about a boy...

In the words of Stephen Hawking;

"Quiet people have the loudest minds"

I've found it comes in handy that I have two hands -

One for each child of mine to hold.

Though I have two eyes

it is usually the case that both eyes are trained on one person, 

typically one of the two, 

the two my hands hold onto.

Lately she's been at the top of my mind and inside and underneath every thought I have.

It's easy to consider my daughter, when so much has changed in her precious life.

But... as Stephen Hawking said, quite people have loud thoughts...

my quiet son has been thinking loudly.

Today as I took care of his red mare,

I talked to her about him.

I told her sometimes he's so fine that I forget he might not actually be all that fine.

Polite, friendly, thoughtful, open and funny, my son...

I told her that I feel awfully grateful, since he's my only one.

I told her how easy he is to cheer up, even when he's down and blue.

I told her how he never hesitates to tell me, "Mom, I really love you".

I told her that he's smart and quick as a whip in his mind.

I told her that when he grows up, he'll be a great find.

I told her that he loves the stars and sky,

that he'll use a telescope to point out the planets and asks me to never go away, grow old or die.

I tell her that it's highly unlikely I'll be here forever, but because of him, I'll try.

I tell her he named her after the place where one day he plans to live,

and that he's always the first to apologize and never waits to forgive.

I told her that he tells me long stories that often make little sense.

I told her that he wishes we had a yard big enough for her, with a barn, huge trees and a fence.

I told her I trust him with saws and nails, guns, knives and tools.

I told her that he's a great dreamer, but that doesn't make him a fool.

I told her he hasn't got a mean bone inside that small body of his.

I told her that he'll make an incredible father when he grows up, gets married, has kids...

I told her that I take him for granted and what a luxury that is,

to have someone so warm and loving right there near me, to freely just give me a kiss.

I never fail to notice his goodness, but he can feel sadness and pain,

and if I could, I told her, I'd make sure he never felt either again.

He's brave for his size.

He's stronger then I realize,

my fragile, concrete boy...

her playmate, her caretaker, her toy.

I told her she's lucky he loves her and that he loves her so well,

but she must already know this, because that's one thing he never hesitates to show and tell.

I told her I miss him when he's gone, even when it's just for a while.

I talked about his easy, wide, infectious smile.

I told her I don't know what comes next, in the life that together we live.

I told her that there are so many questions, but not many answers to give.

I thanked her for never hurting my kind, sweet, cowboy son.

I told her my great consolation as I age is that his life's just begun.

I told her more about him

How I simply never doubt him.

Since I am his mother and dad,

I have to try to teach my smart lad

that no matter how rich, how successful he becomes

not to forget where he's come from,

remember who loves

who cares

and why

and that those who know him best believe he'll soar to the sky

and nobody, NOBODY on earth knows that better then I.

P.S. I Love You...

All over the pool deck.
He threw the playing cards all over the pool deck.
I'd beaten him continuously, over and over.
Me eleven, him a grown man.
Was it Gin or Rummy or Gin/Rummy?
I was unbeatable.
"PICK THEM UP", he demanded and then stormed away.
I wasn't afraid of him, even though he was intimidating.
I was never fearful of him, only respectful and attached in deep and profound ways and I am still, though he's gone.  Long gone.
My love for him has proven to me that not even death can separate us from those we love.

On my knees, surrounded by the massive screen which enclosed the beautiful, blue built-in pool, keeping away the hummingbird sized mosquitoes that flourished in Florida, where he'd taken me to vacation with his family, my beloved cousins and my adorable Aunt, his wife - The lightening to his thunder, I picked up each card and found him there once I'd finished collecting them.
We thoroughly shuffled the deck, he dealt and asked me how I do it.  "How do you win over and over?"
I told him my truth.  I had an imaginary friend who gave me the cards I asked for and then I demonstrated...
"I need an Ace, two, three".   I picked up an Ace and a Two and a Three from the freshly shuffled deck and confidently folded them over.  He shook his head and asked me more about my imaginary friend. This is where my imagination actually took over.  I created details I completely fabricated about an imaginary friend who was real.
He believed the details as much as he believed in me, when I told him the secret of my success.
I can't remember how I explained the inexplicable, but others can and sometimes they remind me of the things I said.
I had an imaginary friend that did real things, but didn't resemble anything I'd claimed he might.
He was just there and nothing else.
I didn't feel alone, even when I was on my own in the crowded life I grew up in.

