Axl Rose and Me

The story of how a 50-year-old Axl Rose brought back my mojo one steamy night in the Meadowlands

We have a lot in common, Axl and I.
We both were once wild and sexy and full of potential...
and now we are both chubby and wistful, but powerful,
reaching out to reclaim what we abandoned.

Ok, so maybe we are nothing alike--
he was an internationally known rock musician,
for years,
while I was simply a writer on the cusp of success,
for a moment.
But I think we both handled it poorly
and I think we've both aged,
and bulked up a bit in our midsections,
our faces puffy and blurring out the beauty that may have once existed.
And I know that I felt alive in a way I haven't for so long,
alive like the fireworks exploding over the stage
as he wailed into the microphone,
alive with the muscle memory of
how
fucking
badass
I once was.

I stood there, hedged in by rows of flimsy folding chairs,
trying not to dwell on the fact that we paid as much as a pair of plane tickets
to be 20 yards from the stage
or the fact that despite the solidity of the Dansko construction,
they were still heels, so I felt an intense desire to chop off my own feet.
But when “Mr. Brownstone” charged through the amplifiers
filling the stadium and my every pore,
nothing mattered but how loudly I could scream.
I let him welcome me to the jungle as visions of power and beauty filled the stage of my mind:
I felt the old me surge to life,
emerging from a dusty corner on atrophied and forgotten muscles.
I felt like somehow he had opened a door for me
a door leading me down a path I've been too afraid to search for,
the path toward the life I forgot to create.

And when the lights came up on Axl sitting at the piano,
playing us in on the opening of Layla,
I thought I'd slipped through the fabric of space-time
and had landed in an alternate reality,
one in which I'd continued writing, and was vibrant and confident, fierce.
I blinked as he transitioned to “Patience,”
still sitting at the piano, his face a blend of serenity and satisfaction.
He looked so comfortable with his fingers on the keys, like he belonged there,
like maybe he was still a little boy taking piano lessons with a prim old lady down the street; that maybe his life had been full of joy and peace instead of drugs and disappointment.

Through it all, I kept marveling that he was there.
That his voice was the voice I'd rocked out with for decades...
He was still the same, even though his sexy elvish face was hard to detect;
he still had the gift that drew him into the vortex of fame. 
And maybe,
even I could find my way back to the fire in me,faded sexiness be damned.

10 Years Gone

Every year, I spend some time thinking of the loss this day once brought to my family.

I try to  make time for a screening of The Big Lebowski, and a glass of Hefeweizen.

I always touch base with his daughter's mother.

Maybe some day soon, I will share some of these posts with his daughter; she's 15 now.

These are the posts I wrote in the aftermath of that horrific night...

and not one of them captures the pain of it all.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Loss for words

I'm still in the denial phase, I guess.

The police came to my door last night and told me that my brother-in-law had been killed.

The one who's been living at my house for the past year.

I haven't slept much, nor stopped crying much, but as always I felt the need to put something into words.

I keep seeing his smiling face and everytime I do, I shake my head a little--

cuz it's NOT true.

It can't be, it shouldn't be.

I will not be around much for a few days, obviously.

I am ok.

But he shouldn't be gone. He just shouldn't.

He was here.

I heard him come in and thought fleetingly of going upstairs to chit-chat a bit;

my usual thought.

But, I didn't.

No, I won't beat myself up with the "what if"s, but jesus.

Another fantastic "what if" concerns the police themselves.

He had been riding his bullet bike fast, up and down our small street and there had been complaints called in by a neighbor or neighbors (we're assuming).

They were on the scene one minute from when they were dispatched, so they were obviously already on their way.

So...what if they had made it there sooner?

He would have had a ticket, possibly an arrest for mouthing off or something stupid like that.

No helmet.

There are 5 brothers where there were 6.

There are people who don't know yet; friends of his that we don't know how to contact without his cell phone, which is at the Medical Examiner's office with him.

So we all sat up last night planning things and his poor mother is such a Mormon and he was just not, but we are all making sure he gets his wishes.

She wants to cut his hair.

We will not let that happen, and she will as always, refuse to accept that her wishes are not the only ones in existence.

She is doing well, though.

If I don't believe it, will it be untrue?

yeah. I know it won't.

Monday, August 14, 2006

How do I begin?

First, thank you all so much for your kind words.

It means so much to me.

I just need to pour out some of my thoughts, so please, please don't feel like you have to comment; grief is awkward for those around the griever and I understand that very well myself.

I guess I'm putting some thoughts here because I feel like you should know more about what happened and who he was.

First of all, he always wore a helmet.

He also knew how to handle a bike better than anyone.

He pulled that thing out of skids a bunch of times.

I was writing a post when I heard him come into the house, and I sort of assumed he was still here.

When the doorbell rang, 15 or 20 minutes later I assumed it was my husband returning from a client site and he'd forgotten his keys or something.

Before I reached the door I realized that was a stupid thought.

There were 4 uniformed officers standing there and I knew it was something bad.

My thoughts leapt to the stupid things G. could have done.

He has a concealed weapons permit and my thoughts jumped there.

They asked if my husband was home.

They then asked my relationship to G.

They again insisted that they needed to speak to my husband, and I said, "Oh no...What did he (G) do?"

They said, "He passed away."

The previous interactions had been like lapping little waves and that was a tsunami.

So unexpected, so wrong.

Then they came in and we sat down and they told me a little bit about it and gave me a card and collected information about other immediate family.

They didn't do the greatest job.

They need a better set of questions.

They never asked how many brothers he had, and whether they should send an officer to tell his ex-wife (as it turns out, they should have; she thought the phone call was a practical joke), and hesitated over sending one to his mother because she lives so far away.

Um, DUH, fuckers, you can call one of the cops in HER town and send him.

Hello??

I was coherant enough to come up with that suggestion, but I feel bad I didn't think of telling them to send someone to his ex-wife.

When they told her, they said he had had an accident on his bike, and she said, "ok, which hospital is he at?"

When they told her that he was dead she said, "oh, then you must have the wrong guy. He wouldn't have crashed his motorcycle."

And she truly beleived what she was saying.

The cop insisted that it was him and it was then that she joined the rest of us in hysterical crying.

Super.

That was when she explained how great he was on his bike--I never knew that he was that good.

So what the fuck happened?

Anyway.

I had to personally tell 3 of the 5 brothers.

And his girlfriend--

the girlfriend he told all of us he had broken up with a year ago.

The girlfriend I knew he was still seeing.

The girlfriend who...is such a fragile creature that I can't stop worrying about her.

My husband didn't get it; no one did.

But I had to find her.

She didn't know yet and I couldn't let her see it on the news.

We had no way of reaching her Saturday night, but yesterday I went to her parent's house and took her mother with me to tell her (I didn't know where she lived or have a phone number).

That.

Was probably the worst thing I've ever had to do.

She needed him more than any of us can comprehend.

I can't think about it right now.

I'm going to go down later and take her into the funeral home so she can see him.

She's not family so they won't let her in...it's so unfair.

So.

As for what happened.

I guess he was racing up and down the street, without his helmet.

So very uncharacteristic of him.

He was popping little wheelies, and just showing off or something.

He lost control and flew from the bike, into a tree.

A tiny fucking tree, like 4 inches thick.

That tree is coming DOWN, by the way. That goddamned tree.

It was the only thing he could have hit and he did.

A few inches to the side and we'd have a whole different story.

He was a big man, 6' 8".

