Listen to Your Mother Spokane was pure, happy-happy, joy-joy magic once again.  Our third year together.  Elise and I had less stress, less last minute panicking, more confidence and more fun.

 We met these thirteen incredible women.

(Gorgeous photography by Kristina Mattson)

We listened.

We rehearsed.

We signed.

We worshiped Phaedra, stage manager extraordinaire, and Tony, the keeper of all things technical at The Bing Crosby Theater.

We fell in love with words.

“Listen to the one who knew your worth before she knew your face.”  — Sara Smith, Behind the Words

“So, I had a starring role in this cascade of filth and mortification, and felt its bite for decades. My mother loved me, sure, but I also knew there was a back story.” — Rebecca Mack, Back Story

“I spent my 20s avoiding baby showers the way most people would avoid a nasty stomach virus.” — Becky Ammerman, Joining the Cult

“Remind those telling you television is evil that your kids were formula-fed, so they were doomed anyway. … Try to be the person you want to be, and know that the kids will be alright.” — Caroline Fowler, Three Ways to Have a Baby

“The night comes.  Mothers get up and go to their children. … It never stops being important.  But it is more than that.  Sometimes it feels like life and death and mothers help us choose life.” — Jennifer Knickerbocker, Nighttime Mothering

“The hardest thing? By far the hardest thing is learning to live without him.” — Kathryn Bonnett, It IS Hard

“There is a crossroad in grief.  A point in which you can turn into fear, what ifs, and why me’s?” — Mery Smith, The Upside of Down

“Columbus discovered America whilst searching for India. And I? I discovered that my eleven year-old daughter is becoming a woman whilst searching for kitty litter.”  — Rose Weagant, Unexpected Discoveries

“No I could not have children, but I can bless them. I can name them. And I will.”  — Becky Nappi, Blessing the Babies

“I thought it would happen instantly and my identity would change from childless to mom overnight. Instead, my identity shifted from childless to infertile.” — Gretchen Cleveland, First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

“Yet, even though I don’t know what the future brings, I know this: Janie deserves nothing less than all of the love my heart has to give, and I will not withhold any of it from her for my own sake.”  — Terra Price, From Momish to Mom

“In our society we call girls like Eliza tomboys. As her mother I can tell you that most days she would simply prefer — boy. Even half, half seems like a compromise.”  — Jennifer Savage, Half Half

“Sometimes, I think, as Mother’s we believe everything needs our strength and doing. And sometimes it absolutely does. Being a Mother is not for cowards. Still, we are not the last word on our lives.” — Karlene Arguinchona, A Way Through the Unknown

We were nervous as all hell.

And then we put on a hell of a show.

Photography credit – Nick Follger of Follger Photography

Everyone should experience a standing ovation from the stage at least once in their lives.  Elise and I are unbelievably grateful to our cast, volunteers, and sponsors, to Ann Imig and the whole 24-city LTYM team, and to our audience for making this one happen.

P.S. I’m pretty grateful to this little crew too. For my show day flower delivery and for making my life not boring. Without them, I’d be missing the “mother” in Listen To Your Mother.

I’m not sure I have much wisdom to share. All the lists have been listed, re-listed and listed again, but oh well.  Let’s re-invent the marriage advice wheel.  Here’s fourteen things I’ve learned about marriage in fourteen years.

1. Know each other before you get married.  You don’t have to agree, but there’s no excuse for not knowing.  Ask questions. Really think about the answers.  Ask yourself if you can live with that answer the way it is, not the way you hope it will be someday.  Change happens and true love flexes and bends, but chances are if you don’t like the way someone thinks, you won’t like who they are eventually.

2. Laugh.  Life is funny.  Gentle sarcasm is a way of turning anger into humor.  Humor always helps.

3.  Keep a budget.  Seriously, it’s boring, but if there was one thing Matt and I fought about in our first decade of marriage it was where all our money went, and why we couldn’t do things/have things, and who had caused us to spend too much money each month.  Three years ago we divided our entire existence into eight spending categories, each with a set monthly budget.  It kind of sucks because whether or not I can do something is all right there in black and white, but I love it.  It makes sense and we can’t play the “you bought this, I never get to do that” game.

