The Gardener

My daughter is a gardener. She grows things. Things like chickens. And kitties, even though she hates birds and is only a little less fond of cats. But she overcomes her fear of feathers and felines and takes care of them anyway. In return, the chickens lay eggs and eat the scorpions that haunt her farm, while the cats keep rodents at bay. It’s a win-win as long as nobody gets too touchy feely.

Kate grows vegetables and fruit, too. Really well. Right now, an explosion of zucchini is threatening a coup on the cherry tomatoes, while a lazy, serpentine flow of watermelon vines shade the melons so they’ll be lusciously ripe when the Fourth rolls around. Volunteer kale showed up this summer, after a three-year hibernation, just to say “hello.” And, I assume, “eat me.” Katy gardens some things without even trying.

Both of my kids are great gardeners. I’m not sure where they got their agricultural gene, but it’s not in my DNA. The only green I’m good at growing lives on the cheese in my refrigerator. My son lives in Kentucky where good soil and abundant rain makes growing your own food so successful, it’s almost a sin not to do it. He’s mastered okra, tomatoes, jalapenos, carrots, green beans, and a host of squashes. A couple of years ago, he grew so much corn at his place that the local squirrels threw a party in his backyard and helped themselves to half his crop. There may have been some squirrel stew in the freezer for a while that summer. He never said.

Katy and Lee shine in their gardens, but there are other tender things they care for, too. Like the hearts of their children. They keep a close eye on the flow of influence in their lives, knowing that invaders can spring up like unwanted visitors at any time. Which is what I would call kale if it showed up in my non-existent garden. Just saying.

There are a lot of marauders when you’re the caretaker of a garden. You’ve got to be on high alert for freeloaders like wildlife and weeds. Come to think of it, weeds are probably the reason I pay other people to grow my food—I just don’t want to deal with the little trespassers. But if you don’t deal with them, they’ll steal all the water, light, and nutrients from your plants, and stunt the growth of your peppers. Some of them don’t just compete for space, either. Some are so toxic they’ll kill your carrots outright.

Here’s what I think is unfair about the whole thing. Sometimes, no matter what we do or how many books we study or how big our magnifying glass is, Weeds Happen. And when they do, we have three choices.

Ignore them. You know, play like an ostrich and stick your head in the sand. Maybe when you come up for air, the weeds will be gone. Let them grow however they want to and deal with it later. Or never. Maybe if you ignore them, they’ll magically disappear. But what if they don’t. Will they grow so big they make even overachiever zucchini plants look like almost-rans?

That leaves option two. Salt the garden bed. Shake your finger at the little interlopers and let them know in no uncertain terms that there will be no bad weeds popping up in this garden patch. Absolutely not. You won’t allow it. Go for the gusto and baptize the entire bed with a Costco-sized bag of salt. There isn’t a weed on the planet who could live through an assault like that. Of course, there aren’t any healthy plants who’d survive it, either. Afterwards, carpet the ground with some artificial turf and silk strawberries and your garden will be the envy of all your neighbors. It’s a poser, but no one will judge you for having weeds anymore. How could they? You cleared the ground of anything real and substituted life with fake plants. From the outside it will look visually perfect, this completely bogus, dead garden. But if appearance is what matters, this is the path to perfection.

I know. I’m frowning now, too. As hard as it is to face, the only way to protect your garden and deal with a weed is to pull it out. This takes daily work and an acceptance that there will be weeds. The best thing to do is yank them early and throw them away completely. You don’t want them to re-grow or infest your neighbor’s garden bed.

When I was a kid, one of my chores was to pull weeds. Probably the reason I don’t plant gardens today. It was emphasized, strongly, when the Weed Police showed up later to examine my work, that every weed I pulled had better have its roots attached. No yanking off the top just so the ground looked clean. Grab that baby at the base, loosen the dirt with a spade, and Get.Out.Every.Root.

So, you’re wondering, as you munch on a few carrot sticks, what does any of this have to do with parenting? Whether we’re cultivating a garden or a child’s heart, sooner or later we’re gonna have to do hand-to-hand combat with weeds. Don’t pretend they don’t exist. Look that little trespasser right in the face and yank it out. If there are thorns, put on gloves. In other words, arm yourself, but get down in the dirt and face it.

It’s exhausting. Thankless. Time consuming, sweaty, constant work. At the end of the day, we may become so frightened by the world our kids are growing up in we’ll be tempted to go to the extreme to shut it all out. Ditch the television, for example. Run background checks on their friends—and ours. Or even sell everything and move to Antarctica where you’ll never have to see another human being again.

But isn’t that the equivalent of salting your garden? If we want the future generation to have successful, life-giving, fruit-producing gardens, we’re going to have to show them what weeds look like so they can recognize the difference between crab grass and crops. We’ll even have to keep a watchful eye on our own lives, put on our gloves, and get face down in the dirt to pull out weeds of our own.

I am often tempted to run away. The worse the world becomes, the more I research the whole idea. I’ll admit it—I am an ostrich, with a tendency to either run or hide. But if I do, all that means is the weeds win. I don’t want the weeds to win. I want to be healthy. I want you and all your children to be healthy. And I want to enjoy real tomatoes, even if they do come from a grocery store.

I think we need to give ourselves a break. Weeds Happen. There’s no need for Gardener Guilt here. Being a healthy adult and raising healthy children, just like healthy plants, means weeds are going to pop up. You can count on it. Is it your fault? Not at all. Maybe the presence of weeds is even a good thing. The truth is every weed is an opportunity for you and your sprouts to learn what is good and noble and honest and true, and, by comparison, to remove from the garden everything that is not.

All of this is very hard work. But if you’re raising young gardeners who’ll one day be responsible for their own food, they have to be able to recognize a weed when they see one. They can’t do that if they spend their childhood hiding in an ice cave in Antarctica.

It’s exhausting. I know. Growing seasons are long and the day-to-day effort is often thankless. So, I’m here to offer my gratitude on behalf of your tender sprouts. You’re gifted. Courageous. Devoted and fearless. You are capable and fully up to the challenge.  You are enough. I’m praying for you. No one else can bring in this harvest like you, the caretaker of your garden.

