot of romantic storylines and I just like being 13 again and it's Friday night in Maryland and I'm watching the Love Boat with my 9 year old brother and eating cottage cheese in an inflatable boat that we pumped up in the living room because when your mom gets divorced you get to do stuff like that, and we watched the show in the brand new rubber boat and I'm telling you it was satisfying, and so comfortable.

Maybe Friday night was Dukes of Hazzard. I can't remember.

Anyway. It mighta been Saturday. Either way. Chris would know.

I guess what I'm saying is I love my life, I love every second of my life, all the things broken and the dirty pool with leaves in it that I haven't gotten to and the garage heaving full like a fat woman and the plants sprouting that I grew from seeds in my Christmas stocking and all the horseshit I shovel because the rides I take calm my heart down and the sound of the horses reminds me to slow down and stop looking ahead

it seems like life is this measured battle between stopping the madness and seeing the beauty for a few minutes and then going in again and shoveling through the muck and then coming out to see the beauty again. Is anyone else on this lopsided boat being tossed around? Is there any way to even it out where's the place with the calm seas all the time maybe in the gulf of steve martin, I like that gulf

The shrink says we don't have to fix anything. We wait for whatever wants to come, to come, and we see what we want to talk about. Maybe we talk about nothing. That sounds good.

So far I talk about my kids because I have been doing this job for a long long time and there is a vast lake of pride in that occupation I have hazarded. I'm so lucky I got to have three chances to follow tiny people in pink rainboots. I'm still following them because they are still so interesting.

I'm so lucky all my family is here, still eating sandwiches together when we can stomach driving in this endless city. I'm so glad for the city that has kept us safe. The stupid old cars that have protected our lives. 

I'm grateful for all our fingers and smile lines and friday nights where we have nothing to do. Imagine a day without having to worry about anything. I would like to aim for that with little Meg the therapist. Put that on the agenda.

Thanks for all our people, and horses, and dogs, and trees, and water. Love Boat is real, I'm here in it.

that's our ball

We were at Bess's high school basketball playoff game. Any game they lose now will kick them out of the competition so why do they make these games bro. You have to go in alREADY with a fresh helping of fear and pressure. If I ran the league everyone would win and there would always be pizza and chocolate prizes every night.

It's packed in there, in the second oldest gym in Los Angeles. We're sitting next to Ray who owns the girls who are always at my house, he's like 39 and has two teenagers who are the stars of the team, he just put basketballs in their hands and kept putting basketballs in their hands and now they do everything by instinct. He's the coach we wish the whole team had, he is the real coach, the sideline dad coach who says the right things as they pass by, fuels the girls with a quiet stream of the right words, steady and true. They hear him in passing, like music.

His girls and the rest of these girls, they play like they're in the Amazon jungle and barechested, fighting gorillas and bigfoot and lochness monsters. They lock eyes with their prey and they battle for that little ball, there's something they need and right now it is that ball, you can't have the ball it's ours, give it

They play like it matters and they play like they have the chance to be good at what they do

They got all the way here. Show us what you got, this is the time to unload all the baggage and use every piece

All us parents just watch with the deafening crowd and the buzzers louder than fuck and the screaming 

We pin our eyes on those legs we know, the ones we raised, and the ones we just feed occasional sandwiches to or braid their hair for games. Those legs are working in a tangle of other bodies, they are somehow somehow after four years of this, this is Bess's senior year, this is the end, this is where we've gotten to, this moment

Why is everything a battle

This is actually a staged one, like on purpose, a battle. These last two months, everything is a battle. Car accidents, Nandy in the hospital, wildfires wiping out villages, tooth surgeries. Everything in your face, everything violently in our face, you think that hurt? well guess what

And then they win

Not laughing like it's easy, they win by stomping unstoppably against rogue opponents, taking ownership of their fight, they win by fighting

by working by rising bigger than themselves bigger than us parents than the second oldest gym bigger than the national parks bigger than earth 

I see Bess and Kayla not the happiest with their game, and some having a great game and some having surprise shots, and this seems how it goes it's never a wide river of joy it's always a turbulent whitewater depending on how it's flowing there's so many rocks always but that's why there's a league so it's not just one time you get more times so maybe one of those times you get a moment of power or divine good you'll always remember