4.  Always ask yourself if you can give a little.  Chances are that you can.

5.  Have sex. Even when you don’t feel like it.  No matter how strong the attraction is, eventually, you’ll hit your fifteenth consecutive week of poor sleep.  The sheets will be covered in milk spit up, the laundry will be taking over your house, you won’t have practiced anything resembling feminine hygiene in weeks, you’ll have a headache, it’s possible you’ve been sleeping in separate rooms for a month because the baby is always in your bed and his snoring at 3:00 a.m. as you pat the baby’s bottom numbly triggers in you a murderous rage so strong you have to remind yourself a child is present to keep from stuffing the fucking dirty boxer shorts he left on the floor up his nostrils until he asphyxiates on them AND DIES.  Not that I’ve ever been at that point.  He’ll cuddle up behind you one evening when the baby is actually sleeping while your feeling semi-conscious for the first time maybe ever and you’ll want to snarl “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me” right before you severe his penal artery with your incisors.  Don’t do that.  The thing about sex between long-term couples is that physical intimacy triggers feelings of emotional intimacy. Protection. Need. Vulnerability. LITERALLY, just do it.  It takes you back where you need to go.  But use birth control because otherwise you get Quinn a little quicker than you planned.

6. Travel separately.  Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.  Go somewhere. Let him go somewhere.  Experience life without your best friend and remember the exhilaration and the loneliness.

7. Keep in mind the things he does.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the things he doesn’t do.  Like, just off the top of my head FOR EXAMPLE, we have a deal wherein going out after the kids’ bedtime is always okay.  But if he goes out for beers, the kitchen is spotless when he gets home and when I go to wine night I’m lucky if the dishes have made it to the sink from the table.  But. That is okay because I have never – in my entire life – so much as touched a lawn mower and I never will. He also kills spiders, builds playhouses, snakes drains, and cleans up all dog vomit, even if it happens during the day and I obnoxiously throw a towel over it so that I don’t have to look at it.

8. Remember: you’re no picnic.  We all have issues.  Face yours down.  I’m a control freak from hell AND I’m lazy. It’s a terrible combination.

9.  Have your own friends.  Do stuff with them.  Never feel guilty about it and never make him feel guilty about his friends either.

10.  Tell each other your stories.  It’s easy to grow apart and feel distant when your days are so different.  Tell him about the weird lady at the PTA.  Make him know the characters and the villains and the rhythms of your day.  Mock the preschool board meeting with him. Ask him, in detail, about his day.  I want to know all of the inside jokes that fly around the room full of computers where Matt works.  I want to know what the young tech said and what Casey killed over the weekend (all legal, four-legged stuff) and the scoop on so and so’s new boyfriend.  That silly, every day, trivial stuff is our life. It’s what we do all day.  Make sure to share it.

11.  Accept the love in every day acts.  You have to do this.  Grand gestures are lovely, but they are rare.  How often have you made them?

12.  No name calling.  Ever.  Make it absolutely off limits.  It’s so hurtful.  That doesn’t mean no swearing. I swear like a sailor.  It’s all in the technique.  Put as many “fuckings” in there as adjectives as you need to make your point. I personally think it takes at least three.  “No, I am not fucking coming to bed because I have to do the fucking dishes and the fucking laundry.”  But never, “fuck you.”  It might be semantics, but it’s important.

13.  Don’t criticize each other to others.  We all need to feel delighted in.  We all need to have one person in our lives who is just over the moon crazy about us and thinks we are the bee’s knees.  Be that person for your partner.  Think about how it feels when you realize that he has told someone else how much he admires you. That doesn’t mean you can’t vent a little, but have your designated venting person and make sure it’s someone who knows how much you love and respect your partner.

14.  Be all in.  Sure, it means you can be hurt, but big pay offs have forever required big risks.  When things are hard, take a deep breath and remember your chain of love.

It’s probably pretty strong.

Yes, I did begin and end this with the lyrics to a Kenny Loggins song.  Think how glad you are that you aren’t marry to me!

“And even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you, honey
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes,
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.”

I always find the winter hard and this year it just about bested me. I’ve been sad. Not can’t get out of bed sad, but sad enough.  Sad enough to hatch wild plans for living across the world, contemplate jobs in other states, and seriously consider letting Matt buy an RV park on an icy cold, deep water lake surrounded by soldier pines.  Sad enough to want to sell this house we’ve coaxed into loving perfection over the last eight years.  Sad enough to beg Matt to move.

I crave change when I’m struggling.  I prioritize poorly, take on too much, and accomplish endless distracting little tasks while letting the big stuff, the real stuff, the actual STUFF sit and sit, gathering dust.  There’s a healing balm to manic busyness and endless to do lists that soothes my sore soul.  The man paid to be wiser than I am on these issues suggests that all that drive to “do” without any real forward motion looks suspiciously like an avoidance technique.

Yes, I whine, I’m sad.  I’m sad the baby died and we can’t have another.  I’m sad to have to live with that decision.  It sucks.  I’m mad at something. Statistics maybe.  Big, powerful forces for order in the universe that don’t care – can’t care – about the effect of poorly dividing cells on a few small lives.