I know you’re tired. I know you worry whether you’re doing too much or too little. I hear it in your voices, read it in your Facebook posts, and I remember. I remember wondering if my little crop would survive all the weeds I overlooked. All my fellow former gardeners remember, too. And we’re rooting for you. You’re not only your children’s hero, you’re ours, too. But none of us is ever in this alone. There’s a Greater Gardener Whose hand is securely on yours, watering and nurturing and protecting. He believes in you, too.

Happy Gardening, my friend. I believe in you and your crop. I know you’ll bring in a harvest to outshine the best of them. After all, I'm a big fan of yours. I’ve got a front seat view, right here in the produce aisle, and I’m cheering you on. Just sitting here, munching on somebody else’s cherry tomatoes and saluting you with a fresh, imported pineapple.

Once a gardener, always a gardener.







With thanks to j arlecchino for the use of this sumptuous photo of tomatoes, my favorite fruit and vegetable. You can find the original photo by following this link: 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/116797173@N07/15166693956/in/photolist-p7egHo-dr18RQ-seZZeA-nLLXr6-eUT957-9ArdEW-gPWmwX-o3pKQD-dpD55G-8nTrxB-efA732-8eNBD4-ajbeiC-cPRzhu-dWNTQw-9k6PW7-afffgB-j6UekJ-qT2Lmn-g92ek1-eX3GRi-c6N3m1-8rFGK8-53zQSY-ooUMzx-6sjzV3-nsMC8y-bPLBT6-cz9pEN-akUTRY-eiN3Xn-4EyfBS-gnEEof-axFpfA-oicE5S-3cCXZq-pKCXy6-d56GP7-iwLKFD-o2CFqC-6Rvncx-5JRAoC-cDU1s1-gFDPL8-agyThP-gxTQfe-EwU28Y-d8xd5u-2JpWDa-agvGfr

Perspective

There’s this mountain.

I’ve loved it most of my life. Massive and solitary, it seems to rise up out of the desert floor, looking like a battleship. I think they should have named it Battleship Mountain or maybe  . . . no, that’d be the perfect name for it. Instead, somebody gave it the moniker Superstition Mountains, or to the fit hikers who traverse its many hidden trails, it’s simply called the Supes.

There are legends surrounding this iconic mountain with its mysterious sounding name, mostly dealing with a gold miner named Jacob Waltz who reportedly found the mother lode back in them thar hills near Apache Junction, Arizona, in the late 1800’s, but never disclosed the location to anyone. After he died in 1891, the hunt was on and, over the years, it’s been reported that many people died under mysterious circumstances in their quest for the gold there. Probably should have stuck to qualifying for the Olympics—it’s safer.

You might recognize this range if you saw it in an Arizona calendar. In some photos, the front of this igneous formation seems to slope up and backward like a ship’s bow, while the rest of the mountain, naturally higher than its bow, leans back like a cruiser powering its way across a dry desert floor—like a ghost ship on the horizon. Every once in a while, when the snow level drops to two thousand feet or less, the entire length of this mountain turns white, and the clouds that hover above it look like white smoke as they roll back away from this rock ship’s stacks. That’s my favorite view of the Supes—when nature goes overboard with the props that enhance its battleship illusion.

How’s that for a solid perspective? But even though I live southwest of this mountain where the profile I see everyday is the one I just described, the Superstitions aren’t one dimensional. They are multi-dimensional. I’ve viewed this wilderness area from the sky, from the north, from its base, and from a few other locations I’m incapable of explaining because I basically have little to no sense of direction. But trust me when I say that my favorite perspective of the Supes is still only one side of them.

There are other sides. And if you were to drive me blindfolded to one of those other sides without telling me where we were headed, then ask me to identify what mountain I now faced, I don’t think I could do it. Because that range is not a battleship. It only looks like one from where I live. Which, as I said, is the side I prefer to admire.

But what if someone lives north of the Supes and never once sees what I see from my perspective? Whose view is the right one? Is there a right one? Or maybe it takes each of us, looking at as many sides as possible, to really discover what makes up this unique mountain.

I can be very passionate about my point of view. I’ll bet you are about yours, too. It can be challenging to put my views on hold long enough to listen well to the perspective of someone else, but it’s worth it. I don’t have to change your point of view. You don’t need to change mine, either. Maybe I’ll drive around and explore the north side of the issue sometime and, if the time is right, I may even find that I like that view better. But even if I don’t, it’s becoming clear to me that there are good reasons we all have our points of view. Right now, I simply live on the south side of the Superstitions, which explains why I think it looks like a battleship. And there are good reasons why someone else may describe it as a cluster of rugged pillars. Or the open mouth of a dinosaur. It all depends on where they’re standing now and where they’ve stood before. There’s no reason for me to feel threatened by another point of view. We’re just telling one another what we see and how we perceive things from that position.

I have friends who are fond of saying that my perspective is a hundred per cent accurate all the time. They also say theirs is accurate a hundred per cent of the time. Which I thought was confusing until I considered this mountain. But now, I think I get it. The point isn’t for me to win you over to my side, or you to win me to yours. The point is for us to listen well, comprehend someone else’s point of view, and above all, respect the place where we each stand.

That’s what I think, anyway. It’s just my perspective from this side of the mountain.

Shock and Awe

Three days. Three women. Two silos. One road trip. No itinerary.

Men hate trips like that. They want to schedule everything. No deviation, no surprises. Just one big plan—drive straight through with no bathroom breaks. Well, we made a plan. It looked like this. “Drive to Waco and . . . dowhateverwewant!”

Plans are for architects. Serendipity is for women. And we serendipitized Waco. Shock and Awe. It was the no-plan plan. I am still in shock.

The truth is, this was my third trip there. My sister Lynette and I first saw the majestic, gleaming twin icons of the Silo District together two years ago. We were so starstruck during that experience, we even asked the college girl behind the counter at Magnolia Market for her autograph. We ate cupcakes at every meal for the whole weekend, hogged the giant grown-up swing in the courtyard for about, oh, forever, and went home with bruises from pinching ourselves so much. “We have to come back to Waco!” we exclaimed when the trip was over.