We win the game and the girls jostle into the locker room and the parents are a huge clump on the stands so many of us and then there's suddenly a wall of people next to us, a few people down, there's a jumble of a bad feeling, tons of people spilling down like the blob onto the court and we stand up and there's a massive fight going on, 20 huge men are piled on top of each other and some old lady next to me falls off the stands flat on the ground and she's knocked out 

and the 20 guys on the floor in front of us are a swarming blob trying to get the guys under them apart and it's taking a HUNDRED LONG MINUTES are they going to choke someone? Is someone going to die under there?

It is not art like in the movies when pain it's happening in front of you, it is just a jumble of bodies, burly men and why are people fighting and why is it taking so long to stop the people at the bottom

We have long enough to be constantly moving farther away and hearing sirens and then the pile is wrestling a bit up and out is yanked/coughed a girl with black and red dyed hair I thought she was a mad mom fan but no later I find out she is a kid, a senior who now won't graduate, a soccer player who got in a fight with another soccer player in the stands, two girls, they decided to tear each other's heads off because winning feels bad to them and someone's boyfriend punched a girl and then all these men leaped to try and stop it and that's how we ended up with an octopus of men on the floor of our gym, trying to stop two girls from a hockey level of conflict resolution

We wait a very very long time because an ambulance comes for the old lady who fell and our kids are still locked behind the locker room doors but finally they're allowed out and the game has been forgotten because the sidebar freakshow was real and we're scared to go outside but then we're out by the red flashing lights of the ambulance and everyone's looking around to make sure they're not about to get jumped because now we live in a gun nation, but the girls are then having a glimmer of moments to feel proud of the game, remember the game? to know they did well and to forget that soccer girls didn't need to hijack their game  

on our old gym floors

under a hundred men

The flashing red lights and Bess is okay. She says soccer is ghetto. She says the whole school is really ghetto, it's only the basketball team that is okay. I feel bad for her that this is her high school experience, I had the drama club there was never any life or death in the drama club unless you count the amount of times you fell in love with people

Fighting hard for a win raises people to a hot air balloon level of immense energy and sometimes I guess it makes people with empty hands want to murder another soccer player

they weren't even playing   

it wasn't even their game

that's the level of commitment 

So yeah guys, come Tuesday. We're playing Kennedy. Historically, maybe not the name with the best endings.

but

Hoping it will just be a game with a happy ending. Do we dare hope for happiness? In this tiny world we live in?  I don't even like sports with all the chances of losing weaved in always, it hurts too much. But I'm a mom and I'm still learning, I wanna learn. I'd rather learn from a skilled team battle on the court than from the aftermath of a terrible fistfight. At least our warriors are trained to fight fairly with a very clear goal. To be the best at what they do, while relying on each other. 

So we'll fight, right Verdugo. 

You're not gonna take our game, you hear me? As the girls would say, that's OUR BALL

it's ours, give it

dear emma

Dear Emma,

I didn't get this card sent to you because this isn't a card and it's the first time you aren't here for your birthday. I sometimes forget you aren't right here because you are so loud you are really still here when you're gone, there's nothing that different. No I'm kidding.

Dear Emma.

I know you are a little far but only a plane ride but also a bus ride to the plane ride so that seems like a lot. Alot of people and variations of clouds, a ride through clouds to get here that seems like far. But you came to us the very first, from the very first second you opened your loud little mouth we were there. You weren't loud as a baby. I'm just kidding really. We like you grew up loud. Cause you always looked like a tiny doll with luxurious hair and crystal blue eyes and the bone structure of young titanic Leo DiCaprio. You came to us first and only us, in Santa Monica in that tiny delivery room with Ziani in overalls, all four months old of her, on the bed, waiting for that cousin to come. I couldn't believe I had a girl, my own girl, to braid hair and have ribbons and to be my friend. dear emma