How can he not be indestructible?

So. He died on impact.

I hate that the news story plays up the fact that he was speeding and not wearing a helmet--

I know those things caused his death, but that's not who he was.

He wasn't that guy who plows through life without regard to others (or of his own safety).

He was so considerate, so aware of other people.

He was aware of how hard my husband's constant business travel was on me; he was so kind to me.

We never talked about it or anything, but the softness in his voice, the compassion when he said, "Cameron's gone again? Wow..."

I should have

--ah, but that list could go on forever and it's pointless, anyway.

I know that he felt loved here, I know that he felt peaceful being part of our family and that is worth a lot now.

We gave him stability.

He wasn't home a lot, but we always had some good conversations when he was.

And I am so, so glad I got the chance to know him.

It's so weird. I go from being matter-of-fact and telling the story to feeling it and just sobbing again.

I didn't know this brother very well before he moved in here a year ago.

With 5 of them, I am closer to some and less so to others.

He had the reputation of sort of being the Asshole--

an ego as tall as he was.

He was Mr. Always-Right.

But he had begun to soften over the past few years and people closer to him had always said he had a soft core.

They were right.

He was an amazing father and a good person.

He really was smarter than most people, which is where the ego came from.

He was taller than most, too.

Got a basketball scholarship, so he obviously excelled there.

My kids were as curious as ever when I told them about what happened, full of a million questions.

They don't quite get it, but that's ok.

I had mentioned reincarnation to them a few days ago (as I tried to counteract mother-in-law's Mormon Resurrection speech...ugh) and so one of them said, "Maybe he'll come back as a bird." The other chimed in, "Yeah, if you see the giantest bird, it's him."

(oops. I kind of posted that mid-thought. J was here with french pastries--sorry, she wins the prize for best friend! Oh, and wine...I forgot the wine. That was more of a thank-you present for watching her dog, though.)

I guess I was nearly done.

I could go on and on.

I have been talking and crying non-stop since it happened, so the healing process feels like it's on target.

My eyes are still very puffy, and I keep forgetting to eat,

and I have to keep busy or I just cry.

There was something else I wanted to say about him, though.

I can't remember it right now.

I keep thinking he's just not here right now and then I remember.

Jesus.

Oh, I remembered the thing I was going to say!

Yes, saying "Jesus" reminded me, actually.

He was staunchly opposed to organized religion, and had often said, "If God himself showed up and told me the Mormons were right, I would still not believe it."

So.

As a person who hasn't lost someone since she herself was a staunch mormon...

it is interesting to wonder what he's experiencing right now.

I still firmly believe in an after-life, and I know he at least recognized it as a possibility.

I found myself, in the first hours after the accident, with this sense of excitement or anticipation--

I don't know quite how to describe it, but I was feeling eager for him to see what's on the other side.

Sounds kooooky, I know.

But I know he was curious, and I know he was skeptical.

But I also know that he was pleasantly surprised.

I better go round up the kids and feed them.

Just because I'm not hungry doesn't mean they aren't, right?

Again, thank you for all your virtual hugs.

I really am sorry for making you feel my sadness no matter how briefly.

But I guess that's how friendship works...we share each other's highs and lows, don't we?

Well.

I'll call ya when it's time to get high.

I mean...be high?

heh.

August 16, 2006

So last night one of the brothers left his Audi here,

and he always lets me drive his cars, so I took it when I ran out to get Arby's at 10.

(I had realized that I hadn't eaten any meals and very few snacks all day, so it was time.)

La la la, fun to drive a different car, etc.

And then I gave it some gas and the pedal stuck to the floor.

It freaked me the hell out at first because I didn't know what was happening.

Fortunately, the brakes still worked and I made it to the side of the road and put the car in Park and turned it off.

I was only out of control for probably 10 seconds (it sped up, I braked, then let off the brakes and it sped up again, so I braked again and got off the road), but it was enough to shake me up.

So that was pretty sweet.

Before that I had a cool chat with a convenience store clerk as she rang up my husband's cigarettes.

There was a rainstorm starting and she commented on it.

I mentioned how much I love watching the lightening with my kids and she agreed.

Then she told me about her uncle who has been hit 3 times!

Crazy.

I have things I should be doing, so I think I'll end this.

Just wanted to pop in and let you all know I'm doing a bit better.

Viewing tomorrow night, funeral Friday.

Ack.

Thank you all again for being here with me.

The obituary's at harktheherald.com, if anyone's interested.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

today I feel oddly at peace.

I don't know if it's because funerals really do offer closure,

or if it's because I am so tired that nothing seems real, let alone the thing I don't want to think about anymore.

I would say I've grieved well.

But this new feeling is odd.

It's like he's still here, just somewhere else right now.

The shock has worn off; I'm accustomed to this new and ugly information which has settled in the folds of my brain, rather stubbornly.

I cried so often and so hard that I guess maybe I'm out of tears for a while.

I'm not trying to get ahead of myself, but I have pretty tangible hope that my life will wend its way back to a pattern of normalcy soon.

The service was perfect.

Each brother spoke for a few minutes.

The oldest went first and was amazing.

I want a copy of his speech.

He is like his mother and I--a lover of words, both writing and reading.

I made a CD to play as background music during the one hour viewing before the service....

I carefully selected some of the somber tunes from among his favorite heavy metal CDs.

No Leaf Clover-Metallica

Mama Said-Metallica

Silent Lucidity-Queensryche

When the Children Cry--White Snake (or Lion?) because it was a song his daughter loved to listen to with him. She calls it "The guitar song" because of the opening.

Anyway...

I somehow included a Quiet Riot track!

The one that starts out, "Come on feel the noise! Girls rock your boys!"

jeeeeezus.

I felt like such an idiot.

The place was packed.

They had to add more seating and open an extra little room.

Beautiful speeches by everyone.

My husband even managed to restrain himself from chewing out the Assholes.

These are people who took the two boys just older than Cameron as foster children when they were in high school.

They have remained important to each other, but when Galen got divorced they took his wife's side and turned their backs on him.

It hurt him so much.

So...Cam thought he would bring that up.

Fortunately he mentioned it to me and I gently suggested that it would be more appropriate to speak to them privately.

Galen would have HATED for him to make a scene.

The mother in question attempted to give Cameron a hug during the viewing and he looked her in the eye and said, "No, I don't think so," but that's as far as he went.

Praise the jeebus.

I mean, hell.

I'd like to tear those pricks a couple of new assholes, too, but that wasn't the time or place.

Not only did they disown him because of the divorce, but they also were just plain asshats to my mother-in-law back in the foster care days.

They took all the credit for the successes of the two boys and treated her like dirt in general.

Fuckers.

And the interment was almost more than I could bear, but then everything sort of went into peaceful mode.

It was a gorgeous day and an absolutely stunning cemetery.

His little spot is behind a grassy knoll...that would make him chuckle...with gorgeous, huge trees around it--very private and with a view of the whole valley.

It is just above his high school and only a mile or so from where his daughter lives.

She will visit him often.

There are bunnies there, and squirrels, which I think will make her visits especially nice.

They just scamper around, cuz it's kind of tucked away in the foothills.

She is so precious.

Her mother is amazing with her.

I hope I never lose anyone this close to me again.

Well, since that's not possible, I'll just hope for it to be a really long time.

Friday, September 1, 2006

I am finally letting myself cry again...a little at a time.

It feels like months have passed since August 12, 10:30pm.

Not so.