My husband, who admits to giving up his man card to watch girl TV with me sometimes, enjoys fixer upper shows.  Merely an appetizer before the main course of golf tournaments and zombie movies, still he watches them. He wanted to see Waco, too. So, at the end of a road trip last spring, we stopped by. It was . . . disappointing. Screaming hot the afternoon we arrived, the line at the bakery was a mile long as was the line at the newly opened Magnolia Table restaurant, so we skipped both. The next morning, typical of the Midwest (“if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”), temperatures fell to forty degrees and rainy, we spent the day freezing to death, and I came home with a cold. “I’m not that impressed by Waco,” my husband said. He’s not really a cupcake kind of guy, so I understood.

I, however, am smitten by this town. The only way to enjoy it, though—forgive me, Baby—is with girlfriends. It’s the truth. Shopping is a sport for women. Just like I don’t enjoy feeding worms to smelly fish for hours on end in case I snag something I don’t even want to eat, men don’t enjoy wandering through a room full of things they never knew they needed. It’s that whole itinerary thing again. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but I’m pretty sure I’ll find it anyway.

Pam—my sister from another mother—and Lynette and I are professional shoppers. When that weary patrolman pulled us over in Alamogordo, Pam explained our rate of speed by telling him, “There’s a shopping crisis in Waco, and we’re the Shopping Crisis Management Team.”

He blinked a couple of times, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay. Drive safe.” I’m pretty sure that guy is a married man.

We hit the ground running our first full day in the District. Ignoring the smell of fresh pastries and caramel corn in the air, we burst onto the busy scene inside Magnolia Market and immediately lost track of Pam.

Engulfed by hundreds of people in the two-story converted cotton gin, it was easy to do. One minute you’re inspecting a bouquet of stems covered in cotton bolls, and the next thing you know your sister has disappeared, too. There’s no point in searching for them, though. All aisles lead to checkout and if there’s one thing I know about women shoppers in Waco, it’s this—you gonna buy somethin’.

We met up with loaded bags, went outside, and immediately realized we were on the verge of starvation. All those food trucks lining the perimeter of the marketplace told us so. We found a picnic table in the shade of the Silos, dumped our treasures, and one by one zoomed in on our lunch options. Alabama Sweet Tea in take-home Mason jars, macaroni and cheese, chicken salad on croissants, and—drum roll, please—CUPCAKES.

I would drive all the way to Waco, Texas, through one thousand miles of cops and desert and dinky, deserted towns just for one chocolate cupcake piled high with white icing. And I did. And I will do it again. Unequivocally, Silos Baking Co. has the best cupcakes I have ever put in my mouth, and sister, I have put some cupcakes in my mouth. If you aren’t an icing lover, you will completely disagree with me, but you will no longer be my friend. Just hand over your cupcake and have a nice life.

My husband knows how much I enjoy shopping with my sister Lynette. He also knows Target and World Market have a picture of Pam and me posted on every store they own in these lower forty-eight. Not because they admire us, but because they fear us. In particular, they fear Pam. In particular, I also fear Pam and my husband Rob knows that. His bank account knows it keenly. 

He warned me to be careful. “You know how she is with shopping carts,” he said. I know only too well. And that’s the reason I had a secret conversation with my sister. “No matter what Pam does, you have my back, right?” The little liar held up her Girl Scout hand and swore she did. It was just an empty promise. She was never a Girl Scout.

Last year, while Pam and I were touring the aisles of World Market, I had a shopping cart and Pam had a shopping cart. That was my first mistake. From now on, I will always put my crap in her cart, and here’s why. When I got home and Pamela was safely on her way back to Tucson, I emptied my bag of goodies on the kitchen island and discovered a four-dollar cookie cutter of a nekkid man that I did not buy. Not on purpose. Immediately I knew who to blame.

Did you put a cookie cutter in my cart? I texted my sticky-fingered friend.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
You’re lying.
Okay, I did.
You owe me four bucks!
Whatever.

She still owes me four bucks. And every time we go shopping together, by the time I end up at the checkout counter, there are always weird things I’ve never even seen before in my cart. Usually, I catch them before I pay for them. But, I’m getting old. And tired. And Pam is younger than me and works out. I need my own shopping cart. I also need a security guard to keep her from throwing things in my cart while I’m reading the ingredient list on a tube of toothpaste. That’s why I enlisted Lynette to watch my back. She promised. Don’t forget that.

I know, we were the Shopping Crisis Management Team. But Pam has a secret motivation for shopping—she is a peculiar kind of kleptomaniac. I don’t really know what to call her disorder. It’s not that she steals things—she doesn’t. She’s as honest as the day is, well, she has a great smile. And she’s as devoted as they come unless she’s shopping with a friend. Then she’s sneaky. And I’m a slow learner.

While we were in Waco, I needed a couple of things from Target. While Pam parked, I grabbed a cart and ran into the store before she could follow me, leaving her and Lynette to their own devices. But I felt safe. Lynette had my back. I breathed a sigh of relief and leisurely searched out the three or four things I needed. Suddenly my phone lit up.

           Where you is? Pam’s about to page you!
          Don’t let her do that.

Pam has had me paged at least three times over the years, usually calling me Red or Mike over a store’s intercom. I’d refuse to respond but it always cracks me up. I mean, who does that? Once, after we’d been shopping together, we were in separate cars and went through a Starbucks drive-thru on our way to the next store. When I reached the drive-up, the nervous barista shoved my drink out the window, eyeing me suspiciously as I reached for it. “The car in front of you paid for your drink,” she whispered, pointing at Pam’s departing Cadillac. When I met up with Pam later, she said she’d told the girl I have mental problems, that she felt sorry for me, and for the teenager to be careful when she gave me my beverage. I’ve never returned to that Starbucks.

My phone lit up again.