But MY GOD, I can’t just sit around and think about being sad all the time.  Even spinning tires catch hold of the gravel every once in a while and I’ve been moving forward in fits and starts.

A friend who spent ten days at a silent meditation retreat in India tells me about the concept of impermanence. When they try to sit for ten hours in meditative silence (which sounds like a recipe for MADNESS to me; I seriously think I might chew my own face off or worry myself into a silent heart attack) they were taught to think of each sensation and irritation as impermanent.  Foot asleep?  Just experience it; it’s impermanent.  Butt numb? Explore the sensation; it’s impermanent.  Mind racing?  Breathe deep and follow the circles.  Impermanent.

It makes a deep, resonating sense for me.  Not meditation – that sounds like hell – but the concept of impermanence. It fits like a missing puzzle piece with my constant struggle to avoid rushing each moment past.  To focus on the joy and not the annoying tasks to be accomplished.  I love it when concepts click, when something that I’ve always believed, but maybe haven’t fully understood, becomes clear in a single illuminating word.

My heart hurts and I stop and sit with it a short time each day.  I try to observe it like a good little Buddhist. Yes, it’s there. It means I loved and lost.  It’s impermanent, even day to day it waxes and wanes, round and full and then a mere sliver in the back of my mind.

My inability to even look at the boxes of baby clothes and gear in the basement – impermanent.

My daughter’s enormous, dramatic temper tantrums over every. single. little. thing.  IMPERMANENT.  (Oh please God.)

The alarm that goes off three times each night, startling us all into bubbling awakeness as a child who shall not be named tries to teach itself to stay dry overnight.  Impermanent.

Nate wobbling down the street in front of me on his training wheels … so very impermanent.

Today’s fleeting afternoon with its delicious baked grass smells and lazy bike rides.  This gorgeous spring is as temporary as everything else and so I sink into it and open my mind to awareness of the sun on my shoulders, the laughter from the park, our lovely, vibrant neighborhood crawling out of hibernation.  We walk to the library for new books, past Temple Beth Shalom, which I keep meaning to visit, and the fire station where they have the trucks pulled out front to wash. A suspendered fireman with a shaved head hands the kids stickers. On the next block, the cute, young Verizon repair man beside his work van sees me struggling to tighten the bolt on Nate’s loose training wheel with my fingers.  He walks over to us with a wrench.  “That’ll hold it,” he tells me after a few quick turns of the bolt.

We are wobble free for the rest of the ride.  On the long walk home, our new story treasures weighing down my arm and hurting my shoulder, Quinn stops his green bike “Stinger” and waits for me.

“I want to be a libwarian when I gwow up.”

“Really!  That’s a cool job,” I gush.  “Do you want to learn to use the computers and help people find books that they need?”

“No. I want to use that coo-wel metal thing to take the plastic box off the movies.”

I know joy, like pain, is impermanent, but it’s so beautiful.

At Mamalode, I shared Just Be, a post from Quinn’s infancy describing a night when I took the time to sit and rock him even though I wanted to be pretty much anywhere else.  Looking at my sweet, smart, funny, handsome almost-six-year-old, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I sat still in that moment and that I wrote it down.

Jill shared Matching, a post in the early years of exploring how different we look in our transracial family.  I should really write an update.  I should really write a lot things!

Matt, Nate and Quinn are currently out on a lake near our house in a wooden boat that Matt spent the last two years making in the garage.  I have two diametrically opposed thoughts on this.  Thought 1)  It’s really cool that Matt can take a pile of wood and turn it into a boat.  He’s handy like that and I’m glad our kids will learn his skills and work with their Dad on such fun and unique projects.

Thought 2)  HOLY CRAP.  Boats seem to me to be the type of object on which one’s life depends.  Like airplanes.  Or roller coasters.  I don’t want to know who built my life-sustaining hurtling metal canisters, but I want them to have engineering degrees and wear smart people glasses and preferably have a team of lawyers who understand the concept of product liability.  None of which foregoing precautions apply to Matt in any way, so I’m relying on the fact that their destination for the inaugural voyage was a very small lake and, therefore, should the boat suddenly fail to perform as required, Matt should be able to swim back to shore with our small children in tow.

Hampton’s ass is much better; I’m sure you’ve been worried.  He’s still on antibiotics, but we haven’t had to sacrifice our children’s college educations to a pus-extracting vet visit once this week.  Progress.  We had a brief, terrifying bedbug scare when Nate awoke one morning covered in bites.  Or I thought they were bites.  And then a friend who is also a doctor said bedbugs and I lost my freaking mind.  Have you every researched bedbugs? Shudder.  Fortunately, we realized it was probably the tail end of a virus before I doused the house in gasoline and burned it all down.  A fresh start is sometimes best.