I sometimes wonder if I wasn't just extremely lucky in cards, rather then shadowed by the impossible, invisible, unlikely?
Proverb:   Lucky in cards, Unlucky in Love...

Was I lucky?   Did he exist?  Who can say?
I'm no longer all that lucky in cards.   I lose as much, if not more then I win.
I'm still what some people might call unlucky in love, yet just as I had confidence in my imaginary friend, I have certainty that my life is brimming with love; perhaps not thunder to my lightening, but love of all kinds always surrounds me; holding me, buoying me in everything I do, go through, deal with and especially in all the things that bring  me happiness.
I can feel this love, as if it was a real and tangible thing, a stone in my shoe, a distinct mass filling my heart.

And it's the love I feel, but cannot see which holds me as I let go of one of the best loves I've ever known.
The first time I saw him, I fell completely in love.
Tall, dashing, striking, powerful and firey calm like a star twinkling in a stable, solid black sky.
He changed my life.
He moved me.
He opened me up.
He loved me, I could feel his love for me in the tickle of his warm breath rushing down my neck and the crazy horse kisses he pressed to my face every chance he got.
He loved my children.
He loved my father and mother, my sisters and brothers.
He loved us.
He was the most beautiful thing in the world to me.
He was mine.
I owned him and it gave me a feeling of purposefulness and a dignity that nothing else has.
I cared for him.
I gave him everything he needed and more, including my child.
I will never regret a single moment of my life, beginning the very second he came to me.
And it is with my best, most open, most warm, deepest, kindest, truest love that I let him leave me.
I would rather know this love, then that, I would rather have his thundering hoof beats cause the electricity lighting me from within.
He was the thunder to my lightening.
I've been in love with this horse, corny as it sounds and silly as it is, he's been the largest, most intriguing, most genuine, stirring, exhilarating, rewarding, painful, unsettling, beautiful love aside from parenthood, which I've ever known.
Even in these past few months of wondering and worrying and puzzling over what to do and when and if and why, I have grown infinitely in my capacity of love for him and in my respect for his beautiful life.
Even now, in the last hours and the hardest moments, I don't, won't and cannot regret a second spent knowing him and having his life in my life...

...and this makes me lucky in love.

Rest in peace Johnny Cash, my beautiful, beautiful boy and please, pretty please come to me in my dreams.  Meet me in meadows, with the tall, green grass, hills and shade trees, where the wild flowers bend and lend their sweet scent in the gentle breeze.  Find me beneath the open, bluest sky, speckled with cotton-ball clouds.   Run to me and breath your soft breath on my neck, let me pepper your strong, perfect face with baby kisses and walk beside me, just as we have done in all the days I've known you.   

See you soon.

   

 I love you, I love you, I love you and I know that not even death, nor time, nothing, not one thing will ever change this.

My love stays when you go.

The Free Lunch

 

As often is the case, I really had no idea what I was doing... but I did it anyhow.

And it's not that it felt right

It didn't feel safe

It didn't feel smart

It didn't seem realistic

It actually felt quite scary and that's still not why I did it

I don't know why 

There is no poetic explanation

Only that something in me knew to say yes to the yes that wanted very much to leave my lips

and to be a YES, instead of a no...

There is a saying that many have said, but I recall my darling stepfather as being the one who brought it up to me most often in my life.  

"There is no free lunch".  

I have altered this saying a bit; "There is no free horse".

I got one of those free horses offered to me and that's where the whole YES that wanted to be comes in.

As often is the case, I rationalize that I did this for my children...

And I did... 

As I have done and continue to do many, many things purely for my children's sake; like going to watch a Disney film yesterday in the 111 degree heat, where I forced myself to sit idle, eating popcorn and Milk Duds, while there was carpet to be vacuumed, laundry to be sorted and paper to be filed at home.