She’s looking for the bathroom! But she’s thrown stuff for you in my basket.
Dump the basket. I’ll bring you another one.
Ok! I don’t actually need one-I only have 2 things.
Just walk away. She’s some twisted kind of claustrophobic.
What? You mean kleptomaniac?
Whatever.
I’m headed to the bathroom now. Pam’s alone and on her own.
Genuflecting as we speak.
But you’re not Catholic!
I am now.
Run!!!

It was too late. Pam found me in cosmetics, and by the time I found what I needed she’d filled my cart with sprinkler heads, cauliflower, a family size pack of toilet paper, and disappearing ink. I scooped it all out and left it on an end cap, but I had to go down one more aisle before I could make a run for the checkout lanes. Lynette showed up just as Pam put one arm on the counter in aisle seventeen and in one swift swoop slid everything on the shelf down into my cart, doing a high five with herself when nothing fell on the floor.

That’s when I gave up. Defeated, I dropped my head and my arms and stood in the middle of the vitamin aisle like a bird-pecked scarecrow, useful to no one, harassed to the point of exhaustion while Lynette held a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. Pam had won. She quit throwing bandaids in my cart and grinned in victory at my undoing.

I plucked it all out, tossed it randomly on the shelves, and pushed my humiliated cart to the courtesy counter where a wide-eyed pubescent clerk stared at the three of us with our matching renegade baseball caps and asked, “Did you find everything you need?” Pam whipped a bag of plastic Easter eggs out of her back pocket and handed them to the confused kid while I shook my head.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t want those eggs. What I need is a pair of handcuffs to control that lady, but you guys don’t carry those.”

He handed me my receipt, wished me a nice day, and disappeared into a back room. I grabbed my bags and glared at Lynette.

“I thought you had my back.”

She laughed and said, “Well, I can’t be everywhere.”

Later that night as I checked my Target purchases in the hotel room I shared with Lynette, a pair of yellow rubber gloves fell out of one bag. I picked them up and stared at my sister.

“You just stood there while I paid for these?”

“No, I stood there and watched while Pam paid for them and then put them in your bag.”

I went to Pam’s room and threw them on her bed. Three days later when I unpacked my suitcase, the rubber gloves reappeared. I texted my sister.

            You’re fired as my bodyguard.
            Why, did you find the gloves?
          You said you had my back!
            I say a lot of things.
          So, you’re nothing but a double agent!
            If the rubber gloves fit . . .

I haven’t decided if I’ll take either one of them with me the next time I visit Waco. You think you know who your friends are, but in a free-wheeling sport like shopping, you can’t trust anybody. Especially women.

I bet men never lie to their friends like that about fishing.








Thanks to TripAdvisor for the use of the cupcake photo. I was in a feeding frenzy and forgot to photograph my dessert ahead of time.

A Short Drive To Crazy

There’s a whole lot o’ nothin’ between Tucson and Amarillo, and even less between there and Waco. Eleven hundred miles between us and the Celestial City of Magnolia Market. One Cadillac. Two days. Three women. We were on a mission to tear it up in Waco—by eight o’clock every night so we could get to bed. The aftershocks of Mission:Magnolia didn’t create any headlines—we did about as much damage as you’d find on appliances in a scratch and dent store. But it wore us out anyway.

Pam and I pulled out on the road at 5 a.m. on a Monday morning. Somewhere between her house and Amarillo, through no fault of our own, we misplaced two hours. If the sun rises in the east and we were driving east, who needs time zones and Daylight Savings Time? Hmm? Answer me that.

We wasted another ninety minutes following Google Maps’ advice to take highway 54 north through New Mexico. It’s a nice road for a long, Sunday drive. It’s a lousy one, though, when you’re on a mission and trying to make time. It was just one tiny little nothin’ town after another, and you know what that means. Pam’s Caddy nearly fell asleep we were driving so slow.

By the time we arrived in Amarillo to pick up my sister, Lynette, dinnertime was practically over, and it was almost time for breakfast. The next morning, we all slept in until seven. Or nine. I can’t remember. I was in a coma. At any rate, we missed the world-famous breakfast bar downstairs in our hotel—thank the Lord—and made the first Starbucks detour of the day to find sustenance. And iced mochas, a food group all to themselves. Yes, please.

We did it! There we were—all three of us, trapped inside a car surrounded by mounds of luggage. “Where are my suitcases gonna go?” Lynette asked Monday night in Amarillo when she saw the fully loaded back end of the Caddy. We were worried for a second, but the bigger question was—where were we gonna put all the stuff we planned to buy from Joanna Gaines?

Somehow, Day Two’s navigator overlooked how many miles lay ahead of us on our trip to the land of shiplap. I thought we’d be eating fresh cupcakes by noon. Instead, we made Lynette scrounge around in the cooler beside her on the backseat so we could munch on unsalted hardboiled eggs and four-dollar Sargentino snack packs “filled” with about a teaspoon each of broken nuts, craisins, and cheese fragments. Remember the ‘whole lot o’ nothin’ in eleven hundred miles’? Lunchtime was a distant memory by the time we reached our second hotel.

We decided to play a game to help pass the time. When I was a kid, playing car games like Count The White Cows You See Through Your Window was the only thing that kept my parents from leaving us stranded on the side of the road during family vacations. By comparison, today’s mom and dad seem much more advanced. They wear sound-canceling headphones when they travel with children. By the time they pull into Grandma’s driveway, they have no idea how many times the question, “Are we there yet?” has bounced around the interior of the family station wagon.

But are you really a parent if you haven’t been driven to the edge of extinction by children who travel without portable DVD players? Just a little sidebar there. Don’t send me angry emails. Every grandmother I know thinks they had it worse back in the day, but that’s only because all the really cool baby taming tools weren’t invented until our little tribes were in high school. Believe me, I’d have filled the backend of our minivan with DVD players if it would have short-circuited six-year-old whining.

Lynette and I did our best to drive Pam crazy when she was behind the wheel, but Pam’s used to whiners. She can tune out complaining women and flashing blue lights like a champion. “What?” she said every time I asked, “Are we there yet?” She claimed to be hearing impaired, but I know that trick. My husband uses it all the time. Finally, I found the box of conversation starter questions she’d brought along, and read some of the cards to my captive audience.

