Put Your Money Where My Mouth Is

Today I took a ride in the creek after I got the second of two root canal visits done. Same tooth, just had to do the panama canal of root canals apparently. Like after the first visit the guy who was gentle said, well I can't quite get to the end of this root, I'm going to have the specialist do it tomorrow if you can come back and I was like I thought YOU were the specialist. 

But then today I met the specialist and what makes him special is he calls you my friend with his mouth while looking at you with the eyes of a dead serpent. Then he takes a novocain shot the size of a gas nozzle and crams it in your very trusting gummy face, the one you use to look up at carousels in wonder. But at least he presses the plunger like he's trying to flush out the biggest turd on the biggest water slide at Roaring Rapids. Imagine being married to THIS guy, or worse, in prison with him.

I say to him tentatively when he's telling me all the things that could go wrong as he assembles a trampoline in my mouth, I say they did most of the work yesterday, I say hopefully, eye gesturing to the large xray on the wall, big as a motel painting. Mengele just raises a smokey grey manicured eyebrow like we'll see about that and I opened wide because well, that was the only way in.

I'm not kidding, if you see your patient's legs go straight out when you're giving a novocain shot you might want to vary your technique by considering that the person wearing those legs is an alive person. Maybe Morgue Morty here is used to practicing root canals on bodies he fishes out of the LA river. 

All I know is, his assistant was nice, a sturdy guy with huge messy hair like Meatloaf, and he kept looking at me with eyes like I'm sorry but he signs my checks. 

At least this office started being nice to be AFTER they told me they wouldn't take my insurance which  I found out is actually illegal since they do TAKE my insurance in reality, and my parents were like here let us help you since your face hurts so bad let's get it done. What do people do who don't have nice parents and a lot of tooth pain, I'll tell you what they do, it's called meth. I only know this since I drove directly from my first appointment to DPSS to try and fix my insurance and I was in line with people who use umbrellas as homes. Fixing teeth is maybe 55th on their list, behind stealing guns and fistfighting. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in there, I wanted to climb on a desk and wave my papers and say we don't have to live like this the government is supposed to help us when we're workers who make a smaller dollar. We're still important! But instead I just turned my ring around so the diamond didn't show (the only jewelry on me) and of course the lady in the booth told me I was in the wrong office and to go to the right one on Monday. So I left with my aching jaw, past the skinny sunburnt tweakers with their necks all worn away and I took my social injustice to my car where I left it in the gutter.

Because it's hard to fight for rights when your face hurts.

So now I have an appointment in three days to get my crown fitted and then in two weeks I'll have hopefully the last dental visit of my lifetime putting that bastard on and being done with it and feeling like a king.  I just feel bad I wasted my parents' money when the state could have paid for it. They could have spent it on Fritos or hookers or taken hookers out to pizza or anything with hookers. Instead they put their money where my mouth is.

Every bite I take, I'll be thanking you. Little known Sting lyric. 

The point of this blog was going to be, that AFTER ALL THIS, I was riding in the creek because root canal be DAMMED and half my face was numb but I made it to the water with the most gentlest two horses a girl could have, young Janey and old Dewey, and Jane rolled immediately and then we just sloshed slowly upstream, and listened to water, and ambled, and stood again, and listened, and I said out loud all the people and things I'm grateful for at almost 60 tomorrow, and believe me you were on there, and I cried and sprinkled my fresh teary water into the creek because grateful water should always mingle with rambling peaceful water. And now the creek and I are one. 

I am grateful for every moment of my ever evolving life, and all the paths that keep unfolding. Even the old everyday ones that I cherish so much I do them every single day and grateful to wake up to them waiting for me to be there to walk them. An old house, an old barn, an old car, an old creek, some old kids, some old parents, an old husband, some old dogs and horses, a flaking pool, some mismatched furniture, some tuna on crackers, a few carrots, some ripe peaches, what else does a person need. 

Just one more day, maybe.

To Be Fair

This is the summer not like all other summers. This is the first summer of non kids. I mean I do have two home, one from college, the other just lives here. I have one visitor daughter who pops in every few weeks from colorody way. 

It started with not going to the fair in May. I don't know why that was a big deal, it's just a hot cement place with sheep you can touch and it smells like burning meat. But I loved that tradition. I would take them out of school to do the fair, and disneyland, once a year. This year nobody was home to do the fair. The fair and its kettle corn went on without me. No one pulled the rope to make the steam engine whistlescream and scare the shit out of people. We didn't have the snack stroller. The drawstrings of my life, they are unravelling sir.

Before kids I never went to the fair every year. Okay my mom did take us to the state fair in Maryland where we ended up picking up a man for her at the bobo booth. The one where the guy is sitting over the dunk tank of water, insulting you until you throw a ball at him. Need a baaaalllll player, he would drawl. We stood in front of that booth for so long because the jokes were so funny. Who would think an alcoholic poised over a tank of water with little or no education and no real dental care (just guessing) would be so funny with dry jokes. We ended up on a state fair kick for a few months, going to different fairs to follow these guys around and listen to their jokes. Comedy is a seductive mistress my friend. There must not have been enough comedy in Maryland. 

We ended up taking that first guy home. Billy Redgate. He was my first alcoholic if you don't count my grandmother. First alcoholic I ever lived with, let's say. I was 13, we lived on a river in Maryland in a rented house, I slept downstairs and everyone else was upstairs. When I got off the bus and walked down to our house, if I heard Sweet Home Alabama blaring at full blast from our house, I knew Billy was drunk.