I took a free horse for my trapped child

I took a free horse, who was beautiful and lost, for my lost and beautiful daughter

and he freed her

and he filled her days

which fill my days

emptying my pockets

leaving impossible to displace hay in my car 

mud on our boots

calluses across my hands 

And these things multiplied when the love doubled and I "yessed" again on a second horse...

The no free lunch/free horse had a bum leg, but so do I and I never let it stop me, so why should I have let his stop him/stop us?

And he's been a blessing and maybe he's a curse, because today the Vet will come to the stall I find myself cleaning all the time.  Today, after months and months of free lunch love, the bum leg of the free horse will be examined more thoroughly.

She says, "I can feel his pain"

I tell you that I can feel her pain

She says, "It's killing me"

I tell you that I can feel the dying part of her, while I know with all my heart that a portion of her is more alive and stronger then ever

...and somehow it's the most gut-wrenchingly, beautiful thing I've ever experienced.

The no such thing as a free horse may be trapped now, but he freed my daughter. 

My different girl is different now, though her heart is breaking, she's less broken

She's become someone she never was or might have been if not for him.

And for that and for one thousand other reasons, he is, quite possibly, the great love of my life.

And I don't know what I'll do when I know more...

I'll probably follow my heart

rack my brain

empty my pockets

grow some

change some

arrange something
Find another yes or no or maybe so...

and hopefully there will always be impossible to remove hay in my car

mud on my shoes

calluses on my heart...

"There is something about the outside of a horse that does something to the inside of a human being" -

 Winston Churchill

The Lady with the Little Dog...

I absolutely have better things to do with my days

But I would/could never say that.

Instead I hung up the phone and made the requested phone call immediately.

In the morning after dropping my son at school, I headed off to do this favor, the favor I was not in favor of doing.

I was lucky with the traffic, rather the lack there of.

I took the highways my Nav system told me to take, inland toward the desert and through the low foothills to where it's hot and dry, with low, scratchy looking shrubs dotting the sun-scorched landscape

And I took the exit the dog trainer told me to take.

I was early and there were a few stores I like in the parking lot where we were meant to meet.

I partook.

I killed time.

I bought sandals for my daughter, which she won't want

and didn't buy sandals for myself, which I want, but don't need.

Ring-a-ling-a-ling

"Where are you?"

I'm not at the right exit, apparently.

Not Summit Road, but the summit, the actual summit of the Pass...

Oh shoot.

AGAIN, I remind myself that I have better things to do today, any day actually, than pick up a friend's dogs from Hunting Camp in the high desert, when it's hot and the last days of school are dwindling down and things feel hectic at my house.

I grabbed an iced tea from a drive-thru and drove on and upward deeper into the heat and up to the Pass, to the summit of the Pass and pulled off to the side of the road, to the dirt and gravel and brush encircled space.

Two crates in the back of a dusty pick-up.  

This could be Taliban, I think to myself.  

eek...

A Duck Dynasty look a like, and me, with my clean, white SUV, in my Juicy sweat pants, iced mint tea in hand, sandals showing painted toes

 and oh no, no, no, no...

He pulled the dogs from their crates strapped into the truck bed and showed me the problem for the one, but there were many problems for the two, none of which I mentioned, maybe on account of the beard and the gun rack and the fact that I was shocked which rendered me speechless.

I pointlessly spread a beach towel in the back of my car and we placed the crates with whimpering dogs inside them in the rear of my no longer pristine vehicle.  

I drove the two hours toward my home, closer to the sea, away from the scorched earth and harsh heat, with the windows wide open in attempt to stay above the rancid odor.

I didn't/couldn't listen to the radio, but found myself humming lullabies, the kind I used to when my kids were smaller and hurt or sick.

I dialed the Vet near my home.  

"He's leaving soon", said his stern receptionist insistently.

"No he's not", I thought, persistently.

I was embarrassed to carry the stool covered, bleeding dog into the Vet.

Her silver stapled abdomen seeping serous fluids and her mouth dripped green bile.

She was cut up all over, but the stomach part was the worst.

I'd made the two hour drive in under 90 minutes.

I stuck around the waiting room, silent while taking a verbal beating about animal abuse and I kept my mouth shut as my breath felt stuck in my throat and tears pooled in my eyes.