Only 19 days.

That BareNakedLadies song reminds me of it...the way they count how long it's been since different things happened.

It's been 17 days since his room looked like his room.

It's been 13 days since they put him in the ground.

It's been 19 days since he sat on my couch and we discussed his friend's penis. hee...fairly large, so they say.

The crazy part is it really feels like he's still here.

It's been 4 hours since I told the kids to get the hell out of the bed of his truck.

It's been 10 hours since the sheriff's office called to tell us they won't be able to helps us find his other truck.

Big penis-friend has been driving it for a year or so and he hasn't been reachable since...19 days ago.

Saturday, September 9, 2006

I got home yesterday and the truck was not in the driveway.

I was slammed in the gut with a brief urge to puke, but it passed as soon as I realized hubby had probably just taken it for some cargo-related errand, but...

gah.

This morning we were watching VH1 Classic and Quiet Riot, "Cum on Feel the Noise" came on.

I didn't cry, but I was sucked into reminiscing about the funeral.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I am so emotional about this...

I'm a deep-feeler.

And it's strange but I really like crying.

It's when I think about him without feeling sad that I get freaked out.

I panic--"why doesn't it feel like he's gone?"

Oh, I also took the opportunity of a long drive last night to cry loudly.

Hadn't done that before.

It felt good to let out the barking sobs and suspiciously wail-like sounds.

And meanwhile I keep putting off sending an email to all the brothers to ask them for (content) contributions to the book I'm making.

Purple Rein

I'm obsessed with Prince right now. His untimely passing has brought him back into the forefront of my mind, and Facebook feed. His music surrounds me, and fills my mind, articles about him and videos of him are all I've been reading. I'm learning more about him than I ever bothered to know before, back when I still hoped for the chance to see him perform live. I'm in awe of his talent, especially when reminded of his size--5' 2" tall and every cell of the man was creativity incarnate. I heard that he usually played all the instruments on the recordings of his albums, which is astounding in and of itself. His huge voice, his huge spirit, packed into that tiny man. I read today that he had epilepsy, but I'd forgotten that. I don't think it was a much talked-about part of his life. I also keep hearing that he was a Jehovah's Witness, which seems jarringly impossible. How could he be part of such an uncelebratory religion when he was so full of celebration and sexuality? It doesn't jive. Maybe I'm jealous that he was able to keep his faith while expressing the depth of his artistic nature (which is not to say that I miss the restrictions and oppression of religion, but the division from my family has caused me pain). 

I remember the first time I really listened to Prince. I was a kid, probably six years old, in the oh-so-purple bedroom of my older, oh-so-cool cousins. Thick, deep forest of purple carpet, and matching purple and lavender bedspreads, and lavender walls all around. It was utterly perfect! On the tape player was Prince. The organ music played and, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today..." was intoned by an authoritative voice, and I felt like I was in church--but TV church, not my own congregation, which was so different from the churches on TV (the crosses, the stained glass, the glorious white-clad brides marching down flower-filled aisles were what NORMAL PEOPLE had, not us). It was obvious that this song was referencing something from this TV-style of church that I saw as the standard, like neighborhoods with sidewalks and matching architecture. My own life did not measure up to these standards: I lived on a dirt road in rural, coastal Maine, with my nearest neighbors my grandmother and my aunt and uncle (and their kids, the aforementioned cool cousins), whose houses had been built by the men who lived there. There were weeping willows and apple trees and wild berry patches, and creeks and honey pots; the closest place to go for candy was the vending machine at the tiny municipal airport a couple of miles by bicycle. We did not live in TV Land, and I felt like we were the only ones who didn't. So, there was Prince, in all his purple splendor, who would have been camouflaged by my cousins' room, speaking out from the tinny speaker, telling me that life is just a party and parties aren't meant to last, but that there is a party in the afterlife, and that we should just "go crazy." I take comfort in those words. This man meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Maybe to me, the most meaningful connection I had to him was the intersection of religion and freedom, of being different--but he owned it. He showed us all how it was done. He moved with grace and ease through a world that was not designed with him in mind--he was his own size, gender, race, religion...he was comfortable being himself, maybe. It's easy for me to say that with so much talent it must have been easier for him to find his confidence, but he had hurdles to clear that many people don't. I just can't let go of him yet. It seems like he should still be here, dancing and composing and being beautiful.

I wonder

There are so many ways to tell a story. Where does one begin?

I wonder if I'll ever actually write a book, or if my personal hell will be to start and stop and worry and wonder for so long that I just burn myself out? I feel like I need an audience (case in point: choosing to write here instead of in a silent, barren Word doc), and yet...I have no audience anymore. And no real will to conjure one. Probably I just need Valium or Xanax or lovely little bursts of beer. Something to untangle my bundles of nerves, something to melt the stress off the inside of my skin like candle wax......Not that there's not plenty to worry about, but just that I shouldn't. Instead, I should write. For no one, for anyone, for ME. It helps my brain to function properly when I put fingers to QWERTY and let them tap out the thoughts I can't seem to hold onto. I need a little less conversation and a little more action, but replace "little" with "hell of a lot" and we have a good start. I miss this. This...talking to myself. This stream-of-consciousness blurted onto the page. 

And so, I have stories to tell. Many, many, many of them. And I should be chronicling my life in some simple way--so that when I look back I have a story to follow, and I am reminded of nuances of my daily life that may have slipped my mind by then. I love the ten years-worth from teenagerhood through young adulthood that I do have, but I've missed the most important parts of my life--marriage, childbirth, divorce, remarriage, deaths, moving........I should have captured those things in real time. But I guess It's not too late. I can capture what I do remember. And maybe bring back some of my writerly skills and instincts. I need a mentor, a guide. Someone to encourage me and to provide focus for me. But, I guess I could just do that for myself :)

The Long Walk Home

(What follows is mostly fiction)

                                               The Long Walk Home

I'll tell you right up front: I blame the heat.

It was one of Maine’s rare heat waves that year, temperatures in the 90s with heavy humidity. To people in some climates, that may not seem like much, but in Maine, we just aren’t wired for it—not our bodies, not our minds, and certainly not our homes. Air-conditioning is a refuge only offered in grocery stores (or your own car).

The heat started on a Wednesday, the day before Independence Day, and it still seemed exciting—new and interesting—after the week or so of drizzly, 60-degree weather preceding. Trekking inland, to meet with my best friend and her huge family of siblings to grill pizza, laughing, wondering if the heat was a fluke, nobody bothering to check the weather report.

When he walked in, he swallowed me in that familiar bear hug—nearly crushing the oxygen from my entire body, and we caught up a little, in short bursts; not enough. He charged off with the men to chop wood or build something; I soaked up the ladies’ chatter in that happy kitchen I’ve known all my life, making plans for the next day, the holiday.

The heat was still in its infancy; a nuisance, but a novelty.

After dinner was cleaned up and plans made, I wandered back to the coast, finding temporary relief in my blissfully cool vehicle, driving slowly (for once) to savor the reprieve from my own flushed and sticky skin.

The heat crushed onward through the night, and in the morning we all struggled forth from sweaty sheets and ominous, shadowy dreams, feeling hung over despite a lack of alcohol.

The Fourth brought another trek inland, this time against the receding tide of parade-goers, but I was happy in my nest of cool air. Beside me sat a cooler full of humus and tidy little boxes of berries, bound for the Great 4^th of July Hippy Party I’d heard about for years.  

