Lilly and I climbed a mountain today with the dogs. We weren't planning to go to the mountain, I had to first drop off some pants for Nathan at school. He called me from the office, the first time ever and said, "I have a hole in my pants." "Where?" I said. "At school," he tells me. His voice sounds so high on the phone, you know, like a child. At home he seems huge. A forty ton marble pillar, holding up Athena's temple in Greece. Calling from school, his voice wavers like a fisherman lost at sea. He's really only seven. With a hole in his pants.I deliver the pants to school, taking the huge dog and the scared black dog with me, as well as Lilly, who wants to eat my keys every time I carry her out to the car, since I'm grasping the keys close to her face, since I can't seem to carry a purse. I set her in the carseat and start wrestling for the keys, and for a 17 pounder, she's a hearty opponent. I win because I'm big and I have reasoning on my side, I need the keys to drive. She's small and cries because she doesn't know this and thinks I'm mean.
We go in to deliver the pants, behind the chain link fence they've put up along the roof line so as they fix the roof, nothing drops from above on kids below. But it looks like a maze of chain link, I spy Nathan through layers of protective fencing, over where the kids are eating lunch like they're out on the yard in San Quentin.
We go to the bathroom so he can switch his pants, which do have a hole in them "at school." Also right in the front crotch of the pants. He's tied his sweatshirt in front of his pants. He doesn't really care about being exposed, but I'm sure he displayed modesty for the sake of his less confident friends. I go into the boys bathroom, a realm I've never experienced even in elementary school. I check out the line of tiny urinals as he changes in a stall, and ask him if the kids use the stalls or go in the urinals. "Both," he says. I ask him if it's weird to pee in a urinal in front of other people. The idea seems foreign to me. His answer is a bland "nah." I guess for guys peeing in the urinal is a normal thing, like eating chips in front of other people.
His pants problem is solved, and I get to feel the joy of touching his ocean crashing blonde hair in the middle of the day, AND the excitement of finally seeing a men's room. He kisses the baby sloppily, happy to see her, then he dashes back off to the prison yard, and I head back to the car with the baby eating my keys.
I drive the white surveillance minivan up the street and decide to take the dogs on a hike up the mountain. I didn't bring the backpack or the proper stroller, but decide I can wing it with the plastic stroller in the trunk.
Luckily the ground is perfect after a deluge of rain a few days ago. It's half-dried into hardened sand, so the stroller doesn't sink as I attempt to take an on-road stroller off-road on the trail. It's like trying to drive through hard pudding. The baby is jiggled harshly as she chews on her toy in the stroller, and gazes up at me with machine gun rattled head jerks as we crash and bump over the terrain. Poor baby. The dogs are thrilled to be on the trail, and no one else is on it but us. We press onward and upward and I finally reach terrain that threatens to fling the baby outwards with the jarring hard hoofprints holes we're running over, so I break her out of there and carry her, abandoning the stroller and we start climbing the hill to a plateau. They're building new houses here, because why not, there's all this empty space, why not wreck it with 2 million dollar Spanish style houses. Huge flat lots have been leveled next to the mountain's bottom, and on one is a gigantic lake of water from the recent rainstorm.
Hank is walking right in, gazing majestically at the water around him like it's his kingdom. He bites at the water like there are huge floating dog biscuits, and he's going to eat each imaginary watery one. Owen follows him happily. The scared dog does whatever Hank will do. Wading looks good to Hank, then Owen boldly follows, the Gilligan to Hank's Skipper.
We head up the mountain, I put the six month old on my shoulders, a perspective she hasn't enjoyed yet. She kicks her feet and exhalts from above. It must be lovely up there. We get up to the first level of mountain and it's already kicked my ass. You don't really feel how much chocolate doesn't help your stamina until you climb for about five minutes. You start realizing the importance of, I don't know, carrots.
Tired already, the baby and I sit in the dirt while the dogs take off running. Hank wants to see everything. The world is his, and he wants to pee on it. He charges off up the trail, and I can see both the boys running at full speed for a long distance, along the rim of the mountain.
Lilly and I breathe in the air and look at rocks and tiny yellow desert flowers. She squints in the sun, feels the dirt. It's the first time we've sat down on a mountain together. Her in her size 3 diapers. She's the perfect companion. She's happy with everything. She sighs. She has no immediate needs, except to be there with me. We are together.
At six months, I'm finally starting to relax and be with her. She's so cheery all the time, except momentarily when putting clothes over her head. She's starting waving her arms around, and when you look at her she's so happy for the attention, she beams, grins, and laughs at you. She's getting two tiny teeth in the bottom of her mouth. When she sees the dogs, she laughs out loud. That's why I know dogs are good. Because the baby laughs when they come bounding up, smiling at her, panting.
I get up and walk with her some more. The dogs zoom by us, and then they start trailing alongside us, having done about a zillion miles of running in the last ten minutes. We head back down the mountain and Lilly laughs and yells to Hank as we watch him wade proudly into the mud lake and enjoy his water sandwiches. It's a sight, on the blue sky, white clouded day, when we don't feel like we're in Los Angeles. It actually looks pretty here after the rain, and seeing the empty space clears up something clogged in my interior.
We find the stroller and head back down, clipping the dogs on leashes when we get to the street. We get home, and the baby and I are off to the rest of our day together, her riding on my arm as I type, do laundry, clean up the kitchen, feed the bunnies. She's my pirate's parrot, and I'm her rowboat. We step over strewn, happy dogs, who smile at me from a mountain-freed relaxation. And this is only a regular Thursday.
That night I make chocolate chip cookies and Barry cooks spaghetti and we eat together like a family and I get to look at everyone with an unusual contentment, Emma crying because she says she hates the fruits and vegetables in spaghetti, Nathan spilling alot of cheese into his, Emma happy because she tried the spaghetti and it's not so bad. Barry sitting with us for once, and the baby swinging nearby and singing as she chews her iced round pink teether. Crammed together, things are good. I told Nathan and Emma about the mountain, and that we'd go tomorrow. And even though I know it's just a dirt road we'll only get inches up, when I go with them it'll all be new, the greatest adventure ever.