Shaken, I got behind the wheel of my car.  

I held a clump of wet wipes over my mouth, because I now stunk as fowl as the dog who I'd left howling 

shaking

dying?

I reached my home and went into autopilot mode.

Crates out of the car, dragged beyond the high fence and into the backyard where I doused them with detergent then sprayed them down, left them to bake in the sun before I dealt with them further.

The second dog, who once upon a time was white, stayed hidden, pacing back and forth along the high wall behind the rose bushes while my own pup tried to lure her out to play.

I scrambled an egg and put it on a plate on the ground next to a leash, sat myself in my favorite wicker porch chair and waited, acted as if I wasn't watching her watch me...and in time she came toward me and ate her brunch slowly, painfully, her mouth torn a bit, her long ears full of thorns and small bits of sticks

I leashed her to the lawn chair and carefully, quietly poured buckets of warm water over her, being sure to avoid her head, in part because it was bloody and fur-less,

in part because I was afraid she'd bite me, though it was not in her nature

I didn't know who she was anymore

Tea tree oil shampoo, half a bottle

painstakingly pulling ticks and burrs with my finger tips till I caved and cut with scissors, the clumps and bunches of filthy fur.

She trembled, though the water was warm.  I lifted her into a kiddie pool, which is not at all for my kids, but rather for my Labrador to play in.

I laid her down in more water, which turned pink, though I'd been washing her for a long, long while.

I examined the pads of her feet.  Where did they go?

Then I patted her dry with a soft towel and let her disappear again behind the rose bushes.

My daughter came home from her day at school and soothed her into another bathing, afterwards applying heaps of antibacterial ointment to the dozen or more various sized punctures and to the bare, raw, sore spots where beautiful white fur used to be.

The dog remained aloof the rest of the day.

Avoiding me, but approaching my children now and then.

Good news, the other dog survived her emergency surgery. 

I wanted to cry when I hung up the phone with the Vet, but I never can.

 I was instinctively gentle with the doggies owner, when we spoke on the phone.  He was far away and unaware of the situation, which left me wondering what sort of man he really was.

I never understood the pull to the high desert dog camp,

nor his ability to leave these dogs, who were really more like his children, when he went away for long stretches.

There are times that this man has made me feel like I'm maybe not the best decision maker

I was non confrontational with the trainer, who around happy hour began blowing up my phone with inquiries about the dogs, the cost of surgery, and his advice on how to care for them

though clearly he did not care for them.

A powerful funk took me over, one I could not shake, one that blanketed everything else in my typically peaceful and mostly beautiful days

 and I wanted nothing more then to go to bed at six pm.

But that's not my life.

After I made dinner and helped with homework and did my usual things; the things I love for the ones I love, I got into my bed, my beautiful grown up bed, with it's beige linens, dotted now with specks of red blood, from the dog's still seeping wounds.  

Finally that dog, the now white dog, with red spots, jumped up onto my bed with me.

I like my space...

but I didn't get any.

She didn't want to be pet and each time I tried she'd leave

but later she'd sheepishly return.

Only when I didn't acknowledge her, did she relax -

right across my legs.

All night long she lay over my abdomen.

I could hear her non stop snoring

feel her body shutter

and then I knew

 that I had nothing better to do with my day, any day, not right now, not ever.

I didn't know how much I loved animals

though people probably look at my horse drawn, dog filled life and assume I am an animal lover.

But me, I truly had no idea how strongly I felt about four legged creatures, until I felt what I felt all night long;

the weight of her across my body

the weight of knowing how very badly she and the other pup must have been treated and the weight of not being able to say what should be said to the trainer

and knowing too, that I will never tell these sweet dogs' owner how it really was,

because he's my friend

because its my sorrow now, 

because for whatever reason, the universe put these troubles in my path today

and so this gets to become part of who I am and who I will be

 and happily that's sadly alright with me

It amazes me how everything changes us, if we allow it to 

Ten Things I Hate About You...

When you were born, things got rough.
I swore I could pass a ship through these hips...
but apparently I could not

"It's a little girl.  A really, really little girl", said the Doctor, not my Doctor.
My Doctor was in Paris and you were early; something I rarely am.

