Dante the Wonder Dog
I'm fostering Dante for the moment. The pound is overcrowded, and he was scheduled to be euthanized. What's a mom to do? Dante is under a year old, likes to slobber, has a gentle disposition and a permanently dislocated hip. He also does a mean Jazz Hands.
A kachina, a challenge, an interview with author Amy Cohen...
A Hopi kachina watches my computer screen from over my right shoulder. He wears a sanded leather loincloth over ochre skin, collar and cuffs of soft maple rabbit. He stands two-feet high, but he feels as tall as a man. His protruding eyes burn my back, transmit an ancient message of sure-footed joy.
You will dance and you will like it, he mutters. You will run and you will jump.
I try to pay him no mind.
"Hey, we're the same age, man. You can't tell me what to do."
Mudhead knows I'm right, knows we're both children of the sixties, his back rigid with curved cottonwood, my mind stiff with routine.
A rancher's wife handed him to me, made me take him in lieu of payment when I handed her a bag of frosted cosmetics and an invoice for eighteen bucks, thirty-one cents. I wanted to sell him on eBay, collect my fee by proxy, but Mudhead wouldn't have it.
You will keep me and you will like it.
He's a difficult Spirit.
The feathers in Mudhead's hands shook as I rustled the pages of my local paper in search of the County Fair schedule.
"Hey, boys! Who wants to help me bake a cake for the fair? I'm thinking I'll do a triple layer lemon supreme, whattaya say?"
My two sons barely removed nose from book. Louis, 12, raised one eyebrow.
"C'mon mom, you always win. Why not let someone else have a chance this year?"
Martin, 10, chimed in.
"Yeah. Besides, we don't get to eat the cake. Those judges are greedy."
I glanced at the two blue ribbons stuck to my wall with thumbtacks. San Miguel County Fair, First Place, Cake Competition, 2006. San Miguel County, First Place, Cake Competition, 2005. Maybe I have gotten complacent, I thought. I handed the paper to Louis.
"Okay, you guys think you're so smart. Find another category for me to enter."
I swear Mudhead giggled. The boys smooshed close on the couch, legs extended against my Spanish pine coffee table.
"Uh, mom? Will you actually enter the contest we choose?"
I shrugged my shoulders. Sure. Sewing, painting, pies, cookies, tortillas, I remembered the list, the old-fashioned pitting of gargantuan zucchini against watermelon, remembered last year's bevy of upstanding ranch women carrying tater-tot casseroles laced with green chile, carrying small town tradition in the crook of their arms.
"Sure. As long as it's something I can actually enter. We don't have a monster melon in the garden."
The boys whispered, laughed. They sounded gently sinister, the laugh of children giddy on newsprint power. Martin stood and handed me the paper, his index finger indicating my fate.
Mud Volleyball. Noon - 1 p.m. Open teams. Coed.
Damn that kachina.
The morning of the competition my boys brushed their rabbits. Martin checked Snowball's toenails, her tail, and packed her and Midnight into a cat carrier. The bunnies didn't care, didn't know they would be judged for size, weight, in the "Meat Pen" division.
"It's okay," Martin whispered. "The rest of those bunnies might get eaten, but you won't. We just have to tell the judge you're for dinner."
Midnight leaned one shoulder against the tight wire bars of the cage and rubbed.
My stomach flip-flopped as the car skidded into the dirt lot framing the fair. I wore shorts and a tank top, Walgreens sunglasses, my hair pulled back in a long ponytail. I never played volleyball of any type in the past, never cared much for organized sports, for the concept of a team, a group that must move as one. I stepped into the sun, into the tiny midway comprised of a few barns and several mobile units. I made the sign of the cross.
I like to do things by myself. I like to run, to move, to dance. I'm not that crazy about flying balls and muddy people. Hell, I'm forty-one years old. I'm not in the best of shape, either, not since the car accident last summer.
I tried to stop my mantra of pain, of worry, of Girl Who Can't Play Ball. My boys hustled their bunnies to the exhibition barn. I walked past the trailer serving up plates of greasy funnel cakes coated in icing sugar, walked to the wide ditch over which hung a drooping net like a useless apron. Several people stood beneath the net, waiting for any other takers, deliberately covered in mud like Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cones.