I did not know at all that you would be this skyrocketing star, I only saw the 1%, the little bundle on the bed wrapped in the homemade quilt we brought to the hospital. I remember getting out of bed in the night to go to the bathroom and leaving you there on the bed and then climbing back in and there was newly minted Emma sleeping all wrapped up like the world's cutest burrito, just waiting there, happy there, resting, safe. It was my first night without Nathan since he'd been born, 18 months earlier, so I was a little confused, I had a baby and now I had TWO babies. As usual I just laid down in my bed and now you were here, and I looked at you and my life and felt like I always do, that I have everything I ever wanted.

little babies in hospital beds. they make the world stop, like snow falling. Everything goes quiet and you just look because this moment has never come before and the snow tells you to shhh and look at the majesty of this one little person in this one little life story we all are lucky enough to get to have somehow

I think that's why I wanted at least 4-8 children because I wanted more time to stop like that and to fill the time with something worthy like loving a baby. I got 3. Luck. I got 3 whole babies.

For your birthday I wish that you run leaping and frolicking. That you're enjoying having your mind opening all those little doors that require math combinations that only you can figure out. I hope that it's an adventure, the learningfiguring it out, not just with math, but in regular days, with every single thing, because that's where the joy is, where we are curious, like Alice, like Peter Pan, like Einstein, like Jimmy Stewart

As b would say look for the heart in all things and do those things

he says that will always be an interesting path and you are never sorry for those trips. I'm still on mine. not an acid trip. motherhood. maybe it is an acid trip we better ask dad

All I know is I thought I was okay until I had you and then I realized my life was missing so many days in a row of this colorful badass bendy flowery swimmy popsicley rainy puddle one direction santa barbara funny kind sweary hangry loving interesting investigative intersteller reader just fer scuzz adorable down to every cell daughter

It doesn't matter you're in Bowdough. You never left us, you're made of us. We're holding your space. And of course it's snowing there, like you said on the phone. Because you were born and the world says wait snow means shh

stop 

look 

look at her

how beautiful

Clown Car

I went from riding in the creek with my large assed but sensible buckskin mare Maggie, to going to get a root canal.

Who the hell signs up to be a dentist. Who.

I went in because after months of begging I was finally scoring this shitty prize of getting my tooth fixed. I kept thinking it's okay, just remember the creek. Pretend all these faces in masks around you aren't there. Remember the ducks flying off the silent water in front of Mags.

This is impossible to do. I mean you can grasp a second of beauty but then the specialized dentist surgeon is rotating a series of tiny chainsaws in your jaw and all you can feel is the battering. 

She psyched me out. When she first came in she said oh look at your eyes, I wish I had blue eyes. I forgot to be scared for a second. She was a stranger in a van offering me candy on my bike. I didn't see behind her back she a shot full of novocaine in a gigantic needle, just waiting to stab it into the thin skin decorating the roof of my mouth.

I looked at her brown eyes and then I closed my eyes and after the novocaine, it was quiet for about ten minutes. They were doing other things to other people's faces in other places. 

Then suddenly, like a tsunami, I hear machines and people swooping into my tiny closet room, and like a clown car my face is mega crammed with a mini trampoline, ten people's hands, and the sound of fracking. They're fracking my face. 

Think of the ducks. I saw the ducks flying off.

They tip me so far down that my head is almost touching the floor. I feel all my fluids, like my bladder, and my brain, slosh to the top of my body. It's kind of funny if they then weren't chopping down a forest of tooth root in my usually private by invitation only mostly gentle mouth area.

The clowns hammered and banged and dragged tools on carts in and out while I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on pretending to be a helpless cute ape hanging upside down in front of masked strangers. 

They took several pictures, draping me in the heavy robes and I'm sure making a peace sign as we selfied. 

Then they said ok done. There's a snapping of rubber gloves, my eyes are still closed tight like a museum at midnight.

They whooshed out of the room. 

The one guy left in my emotion rubble said oh you can leave, unless you want to help me clean up.

He tipped the chair up to regular level and I unpinned the pink drool towel they left on my chest and wobbily got to my feet. You better not chew on that side it's pretty soft til you get a crown you better get that within a few weeks.