Billy was 21. I thought that was ANCIENT. My mom was 38. I thought they were the same age basically. Old. My mom drove a fast car, was crying most of the time from her divorce, and now we had Billy at our house, her first (of many) male diversions. I did not know what alcoholics were, but I did know that by night time, there was alot of screaming. All of it by him, not us. None of it made any sense. He told me he would go to my barn and poison my horse so he would be dead next time I saw him. 

The next day I was at my barn and Billy came in with some flowers. He said he didn't mean what he said. He was gentle Billy, the one who could be so funny hoisted above water. I looked at Billy over the stall door, with my chestnut gelding Zeus still alive and chewing hay next to me. It was the first time I realized that people could be liars.

Also Billy wasn't my problem, he was just upstairs and making alot of yelling at times, but really he was not in the realm of me and my brother, and even my mom. He was just Extra. He was never going to stay forever. The fairs only stay a month at most. 

So my kids growing up did not have the same fair experience as I did. We actually just pet the sheep and ate ice cream and watched the pig races, I kept everything rated G because a kid should have clear bliss for as many years as they can. The Billy thing did not add to the understanding of my life, it just was a curious eyebrow knitting to me. I thought maybe we were going to follow the fairs around forever, until we found the right prince. The jokes were so good, and the lights were so colorfully flashing. And I had my buddies, my mom and my little brother, he was only 9. We were always floating in our own boat, above the world, there was the sea, and there was us 3. I never thought anything could really touch us.

I think the goddesses wrap you in a special cloth when your dad and big brother are far off, and nothing can prick through it, not a diaper pin not a dagger. If life barfs at you, you just rock one way or the other and it passes right by. Later on you will unravel, when you can unwrap yourself and see all the heartache you stored up being wrapped so tightly. The goddesses know, that you needed the protection. They don't leave you any instructions for how to unwrap yourself or how to manage the rest of your unruly emotions the rest of your life. I suppose that is how we all grow up, untangling, overwhelmed,  enthralled, dumb in the reality of how huge life is when you are a real live person, exposed raw to this little earth and your singular self. This is why we gather in clans. We wear animal skin and stay warm and go to the bagel place or Palm Springs and make smores and we feel safe inside walls because we already know there is so much we can't know or understand outside because we are whipping through life before we can grasp it. We can only grasp the tiniest fraction.

That's how a one day at the beach trip every week in June and July helped make the summer feel real. That taking a day off to go to disneyland and the fair helped us mark growing up years. That seeing our people at dumb parties over and over helped remember and celebrate how rich all their faces are. 

Just Float

Going out of town with your family makes you forget you ever had any problems. You can literally drive away and leave all your troubles behind, just like Joel Grey says in Cabaret. 

It didn't happen on the road, because it was new to have moose in the car and what if she died in the car, she never is in the car except last year at this time going to this same place. So I felt a little bit dubious looking at her because she's my whole cup of tea, nobody else's, and I feel that responsibility, especially if she croaks while on the desert road to Palm Springs. 

But I figure lots of people die in Palm Springs, it's the Florida of LA. It's really the BEST place to die. It's warm, there's probably lots of oxygen machines we could rent if she needed it, it's a good send off, especially if going to hell where it's almost as hot I think. Less of a transition.

But she didn't die, and we got there, and I think we just left all the problems in the pool. That's why it was so cloudy. All of us shed our many layers of crap, and my niece put an umbrella straw into a cup of  ice and then magically there were people just floating around and way too many meals made by not me. Where I just showed up. I could even eat a smore BEFORE I got to the table.

Then back in the pool. Forget what time it is. Who cares if the sun or moon is out. There's nowhere to be and time cripples you. Throw out time. I brought 47 games and we never cracked one game, we never got bored. We floated, burned our bare feet, threw a tennis ball for the dogs, floated, read a little, visited with whoever floated by, peed on the grass, went to a thrift store eventually, but really never went anywhere or did anything.

At one point at night all three kids and I walked out front and down the driveway 2 minutes down into the wilderness and there was nothing but desert around and stars and we laid on the hot road in the empty dark desert and looked up at the stars and it was so quiet. 

Then later we were on couches in the area that had carpet, playing a game called Werewolf where it helps if you're a good liar and the kid cousins were very good actors, and later Bess and another little cousin made drinks out of fruit juice in the bar area and another cousin played the sound of Bar Noises so it sounded authentic like a bar and this was the favorite game, drinking shots of grape juice and tipping your waiter. 

Best part was waking up and getting tea and getting back into this cushy millionaire's bed not my bed, and reading my book while having hot tea. And then a cousin or two would come in and burrow under the covers and play a game on their phone and there was nothing to do except be comfortable and quiet.

Somehow it's the last night and the kids fold a piece of paper into a hard pointy star and turn off all the lights and they play ninja star which is basically you have to hide in a bunch of places silently in the pitch dark but you can't stay in hiding long, you have to keep moving and finding new spots and the person with the ninja star looks for you and then whales the ninja star at you to tag you. One cousin crammed himself under a desk which later turned out to pop something in his back so when we left the next day we had to take our family photo in his bed because he couldn't move his back.

Then the scurrying of packing the too much food and cleaning all the dishes and trash and straightening and cars are crammed and old people are loaded in with dogs and suitcases and then we're leaving the quiet desert and I'm in the car with no gossiping so I am bummed but I look out the window and think I can't go back to my life everything is different now my life is vacation life real life is too hard and then I get home and my life falls back around me like a silent snow scarf and I am okay, there is peace also in structure. 