I chose a side, kicked off my sandals, and stepped into the mud. It oozed through my toes with a satisfying squish. It smelled bad, dead algae mixed with lord knows what kind of field run-off, with the stale warm water from a rancher's steer-slobbered watering hole. A referee blew a whistle. He held a trophy, a statue as big, as bold as Mudhead, and I held my breath, dropped beneath the surface, let it coat my hair, my face, my arms-who-knew-no-volleyball. Rats. Forgot to take off my sunglasses first!
The game was on! I jumped! I ran! I danced, one foot stuck after another! I felt the spirit of Mudhead move my bones, move my bones, crack my back. I hit the ball once, just once during the whole damn game, and as I did, my boys screamed, "Mommmmmmmmmm!" The muddy man to my left high-fived me, and as we slapped hands together, we both fell backward into the slippery muck. Score one more for the other team! We lost. Big time.
I let my boys hose me down next to the pig barn. A cute rancher in scuffed boots and a goatee grinned, shook his head.
"God, you were horrible. But I have to say, I never saw anyone have so much friggin' fun."
My shot of glory! I am the muddy chick who just slapped that ball over the net at the County Fair!
********
I was asked to participate in Amy Cohen's Virtual Book Tour via Blogs. Amy Cohen wrote screenplays, wrote for television, wrote for shows like "Caroline in the City" and "Spin City."
Amy wrote a memoir, The Late Bloomer's Revolution, where she talks about finding herself later in life, in her late thirties, after her much-loved (and hilarious!) mom dies after a heart-wrenching bout with cancer. Amy and her dad both approach the single's world, both begin to date. Amy even learns a skill that most of us master in childhood - how to ride a bike!
As a single woman in her 40's, as a woman who has tried a million careers, who is still reaching to find herself, her audience, her sure path, I opened Amy's book with trepidation. There's nothin' like reading about someone else's perfect success to bring ya down, to accentuate your own flaws. But Amy's stories of searching for self in the midst of city life captured my heart, my laugh, and I realized she was different from me in nearly every way except the one way that mattered: she desperately wanted, needed, to live life as fully as possible.
I sent Amy a few questions, questions that I hoped would help you get to know her, to understand the warrior under the surface. Read her answers, then go buy her book! You won't regret it... 'cause if I can hit a muddy ball over a net and Amy can haul across town on a ten-speed, you, too, can do anything. Anything.
Birdie: Amy, I opened your memoir expecting to read yet another snarky, irreverent chick lit romp like so many other new books on the shelves, but instead I was surprised to find a deeper, more thoughtful, achingly real story of a woman in search of a way to unite her family roots with her growing sense of self. The book had some incredibly funny moments where I giggled out loud, but the parts that made me stop, made me gasp, were the intimate asides where you flipped a funny story to reveal the hidden darkness below the surface. How has your great sense of humor helped you face difficult moments in both your personal and writing lives?
Amy: Birdie (love that name!), first I want to thank you for all the incredibly nice things you said about my book. You can't imagine how much it means to me to hear that.
I'm actually convinced I've gotten a lot funnier as bad things have happened to me. In fact, there's no question. I mean I was no laugh riot when my mother was sick, but afterward when I got fired, my boyfriend broke up with me, and then the eight month rash? I always thought if anyone had caller I.D. at that point, they were screening, thinking, "Oy. What's happened to her now? Let her leave it on the machine."
I think humor is a coping mechanism as much as anything else. I feel so lucky to have it, because, boy, has it gotten me through some rough times.
I'm not sure I even would have known that I could be funny or see humor in those situations until they happened to me. But you make one joke about your face looking like you went through the windshield of a car or resembling a really bad diaper rash, and that makes you feel more like yourself. Plus, laughter is such a relief – sometimes the only relief in a situation like that.
I think people often think that because you can joke about something you're in denial, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's simply a different way of expressing pain and confusion.