“If you could pursue any career in the world, what would you be?”
Octopus wrangler. Well, we were teetering on the edge of low blood sugar.

“If you had intro music, what song would it be?”
Ba-by shark doo doo doodoo doo doo . . . Thanks for putting that music in my head. For the rest of the day. All the way to Waco.

And the question that explained everything. “What word describes you and the kind of dog breed you’d be?

“Annoyingly happy,” Pam said. I knew she wasn’t deaf. “Like a Jack Russell terrier—always wanting to sit on your lap. I like to ‘do.’ I don’t like to ‘think.’ Cuz if it turns out wrong, at least you’re doing something.”

Lynette and I exchanged glances. Yep. It explained a lot. Especially that red blanket thrown over her head in the backseat thing.

I had to think for a minute. Dogs. There are so many. Should I go with a red one to match my hair? What type of dog is a slug? “I think I’m hopeful,” I announced. “And sensitive, like a Saint Bernard. Like, I don’t know how to help, but I want to. So, here’s a beer.”

Head nods from the other two women. “Definitely you,” they agreed.

“Okay, Lynette,” I pressed, “your turn.”

“I’m faithful,” she told us after a nanosecond of introspection. “I’m like a mixed breed. You know, fiercely protective but temperamental with a mean streak. And a sharp tongue.”

“So, you’re a pit bull?” I asked.

“Or a chihuahua,” Pam contributed.

Lynette raised an eyebrow. “And I pack heat,” she added.

I made a note of that. Do not annoy the pistol-packing pit bull/chihuahua in the back seat.

We played twenty questions for about twenty minutes and then a couple of us began to whine again. Pam gave up the driver’s seat in retaliation and curled up in the back with that red blanket disguise, Lynette stepped in as navigator next to me in the front, I set the cruise control to “avoid Texas cops at all cost,” and we crawled through one dusty, deserted town after another for the next two hours.

Highway 287 South is a long, lonesome corridor through the remnants of once-thriving communities and a few that are still alive and kicking. The good news there is the towns with a population have open bathrooms. The bad news is they also have cops who hide behind speed limit signs. I prefer the ghost towns, like the one we drove through called Chorizo, Texas, or something like that, where all the windows are made of plywood and even the library is up for sale. I mean, when a town sinks so low that they sell the library, you know it’s time to move on. Especially when the marquee on the only remaining hotel reads, “We offer full hookups.” Time to move on.

Well, it’s not really about the destination, is it? It’s about the journey. The memories. The starvation. The potty breaks. We took a lot of potty breaks because—the drivers were always women. We were in charge. There were no men rolling their eyes. In fact, no men allowed. We were a car full of women, dadgummit, and if we even felt a tiny little bit like nature was calling, we pulled over at the first Love’s station and took care of business. Because we could. Because we’re women. Because there were no men to tell us we couldn’t. And because we were sick and tired of driving.

But all that freedom was expensive. It cost us at least an extra hour on Day Two of The Road To Waco. And quite a bit of what little sanity we remembered to bring along. This time Lynette pulled out the Chatterbox Game, while Pam yawned and stretched in the backseat, alert and oriented times zero but too much a terrier to let us play without her.

“What will the epitaph on your headstone read?” Lynette read.

“She Peed.”

Lynette rolled her eyes. “That’s standard on every woman’s gravestone.”

“Okay,” Pam said, “mine will say, Death Is But The Beginning.”

“Very optimistic, little Jaqueline Russell,” I commented. “Mine would be, I Told You I Was Sick.”

“And Rob’s will read, What Else Is New,” Lynette quipped. She knows us so well.

“Your turn, Lynette.”

“Hmm, I think it’ll be, I’m Watching You.”

“Creepy,” I said, “very creepy. You’ve been watching thrillers again, haven’t you?”

It was all downhill from there. From the positive, feel good inscription, She Loved Well, to the neurotic, passive aggressive Maybe Now You’ll Come Visit Me, You Ba*****s, we breezed through another hour of road weariness writing our own epitaphs, convinced as the sun began to sink low in one of those directions women can never find that we’d all be dead and buried in a remote ghost town in the Republic of Texas before we ever found a place to sleep and something to eat besides hard boiled eggs.

And then it happened.

The road rose up to meet us, the bridge over the River Brazos appeared, our national symbol—the Golden Arches—gleamed, and rusty silos stood silent and welcoming. Closed, but welcoming. “Come back tomorrow,” they whispered, a comforting invitation to our weary, road sick souls. “And bring lots of money.”

Well. At least it wasn’t another ghost town.

We Didn't Die

I think, now that it’s behind us, if you’re gonna drive eleven-hundred-miles from Tucson to Waco by way of Amarillo (to pick up the third member of your girl gang), you should always do it with a crazy friend in her shiny red Cadillac.

“Wackos Do Waco!” Pam cried, toasting our road trip to Magnolia Market with her hardboiled egg and a thermos of coffee. By the time we got home a week later from our adventure in her new Caddy, we needed a mantra just a tiny bit stronger. We settled on one we picked up along the way.

We Didn’t Die.

The three of us—Pam, me, and my sister, Lynette—spent the last six months planning our girls’ trip. My sister booked our rooms, I took up space, and Pam provided the transportation. We split the cost and left our husbands in charge of the dogs and the remotes. It was gonna be awesome.

“My mom drove a Caddy,” Pam told me as she settled into her comfy leather seat, clicked the number “1” on the driver’s door which was code for adjust my everything so I have a personalized driving experience meant for only me, set the cruise control to a secret number somewhat higher than the DOT recommended on I-10 east, and told her onboard Siri to cycle through her favorite songs. “She always said, when you drive a Cadillac, you can make the rules.”

The maverick in me liked that. I hate following other people’s rules. I also hate getting in trouble when my version of rebellion goes unappreciated, but I’ve gotten used to living in a state of internal conflict as long as it doesn’t involve time in the Big House.