Saige and Garrett starred (with 80 other shining first graders) in the first grade musical ARF! last night. I’m going nowhere cute or deep with this, it’s just straight up, good old-fashion, my kids are adorable blogging.  We worked hard on their dog costumes.  I bought felt!  And craft glue!

It really was cute.  I give huge props to the music teacher who spent the last two months somehow convincing 80 six/seven-year-olds to stand in the correct locations, move on cue, and sing for 30 minutes.  Also to the three first-grade teachers who gave up their evenings to wrangle their classes before and after the show.  Teaching is not for faint of heart.  Also to me for not killing Garrett (and all the other parents for not killing their children) when he wanted to rehearse his three-line speaking part for the tenkajillionth time.

The week is over now.  Matt, Nate, and Quinn survived the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Conner.  They didn’t even get their feet wet.  I’m typing the end of this while I wait for the emergency plumber to come and unclog our 100-year-old sewer drain, which has once again backed up into the basement, soaking four loads of laundry (two of them FINISHED) in shitty water.  Matt was on his way out for beers with a few friends when we discovered the flood.  Why does this kind of thing always happen on Friday night … a full 72 hours from non-emergency pricing?  Matt informed me the plumbers he called were too expensive and he was leaving, but he would rent a machine and deal with the problem in morning.  Then, I reprogrammed Matt’s brain with the evil power of my laser beam eyes.  So now the plumber is on the way.

And they all lived happily ever after.  Or at least through the weekend.

“And Kaki,” I called after her.

“And Kaki,” she repeated into her radio as if we were prepping for a walk down the red-carpet amid screaming fans.

I adore pick-up line days.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy. Just don’t make me get out of the car to pick up children.

Mrs. S, Quinn’s Kindergarten teacher, brought them around to the side door and lifted them in one at a time.  I turned down the forgotten radio to smile at her, shushing Nate over my right shoulder, and directing children to chairs in rapid fire mom mode.  “Hey, Mrs. S. Thank you.  Kaki, the brown chair honey. Ty, up here.  I’ll buckle them around the corner so we don’t hold up the line.”

“I want you to know,” she told me over the cacophony, “that Quinn clipped up to green today twice.  And the second time, well …” She stopped to control a hitch in her voice. “I’ll let him tell you the whole story, but I am really proud of him. He stood up for a friend when other kids were laughing at him.”

“Oh, that’s amazing Quinn,” I said, surprised at the quick hot tears hidden behind the sunglasses I’d finally settled onto my nose.  “Thank you for telling me.”

She nodded.  “I’m really proud of him,” she said again.

“What happened?” I asked and they stumbled over themselves to tell me the story.  Ty enthusiastic and Quinn shyly thrilled at the attention.

“Well, mom, Bwady dropped a game and it spilled everywhere.”

“Yeah and some girls were laughing at him and he cried,” Ty explained.

“So I told them it wasn’t funny and I helped him pick it up.”

“Wow, Quinn,” I choked around my embarrassing mom tears.  “It’s hard to remember to help your friends sometimes when other people aren’t kind.  I’m really proud of you.”  The car was in the way of the crowded parking lot’s flow. I had to buckle all the buckles, drive them all home, make lunch, turn it all around in time to pick up Saige and Garrett. Nate still wanted a snack. The moment was quickly forgotten.

*****************************

On the walk to elementary school two hours later, Quinn weaved back and forth by my side, jumping sidewalk cracks.  I reveled in the still bright sunshine and pushed Nate forward on his new two-wheel bike every five or six steps.

“Christians believe when you die, you go to heaven,” Quinn announced authoritatively, apropos of nothing.  Quinn always has questions. He wants to know about everything. He’s intuitive and a little too probing for his own good.  He knows when he has you sweating.

“A lot of people believe that.”

“Yeah, but you don’t.”

“I have different beliefs,” I say carefully, “but that doesn’t mean believing in heaven is wrong.”

“Where do you think people go when we die?”

“I think we all have energy inside of us, a bright energy that holds all our kindness and goodness.  It’s what some people call a soul.  And when we die, that energy gets released and it becomes a part of a bigger force for order and good in the universe.”

“So, then, there’s a force for good in the universe?”

“I think so.  An energy that has a consciousness. That means it can direct its will.”

“Is there a bad force too?”

I startled.  It was so Quinn. I never know where he’s going with something, but it’s usually right to the point.

“Yes, I believe there is. Something makes us unkind and hurtful. Something tends toward chaos.”

The words were too big and I knew it, but he cocked his adorable round head to the side and pinned me in his discerning gaze.  “So which one is stronger?”