Birdie: You and your dad share dating (horror!) stories and advice. Did you discover new things about your dad, about your relationship with your dad, through writing about him? Has writing about your family and friends changed the way you understand them, understand your relationship with them?
Amy: I think in particular with my father, I had such a great desire to portray him as I saw him – funny and so sweet and good.
We'd had such a rough road for so long. And so often he can come out with things that drove me nuts, like when he said that because I'd been "on the schnide" (chaste for a few months) that might make men think they could go to bed with me easily. That was his awkward way of saying, "but you can't let that happen because you're very special," (which he said.)
I wanted to show a side of him I knew so well, but few people saw. That was so important to me. Our new, incredibly close relationship, which I never could have predicted, has been one of the great surprises of my adult life.
I think it's been so wonderful for him to finally realize, in print, how I really saw him. It reminds me of what people say when they see themselves on TV, that you see yourself in a whole new way from a distance.
But what really thrills me is he has all these new fans! People just cannot get enough of him – he got an ovation at my last reading in New York – how great is that?
Birdie: As you describe in your book, you suffered a humiliating fall - and some serious road rash - as a young girl since you were too embarrassed to tell your friends you didn't know how to ride a bike. You decided to face that deep fear and learned to ride a bike in your mid-thirties. Do you think that we, as women, are improved by facing our fears?
Amy: I think we're improving because we're talking about things more. I've gotten about a hundred emails from women saying, ‘I thought it was just me feeling scared and insecure and like a big loser! Now I have a term for it. I'm just a Late Bloomer."
I think in some weird way, all my bad dates and failed relationships played a big part in my ability to confront things that scared me. After my break up, when I thought I might never get up again, I had a series of painful little break ups. At first, after each one I'd cry and fall apart for a few days or weeks or months – the guy who wore a beret and sunglasses INSIDE (can you believe I cried over a guy who wore a beret and sunglasses inside?); George, the musician. Even "John Lawrence," the newscaster, who I didn't even like that much.
But after awhile when each new promising thing didn't work out, I started to realize I'd survive. I'd be fine. I'd done it before. I'd endured much worse. And that helped me face new scary things (like bike riding) and know, whatever happened, I'd be okay.
I'm hoping women are realizing slowly that age shouldn't be a barrier, even in ways as big as motherhood. Which I think is a great thing because you can savor life in so many great new ways as you get older.
Birdie: Your life is about storytelling, about the art of storytelling through many mediums - fiction, television, memoir. Why are stories important? How do they help us?
Amy: Well, I think in addition to hopefully being entertaining, stories help us connect, which is a huge accomplishment in our increasingly disconnected world. What I've loved so much about this whole experience is feeling like we're getting together a whole club of LATE BLOOMERS. A sisterhood actually. I've gotten so many amazing letters from men and women who said, "I thought it was only me."
Birdie: Your book, at its base, is about evaluating fear, putting it to the side so that one can fully live. If you could leave your readers with one legacy, what would you want it to be?
Amy: What a great question! Encouraging others to confront their fears would be a terrific legacy. I would love to have people attempt to confront their fears, knowing if nothing else, they couldn't fare any worse than I did. In some ways there's nothing more liberating than confronting something that scares you and knowing you won out.
That's why I wrote the book. So people would feel not only less alone but emboldened. Even something as small as a friend of mine who was afraid to drive in New York and after reading my book, took on the scary cab drivers of the city. I love hearing those stories. And the people who whisper that they didn't know how to ride a bike well into their thirties either and were afraid to tell anyone. I would love so much if I could be the inspiration that says "honestly, just try it. I did it and it changed my life."
Thanks, Amy! And thanks, Mudhead, Louis, and Martin, for making me step into the mud, into an existence a little less clean and oh-so-much-more beautiful for it.
Click on the photos to view a larger version!
The Navajo consider Canyon de Chelly one of the most sacred and important places on Earth. They call it "Tsegi," which means Rock Canyon.
For more than 2000 years, humans have lived in the canyon depths, in pit houses, cliff dwellings, and Navajo hogans. Numerous petroglyphs and pictographs exist throughout the canyon, most of them telling the story of a cherished life at one with the animal and plant life that call the canyon home.