We packed up our ride with plenty of luggage and eggs and Luna bars, told our husbands “Hasta la vista, babies,” and hit the road at five a.m. Look out, Waco, here we come! I don’t have the luxury of a number “1” to tap when I cruise around in my aging Tahoe, but when it was my turn to drive her car, Pam let me set the “2” to my specs. Just for me. Nobody else. Yeah. There’s probably nothing cooler than having a Cadillac adjust your seat and steering wheel because it knows who you are. Um hmm, I was important. Second in charge. Pam’s shadow.

Big mistake.

According to my husband—who usually drives across country while I navigate—if I keep up with traffic when I’m driving, I won’t have to worry about getting pulled over for speeding or getting shot by a road-rager for going too slow. It’s worked so far. It works every single week while I commute into Phoenix’s east side for hair appointments and coffee dates and grocery shopping. It worked when we loaded up our Tahoe last fall and drove it nine thousand miles to Nova Scotia and back. And it worked for Pam and me all morning as we drove east away from Tucson last week. In fact, it worked all the way to the New Mexico border.

And then it stopped working. Halfway to Amarillo, halfway through The Land of Enchantment, halfway to the next Starbucks, all that advice stopped working. I think even Siri must have bailed on us. Why else didn’t this super dooper, computerized-everything/please-do-my-thinking-for-me vehicle fail to warn us that a weary highway patrolman was about to shut down the joyride we were having in Pam’s car?

“Great,” she said under her breath as she slowed to a stop on the side of the highway. The officer walked up to the front passenger window and spoke to us on my side of the car.
  
“Ladies,” he said politely, “you’re probably wondering why I stopped you. You were doing fifteen over the limit. You’re on a bypass now—the limit is 55. Slow it down and drive safe,” he finished, looking like he hadn’t had a cup of coffee since he woke up at four that morning and was weary of pulling over red Caddies on road trips to Waco. As he headed back to his patrol car, Pam and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

“That’s it?” we asked ourselves. Then we texted our husbands. 

Just got pulled over in Alamagordo for speeding.
Slow down.
It was an accident.
Was anybody hurt?
I mean, we were accidently speeding.
Oh brother.

“I’m so glad you were driving and not me!” I gushed, relieved I wasn’t the one behind the wheel. It would have been awful to get pulled over in her beautiful car after she let me program its number “2” with my personalized specs. I would have felt so guilty. I’d have been so embarrassed to be the one driving when flashing lights blew up in her rear-view mirror.

I was right. It was awful.

We picked up my sister in Amarillo and hit the road again the next morning. Less than an hour later, we switched drivers. Now Lynette sat in the navigator’s seat up front while I pushed my little “2” on the driver’s door. “So, what’s a safe number to go above the limit here in Texas?” I asked her casually. She’s practically a Texas native, which made her an expert.

“Five over is probably fine,” she told me while Pam curled up in the back seat behind me with a red blanket thrown over her head. In the end, and in my defense, I think that’s actually why the Texas version of Smoky the Bear flipped his light switch in Clarendon, Texas, twelve minutes after I took over as driver and Pam sat snoring in a happy little REM cycle under that blanket.

“Crap!” I said with gusto, or some less acceptable version of the word, as I noticed blue and white lights in the rearview mirror. My exclamation woke up the owner of the red Caddy and she came out of hibernation while I came to a stop in a church parking lot. Appropriate, since I was pretty sure our guardian angels were having a laugh at my expense and I needed a lot of prayer on the double. New Mexico may have sensible, weary patrolmen who know when a girl just wants to have fun, but Texas has never been accused of producing cops who can smile. They’re pretty good at intimidation, though.

“M’am,” the serious man’s voice said while I stared at the gun in its holster conveniently located at my exact eye level. “You were doing 81 . . .” – my heart skipped a beat! – “. . . in a 75 zone.”

Wait. What? I got pulled over for going six over while Felony Melanie in the back seat zipped through New Mexico’s speedway fifteen above the limit?

“Is this a rental car?” asked the man who told us he’d followed us for two miles while I created an extra six miles per hour of chaos in the car sporting personalized stickers on its back window.

“No, sir,” I said with my best penitent manners.

“Are you the owner?”

“No, sir, the hostage—er, lady in the backseat owns it.” Okay, I’m not that stupid. But later I wondered if he’d followed us for two miles because he thought we were transporting either a dead body or an illegal alien under that clever blanket disguise behind me.

He turned his attention to Pam who had by now rolled down her window. “What year is this vehicle?” he asked. Hmmm. Since when do policemen want to know the year of a car they’ve been inspecting for two miles unless they want a closer look at the model their wife wants for Christmas?

“It’s a 2017,” she told him. Finished with my license, his curiosity satisfied about the car’s age, the officer announced this would only be a warning and to sign here. Then he and his partner followed us for half a mile and ditched us to make a lunch stop at the local café.

“Well,” my sister said, as we passed the hungry patrolmen, “we didn’t die.”

“You said five above would be fine,” I accused.

“Hey, I wasn’t driving,” she shot back.

“You’re fired,” I said.

Whether or not the cop in New Mexico sent out an all-points bulletin to his brothers in Texas warning them about the return of Thelma and Louise to Texan highways, we’ll never know. But I’m suspicious. And Pam and I were both paranoid for the next four days until we safely crossed the border back into Arizona where it’s too hot for patrolmen to bother with women who drive six miles above the limit and sport Fire Department stickers on their back windows.

We obeyed every speed limit after that. And nearly every traffic signal. Most of the time. While my sister chuckled happily to herself that, even though bad luck travels in three’s, she didn’t get pulled over for speeding a single time on our girls’ trip to Waco. Of course, it’s hard to get pulled over when you’re the navigator. But it’s easy to get pushed out of the car if you gloat about it too much.

Lynette was right. She never got caught for speeding like Pam and me. But she probably regrets buying those ballcaps we wore for most of the trip.

Pam’s bragged, “I’ll Bring The Bad Ideas,” while Lynette’s boasted, “I’ll Bring The Alibi.” The one she gave me rounded out our weekend trip. “I’ll Bring The Bail Money,” it read, certain we were going to need some. It was all in fun. Right up to the point where a nervous checker announced over a loudspeaker at that Love’s gas station in south Texas that a suspicious-looking woman stood near the front exit.