The Extreme Family noise though, that takes awhile to not miss. I like their sounds, people cooking and talking and floating, just over there. Where no one needs me, but I can help if I want to, when I'm ready. For a writer, just the right amount of space to daydream.

Meri ly We Roll Along

Meriwether is the horse that has taught me the most.

He is the size of a great dane, if you have seen how tall I am, so we are as mismatched as some NBA players, but he's my horse and there's no one else to train him. So poor little guy. I tell him everyday, you're going to be the grandkids' horse. I just have to ride you first for awhile.

He is a very smart horse. He is 5 so he should be done with shenanigans but when he learns a trick he will use it until you very clearly tell him he can't be doing that. Like when I'm riding Dewey at a canter and ponying Meri alongside and Meri slams on the brakes and Dewey and I try to slam our brakes but not as quickly so I run out of rope and it drops and Meri goes running back and up the crumbly hill to eat a tree he saw that looked good. 

So then I have to climb the crumbly mountain and try and drag him down without sliding on shale and he always shows me luckily the easiest path to take if you have one toe on each leg (him) and sandals (me). He's a generous host that way.

After that shitty trick I was complaining to Aela that when I pony Meri he is just a goofy moron like a 4th grader on a field trip but when I RIDE Meri, he is super good because I have arms and legs to give him clear boundaries and he knows exactly the little box he needs to stay in to listen and succeed. She said oh he's just like Matt. Her boyfriend. He wants to know exactly what the rules are, and then he can do it.

So today when I was riding instead of ponying, and ponying Dewey alongside like the anchor old man that he is, my safety device, I thought okay I'll pretend this is Matt. 

It was SO MUCH easier to guide a pony when you think of them as just needing clear instructions without any emotion. Don't clog it up with all your thoughts and feelings which are free ranging loudly in my head. He wants JUST THE FACTS, please. He needs clarity. 

So Meri kept asking so many questions like want me to go faster here? How bout we walk in this shady part here where I might accidentally scrape your leg on the wall? Hey that wall is knobby! Can I itch my butt on that wall? Lemme see if I can at least scratch my shoulder on there. 

Each question I was able to just say with my hands on the reins and my legs on his sides, hey no. Nudge nudge. Let's go over here silly.  Two steps over, way easier over here. He was like oh over HERE!! Oh okay!! Hey look it's so open over here I can walk over here way easier!

I ask for the trot which is a new thing we're working on where you want the horse to go gently and not hurriedly into any new faster gait, and usually he tumbles into it like a dryer full of wet clothes and today he was like hey you want me to just stay easy under you, ohhhhh like this!

Of course it's only a few strides every time but it is so amazing when we both realize he's trying very hard to be a good student. His brain is VERY busy. I know this because he chews everything. The reins, my stirrup, my boot, Dewey, any ropes hanging, all chains. He needs me to ease him out of all the questions so he can relax. Kinda just like I need to stop all the emotion blabbering behind everything and just focus on giving clear simple cues. 

No wonder our partnership is so volatile at times. It takes practice to figure out how to communicate with two loud brains in the way. 

So back to this ride. Everything's continuing well, forward, relaxed, listening. I'm still learning to trust this youngster. I get moments of that.

Around the corner on our regular trail someone left a LADDER folded and leaning neatly against the fence, not in the way at all, not exploding or on fire, and Meri's head went straight up like DO YOU SEE THAT?! THAT IS NOT NORMAL! and his legs went LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THIS WAY and started to try and head hurriedly to the right and I just kept my right hand and leg (oh his fleeing side) like a wall with his head turned toward the HORRIBLE LADDER which was NOT CHASING US, it's just lying there on its lunch break soaking up some sun. Meri and Dewey did stop finally and stared at it for a full 5 minutes on full alert.  Heads straight up like giraffes, eyes bulging. There is no way they will pass it. If I try to urge Meri forward he is either backing up or going farther to the right.

The goal as the rider here (as a good trainer Mark Rashid says in his books) once you get your horse stopped, is to just sit there yawning. There's no rush. You can stand there all day. Where you gotta be in a hurry? When a horse sees danger, their instinct is to run far and ask questions later like way later like maybe down at the Dairy Queen. But you just ease your horse to a stop and face the direction you want to go (which includes the dangerous ladder in this case) and then you just sit there. So the horse learns after keeping its head up for 5 whole minutes, that when you're riding them, you're gonna sit with them quietly in danger, and when they relax their head down, emotion dissipating, then you sit there a little longer and then nudge them forward like there's no danger at all. And you walk by the ladder with no shouting or kicking or drama, and your horse has one more moment of knowing you're his partner, and to trust you when they're scared. Also learning to rest when they feel danger. Cause horses like THE MOST to stop and rest. If they can rest when there's a surprise ladder, or in real danger like when their feet are trapped in wire, or when you're stuck on the side of a crumbling mountain, then you have the chance to help make it safe.

I wish I was as good at stopping when I'm mad and resting until I can walk past danger in my non horsey life.  

So the rest of our regular practice ride up the hill and back felt like it was stitching me and Meri together in a way that would help our future. I felt like I could keep learning to trust my skills and my horse, be aware without being scared, and even look at the flowers and leafy trees while building a bond with my solid trail partner for life.

Man am I sure it is the same building communication with people, why is it so much more interesting with horses.