How is the weight of the world held in one innocent question?  I don’t know, Quinn.  Most days, I think, of course the force for good and light and kindness in the universe is stronger than anything else.  Of course it is.  But that leaves so many unanswered questions.  Why does chaos win?  Why are eight year olds blown apart?  Kindergartners shot?  Why cancer? Why are background checks not common sense?  How do those senators sleep at night?  Is life worth living in a world where Ryan Lochte has his own TV show, but no one knows the brief, wondrous life of Wadagens?  Why does the Pope, a man with so much power it drips from  his lips, preach against birth control in third world countries?

“Well, it depends on the person.  It depends on all of us.  We have to choose kindness.  Like today, when your friend dropped his game and some kids were laughing at him, you helped him because you chose kindness.  And that helps the universe stay … good. Right?”

He was quiet for a long time, so I asked, “which one do you think is stronger?”

“I think the good force is stronger because when I told them it wasn’t funny, they stopped laughing.”

“Uh huh, so they had kindness inside of them too. And you reminded them.  And the whole universe wins. Pretty cool.”

“Yeah. I knowed that.”

We all knowed that. But it doesn’t hurt to be reminded.  Choose kindness.  The whole universe wins.

*****************************
Do you know what helps me choose kindness?  Laughing until I cry.  Here are three things that made me laugh to tears this week.

Newscasters lose their shit over Ryan Lochte’s stupidity.

Sheinelle Jones, I love you.

Who’s the penguin, who’s the penguin?

“It looks a little bit … risky.”

And finally, I give you How Animals Eat Their Food.

I know. There’s something wrong with me. I’m not sure I’m contributing to the positive energy in the universe, but hot DAMN, that shit’s funny. You’re welcome. xo.

I want to say I didn’t like this book because the tone is dark, bitter, and depressing, but I couldn’t put it down.  Maybe that says something about me.  It’s a book about food and why we overeat it, family, and the average-ness of the lives most of us lead in spite of ourselves and our grandiose ideas that we’re different.  The final line is one of the most delicate, redeeming, beautiful one-sentence stories of humanity I’ve ever read.  It’s worth it for that healing, affirming statement alone.  But you have to read the whole damn thing to get there and it sticks a little. It’ll pucker your lips.

I really enjoyed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Diaz. The imagery and story telling in this book don’t disappoint, but the purpose and plot aren’t there. It’s still pretty prose?  For what that’s worth.  It’s still a glimpse into Latin immigrant culture.  I was supremely irritated by the weird point of view in most of the stories.  It’s first person, but the author is kind of talking to himself, calling himself “You.”  “You fall in love, and at first you’re faithful to her.”  At first it works, but then you fall out of love and you kind of want to hit him over the head with a book because you’re done with it.  This is how you lose me.  This is how he lost me. WTFever.

Right now I’m reading The Round House by Louise Erdrich. I adore it. It’s about a teenager on a reservation in North Dakota whose mother is brutally raped — so not for the faint of heart. It’s so good that when I finish I’m going to read Erdrich’s Love Medicine, which I heard is better.  I never read two books by one author in a row unless it’s a smutty teen romance series with vampires or dystopian, awful murder games or time travel.  Or GAME OF THRONES. That’s my literary smut alter ego peeking through.

My next book (for book club) will be The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Feel free to follow along at home!

Garrett (7) is a force of reading nature and he can not be stopped. He just finished the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series.  Fifteen books about owls and a tree. Set in Ga’Hoole, I think .  I don’t freaking know because I can’t keep up with him. He reads too much, too fast and I don’t want to read about owls and trees in Ga’Hoole so I gave up pre-reading and screening MONTHS ago.  I suck. Garrett loves these. Age-appropriateness not certified by blog author.

Now he’s started on a series about the wolves of Ga’Hoole by the same author.  Again, I have no idea what these books are about or whether they are appropriate for first grade.  All I know is that he is so engaged by them and reads for hours.  You see, when he reads, he is quiet and he isn’t whining to play video games and I would let him read Twilight or Hunger Games or How To Be An Evil And Terrible Child to keep him quiet and non-video-game-whining.

Related:  Saige (7) won’t read!  Not like that.  I mean, she reads very, very well, but she won’t find the magic.  There’s magic!  I swear it!  She begrudgingly checks out stupid books about Barbie Fairies or Garfield and then won’t finish them.  What do I do?  How do I make her like to read?  She’s so whiney. I’m so whiney.  God.

Quinn (5) is “reading” Frog and Toad.  Where in the previous sentence “reading” means Quinn has progressed from refusing to put his “Q” sticks in the correct location, but not far.  Anyway, gotta love the classics. Oldie but goodie.  I love it when the kids discover books from my childhood.