Several Navajo who live in and near Canyon de Chelly create original Rock Art pieces, paying homage to the the ancient monument walls.
Eugene Clark, a native Navajo who lives on the Navajo Reservation, painted this gorgeous slice of Canyon de Chelly rock. He copied petroglyphs from the canyon wall, painted antelope and hunter, Kokopelli, the four cardinal directions, ancient symbols for life and mother nature.
This piece measures 8 inches long by 6 inches high at its highest point, and half-an-inch thick. The rock is that of Canyon de Chelly, a gorgeous rich red. The colors are natural, vibrant. Eugene Clark signed his name and the year of his work, 2001, on the back of the rock.
So here's the deal:
Ask me to write something, anything. It could be a short story about the underworld, about life in ancient India. It could be a poem, a song, a Gregorian chant. Be as creative, as thoughtful as you can. Whatever idea resonates the most with me, I'll write. And the Creator of the Idea gets this beautiful piece of Native art.
Post your ideas in comments below. I'll close the contest at one minute 'til midnight, New Mexico time, this Friday evening. One idea per reader, gracias! (But chit chat MORE than welcome!)
A windmill marks the grave of a rancher.
I mentioned the local cemetery in my last story, but plan to write a full article about the place in the near future after interviewing some of my neighbors.
I uploaded a little photo album you may enjoy.
A young man I know fell off an outcropping of granite this summer, fell eight vertical feet, fell into a six-week land of cast and crutch and exotic metal pins. Shattered tibia. Surgery. June plans as broken, as painful as his swollen skin. I wanted to sign his cast, the blue sheath that hid the parallel scars, but he refused my pen.
"I don't want any signatures. I just want everyone to leave me alone."
I watched him hustle down my street, good leg out first, gimpy foot behind, dragging, dragging, rubber crutch-tip pressed into uneven brick, blue cast wrap coated with New Mexican clay, his armpits red with fury.
I told my dad about the man, the dirty cast, the way the sun refused to melt his disappointment. I couldn't read my dad's expression. He sat on my desk, in a five-pound box of unsifted crematorium dust.
"Dad."
I sighed, loud and low. My dog shifted her weight from one side to the next with a hollow thump. Her fur vibrated against the wood floor, echoed the song she expelled with one breath, another.
"Dad. C'mon. Gimme a sign. I just need one sign. One stupid sign. C'mon."
My dad didn't budge. His remains ignored me, ignored my exhaustion, my fingers stiff with forgotten words. He didn't need me, my pleas, my little-girl-lost frown. He sat on the edge of a galactic ocean, his body mingled with beach, with stardust, his mind so astral, so shattered, that any response he gave flew between the atoms of my heart, the quark and string that signaled it to continue, continue, beat, beat, continue.
The young man sat on his front porch, his bad leg extended, as my youngest son and I walked to the cemetery. The cast looked wary, heavy with dirt and anger. He didn't wave as Marty rose his hand in friendship, didn't move. I thought I heard a grunt, the shattered rail of ache against lung.
"It's too hot, Mom."
Marty lifted his baseball cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. We'd walked two miles, almost three. The cemetery stood just out of reach.
"We're almost there, honey. I've never seen it. C'mon. Have something to drink."
I held out a full bottle of water. My dad's ashes coughed. I felt it, three miles from my desk, felt him assemble and decay. Marty lurched forward, a robot on Mars, tiny robot with bio-skin near meltdown. He sipped.
The cemetery stole my heat, my fatigue. It rolled an acre, two, fifty, fifty acres of homegrown tobacco pain, of buried man, woman, and child. Marty chased a prairie dog, his robot battery satiated, aware. He didn't notice my surprise, didn't know the cemetery didn't look like a cemetery. I lost him to the pinon, to the prairie dog, the sky of stillness and fire. I didn't worry.
The plots didn't lay in elegant rows. They jockeyed for position, each facing the East, facing the rising morning Christ. Tiny iron windmills. Hand-carved river rock. Burned and etched slabs of pine. Dolls. Rosaries. Plastic Marys with deliberately tilted heads. A handmade garden of death, only a few granite headstones in sea of a thousand, only a few memorials of Rich Person Passing.