I was dialing my dentist while walking woozily toward the front, I better get that happening I didn't even fully believe I was going to get in here to get this part done after months of trying so I certainly didn't preplan the rest yet. 

There's a prescription you better pick that up they're saying and I'm looking at the guy like I feel so violated how is everyone acting normal. I leave a message for my real dentist and spell out my name like they don't know me even though I've been going there for about 20 years and I bring eggs from the chickens so they call me the egg lady. I didn't spell that out. I forgot I was anyone, they fracked away my spirit.

I walked to my car feeling like everything changed and my face was starting to hurt and wait didn't I do this so my face would not hurt? And why do I need a prescription that means not going home right away and now I have a soft tooth filling to worry about and all I like to eat are carrots and popcorn.

I never have to do that again. That part is good. Why is everything so much scarier when you're a mom almost done with the basics of mothering, almost at the finish line of throwing children out into the world. Then you look back at yourself, like the tattered american flag in the revolutionary war, you're still holding the damn flag but it looks so shitty from all the battles. 

But I still have the flag though, dammit. Look at that victory. And the ducks.

The ducks were there.

this year keeps getting better and better

Ok raise your hand if you thought I was getting a root canal today. Everyone's hands down! Cause you're all wrong.

Yes after 6 months of tooth pain and many rejections and then an appeal that got me the pink paper which means success, I won the root canal by fighting bro! So I made that appointment. Jan 16th. I told my friend Kurt I can't ride that day, I'm getting my tooth fixed. 

The day before they call me to confirm. They call me twice. They text me to confirm. I am definitely going to be there. 

Then I get one more call which I knew was going to come. Because I knew somehow this was going to fuck up. They call and say ooohhhhh yeah, your insurance says ineligible. 

Eyes wide.

I have been fighting for this incredibly not wanted prize for 6 months. And now you're saying the day before, oops. Kidding, you can't come in.

Somehow the computer is saying my insurance isn't working. So they have to take me off the schedule for tomorrow, they say. I wish you wouldn't, I say.  You should call your insurance, they say. But save that pink paper.

Eyes wide.

I call my insurance and wait on hold for two hours. I finally get a lady who seems already mad at me. She says oh did you cancel your medi-cal? No, I say. What??

Oh the system cancelled your case. 

Eyes wide emoji.

Wait I don't have any insurance? No. Oh, wait, Barry does. But no one else on here. Not you or the kids. 

Okay so somehow on the Christmas break, between getting the magic pink letter and Los Angeles burning down, they cancelled my insurance by mistake.

It's Thursday right now. So call on Tuesday after 2pm, she says. You have to give them 3 days to try and fix this. Then it can be expedited to 24 hours if not fixed by then. I said can't they just expedite it now?

So now I will wait until Tuesday at 2. And I'm assuming that I'll never have coverage again because isn't that the way this year is going. Then Bess walks in from school and is saying how life doesn't seem worth living. My little tiny baby is finally talking after 4 years recovery from covid lockdown, and puberty, dementia gramma and wildfires on the tv behind her, she is saying I don't feel very good inside. For four years now. She is teary.

So I made a doctor's appointment for next week and hope they don't check my insurance currently to get her a referral for therapy, and we talked to her a bunch. To see what's going on, how we can help her. Making sure she knows the only things that matter to us is the thriving of  her self, her brother and sister and her self.  She's made of us. We're all made of the same stuff.

Then I send her off to school the next day on my non root canal day and hope for the best and I tell Kurt sure I'll ride now, I never get down to the water unless he's there, I'm too exhausted. So we get ready to go and I'm too tired to take the dogs I don't wanna have to wrangle anything extra, just Dewey, and Kurt and his horse and dog. Dewey has sore legs so I say let's take the road there, it's flatter and easier for Dewey, even though we hate the cars and traffic. 

We're walking along the road, I didn't even get to air all my troubles yet, it was still early in the ride and right before the feed store, this pit bull comes running out across the street and attacks Kurt's dog. 