Maybe Meri will help show me the way.

You Just Take Your Time

The most beautiful day. Blue sky puffy clouds, breeze. 

Yesterday I had the hardest day, had to take my two tatted up riders on a trail ride even though I knew my youngster horse my gangsta horse needed to run around and let off energy at the arena. Instead I took these girls up the bushy mountain trail on my tiny horse warrior carrying a backpack of New Trails anxiety but going anyway. It was cold and cloudy and I had to be responsible, so you can imagine that dark cloud added on, and if only I was riding my two old horses, I looked ruefully at them chattering away on the horses I've spent 14 years maturing and who are safe, while I'm on the Tiny Most Likely to Do Something Stupid award horse. 

Anyway he is a good plower, he plowed right through the bushy overgrown trail, up the mountain like a goat, we get to the first little downhill and I'm like okay take it easy man, and he is doing so well that I forget to sort of guide him and if you don't have your hands on the wheel at all times with Meriwether he likes to try fun stuff like in this case, he wanders into the bushes which are so scratchy and satisfying he says hey lemme just sit down a minute right on this tumbleweed brush. So I KNEW he might do something dumb and his sitting down takes a really long time, but I am also almost 60 so my jumping off my horse ALSO takes a bit longer. I do manage to leap off to the side just as he sits, which makes it sort of like he was doing me a favor getting closer to the ground and then he stands back up like it was the greatest achievement of his life. 

The girls I'm with behind me have eyes wide like platters and they're like ohmygodareyouokay and then we keep walking up the trail while I gather the nerve to dump that recent cortisol spike into the bushes and get back on my little demon french fry. 

We are now riding the last part of the bushy trail which are two steep inclines like a Z, and the girls are in front of me and I'm charging up behind steadily on Meriwether. They go up and around the very steep Z corner part and for some reason Meriwether and I accidentally cut the corner too sharply and he gets two feet off the trail which is like a sheer cliff to the left and his feet are sinking in the loose sand like it's emptying out under his feet like a dirt avalanche. This is way worse than sitting down on the trail because at least with that there is GROUND under you. I make the split second decision to jump off on the avalanche side because throwing my leg over to the right is stiffer for my body, and luckily somehow Meriwether is smart and doesn't flail around and slide down the mountain. He waits, when there's trouble, and says hey you better do something bro.  I land on secure steep mountainside and then grab onto him and rappel myself around to the actual trail side where it's flat, and then we're walking up the steep incline to catch up with the girls who have no idea why I'm again off my horse. I walk until my nerves settle again and then swing back on the little matchstick pony and the rest of the ride the dark cloud hovers over me because when rides don't go 100% boringly I get really irritated. The rest of my life is where things can go wrong, the horses are like the balm. So my internal need-o-meter for peace is all broken and spinning frazzled. 

After I get the girls back to the barn, I get paid and then get them shoved off to their car, I am still grumpy so I decide to take Meri out again with Jane to the park to run around to get their energy out and erase the bad ride. We do that, I lunge them both to teach them voice commands, then for a reward I let them run crazily like loose salmon in Alaska, and on the ride back I still don't feel any better, in fact, I'm just tired from too much riding. 

But then THIS MORNING, Emma is home and I slip off to the creek just to keep my routine, but also to see beauty, and I ride my big oaf Dewey, the president of our barn, posterboy for all things benevolent. He gently herds me and Meriwether to the wide open land by the creek, and then navigates us with deep contented sighs through the water, where there are green plants and no people to worry about, and no way to think anything, just listening to the water. Meriwether after two rides yesterday and time with his favorite president in the creek, he is just a perfect boy. We ride back out of there better, quiet, the sun cracks out for moments from the clouds to give us that special slant of sunlight that is meaningful on a cooler day.

I switch horses to go home over the big hill, and that means getting on the sassafras pony, and he doesn't sit on any bushes or try to avalanche down any cliffs, he is acting like yesterday never happened. I'm glad it happened because it helped me remember he won't always be a young horse, to keep doing a little each day, vigilant but with sighing, to see the improvements and know that like the clouds and the water we were just a part of, everything keeps moving.  There's always something good up ahead.

As the neighbor said in her truck when the horses and I passed her, almost to our house, happy to be home, she looked at us passing and she said  you just take your time.

Von Trapped

Before I rip on seeing the Sound of Music yesterday, has there ever been a good production of Sound of Music? I mean aside from the dresses and the songs, have you seen this play?

I couldn't say anything because the cousins I was with paid for my ticket and there were teenagers who I didn't want to kill their vibe, but the broken escalator in the parking lot that we walked up to land on murder infested swollen hot dogs on grills Hollywood Blvd was WAY better than the show.

People should go to theater. Definitely kids should be clapping to keep tinkerbell alive in a dark theater, in a group of hopefulness. 

People should not have to pay 7000 dollars a ticket to watch the father in Sound of Music who had the sex appeal of a potato gone bad, although let's face it Captain Von Trapp if you draw straws, is probably the worst male role you can score on Broadway. You have nothing to do but stand there in your wool jacket holding your whistle while everyone frolics like goats around you. The NUNS have more sex appeal.  And why is the biggest song Climb Every Mountain? That nun with the huge lungs gets the most applause and I'm not sure she's ever even climbed ANY mountain, sure she can belt out the tune that tears the paper off the back wall, but in reality she's a nun screaming her work ethic song to timid Maria and shoveling her out into the world, while she herself goes back to eating god wafers and doing a little gardening.