I'd thought you were going to be a big boy, and I thought I wanted that, until I came to my drugless senses the morning after your early arrival and I stared down into your denim eyes, took in your circle, pink cheeks, all five pounds of you, and realized that you, the very little girl you, were in fact, the very little thing I truly wanted, without my knowledge.
And not a day has passed where I've known what to expect since.


You're fifteen today and I hate it..

1) I hate that with each passing day you grow older and more interesting
2) I hate that I miss you the moment you're out of sight and even when you're sleeping
3) I hate that soon you can learn to drive and all those rotten drivers will surround you
5) I hate that you have no idea how funny you are
6) I hate that you always isolate yourself and have no clue how many people want to know you well
7) I hate that one day you'll grow up and leave me
8) I hate that you have ruined me for regular people, people who are easy and constant
9) I hate that you have no concept of how utterly beautiful you are
10) I hate that I, a lover of words and a fountain of feelings, can never find a way to express how very much I love you, nor inform you that I live purely to make you happy.  I'm inept at telling you that you've changed me irrevocably in countless ways, for the better.  I hate that I can't explain to you just this - Baby, I am your biggest fan.

Happy Birthday, my 15 year old puzzle of a daughter.
You're everything I never wanted.
Emphasis on EVERYTHING.
You're everything to me.   

Love your #1 fan.

Wild Life...

I was deflated.  There were no big horn sheep to see, not today anyhow.

I'd walked a long way following the river; green, fierce, flowing fast and loud like a freeway, with it's granite walls holding it all in place on the far side.  And then there was me, a pebble beside it and the tens of thousands of utterly wild acres, mountains, valleys and fields behind me, with just the one, winding, icy, snow secreted, dirt roadway in and out of this stunning, hidden and isolated place.  I felt somehow claustrophobic with all this vastness surrounding me.   
The men and the dogs had gone off in the opposite direction, having told me which way to walk in the hopes that I'd catch a glimpse of and with any luck, some photographs of the nowhere to be found sheep.  
I left the river and accidentally, to my great fortune, scared up a mass of Canada geese, and they gave me a show worth tearing up over... and I did as I snapped photo after photo of them, beautiful to me.

Ignored by a red falcon on a thin limb.  I pressed in on him but he stayed put.  
Huge elk on a distant ridge, multiplied as time passed, sunning themselves smartly in the solitary sun thawed location. "Brilliant", I thought to myself.

And the mule deer, so many of them, not far off, but not many bucks visible...

THEN I remembered the man in the truck with us this morning, what he said about "antlering" and how to do it and when - and it was now, now was the time the large mule deer dropped antlers and I could find where, because he'd explained and I'd listened carefully.  And if I found some, then I could touch them and I could take one and better still, I could give it to my son, who waited for me at home in California, and I could say, "see what I've found for you" and he would love me more, if possible.  
And so I moved purposefully.  I looked through my long camera lens, searching likely places, using it as a telescope and finally, in a crevice, between two steep slopes, I saw a creek trickling toward the river and a half mile or so in, a big bed of tall grass, flattened and soft, unlike the rest of it, which stood upright, surrounding it, frosty and spiked, like a little fence around a hidden garden.   

I lost a glove.  I fell down a few times.   I tucked the camera and the heavy lens inside my parka, pushed them toward my back, but they fell forward as I scrambled on my hands and toes down and into the scrub, moving up the creek toward the place the white antlers had appeared to be, scattered here and there, beside mossy, slick boulders and fallen trees.   A branch tore at my face, another slit my coat.  I sat down, a little breathless, filthy and worn out.  This suddenly seemed like less of a good idea.
I surveyed the sky, searched for and found the still sunning elk way, way , way above and noticed the changing strands of sunlight.