Then Kurt is off his horse, wrestling with the evil dog and the evil dog's owner is yelling and trying to get the clamped on jaws of death off Kurt's dog's leg. This dog is not letting go. Kurt looks at me for help and I'm holding the two horses just staring I can't do anything. Even though Kurt has breathing issues and shouldn't be wrestling a butterfly. Suddenly there are people everywhere, a lady has jumped out of her car and is calling 911, a teenage kid comes running with a broom handle and this kid saves the day, he uses the broom handle to pry open the dog's teeth and Kurt's dog gets out. Kurt's dog is loping off down the street and the pit bull takes off after him, with the owner running after both.

Kurt is wheezing on the ground and I'm speaking for Kurt who has no breath to get him the help he needs and then there's an ambulance and fire truck and neighbors.

The firemen are so huge and powerful like redwood trees, even just standing there you feel awed and safe. They bring a garden party mood to a traumatic situation, they've seen everything and frankly after all the fires and the lack of blood at this site, they could be in line at the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland, eating a churro, that's how easy this disaster looks to them.

They strap Kurt up into the red rectangle ambulance to get oxygenated, and the horses and neighbors and I are standing there in the intersection aftermath of the fires and dog attacks, and the horses are the best company. They doze in the sun. There are emergencies, they say. But also you're standing here, your familiar hand holding us, we're together and do you feel that warm sun right here.

The neighbors and the lady who jumped out of her car and the kid who appeared with the broom handle to save the day, where did they all come from and why did they care. They cared and they came out to help.

They all eventually disappear back into the fabric of the street.

Kurt and I end up back at my barn. His dog seems ok, just some puncture wounds. How this dog has a leg at all I don't know. He's going straight to the vet. But Kurt and I are standing there saying why didn't we take the mountain not the road. Why didn't my root canal happen, we wouldn't have gone riding today. 

As soon as Kurt leaves, I cry by the water bucket.  Because when people are there you're wrestling with what happened and using words to understand, but when people walk away you feel instead and you cry. 

Meriwether, the devil of all ponies, comes over to me and puts his butt next to my shoulders so I'll scratch him. Then he turns around and puts his face on my chest. He's a barn destroyer but also a deeply loving buddy.

Come on, man, he says. Don't cry. It's only January.

Someday you'll get that tooth fixed.

Total Loss

How can all of us feel so bad all at once

I can feel all of LA, the widespread cloud of horror, all of us poking the blanket we're crowded under, everyone huddled in clusters of sadness

It was Monday like three years ago, it feels like. Monday before there was even a fire. I went to Costco and got a pizza, it would last the whole week. My brother was here to help with my mom. It was just a Monday. On Tuesday I got hay because it was supposed to be windy, in fact it was getting a little windy. I was worried about the hay falling off the golf cart. But the wind wasn't really supposed to be bad until that night. 

That night Pacific Palisades burned to the ground. 

That night the wind blew fire through Patrick's neighborhood burning all his neighbor's houses to the ground. He got woken up at 2 am and ran out of his house filled with smoke, with only his charger. He drove away with his family, seeing his neighbor's houses on fire. He wrote me i think it all burned

Bess got up for school Wednesday and didn't want to go but she had a game but then texts were coming in, none of her friends were going to school. There's a fire. None of the teachers were going to school. As we stood there, everything that was regular life started to just fall away, Wednesday morning. Life shedded us. We became emergency.

We sat with our dead Christmas tree, staring at the tv.

We stared at it until now, Friday.

It has been three years since Tuesday, it feels like. 

We just keep watching things disappearing. People scrambling, everything turning chalky white. Cars piled up. People on the news talking and then dissolving into crying. Because Tuesday everything was okay, there was just a little wind. Then this line of fire, then this other line of fire. Right near us.

Nathan's work was evacuated. Nathan showed pictures of our passover friend's house in Alta Dena. It was a driveway and no house now. It was a driveway now.

That picture is when time stopped totally. Wait, people we eat dinner with can lose everything? And the panic of feeling Patrick's heartbeat in my head. His house is right near there. What if it all burned. What if it's gone. What if he loses everything. What if we all lose everything.

What do you do if you lose everything.

What are we living for?

A house is where you rest from the world. What if you lose your place of rest. The world is already harassing you to your very doorstep. At least you have your house, to shut everything away. And deal with what you can. At your pace.