Speaking of huge, when the play started I could see the whole stage it was pretty sweet and then the world's tallest man came in late and sat directly in front of me like imagine the Sears Tower WALKED IN, carrying an industrial steel refrigerator, and they both sat down inches from the front of your face. 

So I spent the whole rest of the three hour show tipping right, tipping left, bending my head so I could look under his shoulder like an accordion monkey. 

I was scared to go to this show anyway cause I had to ride in a car with people and make conversation, in SOMEONE ELSE'S CAR, but I aced that guys, and then I had to be in a room with like 40 thousand people which is still weird since Covid, but I didn't mind just feeling like I was in the shallow end at the beach with fifty thousand of my closest friends all crammed in a semi-circle salad wedge like a half eaten human layer cake. My friend Rebecca said find 2 surprising things (she's always good with how to allay anxiety by making it a treasure hunt instead) so the best one was as we were walking into the theater with the crowd we were behind two older guys and one said do you wanna go in first (indicating the row of seats) and the other guy said I don't wanna go in AT ALL. 

It woulda been fun to sit by those guys.

Yes I realize I'm incredibly lucky to get to sit under the art deco Pantages ceiling and rip apart a show that people actually rehearsed for months just to make it this bad. I was imagining my plays up there and my stuff needs a much smaller audience and the intimacy of fresh awkwardness. So perhaps this isn't my venue.  

Before we got in I said Gretl better not suck, I'm here to see the tiniest Von Trapp. They kept picking up Gretl to make her appear younger but Gretl looked like an eighth grader and she could barely talk. I whispered to my niece is Gretl retarded? And then my favorite character Brigitta was NOT played by Angela Cartwright, the greatest Brigitta who ever lived because she played it in the movie sweet, vulnerable, kind, open and this Brigitta looked like a Swiss Miss Urkel she said all her lines loud and squinting behind glasses, and with no inflection like the director said NO, DO IT EVEN MORE BROADLY. The director clearly was sleeping with an intern and fooling around in the back row of the theater instead of watching rehearsals because that's how you get actors not soft and endearing, that's how you miss moments of real feeling, that's how you project nothing and you come away from the show like you opened all your paper dolls, cut them out and then bored, set them on fire.

The best part of the show? The art deco ceiling of the Pantages that looked like swirly mermaid hair and crazy cut out designs and vibrant dark blue and the velvet seats, and the hole in front of us onstage where the possibility of so much human beauty and art could be displayed for us as humans to watch and feel. There's always a chance.  

I thought of the real Maria Von Trapp, whose biography weirdly I had read a few months ago from the library, and how I had to skip over most parts because it was so crammed with god there was barely any space for music. And music was big to her. Also her real kids were named terrible names like Hedwig, Werner, Agathe and when they were touring the country singing their family act was so stiff and hymnal that no audiences wanted to come and it wasn't until they screwed up a song by accident once and started laughing onstage that Maria looked around and said oh man maybe we should interact with the audience, so we're like together on this, and THEN at that moment she married strudel hair and lederhosen and petticoat dresses with cheerful songs and cherubic kid faces and the Sound of Music became a thing. 

Layee o de layee o de lay hee hoo

The ancient Maria, in her ghostly yodeling outfit, musta been standing at the back of the theater with her ghost children last night, way back in the last row so she could see over the guy in front of me, and she must've been eating a fat hot Bavarian heaven pretzel, holding hands with god and shaking her braided head whispering to him that's not how it was at allll. But that show did pay for her to open a singing camp in the summers in Vermont. It's still there, Trapp Family Lodge. The summer camp that god and vocal cords built. 

For when you need a little austrian to remind you to simply remember your favorite things 

and then you won't feel so bad.

Mom Solo

Today I was alone at costco. Or don't get me wrong, there were 50 thousand people around me in the pepperoni pizza line, everyone looking at the one small screened in window that would yield our prize and everyone looked like if one TINY thing shifted there would be a balls out fistifighting riot. I don't know why everyone wanted the same pizza as me on a friday before memorial day. Why weren't these people getting their boats out of their neighbor's yards and going up to that cement lake in Castaic and pretending it's pretty looking at yellow water with no trees and drinking bad beer and by saturday - early saturday - realizing with trembling chins that this pizza line was already the best part of their weekend. 

But aside from the irate ladies next to me who were waiting for their chicken bakes and glaring at the newcomer lady with the heavy necklace who elbowed in front of them like they weren't all waiting for the SAME thing, and she is just a johnny come bust in front of us.

So I waited alone with my cart, island of the blue jules, I was wearing a gingham romper like some amish beauty contest hopeful, and I want to say in that melee with all the hungry people and the shopping people and the tense crowd like I'm waiting at Penn Station for my train home from NYU to Maryland at Christmas and everyone's cranky, I just stood there not really alone, not ever. The clouds of my children are always there with me, tugging on my hands, resting their fingers on the seam of my shirt, chattering about friends, complaining about a splinter, bouncing when they walk. I am never alone or without them. I have less people in the car it's only me if we're counting visually but when is something you see ever really someone's reality. If you were in me, once you've had kids in you and then spilled out of you cause they got too big to stay inside, so sprouting around you at grocery stores and thrift shops and county fairs and road trips and trips to the bathroom and beach days and on your back and in your lap and eating off your body and then taking driver's tests and eating on their own at drive thrus and making brownies blindfolded and making alot of noise at night laughing through their bedroom doors. 