We tumbled carload after carload of children and food and drinks down the winding-weaving, twisting-turning road, slipping past trees and along rivers, as the heat pressed against our windows, clawing to get in and escape from itself.

When we arrived, it seemed that all the food and people had been there for at least a week, wilting in the sunshine, so I didn’t eat anything I hadn’t brought (which will explain how I managed to accidentally become a bit drunk, but we’ll get to that later). I met the hosts (friends of my best friend’s parents) and various musicians and artists and quickly lost sight of my best friend and her gaggle of small kids.

It was hot, heavy, mind-frying. It was getting harder to talk as the hours wore on, and harder to remember…anything. (Like who I was, in real life, or who else I was connected to out in the real world, away from this summertime haven of disjointed, alternate-reality-lined worlds I was inhabiting, as I traveled the country).

Gin and tonic? He said.

Any other day I would have likely declined, but this day, the thought of a clear, cool glass of anything sounded almost as perfect as it ended up being.

With a laugh and a flourish he handed me the plastic cup, already dripping with the sweat of evaporative cooling.

The dry taste of gin, the tang of the lime, the chilliness of the cup as I pressed it against my neck, rolling it across the skin—almost brought me back, but I was too far gone.

Chairs and blankets scattered themselves across the sharply sloping grassy hill (I hesitate to call it a lawn; Maine’s landscape is too wild and relentlessly fertile for such a tidy word), facing the field.

They made their own crop circle, I giggled, sipping gin and watching the men set up fireworks in the wide space they had cleared.

Something caught my eye, on the edge of the clearing. A teenager had climbed an unbelievably tall pine tree, and sat playing his guitar, long hair in his eyes, bare feet propped on the branch above. Maybe that’s when the day started to feel like a dream.

I haven’t been drunk in a long time, I said.

Oh, I remember you drunk… he said.

And then another gin, another tonic, another lime.

I heard “La Vie En Rose,” filtering out from some distant speaker and I knew that if I closed my eyes, I would open them on the same scene, but 30 years would have slipped through my fingers and instead of this crowd of happy strangers I would see my parents, young and dancing, laughing…together, alive. So I didn’t. I kept my eyes wide open, taking in my surroundings: trees crawling with moss, willows weeping over us (tears of joy, surely), and the green hills rolling away toward the setting sun, as I laughed and touched his arm, not wanting to miss a single twinkle of his eye.

This—all of it—I had not felt in years…too many to count. The blush of flirtation, the flush of libation; I was drifting away from my happy life, my good life, and existing only in that warped and delicious present. The heat was cooking my soul—like heroin in a spoon.

We danced to the Marvin Gaye song floating through the tree branches, swirling, twirling in wide circles, around and between all the tie-dyed and patchouli’ed guests who sat strumming guitars on couches dragged onto the wide porch, or stood talking in the shade (deepening into evening, is it evening yet?). We smiled more than we talked, so happy to be in the same place at the same time.

I wanted to press my hand against his cheek and remember, remember…

But the fireworks had started, so we ambled back to the hilltop facing the crop circle and the pyro technicians and the tottering children and the tired Moms. When the sun left, it took some of the heat with it, but not enough.

I was drifting in the muffled quiet of a mind slightly drunk, smiling up at the colors, almost-thinking, almost not-hot, enjoying the limbo of this place and its blurry lines. I was just getting comfortable in this semi-reality, ready to see where else it could lead, when the fireworks ended. The sudden transformation around me was jarring: from the quiet hum of a gently relaxing evening to the impatient hustle and bustle of parents lugging sleepy children and empty coolers back along the road to the cars lining it for a hundred yards.

I rode along in my best friend’s back seat, surrounded by her sleeping children, deposited safe and sound to my bed.

I slept fitfully, alive with this newly remembered vitality, dreaming of him in vibrant colors with undertones of guilt.

So maybe I shouldn’t have texted him when I woke up, to see what he was doing that night, but our friendship had lasted long enough that it seemed safe.

The heat dragged us down Main Street, rubbing elbows with artists and their patrons, from gallery to gallery to gallery. I should have been accustomed to the heat by now but instead, it was making me delirious—skin permanently damp, sticky; hair wild, eyes wilder.

I do blame the heat, but…I still ordered gin and tonics, well aware of the time machine they created.

As we waded through the exhibits and the waves of heat, we folded deep, earnest conversations between it all. There was an exuberant reunion around every corner, small town, hometown summer night; and paintings to inspire, sculptures to mock (they really did look like penises!), and live music. Music, music…it seemed like it was everywhere, but looking back, most of it was just in my head.

We talked about motorcycles and first marriages; we talked about mutual friends and Russian punk ska bands and sailing…but the conversation kept taking detours down memory lane.

Why didn’t you tell me what a psycho she was?? he asked.

Would that have made a difference? I knew it wouldn't have.

We laughed some more, and I leaned into him, looking up into his eyes, and falling back in time, to that other night…the opposite end of the spectrum: 60 below zero, winds slicing through parkas, as we walked the streets of Portland, New Year’s Eve, relentlessly seeking…

Here, in the heat, we stood in the dark, at the back of the crowd in the old movie theatre-cum-concert hall, remodeled to its sumptuous Prohibition-Era style, and moved to the unfamiliar beauty of Mexo-Americana melodies, while almost holding hands.

But it was under the trees, on the brick patio of the Mediterranean bistro, with the guy from the Les Claypool Band JAMMING-THE-FUCK-OUT, that I let the heat (and intensity of music) push reality from my mind and I reached out to cup his neck, drawing him down so I could shout into his ear that it was time to go.

We walked, slowly, but not because of the heat (the culpable, dirty heat). I swayed a little, and reached out to steady myself, but he was already reaching for me. The heat didn’t leave room for thinking (his girlfriend was in Europe, my husband on the other coast), so his lips found mine and we were flying through a wormhole, the years a jumble of mixed-up numbers—we were at a Blues Traveler concert, and 4-wheeling with our Subarus, and at each other’s weddings and his college graduation and my Dad’s funeral, and in my front yard, and in that bar (I’ll marry you, just move back here…). We kissed and groped, and whispered aching, broken words, and his hands fumbled with the keys and we stumbled into the backseat.

The next morning, the heat had lifted and we dressed and parted, leaking slowly back into the real world.

I blame the heat.

Driving with Dad

"I wish my Dad could teach the boys to drive in the snow..."

The words were lost in the competing sounds of the busy conversation,

but I faded away with them,

staring out the window as the boathouses on the Schuylkill blurred past.

I was no longer in Philadelphia on a warm September day,

but on I-95 in the middle of 

a blizzard, 

the night, 

and New England.

That is the last solid memory I have 

of my Dad's incredible snow-driving prowess.

He was spectacular that night,

captaining the Cadillac that sailed through knee-deep powder

all the way up the coast,

ferrying my tiny babies and I 

(but not our luggage)

from the airport in Boston

to his and my mother's snug little home in mid-coast Maine.

That was a good one.

And I choke up a bit, from the backseat of my own car,

as my husband manuevers Philadelphia traffic,

so much more deftly than my Dad probably would have...

because I realize this might be the first time I've missed him

in the 2? 

3?

FOUR

years since he shuffled away from this page of his story

and onto the next.

Which is not to say I haven't grieved, 

haven't sobbed,

haven't wrestled with how it all 

went so wrong.

But today, 

I casually mentioned 

(like he was somewhere nearby,

like there was a chance)

that it would be great if he could teach my kids to drive in the snow.