It is a question no one can fathom. What happens if you lose everything.

Patrick and Nathan went back to Patrick's neighborhood. Everything was destroyed. But - Patrick's house was still there. The fire had burned right up demolishing the yard. It skipped the pig in a pen. It got to the wall of the house. It left black marks around Patrick's window like it was banging to get in. The wind must have shifted right then.

It blew to the left, it jumped the street and burned down all the neighbor's houses. It left Patrick but it destroyed the neighborhood. It broke all those people's hearts. That doesn't feel better.

The neighborhood is flat.

We sat by the tv watching the newspeople in weird yellow rainjackets like they're faking being firemen. We watched as no planes could fly because the wind whipped hurricane strength and the fires ate house after house because like the ocean it didn't care, it was fueling itself, doing what it was made to do. We sat with tiny arms at our sides, a whisper, not big enough to fight this monster.

All the pain of our city raining down on us. Every person who lost every thing they cared about and their safe place to belong to. They are standing in ashes.

All of Thursday felt like an entire year, like feeling every step of a hundred legged caterpillar, just trying to get across the sidewalk and not getting anywhere.

There was not any good news. Patrick had a house. I kept thinking. Patrick who had nothing, he had a house still. 

The smoke is lessening, it is Friday. There were other small fires, fires nearby, fires that made us stop and undecorate the christmas tree and throw it out of the house. So we have the homemade ornaments in a box in case we have to put it all in the car. We would let the horses loose in the neighborhood. Leave and come back to nothing.

The passover friends whose house burned down, they were eating dinner somewhere on Tuesday. My niece called them and said hey I think you have to evacuate. The friends were annoyed. They went back to their house. Packed an overnight bag. It's probably nothing. They took their papers. Everyone's always overreacting. We'll be back in the morning.

They packed an overnight bag. Not even all the way full.

They came back to nothing. 

I saw one old guy on the news who said what do you take when it's all going to burn down. You take nothing. All this stuff we collect it doesn't mean anything.  It's not the stuff.

We need to belong somewhere. He said.

We kept hearing total loss. It's a total loss. 

Widespread total loss. We kept looking at each other, wondering what happened to Monday. When it was overfull. Life was messy and full, dripping. Did we have too much?

What happens now. This is so long, staring into this flat razored land. Everyone's clumps of nothing next to everyone else's clumps of nothing, stretching to the ocean. How do you live when everyone around you has lost everything. You feel their pain. 

Patrick's house is still standing. 

Nathan and Patrick said they just grabbed the one hose that was working in the neighborhood and started putting out tiny fires. A guy in a car detailing van stopped and was spraying water out of his van to help the neighbors. The powerlines were down all over the street like a basket of electrified yarn had spilled and rolled all over.

It's only Friday, and what do we do.

You stare at the mess and feel burned down. Now there is looting and anger and curfews. Now there is scrambling and people parched with loss and devastation. There is going to be so much upset because no one knows the next step, things are still on fire but everything is still gone. There's too much sadness and not enough bags to gather it all into. How do we help our people suffering, this is our city. On the streets in our neighborhoods, right across the street from Patrick.   

How do you start over when you were just in the middle, living your life, you weren't even anywhere yet.

shituation

Let's talk about the Christmas break shall we friends.

It was not so much a break as a mauling.

The most important things I came away with where I wanted to kiss the ground was the fact that my green trash cans got emptied and I won a hard fought battle for a root canal.

But let's step back.

Right around the time the fat red man was coming to dump presents down our chimney, I have five horses at my house. Right? So that week the trash truck decided to accidentally NOT take my ten green trash cans full of horseshit. Which sets off a chain reaction of me calling every day begging them to please come get my trash cans. So my farm can resume regular working conditions not high alert working conditions.

In the meantime I had five horses still committing to their steamy green output and me with nowhere to input their output. So at night I was having to roll their output down the secret path, rake away some fallen leaves along the sides of the paths, hope the weird silent asian lady who is never in her yard is fingerscrossed never in her yard at this certain midnight, dump my (what will be eventually nice mulch) along the fence and then cover it back up with leaves just like in a crime show.