And then there’s Nate. Nate is obsessed with this book.

It’s cute. The monsters color. Obviously. Because they love color. Nate’s picky and he doesn’t ask for a book to be read over and over very often, but this one we read again and again. I need to take it back to the library and I might buy it, which is a big deal because I’m cheap.

What are you reading? What about your kids?

Very loving. Likes the couch.  Ruined the couch, but now it’s his, so whatever. He slobbers lake-sized puddles onto the floor, which I then step in with my sock-clad feet.  I hate wet socks.  He shakes ear-blood onto the ceilings.  He has very large … anal glands.  There I said it.  Gross.

He likes to squirt them when he gets excited.  Like at the mailman’s daily visit. Or when I turn on the vacuum. Or when someone moves a child-sized desk chair a millimeter out of place and he can’t exit the office because the door opening is now only 7 1/2 feet wide instead of 8 feet wide.  My god! The opening has reduced in size!  How will he fit through?  Assume chihuahu-like crouch complete with uncontrollable trembling.

Last week, I noticed the familiar dog butt-gland odor and there was… how do I say this nicely?  Who gives a flying dog fart? LEAKAGE.  He was leaking from his ass sacs.

Dogs are foul. And the bigger the dog, the larger the capacity for foul.  Now you know.

I called the vet, but it was a new vet that a friend had switched to using because our really hot vet appeared to be … this is just a hypothesis, but one confirmed by multiple people … dipping into his pet pharmacy. Or smoking pot.  I have no idea.  The man was high.  Still attractive, but high on something.  Which wouldn’t have been a huge problem except that it made him really slow and the last thing I need when I drag four children and a 150 pound Great Dane that is leaking something from  his ass-region to the vet is a SLOW-moving, babbling, drugged veterinarian.

You can’t make this shit up.  Life is weird.

The front desk lady at the new vet recognized the gravity of the problem and fit us in quickly, which I appreciated, but unfortunately, that meant Matt could not come to the appointment with me.  “So, I need to know,” I explained patiently into the phone, “because my husband can’t come at that time, and the dog is BIG, really, really big, and I need to know that you can handle him.  He’s sweet and he’ll never hurt anyone, but if he gets scared and decides he’s not moving, I can not move him.  Matt can, but I can’t. So will this work?  Without Matt?”

“Oh yes,” she assured me, “we are a vet. We handle dogs all the time.”

I didn’t feel confident that she understood the full scope of the issue, because she didn’t verbally acknowledge that they handle ENORMOUS, pony-sized dogs that have the courage of a trembling mini-pincher, but I had pony-sized leaking ass sacs in my house, so yeah.  Onward.  New vet.

The next afternoon started well.  We arrived early. I only had Quinn and Nate  with me and Hampton entered the vet office willingly and eagerly because he had never been there before.  I attempted to hold him on his very short chain while we checked in and then went to a small exam room. Dino-dog trembled and expelled hair and slobber and stench while the children whined and wallowed about on the floor picking up canine ebola zaire and previous-ass-leakage on their clothes, periodically sticking their filthy hands in their mouths for the express purpose of driving me certifiably insane. I went from filling out paperwork to the poster parent for CPS’ “Our Children, Our Problem” Campaign in 2.4 seconds, and I think my head may actually have been spun around backward when the vet assistant entered the room without knocking.

Medical professionals should really knock before entering an exam room in case someone is naked or I’m in the midst of needing a parental exorcism.

“The lobby is empty  now, so let’s try to weigh him.” She reached for his leash and started to walk from the room.  Amateur.  Hampton reversed until he could place his leaking, 90 pound ass in my lap and trembled there.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” I suggested, which meant we trooped into the lobby en masse.  Once frightened, Hampton will usually go anywhere I go so long as he can press into my leg and shake miserably.  The scale sat in one corner of the entrance way, a vast sheet of metal about three-inches off the ground that clanked and wobbled when she touched it.

I laughed out loud and felt a headache developing at the back of my neck. “That’s not going to happen,” I told her.

“Just walk right up onto it,” she replied cheerfully.  About a foot from the METAL GROUND OF HORROR, Hampton hunkered down into extremely heavy immovable object pose. I sat down on the edge of the scale, making it rattle like the terrible implement of death it was.

“Okay, can you call him up with you?”  No.  “Can you pull him toward you?” No.  “What about a treat?”

“You just have to consider him a part of the ground at this point.  Like a tree. Or a boulder.”

Quinn walked over from the counter with a handful of treats.  “Here Hampton, treats!”

“He doesn’t want those, does he?” the assistant chirped.

Do you often see inanimate objects move for treats? It’s like you’re offering a treat to a goddamn brick house.