Those tiny babies from all those years ago,

would dwarf him now.

They could have learned so much from him.

I could have...

But here we are.

And maybe I did.

And maybe I can teach, 

or have already taught, 

what I learned from him.

But not how to drive in the snow like a pro.

Not how to haul lobster traps from the ocean

or change oil - spark plugs - belts

or chop wood efficiently

or savor the taste of Postum...

I remember tracking some down on the internet,

several years after they quit making it.

I guess I showed him I loved him once, at least.

Golden Haze of Youth

I wouldn’t exactly herald them as “The Good Ole Days,” but there is a golden quality to them, in retrospect, all the same. They are rich and gritty, dazzling and dark. That hazy era between naïve, lovingly protected childhood and the misunderstood certainty of the first marriage. Those years were sprinkled with tentative leaps out into worldliness and heartache (just as predicted), then huddling back under the shield of the great Man in the Sky—so safe and quiet here, so dull and formless. Still, a good place to lick wounds (self-inflicted lashings-out, a poor attempt at healing a broken heart by trying to stuff another into the festering gouges left by First Love’s abrupt absence). But then, still injured, badly scarred, to step cleanly from within that shelter out into the brazen world of delicious cocktails and daring sexuality—of bouncing over rutted backroads in a rusted out vintage Camaro, or relentlessly pressing out into the mountains in search of the peace and love so thinly promised by the hippies I wanted to be, or inhaling deeply of life, of lust, of incense and the smoke it was meant to disguise.

Facebook spillover

I was writing a status update, but I started to run long, so I decided to move things over here to finish up...

So, like, one week from tomorrow is MARCH. The month of March. WHAAAAAAT??? How is it possible that yesterday was Christmas, and now it's summer and I just want this ride to slow down a little bit because I have too many unread books spilling off my shelves and too many unwritten books spinning around in my head and--mostly I'm just trying not to think about how soon my little tiny (4-pound premie) boys will be starting high school/finishing high school and going away to college and...ok, who has a spare Zanax?? That is FREAKING ME OUT. I have enjoyed the unique ride that is "raising twins," but I do NOT approve of having my oldest and youngest children graduate at the same time. Panic. Big time.

Don't get me wrong--I am looking forward to some aspects of the "empty nest" situation. Like fewer loads of laundry and less general crap to pick up, plus less cooking, and more traveling, but........I guess I just can't believe this part is really almost over. And it makes me sad. I love them so much it hurts, and I always feel like I'm letting them down. Recently I have put my finger on that issue, and I believe it stems from the ultra-high esteem in which I hold my own mother. This causes me to always feel like I'm not doing nearly enough, because she was (and still is) utter perfection: kind, calm, patient, careful, caring--uncomplaining, unruffled. She just seemed to know exactly the right thing to say or do in any and every childrearing situation. She was serenly confident--no hubris or arrogance, just a gentle knowing. And I may be a lot of things, but I am not THAT. I am not HER. I wish, more than anything, that I would have turned out just like her. But I didn't. I am feisty and feminist-y and dreamy and irreverant. I just know how hard life is, how hard it has been for me to always feel loved or happy or whatever, even though I had The Perfect Mother, and it terrifies me to think I'm sending my little boys out into the world with way less armor than I had. But...oh! They're boys, and so maybe, maybe, please-please, MAYBE they will still be ok??? Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh. I guess I just need to focus on being Me and try to whisper to my subconscious that just because I don't match up, like a row of paper dolls, with my own experience of being mothered, that I am still doing a good job.

Nine Lives...or so.

I’m like a cat—I’ve lived three lives so far, or maybe more. I grew up sweet and pure, kind and quiet; then I flew away across the vast country and became a person who had shucked off that religiously heavy (but happy) upbringing, listening to harsh music and seeking hard thrills, I married a man and had twin babies; then I was set free from him and found a soft and welcoming place to land, safe and warm with my True Love. I lived on the rocky, harsh coast of Maine; I felt agoraphobic in the wide-open plains between the hulking, great mountains of Utah; and after a brief respite in the lush green and white-capped blue of my Maine, my Love whisked me off to perch in a little house on Iowa’s prairie. Is that six lives? Maybe four. I just know that it all feels like three lifetimes, or three tracks on an album…three volumes in the Encyclopedia of Me, three colors of my rainbow. I am Me, but that girl from Westbrook Street looks like a stranger from here, and that young woman losing and finding herself amid the mountains and red rock deserts seems like Me, but I can’t quite reach her anymore…this fat and happy matron that I am looks like a stranger, often unwelcome. 

I'm supposed to be studying for finals.

So I jotted that down.

Sundays

I was reading a story by Don DeLillo, and the characters were talking about how Sundays are depressing, their memories of Sundays on Earth, at least.
And it reminded me of the endless string of Sundays of my youth:
such a stale, forced-pleasantness to the day--
too quiet, too rigidly ordered..
Not now. 
Now the only depressing thing about Sundays is how roaringly fast they go by,
thrusting us forward into another work week, 
which turns into Thursdaysofast 
and that's my Friday, so it's alright again...

Well, well, well...

You never can tell...
Or something.

So, here I sit, procrastinating homework.
I don't have a lot, but I also have a choppy, busy day ahead, so I better focus.
I will focus better if I empty my brain of its chatter first.
Right?
Right.

Ah, there's the rubbity-rub of it, eh?
The things that are nibbling around, chewing on the edges of my concentration
are
mundane
worrisome
private
so I don't really want to blog them.
But I miss...
this.

I'm in a Fiction Writing class, and we workshop each other's work, and this week one of the stories is utterly captivating and I am sooooo excited for this girl! Yay!! I hope she writes books, and some publisher is smart enough to buy them and push them and then I feel like, aw, crap, there goes one more person in front of me in line for the 5% acceptance rate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Heh. But, ya know...good for her. Truly. I would rather read what she's written than write, if that tells you anything. I am actually awed by her talent and can't wait to write her "response letter" and tell her so! Ah, but apparently I can wait...cuz I'm here...doing this..........

That's ok. I needed a brain break. Now time for a shower-and-meet-a-friend-for-chai-tea break. Then more homework. Sure.

The post below is something I wrote for one of the short writing exercises we did for that class.

Ode to the Tallest, Lost too Soon

My boys were only 6 when their uncle died. Their Dad’s brother had been living with us for about a year when his motorcycle betrayed him and sent his 6’ 8” frame unbelievably and mortally into a sapling. I was there that night, I heard him come home. A Saturday night in August, 10:30. I was tucked into my desk in the newly finished basement and I heard the garage door open, then paced his long strides across the tile on the main floor, and up the carpeted stairs. I should go say Hi, I thought. Let me just finish this email… And then the front door slammed and I assumed he had left again. Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang and I assumed he had locked himself out. I sprinted up the stairs and opened the door for four uniformed policemen. I was relaxed and smiling as they asked if this was his residence, and said yes, and they asked if my husband was home (he wasn’t). They kept asking if he had a wife or when my husband would be home. Shifty-eyed; they didn’t want to tell me. What has he done? I asked, assuming he had been at fault somehow, arrested for a fight or something…not because it was characteristic of him, but at that point I still equated police inquiries with broken laws or broken jaws, not broken bodies, not splintered bones and crushed flesh not the end, not the forever gone, not that, not that. And I won’t dip into the well of emotional memory that was created in me like a gash that night, black ink of absence dripping through me, filling veins that ought to have carried blood, but how can someone be gone, someone who was just here, someone whose footsteps still echo, still burn across that floor, the place where I’m standing? How can that be? How do you tell his brothers, his mother, his girlfriend? How did I omit his ex-wife in my haze of shock, how did I not insist they send an officer to wake her, to tell her, to tell her, to tell her that their daughter now had no father? I made them send someone to his mother, even when they floundered because she lived in the next county, Uh…could you send a local cop?? Oh, they said. Oh, yes, I guess we could. And that was all the brilliance my brain could muster, I suppose, but it was almost enough, and then hours later remembering his girlfriend and finding her parents’ house in the morning and asking them where to find her. And her Dad (built like her, like a Finnish bird, with the accent to match, and steel blue eyes) pointing the way, and she knew, she knew she knew when she saw me. She crumpled like a delicate white rose or a house of cards built on hope and desire and she thought he would always be able to protect her, because she could practically fit in the palm of his hand, like a little china doll, and he would save her, he said, but why couldn’t any of us save him?