So I stood there today after my summerish morning of tending my mom at our home dementia camp, and riding my young horse and old horse, and running over to get this junk at costco, and in the waiting there amidst the pizza impatience, everyone with their group, and me single to the naked eye but crowded like regular in my own mind. They're good company. I've been used well. They're right here. We spent so much time together. My motherly tentacles snake off me like invisible pink viney octopus arms and I curl around those imaginary my people, keeping them close to me so they don't drift off, looping around them gently squeezing them so they shoot out the top and then float back over, they never wander far, and I don't have to hold tight. Watery, comforting family shield.

Mom Solo

Keep Your Head Up

You know when you have a really great ride.

First, though, you like when Violet gets too excited and catches a baby chicken with one meaty paw breaking it in half practically, and you have to shoo her off angrily and the chicken looks flat but she's trying to get up. And then you curse that you spend 10 dollars on that baby chick and also you want your chick to be able to walk and be part of her group like she was one second ago. It's day 2 now and she is still alive, and trying out her wooden leg, one leg is definitely mangled but like Vando on the Lakers, she's valiantly trying to get up and play. 

So because it's nice out or for some reason because my heart is lighter, or it was just the perfect day, I don't know, my back has been really hurting badly like I lift hundred pounds horse containers or something every few hours (oh wait I do) but today I decided okay, I'm going to to check on the creek. I've been doing practice rides, which are my daily neighborhood hour rides every morning, and my horses and I are good at the regular routine, we need to have a creek adventure. 

It was Mags and Meriwether day, so I saddled them both up and we headed out. The secret path right outside our door has been having a peacock on it in random places like a car bomb. You never know when it might pop out of the bushes and hopefully not with his feathers all shot up like a balloon arch. Nothing a horse likes better than a fancy chicken who JUMPS OUT and then SPLAYS a million feathers like a sudden umbrella opening. Today I saw the peacock lolling under a tree and I made sure the horses saw the peacock, and then I talked to the peacock about NOT moving until we had passed him which he apparently said ok. He stood up, bowed as we passed and then danger averted.

I rode Mags first because she's my solid one although you can never say for sure, but Meriwether is only 5 so he can be a little skippy at first with happiness. So I rode out Mags and made sure to trot canter the flat parts to get the excess energy out. Meri was cantering merrily along with us until he SLAMMED on the brakes (a trick he learned from Fast and Furious movies) and we couldn't stop in time so I ran out of rope and lost the rope, which he was saying YESSSS and then he looked around for which grass he was gonna trot over to. While I fumed and got off my fat mare and had to try and get in front of him on the side most aiming at a busy street so he didn't decide to run that way. He found a nice bush and I grabbed him, fought down the urge to beat the shit out of him, petted him instead, got back on my horse, and off we went over the mountain, through the tunnel and into the wilderness. 

Right through the tunnel someone decided to put a mattress and that is always helpful to horses who don't know what a huge white rectangle is and aren't sure if it can leap up to smother them. We got past that and then it seems like there were several old lady groups on horses, I saw so many riders, which is weird. The women -I'm always looking for a fun person- and mostly they just look like they've been beaten up by wire brushes like RIGHT before their ride. They look like when you go in a diner in a truck stop? The regulars? Or there's the quiet rich ladies, who have on the tight zip ups with their faces all zipped up and the obedient dog following along. Then there's me, today I wore pants but usually I ride in pajamas. Dementia care has stolen my ability to dress at all, and it was never a top priority. 

Anyway the most important part is I am out with my horses, on trails I know pretty well, and we're heading to water and I feel good inside. I have been feeling good for almost 2.5 days, this release of burden I don't know why it's happening but I am starting to feel like a regular person. So much tension from trying to take good care of so many people for so many years, and I'm starting to pop that mom bubble, and see if I can keep the good parts and lay down some of the worry from all those years. We care so much, moms, don't we. It's a full time job. 

I try and breathe instead of panic, breathe and remember everything is fine. I am alive. Water is ahead.

We get to the water and it's always different, we slosh on in, and it's not too deep, not sinky, there's other horses so we go around to the other side of the river where there's no one and then I see a hole in the bushes where the river is coming from, and it looks like it can fit my horses. I think today I can go through those branches and keep going up the creek to see how far I can get. Before, the water was too deep there.

So Mags and I tractor through there and it's so deep and splashy that my pants and boots are soaked, which makes me laugh, and she keeps going, and Meri is keeping up and I'm thinking ok next time I have to try and ride Meri through here, we haven't done deep water yet with me on his back. The three of us slosh very far up the creek, and it's perfect footing, open space, leafy, manageable current, horses are happy and interested, and listening. 

This is really all I like to do. I like to sit on them and feel my hips hurting, and let them eat some river plants and listen to the water and feel sorry that Kurt fired himself from our friendship for a second, but then it passes and I am just still with the horses, deep in water, where there is nothing to worry about. Stop adding worry. Or as Linda says, and I want to make into a t shirt, Stop Thinking About It.

The water washes us all three down, it gives Meriwether some experience, it gives Mags some relaxation, and it gives me courage. Or wait I used courage to go into the unknown area, so it gives me satisfaction.