When I looked down, there it was.   Not an antler, not something lost intentionally because it was time to be lost, but something taken away.   A deer hoof attached still to the lower part of it's fur covered leg, just a few inches away from where I sat.   I touched it with my gloveless hand.   Warm. 
I took a photo.   I walked further into the flattened grass, musky and damp, recently vacated.  A coat of fur, a fawn's head, more hooves, legs, a set of jaws, a hip, an ear, more fur, and five skulls.  And I took photos and I started to place my foot beside the bones so that I could measure the different sizes of the ones who'd been slain.   And I hated it.   And I didn't hate it.  And it thrilled me.  And it repulsed me.   And it moved me.
Wolves.
Not long before me.
And I wasn't afraid.
It hadn't occurred to me till now, that the men had simply allowed me to go off alone, without protection and how we'd laughed when they handed me a radio to keep in contact as they hunted and how it's face signaled  "low battery".   "Oh well", we giggled.   This is not where I'll die, this I know, and besides the wolves are full.  And the rest of the deer have moved closer to the river, seeming to accept this as just another part of another day.  I'd seen them, maybe 200 of them, only a short while ago.  
And you think these things right about now:  
A)  I'm somebody's mother, what am I doing here anyhow?
B)  I'm never going to experience anything like this again, am I?
C)  Who on earth am I going to be able to show these horrifying photos to?
D)  What am I going to do with all these feelings I feel right now and how will they change me?

It's just under a month since I experienced my day in Hell's Canyon.   A few weeks since I shot some of my favorite photographs of all time; the blue sky silhouetted ridge of elk, the bald eagle rolling mid flight while skimming the river, the falcon regal in it's fragile post, wild turkey gossiping to one another as they tripped through a rocky hillside trail.  Not long ago, I stood in a bed of bending stalks and surveyed the remains of a half dozen previously living, breathing beings, savagely slaughtered around me and today, I feel the change I knew would happen as a result of the sum of my experience.  

A big part of me knows that was most likely my last time visiting the wildness of the Snake River.  
A part of me knows that something beautiful and fragile was meant to die that day.
A part of me accepts that not everything we love lasts.
A part of me is grateful for the beauty as well as for bittersweet sadness.
A part of me wants to go back.
A part of me wants to look forward.
A part of me is finished too early, like the fawn.
A part of me is satiated like a wolf.
A part of me is somebody's mother and wonders what am I doing here anyhow?
A part of me is and always will be alive and well forever in Idaho.

Just A Girl...

Have I told you lately that I love you? 

Not you.

But you.

You, my struggles.

I love you.

I love you for making my life interesting and for never leaving me.

I love you for keeping it real, me real, even though you're not real - you're just what I perceive you to be, allow you to become, what I lament over, what I carry with me, most of the time.

You're just what I feel.

You're just mine, my own struggle.

And even when what I feel is worry or frustration, I love you just the same, never less, 

in fact more...

I love you more.

Because your mine.

I recently asked my mother to bare witness and to listen as my daughter tried, to the best of her ability/disability, to articulate what she's going through as a teenage girl with a life long affliction which causes her to feel isolated from most people most of of the time.

It's quite common for those with Asperger's Syndrome to experience great difficulty relating to others, which obviously makes relaying what you can't relate to quite hard. 

And she struggles and I struggle with her struggling.

...And there are tears involved and sometimes outbursts born of anxiety and sometimes just withdrawal, which is the hardest part for me to endure.

Because I love her, I love you my struggle, my child.  I love you.  

Because your mine

I love you and your mine, UNTIL you're his.

When you're his, what would be hard for most people, is just a challenge to you; a joyful, delightful, diversionary challenge.  And for the rest of us who speak without thinking, while you think without speaking, our challenge might simply be to hold our palms flat and steady, allowing a horse to eat a carrot out of our hand.  And then there is you, my struggle - You, my beautiful horse girl.

I love you, my struggle, I love you for making me lie awake in the dark.

For haunting me through my days.   

I love you my struggle.   And I love you too, for making me appreciate those infrequent moments with those rare and beautiful people who make me laugh, make me feel alive and real and warm and open and free and who make you go away, if only for a short while.   Those people who I might not take notice of if not for my struggle, those who remind me who I am...

I love you my struggle, for all you are to me and all you cost me, cause me, give me, change me, make me, stretch me, press me, push me, fill me...

Because of you, I'm more then I would be.

Because you're mine

Until you're his... 

And when you're his... then you're just another girl. 

She's my baby, just another girl.