I knelt to consider a baby's grave.
Our little angel
Maria Romero
9 Days Old
Died June 11, 1987
Rest in Peace
The baby rustled beneath an uneven circle of hand-placed rocks. She danced with my dad, with my heart, with my boy chasing rodent, with the hardened heart of the blue cast owner. I felt my neurons move to catch the wave, the sign, the ink of fury rejected from surface, my surface, my surface of fatigue and sweat. My surface of sweat, overworked sweat. Marty lept into my view, twisted in joy, in prairie dog joy. I couldn't stop the tears.
At yesterday morning's flea market I added a smiley face in Sharpie black to the exposed skin of a scarred leg. The young man's frown shattered. He smiled, the first time in six weeks I saw teeth, saw his open future. My dog smiled too, her haunches spread against dry clay, in her vibrating fur blanket. My dad didn't smile, but the dead don't grin.
********
You can read the little writing lesson that goes along with this story at BlogHer.
An anonymous eBay bidder has informed me that if she wins the I'm-so-glad-I-quit-Avon Mrs. Albee eBay auction, I must smash the statue on YouTube! Of course I shall honor this request should she win. Do YOU have a YouTube request if you win the auction? Post it below! I'll pretty much do anything legal/PG-rated...
I'm selling off my lovely *cough cough* Mrs. Albee figurine plus some other Avon-related junk. C'mon, bid twenty-five cents so I don't have to look at her any more!
The clouds that blanket the Plains of San Augustin rarely notice the science traveler, the Mescalero Apache, the patchwork family with a bag of marshmallows and one unused match. The clouds push from Arizona toward Texas, push across the reservation, the dried lake flats, push past the twenty-seven radio antennas without a second glance. Every time I drive past the installation, I feel those wandering jewels mock me, tell me I don't belong in this wilderness.
Click, I tell them. Click. My camera speaks the only words we have in common.
I tried to describe the sky to Hector as he bagged my groceries. I wanted to tell him that his skin looked like the San Augustin clouds - mysterious, dark, rippled, old. I bit my tongue.
"Hector, I can't believe you've never visited the Very Large Array. It's incredible! Even if you don't like astronomy, it's worth the drive. The sky always looks like she wants to dump secrets, ya know?"
Hector shoved my jalapenos into the pink reusable bag I brought from home. He dumped a bag of rice on top of them, a dusty box of tofu, an ear of corn.
"Bye, Birdie. You need help outside?"
My Turkish friend, Ulak, grabbed the tote and grunted.
"No, thanks. We're walking. Good day."
I patted Hector on the shoulder and chased after my friend.
"Geeze, man. You didn't have to be so rude. What's wrong with letting him walk us outside? He likes to do it. He's my friend."
"Birdie. How can you let such an old man pack your food? He must be 80 years old. He should not be packaging groceries for young mothers. Where are his children?"
Ulak's long legs carried him across a vacant lot seeded with sweet grass, across Friedman Drive where the New Age acupuncturist presses needles into the taut skin of the pained. A starling squawked warning as we lifted angry foot onto compact dirt.
"Well, Ulak, he is old, but he likes to work. I don't think he has a family. Why not let him do what he likes to do? He's always so nice to me. Besides, I'm not a young mother. I have adult children now, and I am now officially middle-aged. Hector just wants to work. He probably needs the money. Heck, I know what that's like."
Ulak, didn't let his leather sneaker hover, didn't slow his long-legged pace. I struggled to match his stride, even though he carried the groceries, carried the heavy piece of twisted mesquite I found in the alley on our way to the store.
"You are not old. You are younger than me, and you look like a young mother. You are like that old man, you know. You don't let anyone take care of you. What is wrong with all you people in New Mexico? It must be something in the water. I think I need to visit more than once every six months. You need someone to watch over you. No camel route is long with good company. "
I stifled a giggle. Ulak let right foot lead, let his weight shift from one slim hip to another. His arms rippled with muscle, with years of hauling one bag of coffee beans after another. His salt-and-pepper hair flew behind him. So long, I thought. His hair got so long this year. We're all changing in ways we don't realize. He looks older, stronger, as if some artist continued carving him out of the mesquite he carries, carved a Turkish man on vacation in New Mexico, a man out of time, out of element, a man in love with an aging woman who can't love him back. I know I look my age, look forty, look forty-one, look as tired as the months behind me.