I video on the way back since I think I can capture it without dropping my phone now that I've done it once, but this also takes courage. One hand on Mags, one hand on meri, phone and crop. I'm not sure how I do it, but I do focus hard. And the water is so nice. It is flowing from who knows where, Denver I guess, I hope Evie comes sailing down. In the water there is no dementia, there is my mom whole, and my kids little, and every dog I've ever had, and all the dead people are alive and gathering every blanket they can find to make a fort out of the couch. Everything seems happening in the creek but only the good things. 

Navigating home is a little hard after the water for about 20 minutes. The horses get exiting creek fever and you have to calmly guide and distract them until they settle down. Their energy zings from the same thing I get from it, from all the good. You just wanna make sure a 1200 pound horse under you isn't zinging. Walking only please.

Then they settle and I switch to Meri to go up the big mountain home because it's his turn and otherwise he likes to stop a bunch and hope I drop the rope. (He's a smart goat) I ride him up the mountain and he is tiny but mighty and on the way down I tell him he will be my grandkid horse someday so he has to be reliable and mannerly, and he has only half of that down, half of the time. 

I get back and we do pass one fat snake but only I see him, this is the second snake in 3 days. I've only ever seen four total snakes after riding here for 14 years, and one of them was dead. 

I unload myself from the guys, untack, rinse them off, give them some of the sweet hay for the reward, check on my little mutilated chicken but she's still rallying, a bit sideways but that's better than no ways. 

There's also a bunny loose under the hot tub, he tunneled out of the hutch. If I catch him I'm going to name him Alcatraz. If he's going to take a journey that is also okay. I'm happy keeping just two bunnies or maybe no bunnies. Eventually. My making a home for little kids, it's okay if I have to do some other stuff. Other than what I used to. Like the fair we did every year. Now this year, first time in many years, maybe no fair. Unfair. Ha.

It's okay to be without. Just because things are different doesn't mean there aren't going to be things that matter and make me feel good. It just was really weird to be suddenly free. Especially since I wasn't trapped at all. I only ever felt free.

I just love the kids so much. We sucked every minute out of every minute. 

Now I get to see what else there is to suck okayokay come on no I want to keep feeling happy. Thank god there's no extra troubles. B lived. His son went to have a life somewhere else. The sun came out again after cloudy April. There is water. There is today. As this Irish guy on instagram keeps telling me softly on his walks in green green Ireland, Keep your head up. You're doin great. 

Stuff Your Pockets

So I am starting to figure out how I can still be myself without my kids. In one way at least

I teach a riding lesson once a week to two girls in their 20s, all tatted up, they're a couple, they're dopey and cute and love animals, and I was scared at first, to have to talk to people, and to do a good enough job to make it worth the $150 they were paying me to do something I would do for free, and now it's been a few months and even though I don't love the having to be responsible and caring for 2 hours on tuesday, I am finding that it keeps me from being lonely, it keeps me learning my horses from a newer angle, and I am getting paid. 

And most of all it gives me a thing I care about improving, how I can mix my teaching with my horses, both separate skills. AND today I supplied them with a snack chamber full of junk that I used to give to Bess's basketball friends, so I feel happiest that I can continue that momming aspect of myself that I liked, feeding people in ways that make them happy. Who doesn't like a little surprise.

I think I'm learning that what I like best is treat or treating and christmas stockings. I like anything where someone is handing you a surprise. It was even my favorite part of volunteering at Children's Hospital back in the day before I had kids and was thinking about joining the Peace Corps. You had to have volunteer hours doing the sort of thing you might do in the Peace Corps and since I didn't have a degree in forestry (which is really helpful apparently for them), I knew I'd end up working with kids and families, so I did my volunteering at that hospital. And in the basement there is a richie rich style vault room that is full of toys and stuffed animals and prizes. They would make you sign a ledger stating what toy you were taking and to which sick kid.  So officially you did that, but the other volunteers whispered also stuff your pockets full of things and give them out to visiting brothers and sisters on the the elevator. Which totally appealed to the robin hood thief me. This was the greatest part of the work there. Cheering up not just the kids in the hospital where you could bring them like a huge toy truck or giant bear, but the kids in the elevators that are stuck in a bad time, to pull out a fun trinket or a coloring book or a ball, this was the time of my life. 

So today after I helped the kids learn more little steps to becoming solid riders, I opened their snack vault and they stuffed their pockets and one girl said well I don't want to take more than one so I can have something next week and I said I'll put more in, take as much as you want.

Because I like that somewhere later today a kid is going to have a cookie she wouldn't have normally had and she's going to sit in a patch of sun on her couch that that cookie created, and she's going to think, my day is looking up.

Maybe this journey of figuring out Why I Matter is actually fun. Some of the things are so basic, it just takes me looking at them from a different angle to know that Hey, I already am that person. That person is all oiled up and ready to go. I am always going to be a nurturer because it is like liquid love. Pour it on like coppertone. 

Maybe the hardest challenge in my life will never happen, like learning to let a person touch my body who knows me, and also trying to get money for my writing. Maybe I should try to get money with my body and just touch my writing.

I did learn from my neighbor who grew up in a fam where the parents stayed married that she always thought marriage was a place you could feel safe and care the most. My view of marriage was it was the most unsafe place to be and never to allow that if you wanted to live. It's good to know that some things you learned can be removed from your pockets. Even if you can never do it. You can feel safe knowing that there is another, crazy truth. 

And save some space in that pocket for cookies for sweet kids.

Hopper

Hopper died. Okay not the real Hopper. If you watch Stranger Things, the big hulking sheriff with the beard, the huge man with the kind heart, saving the little girl, saving the town. 