So this is one aspect of the shituation.

At the same time, Nandy our sometimes nemesis and full time extended family decided she was going to try to die around Christmas Eve. Not a little covid or maybe a fainting spell, a full on cardiac arrest where as doctor niece explained to us layfolk, Nandy's heart said "I'm tired" and stopped. Luckily she was in an ER with B at the time. So they shocked her back to life and then B was spending every day until still this minute going to the hospital to check and be there for this very old friend of his whom he raised a baby with. 

That baby, meanwhile, is 40, and until the day Nandy tried to die, this grown up baby had been telling B for the last two years that he hated B and he wanted nothing to do with B anymore. He certainly wasn't going to be coming down to Christmas because he felt no duty to see the man he didn't feel was his father. Even though this was the man who raised him from before birth. So this rejection baby who was never going to see us again, was suddenly called down here to this emergency, and now in my kitchen and sleeping at the foot of the bed of the man he rejected. 

Eyebrow raised.

A very unhappy grown baby, for sure. He and his nondad did their best to care of the sick hospital part of their family.  I only sat in the kitchen playing morning word games on my phone while I drank tea and woke up each day, and this was my time sitting and listening to this boy I had known since he was 7, telling me how he has never been the person I knew. 

Question mark.

?

Sip tea.

Okay.

I look out the window at the line of green trash cans, full of shit. 

When will they come dammit. Will they ever come. There is more potential incoming shit in this house than I can handle.

In the meantime my brother is coming to give me a break in caring for my invalid mother, and he misses his connecting flight in Dallas. Maybe he is not coming. Also my mom is looking kind of glassy eyed. Is she deciding to chuck it all now, when the house is full of this impending shitcano?

The best part of this particular season this year is I filled with the help of two sweet nieces and a gramma susie, 4000 stockings for people who wouldn't have a stocking at Christmas. I mailed stuff to people out of state who had stockings. So they'd have a thing to surprise them on Christmas. They weren't big things, maybe some socks or a special candy or some lip stuff or a bra. But things people need. People like to be remembered. loved. Even in small ways. 

That was the best part. And Bess playing guitar since the day she got one. Music in the house adrift in a floating shit hub, satelliting the earth.

And then the not documentary worthy battle to win a root canal with my insurance company I've been having since the summer, with rejection after rejection and finally an appeal TO THE STATE like I'm trying to reinstate Roe VS Wade I have battled because my tooth hurts to get this procedure without paying 3000 dollars, and FINALLY after Christmas I get a pink letter from the state, that says OKAYYYYYY we WILL FIX YOUR GODDAMN TOOTH LEAVE US ALONE and I immediately felt terrible because I do not WANT a root canal, I just HAVE TO GET ONE because my dentist shrugged and said well that's the only way to make it better.

So after a winter battle like an irish army starved with rotten potatoes but still fighting, I made my root canal appointment, while cringing. And the blessed green trash truck CAME and emptied every single can, one day before the actual next trash day, but one blessed day less of having to bury the evidence on the trail. One less day of lugging, and I could kiss that wet trash can, and the dentist I will see in two weeks. The burden is lifted. But why so much fight for the burden that isn't even interesting.

My brother showed up, my mom is in good hands, there was no nearby snow so no place to take Bess for a one day vacation so instead our vacation became I made chocolate chip banana pancakes for her. I made potato pancakes for the family. I drank tea longer in the mornings. I sat in quiet a little bit while people rushed in and out to the hospital. I admired my long line of stockings hung along the beam by the dead Christmas tree. It is still pretty. It is sparkly and full of memories pinned on.

The best part of having Christmas was Emma home face down on the couch asleep, dreaming math dreams, and me in the kitchen making a turkey and stuffing by myself on Christmas Eve, and baking scones and pumpkin muffins and dreambars, and Emma and Bess making sugar cookies. And little boy Nathan helped me clean the heavy pool filter. Same as when he was four years old, just standing around near me, curious, wanting to help do a hard thing. We wrapped a huge pile of presents for under the tree and at night I would feel happy because time slowed down, Bess got to see the singer she liked at a huge concert, I got to look up at the stars and know it would be warm the next day because the weather is good here. I have a couch and dogs and shapes of family and horses who look at me quizzically. 