"Yeah, it's the water. Or the lack of water most years." I laughed. "But honestly, Ulak. Would you like me any other way?"
That night Ulak prepared coffee the way of his ancestors, let the ground beans boil with a thousand exotic spices. He poured sweetened milk into a tiny cup, topped it with the black pitch. My mesquite acquisition leaned against a stuffed bookcase, one end splayed with exposed root, the other pointed, firm, arching toward the sky.
"Birdie. Tomorrow we go to the Very Large Array. And then I must leave. You know I am returning to Turkey for a year to buy coffee and make new business arrangements. I wish you'd come with me. The boys would love it. My family is very wealthy and the schools are good. Please think about it."
I pictured myself in Turkey, in a land rolling more conservative, more modern, all in one breath, all in one confused breath, a woman with tattoos in a land she can't reveal them.
"Ulak, that's sweet, but you know I belong in New Mexico."
He didn't say another word until the turn at Socorro the next morning. The boys slept, still exhausted from a late night of Scrabble, from sneaking the rich coffee I saw Ulak hand them before bed. I kept my eyes on the road. Ulak cleared his throat.
"Birdie. Tell me again about the Plains of San Augustin."
He closed his eyes. The tires spun across a road tired of tourists, a road the Apache took when they left the reservation, a road covered in bird pitch and the skin of a thousand dead lizards. I let him rock to sleep. My cowboy hat pressed into my forehead, protected me against the rising sun. We passed the Bosque del Apache - a nature preserve filled with thousands of migrating cranes. An eagle squatted on a decaying cedar, his talons sharp and ready. He gave me the evil eye as my car sputtered past. I heard the flap of hungry cranes in the distance. Ulak snored. A strand of drool hung from the left side of his mouth. Ick.
I recited the story to myself as the men slept. The Plains of San Augustin. LLano de San Augustin. A flat place of deserted water, of mystery. A place said to contain the crashed Roswell spaceship. A place now studded with the Y-shaped formation of disks known as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Each disk measures twenty-five meters in diameter. I said this out loud, though I knew Ulak and my boys couldn't hear. But together, they create a virtual disk twenty-two miles across. We can meet the heavens here in New Mexico. We can carve the sky.
My charges awoke as I pulled into the empty visitor's parking lot. A signed warned us to turn off our cell phones, as our life signs interfered with Science, with ancient alien discovery. I pressed the Off button of my phone first, then Ulak's, as he groaned aware, stretched his legs below the dash. My watch read 9:00 a.m., still a wee bit too early for a tour, too soon to enter the Visitor Center and watch the endless film loop spout azimuth and incline.
We can watch the clouds and just rest as the sun continues to rise, I thought.
"Whoa."
My older son, Louis, age 12, scanned the horizon. The radio antennas stretched forever, one white flowering bud after another, each rising out of earth impossibly green with wild grass.
"Mom, it's not the desert anymore!"
Martin, age 10, opened his door. A blast of spring heat met our chests, our faces, our legs. The land shone green, looked strange, like a Midwest meadow, like the lake bed it once was. I glanced up at the sky, at the clouds moving in swirled formation, the beginning of a scheduled storm. I smiled.
Ulak stepped into the heat. His t-shirt clung to his back with sweat.
"Birdie."
He couldn't say another word. I knew this moment, knew it myself the year prior. You step into a land not-quite-New-Mexican yet all-too-familiar here, an intersection of wire and metal and sage. I lost myself in the moment, in Ulak's first breath of science-gone-loco. I didn't see the little black 'n white fella tiptoe around our car.
Spraaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
"Holy shit!"
Ulak swore! My boys whipped around - as surprised at Ulak's impropriety as they were with the stench that began to fill the field.