He was too tall to die, it was an abstract feeling at first, because the words didn’t form, but as they did, they were all that I clung to, in the first hours after the news, those hours between making the horrific phone calls and waiting as brothers trickled in, oh god, now there’s only 5, now there’s only 5, now there’s only 5! How can the tallest be gone so soon? You’re the tallest now, buddy, said one of them to the youngest…it was too soon to hear such a thing, but no one knew what to say, how to keep breathing, how to exist in this disordered universe.

I visit his grave every time I visit Utah, but my boys had never been. Seven years have passed and I felt like it would be good. They were funny; he would have loved it. They couldn’t remember what he looked like, but I assured them there was a picture on his headstone—a beautiful, colored photograph etched into an oval next to his name. Oh yeah, they said. He was so tall…

I blamed myself for a long time. If I had only gone up to say Hello, maybe. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone out at all, to play with the “YOUR SPEED IS___” sign, zooming back and forth on our little suburban street to see the numbers. Maybe I would have said, “Don’t forget your helmet!” Maybe he would have invited me out to watch, and maybe I would have had to see it happen…maybe he would still be here, and they wouldn’t have named the Philosophy Department scholarship in his honor, and his daughter would know his faults, and he would have lost his truck…but maybe he would have graduated, and she would never see his faults, and he would have sold the motorcycle. Maybe. But then, who would I pray to?

The last great adventure in my Great Adventure

The best part of all was the week I spent making my way from Utah to Iowa, with my boys.

We stopped in Idaho for a few days to reconnect with old friends, swimming and laughing,
and laughing
and laughing.

Then we headed north, through the edge of Yellowstone--
connecting with the oldest friend,
the one who was my siamese twin, my spit sister, my muse, my soul mate.

She took us to swim in the Boiling River and laughed at my kids' antics and sarcasm and short tempers.

She sent us off with greens from her garden and eggs from her hens!

We stumbled into a great, wracking thunderstorm just as we passed through Billings, the radio blaring a subtle suggestion to seek shelter immediately in certain counties, 'though we didn't know in which we were...

Darkness descended abruptly, rain obscuring my vision, except for when lightening struck and struck and struckSTRUCKstruck,
the mountains opening out to wide rolling plains, leaving us exposed.

The wind shoved us around, so we slowed to a crawl, seeking shelter under an overpass with other wary travelers.

This wretched storm slowed us down for hours, so our late start turned into a ridiculously late arrival at our hotel--4:30 in the morning.

Late check-out, please...?

We slept until 11, then headed for Mount Rushmore!! Because how often do you get the chance to drive right past Mount Rushmore??

I figured that would only add an hour or so to the 10 hours we had left to drive before reaching home,

but of course not.

The boys enjoyed climbing around on semi-forbidden rocks, and we enjoyed the monument very much,
 but then the day had gotten entirely away from us, and it was time to point eastward...
6:00 p.m., and 10 hours to go! 

Siiiiiiiigh.

Before we reach the worst moment in the whole 9,904 miles of driving, before I describe the look in the deer's eye as it ran toward, and somewhat through my vehicle, let me take a moment to really savor the time that my boys and I spent during that week of travel.

We laughed and talked and listened to comedians and stopped for snacks, and just generally enjoyed the hell out of each other.
It was an oasis in the storm of life, you could say.

And then, just when we were about to pass from South Dakota into Minnesota,
and precisely upon the halfway point in the day's driving--

the aforementioned deer, sweet little confused thing, was suddenly in my peripheral vision--

darting toward me and onto the hood of the minivan, and I was slowing down, and shouting many swear words, to the effect of, "I can't believe I just hit a deer!"

And as I slowed, I realized there was a scraping and my tires felt weird, and there was steam (or smoke???) coming from my hood, and the impact had been minimal--
(the kids would later say they thought I had hit a traffic cone from one of the thousands placed along long stretches of construction we had passed through.)

Everything was still,
and not just because we were envoloped in dark
ness
and corn fields and no city lights and no street lights and no homes/streets/people--
just soft night air and the ticking of a rapidly cooling engine,
and my kids, blinking,
and my door wouldn't open all the way, but enough,
and my gear shift wouldn't land in Park, so I set the emergency brake
(and only now do I realize how LUCKY/fortunate/protected I was that the brake held, and my kids and/or I were not whisked away down the slight incline by a car still running and not in Park...someone later told me I could put it in neutral and turn it off, but not then).
And we waited a moment, but first I called my Sweetest, because he would be calm and clear and would
know
things.
Because I felt rattled and cold and a little shaky, but mostly calm, I guess...
And he said
to call the police and the insurance company
and I did.
And they asked me for details and I gave them,
but then.
There were no hotels with vacancies for at least 50 miles in any direction,
and it was late,
and there was nowhere to sleep.
So the tow truck guy
(you're picturing someone old and scruffy, aren't you? Wrong! Young and clean)
suggested we hang out in Denny's until the car rental place opened in the morning.
Every person I encountered was as nice as could be,
but that still didn't make up for having nowhere to sleep,
especially for my kiddos.
But we made it.
And I am grateful we weren't injured,
and I am grateful we were treated kindly,
and I am grateful we have good insurance,
and I am grateful my car is only a 5-hour drive away, being repaired for 3 weeks*, because all of the above could have been a hell of a lot worse, but that one...we drove 9,904 miles before we lost our vehicle; and most of those miles were a hell of a lot further from home than 5 hours.
Yeah.
Coulda been worse.
And what an amazing summer of travel it was!

*turned into 5 weeks, and we had to fork over more cash than expected, but still OK.
UPDATE:
And on the day we drove to South Dakota to pick up the van,
after nearly completing the 10-hour round trip,
just 10 miles from home--
another deer leapt into our hood
in the exact same spot.
Undoing the work that had taken weeks to accomplish.
Thank goodness my husband was driving.
Thank goodness we were close enough to home to get dropped off by the tow truck
after he dropped our poor crushed vehicle at the dealer's body shop where we bought it.
Two Friday nights at 11 pm.
Two deer (dead).
Two months without my super awesome vehicle.
Two rental cars (the first one was fun; second lame).
Mostly I'm still just glad we weren't hurt.