“What?!” my sister asked in annoyance once we got back in the car. “Do I look like my face belongs on a wanted poster?” It took her a while to see the humor in the situation.

“Well, I didn’t get accused of being a criminal in a gas station,” I said, rubbing it in.

“Nobody sent a security guard over to check me out,” Pam added.

Lynette bit her tongue.

“Ah, come on,” I said, trying to sweet talk her into laughing. “Look at the bright side. We didn’t die!”

“Yet.”

What can I say? If she didn’t want to bring the alibi, she shouldn’t have worn that hat.

Zombie Apocalypse

It was that boy’s fault.

The one with the warm, brown eyes and the Colgate smile who pushed a strand of hair out of her face one night while they sat in a private corner in their favorite Starbucks and suddenly the fireworks went off. Well, it was New Year’s Eve. But still, fireworks went off and hormones went wild and the next thing she knew she was writing “Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes” all over her notebooks, waiting for the magical day when he would get a job. As soon as possible. And pop the question. She’d thought of everything. The flowers. The dress. The groom. Now he needed to connect the dots. As soon as possible.

Finally, it was possible. He proposed, they got married, they moved into the garage apartment behind her grandparents’ house, and the next afternoon she was pregnant. Ta dah. She’d thought of everything except birth control.

Still, they were off and running. Grownups. On their own. Behind her grandparents’ house. They had everything they needed. A place setting for four, towels for two, six cans of tuna and a Costco supply of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese in the pantry. She also had morning sickness. He spent ten-hour days at the pretty good job he landed. She spent all day every day throwing up in their tiny bathroom. Nine months later, their healthy little bundle of joy arrived, and the garage apartment was suddenly too small.

So, they moved.

Into a two-bedroom, one bath apartment duplex in town and close to shopping so she could push the baby in the BOB baby jogging stroller on her daily grocery store trips because Mr. Warm Brown Eyes had their only car. They celebrated their first anniversary at Chick Fil-A while her mother kept the baby. They split a chicken sandwich and watched all the children climb through the play area’s gym, dreaming about the day their baby would be old enough to join in on the laughing and squealing. Then they went home and took a three-hour nap and the next afternoon she was pregnant again. Maybe it was a two-hour nap.

Nine months later, another healthy baby was born and the two-bedroom one bath didn’t make the cut anymore. Her parents co-signed for a mortgage and Mr. and Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes moved into their three-bedroom two bath home in the ‘burbs. Then they splurged on a ’98 Honda beater so she could load the kiddos into two baby seats, store the BOB in the trunk, and head to the store—outnumbered two to one. The babies were good about riding, though, and showed their approval by littering the floorboards with tiny, soggy Cheerios doused in fragrant baby formula from fallen sippy cups. In self-defense, she bought a three pack of those little vanilla scented cardboard trees and hung all of them from the rearview mirror. Nobody wanted to ride with her and the babies after that, but she didn’t mind—she needed the passenger seat for the groceries anyway.

They celebrated their second anniversary at the park with Subway sandwiches and a blanket on the grass where the three-month-old lay screaming for half an hour and the fifteen-month-old dropped her peanut butter sandwich in the mud, then picked it up and ate it anyway. Too tired from morning sickness to investigate, she thought she’d read somewhere that a little dirt everyday was good for kids.

Seven months later, another healthy baby was born, and they decided not to move. So far, every time they relocated to a bigger place the universe responded by giving them more babies. “Let’s make it clear we don’t have room for any more kids so the universe will find somebody else to pick on,” they agreed over a third anniversary dinner of Spaghettios and clearance bin salad at their wobbly kitchen table surrounded by its trio of high chairs.

She didn’t have the heart to tell Mr. Warm Brown Eyes the following afternoon that she was too nauseous to cook dinner, but he wasn’t born yesterday. He just moved his shaving kit into the kids’ bathroom with the tiny potty seat and Big Bird shower curtain and let his wife keep the master bath to herself. “Maybe if we stop celebrating anniversaries,” they each thought from their respective bathrooms, “we’d stop needing more high chairs.”

When baby number four arrived, four years to the day after they’d promised in front of the town clerk and their two best friends to love and honor each other through thick and thin, they wheeled two shopping carts carrying two children each through the greeting card aisle at Walmart, picked out cards they would have given each other if there was any extra money to spend, kissed each other while the babies cried, and put the cards back on the rack.

“Happy Anniversary, honey,” he told her gently.

“Don’t jinx it!” she hissed. “You know what happens every time we celebrate.”

But it was too late. The universe was listening.

By the time their fifth anniversary arrived wearily on their front porch, a fifth baby slept in the cradle in the master bedroom and Mr. Warm Brown Eyes recuperated on the living room sofa with a bag of frozen peas on his crotch. She wandered out of the bedroom in the worn-out robe she’d bought for their honeymoon, her long hair tied up in a messy knot, and fuzzy slippers covered in baby spit-up on her feet. She didn’t say anything as he caught her eyes. She just gave him the thumbs up and went back to doing laundry. It was enough. He knew she still loved him and they were in this together. And now that they didn’t need to worry about any more babies, he was already making plans for their sixth anniversary.

The next day he bought her a pretty new nightie for the occasion still a year away that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since he signed the authorization papers in the surgeon’s office. Later he wished he’d read the fine print while he did that. Who knew that practicing birth control was still important for the first six weeks after a procedure like his?

Her friends threw her a “Happy Half Dozen Babies” shower right after Baby Oops arrived. Years later, she had to admit she barely remembered any of it. Still, it was a nice enough gesture. They filled up the corner of their fourteen hundred square foot house with a tower of newborn baby diapers, eight plastic boxes of baby wipes, and a new baby swing. Somebody gave her a gift card to Babies ‘R Us that they got on clearance right before the store closed its doors.

“What do I do with this?” she asked in confusion.

“It’s a joke!” her friends laughed. “We thought you could frame it and hang it in the nursery! Get it? Babies Are Us?”