"Yuck!"
A skunk hustled toward the array, his tail high and mighty, tiny butt wiggling back and forth with aromatic pride.
"Fuck."
"Ulak!" My boys admonished him in unison. They laughed, too, as Ulak stood near the car, his body pulsing with disgust.
"Um. Did you bring a change of clothes?"
I sounded hopeful, helpful, as if my words would manifest a new t-shirt, jeans, sandals, and ten gallons of tomato juice to wash away the odor.
"Birdie. I did not."
I scanned the horizon for something, anything, to kill the smell. A garden hose rested next to the visitor's center, wound like a snake in the center of a small desert flower garden. What could a mom of boys do but the obvious?
"Ulak, take off your clothes. I won't take no for an answer!"
My friend spun around, tried to ascertain whether any other tourists might see his naked butt, and figuring he was safe, stripped down to navy boxer briefs and his socks. His copious black back hair stuck up in tufts along his spine.
"Ulak, I'm gonna turn on the hose. Sorry, this is one of those times where you're just gonna have to suck it up, okay?"
I twisted the spigot. Frigid water arched from the hose to Ulak's back. He flinched, screamed. The boys exploded in laughed. I continued to hose him down while offering instructions.
"Okay, now try to rub down the smelliest parts with your hands."
Ulak flipped me the bird. I squirted him in the butt.
"Excuse me? Hello?!"
A middle-aged man in khakis and an orange polo shirt strode toward us. His eyes still held sleep, still spoke of late night science, of listening to the pitch and roll of electrons against computer, of a wife most likely tired of abstracts and peer review. My boys leaned against each other, their sides against the car, holding stomachs ready to burst from an excess of mirth.
"Oh, sorry! We're just borrowing your hose!"
I continued to water Ulak. He held his hands in front of his boxers, but the cold water prevented any embarrassing displays.
"What the hell are you doing? What's with Chewbacca?"
The scientist nodded toward Ulak, who now was shivering from both the cold water and abject fear. I stared at my friend for a moment, realized that he did look a bit like a hairy visitor from another world.
"Oh, he got sprayed by a skunk. You know. Does that happen a lot around here?"
The scientist slowly backed away from us. He kept his hands ready, as if I the array had called me down from some lonely planet. I rolled my eyes and bent low to twist the spigot off.
"Ulak, you're gonna have to leave your clothes here. Your boxers, too. Can you imagine what they might smell like over four hours on the road home?!"
The scientist ran.
Two hours later, Ulak snored once more. My boys played rock, paper, scissors in the backseat, grand prize the last handful of Hot Cheetos. And my trusty cowboy hat - my beautiful black malevolent hat that knew the clouds of two hundred New Mexican afternoons - sat on Ulak's lap, shading his you-know-what from the desert sun. His natural covering of man-fur protected everything else...
Just a few days ago Ulak sent two postcards from Turkey. One for me, one for Hector. The one he sent me features a blue-tiled mosque glinting in the summer sun and a jaunty Wish You Were Here scrawl. Hector's is more simple - a man as sunburnt as roasted chile and a bored-looking camel in front of a sand expanse.
Hector, it says. I was wrong about you. The skunk sprays the old and the middle-aged and the young. He sprays us all. May you enjoy all of Birdie's groceries.
********
This is the story that goes along with my current Writing Lesson thingie at BlogHer. You can click here for the full column and links to three women who have written incredible stories.
I have an overabundance of fennel in my herb garden. I love eating the fresh seeds (actually fruits but they look like seeds) and adding the dried pods to baked goods and savory dishes. Have a good fennel recipe? Please share!
I also have a ton of Love-in-a-mist seed pods. My youngest son, Martin, likes to pluck the pods and crack them in his hands. They make a satisfying pop. Anyone want some seeds for next season's garden? They produce gorgeous fairy-tale blue flowers on long whispy stalks, and the dried seed heads are gorgeous in flower arrangements. Drop me an email - I would love to swap seeds for a postcard from your area of the world.
No, I haven't turned into a photoblogger post-BlogHer. There just seems to be a cache of local color in my camera...