America's Dead Sea

When I was a little girl, my mother described to me the marvel that is the Great Salt Lake.
"You can't sink in it, even if you try."
I was enthralled, but yet, when I moved to Provo, Utah for college at the age of 18, I didn't ever bother to find my way to the Lake...it may have been a simple matter of not knowing how to reach its shores, compounded by the distractions that engulf a teenager, away from home for the first time, and in an utterly foreign landscape, society, and living arrangement.
Small fishing village on the coast of Maine, meet highly-populated suburban mecca of the intermountain west!
I was overwhelmed, and distracted, soon-to-be utterly heartbroken, and the last thing on my mind was the enormous, heavily salted lake to the north of me.
Several years later, when I had abandoned my reasons for moving to Utah in the first place (think: R.E.M's "Losing My Religion"),
I drove around with Nine Inch Nails blasting, windows down in an attempt to displace some of the hot, thick air that pressed in around me.
I was in search of access to the enormous, visible, but out-of-reach Utah Lake.
I drove for what felt like hours, hurtling down each road that seemed like it might lead to the lake, each time discovering either a dead end or a boat dock.
What I wanted, no, what my soul NEEDED was a beach. A place to swim, damnit!
How hard should that have been??
Growing up on one of the fingers of land on the edge of America that reached out into the Atlantic ocean, amidst lakes and rivers and ponds and quarries had given me a false sense of entitlement to wander into nature and stumble across a place to swim. Even better, the beaches on the ocean offered instant relief from the heat that Maine was burdened with a few days a year.
But this place, this "high desert" was leaving ME high and dry, if you'll pardon the dorky play on words.
I was in tears by the time my search for ingress to Utah Lake had ended, a failure.
And it never really occured to me to try to find my way to the Great Salt Lake.
My one brush with its greatness--a 1996 Silverchair concert at Salt Air, with its boardwalk out into the lake, where we stood in the cooling darkness, flirting with the boy with the seatbelt holding up his pants, and his hot roommate...

I don't remember when it occured to me that a memorable thing to do with my kids (whom I was picking up after having flown them out sevearl weeks before) would be to float in the Great Salt Lake, but it was not long before I arrived there, a few days at the most.
At that point, instead of a hot car and an unwillingness to ask a gas station attendant for directions, I had AC and Google!!
So, together we discovered that Antelope Island State Park has a lovely beach with showers and bathrooms and picnic table pavilions for all your Great Salt Lake needs!!
I was thrilled, and a little amazed that I had lived there for 15 years and never even attempted this wonder of nature--floating in America's Dead Sea!!

And what a beautiful day it was...
It was hot, sure.
(Only outside).
But the sky was that rich, aqua-blue that I've only seen in Utah, contrasting against red rocks or jutting brown mountains.
The water and salt flats stretched out, shimmering on either side of the causeway that leads out to the island, antelopes grazed near the water, as if to say, well, duh? What did you expect?
I was swept off my feet by the place, entranced.
We made our way down the beach, laughing and full of wonder.
We passed through the veil of flies near the water's edge, turned back to leave our shoes on the dry side of the fly barrier, and passed through them again, watching them press away from us in gentle black waves.
With a bit of hesitation from some members of our party, we stepped into the stew of brine shrimp and salt-cloudy water, wading out and out and out--
shallow (ah, yes! That's why I lost interest so many years ago in seeking this experience--a drought caused its levels to lower and I heard it just wasn't interesting/good/worth it anymore!).
But that was years ago, in the lifetime before my last lifetime...I'm like a cat, I guess...I'm onto my 4th, now.
And soon we were chest-deep, and giggling at each other--
Are you ready? Should we try it? Who's first?
Well, me, of course...
And the giggles that erupted from how odd it was to have this familiar substance (water?) behaving so differently...hyper-buoyant, thick and giggling...
And afterward, water rushing through our swim suits, pushing all the ant-sized sea creatures off our sticky skin (well, not ALL), and cooling us back off...
It was everything I had never imagined it would be.
It was perfect.

Back in the USSR, yeah...

"He'll be deported," they said.
"Not only the drugs charge, but because he's an Armenian dissident," they said.
"He'll do his time in the Armenian Army, then straight to jail."
"He won't make it that far, though..." they said, eyes closing briefly.
They were resigned to his fate,
but it was such new news to me that I couldn't dig their vibe.

Driving east across the Salt Flats, California still in my lungs, the song came on from my time with him.
(you remember that song...it was the one that filled you with sadness each time you drove away from him, because you knew you didn't love him, but you couldn't stop ripping holes in the fabric of your life just to be in his bed)
As I looked out across the salt, the desert, the blue sky and mountains--
I wished for his wellness, his safety.
I sent out prayers to the earth and sky for warm arms of love and safety to surround him.

I remembered that feeling of
not loving him,
but needing him.
And the way he couldn't remember the word for "kitten," so he called them, "puppy cats,"
or pronounced pirates, "pie-rats",
or the way he liked to smoke a cigarette after...just like in the movies.
He was sexy and foreign, but his dark eyes were wells of sadness and loss.
This made him seem older than his years (but still not close to mine)
and all my reaching never quite brought him within my grasp.

I've seen him a few more times over the years--
we still share that pair of
(now married)
best friends,
spiralling away from the pivot point where we all once collided,
so far-flung now as to never even be part of the same Venn diagram...
I found him once after my divorce,
for old time's sake,
because I can never resist a good cliche or a good time
(which, to be honest, it maybe wasn't...
it was sort of sad and lonely,
but maybe that was just his anguish
seeping through his skin and filling the air around us,
always a lost boy);
and I saw him once after I remarried
(so thoroughly happy that no one else really mattered for years);
he was happy for my happiness,
and neither of us felt the need for a time machine,
just conversation
out by the pool, under the orange trees,
in the Arizona heat.

His delight at my careless way with him--
"Straight fucked me and leave, she did!"
I can see the delighted wonder on his face, that huge smile -
He marveled that I didn't cling
(I marvel, too, because it wasn't really my style).

A book on psychology or meditation--
something faux-deep,
in which I inscribed "Invictus,"
because I wanted him to know he was the Master of his own destiny...
and now it looks like he could have done with a little more guidance.

An Armenian-English dictionary,
so I could get closer to him,
but my brain couldn't unscramble
the alphabet used to compose those words
or make sense of the phonetic spellings
and we were further apart than ever
as I stared at the pages
of unuseable bridges between our minds.

His roommate, watching from the doorway, unashamedly grinning at us.

The Russians! Remember the Russians?
They were gorgeous, and mildly terrifying.
All the right curves and exquisite cheek bones.
...but with a sharpness that left me speechless.
Those girls were the epitome of intimidating, and maybe in part because they knew the world from which our sexy boys came.

And now, one flimsy immigration hearing stands between him and a brutal end.
It may be fair,
but I don't have to like it.