This guy Bill looked exactly like Hopper. He came to our stocking party at Christmas. He's the dad of some cousins in our family. He was like maybe 50. His (newer) wife thought he was sleeping in, she went in to check on him, he was dead. Died in his sleep. Heart attack they say.

Nathan says how do they know it's a heart attack. What if she killed him. Where were the kids. How do you tell kids someone died. Do you not tell them? 

They'd eventually notice, I said. 

This guy once showed up at our house, on our lawn, with the two kids he was raising zooming around like spazzes, they were not easy kids, and he took them on when his girlfriend (the mother of them) became a drug addict. So Bill wasn't related to us except by trauma, and sacrifice. And dedication. Anyway he showed up on the lawn one day with a wrapped present and I said Bill hi what're you doing here and he said oh, we're here for the party

And I looked down at my pajamas and then I said um the party is next week end. 

He stared and kind of laughed, then we both laughed and the kids were running in circles because these two kids have more energy than some entire classes I've subbed. This guy Bill was huge, not fat, just a giant man, blonde, beard, apparently an ex cokehead and ex is always good when paired with coke head. He decided to fly straight and then took on these kids when the girlfriend decided NOT to be an ex cokehead.

The only other thing about Bill besides his tall physical presence was one time they were here at a party and the kids wanted to go see the horses. So they followed me through a gate and he turned around to latch the gate right and he said always leave a gate the way you found it. And I said hey I never thought of that.

And he was just at passover last month, and sitting at our table, and I came late and I didn't even really say hi to Bill because I didn't get over there and I thought oh well next time, he's so nice  and now that's his last time sitting there, with his smiley self, the gentle oak shading his sunny kids, he called his daughter Sunny, he had no idea that it's way easier to raise some kids, these are the ones he got and he was doing an incredible job where I woulda had my hair in an afro from that full time energy, with that gig. He was big enough to absorb it all, and not give up. There wasn't a piece of him that wanted to give up.

He had partnered up with this other wife after the willowy bio mom/drug addict continued on her way, exiting the scene. This other wife loved our horses even though she musta had some kind of injury cause she dragged her legs around, they bent kind of sideways when she walked like it hurt to move and she kept saying she wanted to help trim my horses, she used to know how to do horse feet. I would love to have help with the horses but she'd have to be able to move her body safely in emergencies and I sorta worried about her.

Now I really worry about her. On her own with those two, and no oak to lean on. He looked like he mighta held them all together. 

B said man I wish I had known him better. Why didn't I know him better? Because he was always on the periphery at parties, the dad of b's brother's grandkids. Part of the family but over there in that part, and a face we liked but we hadn't had the time to know yet.

We didn't know we didn't have the time. He didn't know.

The gate thing, and the missed party, this is all I really got from Bill. What about all the other things and secrets we'll never know. What about his band, and his art directing, and what he thought about in the car when he was alone, what did he regret, what was his loudest laughing memory, what moved him, what did he picture when falling asleep, and his family, the one he made from shards of other things. His daughter wasn't even his daughter. When he took in his son, the daughter was a baby of another man, they had no one, and he took them both. He adored her. He's the only dad she knew. 

The kids didn't understand when they told them their dad died. They were watching a movie and I'm sure they thought okay, well, whatever you say, but I'm sure he'll show up later, he always shows up. He's never not shown up. So. 

I wish we'd known more, not just a little pink taster spoon from 31 flavors. There's so much we missed out on. We always miss out on so much because life is just tumbling at us, all the time, and it's so interesting. It's hard to catch it all in your fingers, it just leaks out like mercury.

I hope he grows a whole forest, wherever he is. He was a grove of gentle trees.

Door #1

I'm in a place I don't understand. I must never have been here before. I don't think I remember myself without kids. I do remember myself though, I was just an untethered child running free and playing with whoever said yes. I wasn't serious. I was just living. 

Now after these 25 years of tethered, solid, living for others, family, I am once again here. Untethered. 

But now my back hurts and I work very hard physically to maintain a body I before just got for free. I am a little bitter about that. I spend half my morning exercising just to stay slightly too fat. 

Untethered. Well now things are much graver, I suppose. Because I'm closer to the grave. I got a letter from SS (not THE SS) saying I could retire in 7 years. Retire from what? Oh I guess I did make money in my 20's and subbing in my 50's. There is a huge gap in my 30's-40's where I did my best work, but it's reflected in the beauty of my children smiling and not in the social security payment column. It's too stunning to fit there, there should just be a glow.

I know what I'm worth. I know my writing is funny and true, mostly true. When I can. I know I've helped my mom in her sickness years as her approaching death coach. She said not to be afraid of death. So I just take her hand and we wait. And eat ice cream usually at around 4. Come over by the way.

I think all my life is open doors and I'm knocking but nobody is really answering. So I think I haven't sat and thought about it enough to approach the right door. I have been watching alot of Let's Make a Deal. Door #1 Door #2 Door #3. The agony of the lady dressed like a cow trying to decide where is her winner. Maybe I am scrutinizing what is the best door, where is the Deal of the Day. I definitely don't want a new washer dryer or any of those stupid prizes.  I don't want to be singing on tour like Billie Eilish.  I want to have quiet mornings where everything is still possible. I want to plod along on the trail until all my thoughts dribble away and I can hear the birds again. I want to be a passenger buckled up on earth, looking for my next adventure. I've had so many good adventures so far. 

I want to like myself. Most of all. She's been waiting for me to notice.