That last was inside my head.  Outside of my head, I said, fairly nicely.  “I explained when I called that my husband couldn’t come and if he doesn’t want to move, I can’t move him.”

“You sit beside the scale and pull a little and I’ll push and we’ll just see one last time.”  So we did. Unbelievably, it worked because Hampton was so terrified of her touching him from behind that he tried to sit in my lap again and I was able to push him off-balance and onto the scale.  “147 pounds!” The other assistant exclaimed in the one millisecond that he half rested on his side on the metal.

Fabulous, we had achieved the least accurate dog weight measurement in the history of time.

It’s all a blur from there.  We went back to the exam room. Nate, Quinn, and Hampton whined. Hampton trembled.  The vet finally arrived and tried to take Hampton to another room to express his anal sacs.  Hampton again morphed into solid rock. “Can you move him forward?” the vet asked me.

??????????????????  No. I can’t. Just like I can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop bullets with  my …

I suggested I tell him we were going to the car. That actually worked.  We wallowed in canine ebola Zaire for approximately seven hours and then the vet came back with a horrified Hampton, looking grave.  “It’s very good that you brought him in.  His right anal sac is infected,” she informed me. “Look.”

If this ever happens to you and the vet says “look” and holds up a plastic bag, DO NOT LOOK.  What is wrong with people? If I wanted to see what came out of a somewhere in the vicinity of 147 pound dog’s infected anal sac, I would have become a veterinarian.

Lawyer.  Think about it.

We went home with antibiotics.  Oh and I’m suppose to apply heat twice a day to the affected area.

I’m so pleased to allow my life to be a cautionary lesson to you all.

On my birthday, we rode for an hour or so to the coast. The weather was crappy most of the week and it looked like conditions on the beach would not be ideal.  “We dance how the music goes,” Miguel told us with a shrug, whistling cheerfully.  The familiar phrase said so differently made me smile.  I meant to ask him what the actual saying is in Portuguese, but I never did.  Heather’s horse went lame a few minutes later and he taught me my new favorite swear words.  “Deo! Christo!”  I’m pretty sure that’s “Ohmyfuckinggod! Jesus!”, which is fabulous.

The trees gradually shortened and became more scrubby, the wind picked up and the soil turned sandy under the horses’ feet.  We crested the top of the last bluff and wound single file down a narrow track to the sand.  The beach stretched completely untouched in front of us for 60 kilometers.  There is nothing like an empty beach to twang that odd ache of loneliness in my soul.  It feels like sadness, but it’s really recognition of vastness. I briefly understand that I am an ant chewing on the universe’s leaf for a millisecond of time.  Squashable and insignificant.

A heavy wind blew off the Atlantic from the east.  Suddenly, it was funny that the earth is round. Born in the Pacific, that wind kissed my boys on the cheeks before it crested the Rockies on the jet stream, pushed an old newspaper down Park Avenue in Manhattan, and then crossed the Atlantic, skimming the tops of the waves so that it could stick its wet tongue in our ears. It lifted the horses tails and made them dance in place and pull at their bits, eager to follow.

We had missed low tide and the best conditions for a flat out run, so we galloped for short spurts in the heavy sand, but mostly walked and soothed jittery, nervous horses.  It was that strange quiet that is only quiet because it’s too loud to hear. I thought about how there’s really no such thing as closure.  It’s made up like so many of our words for complicated processes.  Calendars. True love.  God.  Grief.  These things, as actual things with defined shapes and beginnings and ends, are fairy tales. There is no such thing as a set point in time.  It’s relative and elusive.  I wanted to face the ocean and take a deep breath and be done, in a grand sense, with sadness and grief.  But these aren’t concrete objects that can be cast off like bricks. They are concepts, words for processes of mind-boggling complexity.  They are understood only in relation to every thing else at any given snapshot moment and never, by one mind, as a whole.  My understanding and acceptance and joy, my ability to let go or move on or cry or redirect are Teutonic plates inside my brain, always shifting and sliding over each other, creating new mountains to scale.

Inside my head, I fight against the time continuum.  I wish, sometimes, that we carried the baby to term, not because it would change anything, but because the grief of this month would be so different, more concrete. If he had been born, he would have died by now and the external evidence of such a traumatic life event would be difficult to ignore.  No one wants you to move on from your baby’s funeral, no matter how inevitable.  But I know that’s not the answer either. That’s not closure. Just a different plate with different topography, resting uneasily on the surface of my thoughts.

We had a cake with horses on it and champagne at lunch.

If you want the truth, Portuguese desserts are disgusting. I don’t know how an entire country can fuck up dessert so badly, but it’s true.  The food was incredible except for dessert, which started to be a running joke for my sisters and I with its incomprehensible ability to be worse each night.  Be glad you’re not Portuguese on the basis of desserts alone.  The actual taste of the cake on my tongue was irrelevant because in my mind it tasted of sweetness and friendship and love.