Road Trip Grieving

I felt so alive this summer, as I drove back and forth across this great, lumbering country of ours.
I felt...connected to everyone, yet complete unto myself.
But when I got to Utah, a thousand miles from my house, and 2500 miles from Home, I had a moment of regret.
Sitting in my brother's dining room, birthday cake frosting melting into a puddle between us, laughter and distant conversations echoing throughout the house as everyone moved inside to escape the sudden thunderstorm--I realized what I had missed.
The thought was suddenly obvious--I couldn't believe it hadn't occured to me when sitting at my other brother's table, on the coast of Maine.
When he carefully brought the urn down to the kitchen so we could sprinkle some of our father's ashes into the roots of the tree we were planting, a tree to memorialize the man we lost just months ago.
(Lost doesn't seem like the right word, though, does it?
As though we had misplaced the man.
It certainly doesn't fit with his sudden, angry departure, nor resonate with the man who chose to skip to the end instead of letting old age destroy his body and mind further, to drag him through the indignities of hospitalizations and whatever else he imagined his 79th year had in store for him that was worse than leaping into the Great Beyond.)
But however you say it, he was gone.
He was reduced to ashes, kept in a jar.
And as I drove away from my beloved Maine--
his country--
and meandered across the continent, I didn't feel like I was on a journey yet.
It was when I arrived in Utah Valley, after starting my day in a dump of a hotel on the western edge of Nebraska, just in time for cake and candles and laughing and warmth and beauty--
talking with my brother
that I realized I was on a coast-to-coast journey,
and I should have brought my roadtrip-lovin' father for one last run.
I could have buckled the urn into the passenger's side and talked to my Dad as I drove.
I could have ordered him a cheeseburger at the drive-thru
(but that would have made me sad).
I could have tucked a bottle of No-Doz and a box of Sunmaid prunes in beside him
(two of his staples from the road trips of my childhood).
It would have changed the texture of my trip, for certain.
And I love the trip I had--
the days and days of driving in solitude,
me and my thoughts, and music, music, music!
But I regret not bringing him along...
he would have loved it.
And I owe him that much, at least.

Home, v 2.0

There was a certain stillness that came from being alone in a car for hours (and miles) on end...
I knew that this machine and I were a team, and that we only had each other to rely on.
Not to be dramatic, of course. ;)
I also had my in-dash navigation and my android with google maps, so we were not exactly two lone soldiers, lost in the wilderness of the American Interstate Highways, haha!
We were...well-equipped.
And from Maine through Iowa there were plentiful rest stops, with food choices, and clean, lovely bathrooms...
(Wyoming westward is another story...and do NOT get me started on Nevada! Eeek!)
I also had my husband on speed dial, who could call hotels in the dark of night, as Nebraska's flatness spread out behind me, Wyoming's mountains approaching on the distant horizon.
He could call, and find out that the closest Holiday Inn with a vacancy was across the border and too many miles away in a Wyoming town I didn't have the energy left to reach.
That was the moment I knew I had driven too far, gotten too tired, because I wanted to cry.
So I would settle for a run-down, musty, dusty place that felt like the opening scene to a B-movie, or a depressing documentary, or maybe even a horror movie.
It was still $89 for this room with its polyester bedspread and crunchy carpet, but I hoped to be tired enough to get some sleep.
Instead, I tossed and turned, waking in a panic at 3 a.m., still caught in the guazey web of a dream about a western-movie version of this same hotel, wherein I had been taken from my room, undressed and redressed, and left in another room; the manager would not listen to my hysterical explanations, and I began to realize he was in on it--whatever "it" was. So I turned on lights and put on my shoes to go pee--shoes, because of the aforementioned crunchy carpet, lights because of the dream, the dream, the dream that wouldn't stop churning through my not-awake-yet brain.
And then I turned on the TV and let "How I Met Your Mother" soothe me back to sleep, and when I woke at 5:00, I was not rested, but it was light out, and that's sometimes close enough.
And Wyoming soon greeted me, looking more like Nebraska than it had any right to.
And then its mountains shoved into view, and billboards announced that Sierra Trading Post had a factory outlet in Cheyenne and I nearly peed my pants! That is my favorite outdoor supply store, online! Oh, to go to the actual store!! But, alas, they would not open for over an hour, and I was only just ahead of schedule, which would turn out to be actually on time--
as I rushed to Utah, to scoop up my little boys and head down to the other valley to celebrate their birthday with my brothers.
I made it, too.
I picked them up, and picked up groceries, and we dropped off an ipod for a repair, and we arrived in time to cook burgers and chop watermelon and they blew out candles and we talked and laughed, and I was Home.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation, Part 1

    On June 7, 2013, my family and I drove from Iowa (where we currently live) to the coast of Maine, which we consider "home." We spent two weeks there, then my husband and sons left, and I stayed on for two more weeks before driving to Maryland to visit my sister briefly and back to Iowa to rest and regroup for two days before pushing onward to Utah, where my boys had flown to spend a month with their father. I had originally planned to spend two weeks in Utah, and from there to go on a road trip with a dear friend, but things changed and I rolled with it. I rearranged my exit strategy so that instead of heading back toward Iowa on I-80, which I've used many times to cross this country, I would go north to visit friends in Idaho and Montana, then catch I-90 for my eastern trek, allowing me to pass close enough to Mount Rushmore to visit it--cuz when would I have THAT chance again?? It is very remote!
    Well...you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, don't you? Yeah. Pretty much Murphy's Law takes over at some point and all the planning in the world isn't going to save you from a CRAZY lightening and wind storm or that midnight run-in with a very determined deer, smack in the middle of the Sturgis Rally route (although, to be fair, I could have avoided I-90 altogether, knowing the rally was starting the day I was driving through, but who would have thought I would need a hotel just 5 hours from home??? But I get ahead of myself.)

So, that is the bare bones of how I spent my summer vacation. 

* 8 weeks and 10,000 miles (including side trips). 

* Crossing through 22 states, visiting 8; 

sleeping in 10 different states and 16 different beds/couches.

* Crossing at least 5 different mountain ranges or passes.

* Through Tahoe, the Salt Flats, Yellowstone, the Badlands,

floating in the Great Salt Lake, swimming in a river in Gold Country (CA), and the Boiling River (MT), visiting Mount Rushmore...

There are so many pieces to this great adventure, that I can only get my head around it all if I write it down.

I just hope I can remember the insights and the best parts of it all...

Missing Piece

Something has been missing from my life, and I am here today to (attempt) to end this misery! Haha, a little drama in an opening line, for good measure, there...
I have missed daily writing, since I let my original blog peter out five years ago or so. I have started several blogs since then, writing a post or two, then losing interest. I know that part of the issue is that I really enjoyed the network of blogs with which I was associated back in the day, and that blogging just didn't feel the same without that community around me. Also, I just didn't have the time and/or feel the need for blogging on the deep, primal level that I did when I first began, as a housewife with two small children. I needed adult interaction, and I got it. Now that I am married to my Soul Mate, I just don't have the same drive to connect with new people or to constantly connect with people outside of my four walls. We are content and engaged with each other most of the time, while also enjoying time with our friends and family, but every waking moment is generally taken up by this life we have together.......even if many of those waking moments have devolved into sitting side-by-side with our noses buried in our respective smart phones.....ugh.
So, here I am, attempting this blog thing again. Perhaps I'll just link it through my facebook account or something, since that is my virtual social circle these days...we'll see.

I have so much to say, so let's see if this blog ends up being where I'll say it.

Ashes to ashes...

So I say, “I have to pick up my Dad,”
and I know it sounds casual
and normal
as though I were picking him up from the airport,
or from some perfectly mundane place across town.
But that’s not where he is.
He is on a windy hilltop,
in a building designed to be comforting in its serene beauty,
its halls plush
meant for hush-
ed tones.
He is not exactly a “he” anymore, or a person at all,
but has been reduced to his essence,
the stuff not eaten by the flames.
There, he awaits his last trip home.
His last flight…
“I don't EVER want to fly again,” he proclaimed
last month
upon returning from far across the ocean,
        from that island
where we thought he was already lost to us.

Home we’ll go.
So that he may,
at long last,
rest with the peace that he has earned--
impatiently sought, in these last days,
but earned, nonetheless.