The burden, I tried to tell the adult baby who visited, who is struggling, every morning while drinking tea, I tried to tell him yes it is all a mess. All our lives and feelings are a mess. I tried to tell him that the burden is the burnt side of this whole thick life. Do you see the other side where we didn't burn it? We tried to show him. The other side is still good.

Home for the Holidays or Asunder (I can't decide)

I want you to know I see you. You are not invisible. I know it looks like I'm doing other stuff, like I make alot of stockings and I muck alot of horseshit and I cater to my mom, but really I'm seeing you and your pain. 

It's not all bad pain maybe it's growing. Better word. I see all that globby mixed up beauty in you.

The torrent happiness of Christmas with all the people I want to feel happy and the stacks of presents and cookies and baking and cooking and the welling up of the people all washed ashore at my doorstep, picking themselves up and walking in for awhile.

All of us confused because our normal productive routines are picked up and thrown out the window because there is this eddy whirlpool of time together that won't come again and is too busy and at the same time completely wasted, there's no math accomplished to a Boulder daughter who does math normally 8 hours a day. She now does a variety of family things and painting and in the place of math she is growing a tiny bit of anxiety about not doing the math. She will return to math because math is growing her so limitlessly well.

One other daughter put down her phone and picked up a ukulele which I just learned how to spell and a guitar and now she sings all day. With and without her friends who tumble through the house loud and laughing, with college looming only 8 months away does no one see this but me, maybe but we do all feel it, the littlest Bess buzzing off to grow herself still. In another place. But for now, a singsong homebird.

I get to see my old friend Nathan and his buddy Patrick, the two best sons a mom could ask for. Nathan works like a real man now, barely ever home, working with people who need someone to talk to, they took my costco buddy, my drive to costco therapy and pizza, they're using him for their own good but he's liking helping people, and then changing oil with Patrick after work. At Patrick's work nearby, they change oil and look under cars and talk about transmission fluid. Patrick has done everything for all our cars the way I have made stockings for everyone we know. Between us, Patrick and I have family car care disasters and Christmas morning surprises covered.

Then we have Nandy in the hospital and B's whole family going to help her, Linda baking cupcakes for the nurses who had to work christmas, Aela following doctors on rounds to casually eavesdrop on how she's doing in cold medical terms, B himself being there as much as he can so when she wakes up scared there's a face she knows. Wouldn't you want that? he says, cause that would be comforting. Even though his feet are freezing. But he does like the cafeteria. There's a whole salad bar, he says. 

I see the struggling son from up north come through cause his mom is sick. He's in his late teens rejection phase even though it's hitting him much later, a later age than that. I see his circle of fear that he's not loved enough, the one we all have of course, but he's forgotten the self love, he's left that somewhere, in a sticky movie theater bathroom or class he never goes to anymore, it's sitting there on the floor somewhere waiting to be remembered cause no one else wants it, no one's gonna take it,  that belongs only to him. It waits. Hoping to be found to ease the awful hole he's digging so ardently. Expertly, really, he's really very good at digging the hole and asking every angry question based on no fact. His brain will only allow him disappointment, and madness. Instead of forcibly turning his back on that and grabbing up the peace that is sprouting up all over his feet. We all have that, all of us, the joy right there look you can touch it all. But I know we are all more layered than we'd like to be sometimes and maybe we could grab lots of things but we're too busy just trying to survive the day. Sometimes. Right? So he's still in his two years now ongoing grasping for something pattern. B and I have gone through many phases of help for that situation. Some help has worked but mostly it's like holding up a plastic cup to a fireplace and watching the plastic moltenly curl up and melt away. So now I sip tea and hear, and offer chocolate.

So all this is churning under and around Christmas but Christmas itself? A clear fountain. A couch and some books and people content, happy is the nutella layer on everyone in our house. We just bask in the peace of all being together, being fed with food already made yesterday and waiting

all the prep is done and now we just rest, and I see everyone. 

That's my job.