That’s when the twitch began. Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared into the faces of all her friends who still sported perky boobs. The eleven above the bridge of her nose stood out so much her eyes disappeared into numerology. The color drained from her face, and her voice, once as melodic as windchimes on a breezy day, suddenly sounded as gravelly as an old woman who’d spent her life smoking like a chimney.

“Funny,” she said, deadpan, and stood up. She walked out the front door and up the street, the sleeve of her dress torn where the four-year-old grabbed it in a temper tantrum earlier that morning when she’d silenced “Sofia The First” on the TV. Her flip-flopping shoes trudged along the empty sidewalk and she dropped the plastic red cup filled with Pink Cloud Punch in the hyacinth bushes in front of the Johnson house.

“Hi, Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes,” her neighbor called while she watered the geraniums on her front porch. There was no response from the young mother. “Are you all right, honey?” Mrs. Johnson yelled after the comatose woman. “Harry,” she said, turning to her husband who sat on the porch reading a newspaper. “Does she seem all right to you?”

“Who?” he asked, distracted.

She had no idea where she was headed. It didn’t matter. She had no idea where she was. Or even who she was. Not anymore. Not since the house was overrun with babies and rattles and bottles and teething biscuits and Tickle Me Elmos and coloring books and chicken nuggets and applesauce. Applesauce. She hated applesauce. Whoever came up with runny, tasteless jars of smashed apples should be handcuffed and hauled away like the Anti-Christ he was. In a perfect world, she’d never ever smell another smashed green pea, either, or find a week-old bottle of coddled formula behind a baby crib or walk around with hands that always smelled like baby puke or dirty diapers.

She had to find that perfect world. It was out there, some place far away from the shattered dream of motherhood and marriage that had all melted into one giant apocalypse of hopelessness. It existed. Somewhere. She could feel it. Her instinctive drive to live again kept her feet moving, slowly, one after the other, block after block, looking at nothing, staring straight ahead, her arms hanging limply at her side as though paralyzed. Maybe they’d all forget about her by supper time. Probably they hadn’t even missed her yet. By the time she walked to the edge of the earth, they’d have replaced her with a Roomba and a new microwave anyway. Jerks. She’d always wanted a Roomba.

A familiar noise, like slowly bursting bubbles in a tar pit, suddenly demanded her attention. Her thoughts foggy yet threatening mutiny, she fought a losing battle against recognition. What was that? A lawn mower? Her dying washing machine? A ’98 Honda beater?

“Ohhhh, noooo,” she moaned in a slow, deep-throated growl. Turning like the cursed heroine in “Bride of the Undead,” she stopped walking and looked through the smudged window of the car which now pulled up beside her three short blocks from her house.

“Honey,” Mr. Warm Brown Eyes said, his arm draped over the steering wheel as he leaned down low to see through the crank window that hadn’t cranked shut in two years. “Honey,” he said again, “it’s time to come home.”

“Are they gone?” she growled.

“Your friends? Yes, they all left an hour ago.”

“Not . . . them,” she said, haltingly. “The children. Are they gone?”

He blinked and tilted his head to the side. “Our babies? Our six beautiful babies? No, of course not. Your mother said she'll take care of them tonight. She said for us to go get a room somewhere to celebrate.”

She looked at him like she’d never seen him before. What was he talking about? “Cel-e-brate?” she asked quizzically.

“Of course, darling,” he gushed with those warm, brown eyes and Colgate smile. “It’s our anniversary. Don’t you remember?”

And that’s when she snapped. Out of it. She snapped out of it.

Well, after all, she was Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes, a sweet girl who didn’t know where she was going anyway. Sometimes when you’re covered in baby spit up and haven’t bought yourself a new dress in six years and the best thing you can say about your ’98 Honda beater with the broken window is that the engine still works, you just need to rip off the mask of perpetual sacrifice that’s glued to your face and let the world know you are one of the walking dead who desperately deserves a nap. And a shower. And some new fuzzy slippers.

With a sigh of acceptance, she opened the rusty door and climbed inside. It wasn’t exactly a perfect world she’d found, but it was her world. And she was surprisingly alive—shabby and smelly, for sure, but alive. She looked at her handsome husband with those warm, brown eyes and sparkling smile made up of perfect teeth. The guy who had the freedom to escape to his pretty good job five days a week for ten hours a day while she stayed home and suffered the inevitable effects of celebrating six anniversaries. And she remembered that boy who once pushed a strand of hair out of her face on a long-ago New Year’s Eve in a private corner in their favorite Starbucks.

She had no idea what to give him for their anniversary. Nothing as predictable as a romantic dinner alone or a sexy new negligée, that was for sure. Nor was it a dozen new golf balls or a t-shirt that read, “Best Dad On Earth.” It had to be something that represented how she felt about everything they’d gone through in the last six years.

“I want to get going,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ll keep the car running while you grab a few things for yourself and the babies. I’d give you a hand but you’re so good at taking care of them and I never know where anything is. Hurry now—we want to have as much time together as possible!”

Suddenly she knew what she wanted to give him. She smiled at him sweetly, looked into those warm, brown eyes, and hauled off and slapped him across his surprised face.

 It was the best anniversary she’d ever had.












With thanks to Darron Birgenheier for the use of the hangry bird photo used here. You can view the original at the following link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/9305462056/in/photolist-fbhVEY-UByPCq-274JyjY-8kD7mY-26VUTQS-bCRmnG-Vyv5fJ-79SGhy-mJQE3i-9X1j4-8p1gzz-HRXrTe-mJQEbV-9LufWX-QUs9v-6dwBuG-4VmPXS-TkjFPm-PwvMu-2pkdNg-nyGkLz-HqawCW-6p3TC-nM8245-6LZxLm-TkiHpC-54SrWP-8QjMHF-6szjY4-4CwmQV-6rM9Jy-9M3dyj-4TpqhC-Bv8a6-t133Us-6ABv7B-UeaaCj-eGBevw-8mcR8b-9J83qH-51gWMg-2do9Xm-47MWkV-Xxwvvn-9SLCkB-6zWgNL-25isoQQ-6pDSGD-SUDZnU-PFGML