At dinner that night, we got drunk and when the foul, flan-like, egg-based dessert arrived, we could not contain our hilarity.

It spread to Constanze across from us and attracted the attention of the entire table.  We tried to choke back our mirth and be polite because the owner of the restaurant watched us mock his lovely offering with an evil eye.

“What is so funny?” Sophie asked me.

“Nothing, it’s not funny, we’re just being silly, we want to know if there is no chocolate in Portugal?” I poked the wobbly, gelatinous cake with a hesitant fork.

Sophie sneered down at the offending sweet. “Je detest,” she spat, sending us into uncontrollable laughter again.  Why are other languages so much more expressive of emotions? Exactly.  Je detest.

Stacey, Heather and Dianna – 1983

Thirty years later.

We were all drunk by the time we loaded back into the van, singing songs as a group as if we’d known each other for ten years.  We stumbled into the common room of the inn with a bottle of whiskey and settled ourselves before the fire.  Sophie declared herself drunk and headed for bed.  “How do you say it in French?” I asked her.

“Je suis soule.”

Miguel left us as well, telling us that the next day looked very wet.  “But, it iz okay, yes? We will dance how the music goes.”

Which is all we can do, isn’t it?  The alternative is not to dance at all and that would be a tragic mistake.  It’s not like the music stops playing and waits for us.  We took our soule selves to bed as my fortieth birthday quietly slipped into the day after my fortieth birthday and woke in the morning to dance another day.

The end.  Or maybe: The beginning.  Two sides of the same page, no?

No.  On the third day, Miguel rode a young horse, a tall, broad grey that still looked a bit gangly and knock-kneed like a teenage basketball player, with a pretty dished face, a wide-eyed, WTH is THAT attitude about the world, and long ears locked forward in alert position.  Universo and I moseyed behind him, unperturbed, as he started, looked, jumped, and spooked at trees or a fence or the wind.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to watch someone with such a good seat ride a spirited horse .  In horse-people language, “a good seat” means the rider moves naturally with the animal, even when the horse is silly or sudden.  I would have fallen off a hundred times.

“Bambino!” Miguel declared in his rich accented English.  “He is very smart, but not so much of the experience.”

True of babies and novices everywhere.  I was content to watch with the steady gait of experience beneath me. Maybe let the reminder sink in, just a little bit, that poor decision-making from lack of experience is better treated gently. Admonitions are either lost on the wide-eyed young or taken too much to heart.

And enjoy the scenery.  Portugal is pretty, isn’t it?

At Mamalode on Friday, I wrote about hopes, boys, “rape culture,” and tenderness, inspired by Jennie, who wrote about hope and asked me to do it too.

The week starts under a cork forest, immersed in soft, dense gray-green, slightly dripping.  The bark of each tree is stripped to a carefully chosen spot half way up the trunk, exposing the deep black under-skin of the tree, and then marked in white chalk to designate the year of harvest. They are left to heal for ten years between harvests.

The next time I uncork a bottle of wine, I will wonder if I once, in a dream, rode a little bay horse named Universo beneath the branches of its tree.  Everything we touch is connected to everything else. That is the lesson of traveling.

Sophie, a pretty, effusive Belgian woman, and Miguel, our very skilled and unexpectedly handsome guide, flirt animatedly in French at the front of the line of Lucitano horses stretched over a few hundred yards of the trail that gently dips and rolls with the countryside.  Dianna, Heather and I, competent, but definitely the least frequent riders in the group, poke along happily at the rear on the three quietest horses. We are content to gaze at the scenery, chatting occasionally, but mostly just reveling in the chance to spend six hours with our own thoughts.  The wind gusts rain into our faces at the high points of the trail and my thighs gradually build from a steady ache to hysterical screams of pain.  I couldn’t be happier.

On our first long canter down a winding dirt path between two groves of a carefully planted tree farm, I gasp for breath and giggle, grateful for the unwaveringly smooth gait of the sturdy, older horse beneath me.  I haven’t cantered for fifteen minutes at a stretch in ten years.  Obrigada, Universo, I whisper into the wind and he flicks an alert ear back to catch the sound of my voice, never breaking his powerful stride.

****************************

Dinner? Supper? What is that leisurely European meal served at 8:30 at night when you have already drown yourself in tart red wine?  Whatever the name, it’s fabulous.  Sore and jet-lag tired and happy, we sit at the long table and listen to the swirl of conversation, gradually getting to know this diverse group of Europeans bound together by a deep love for riding.  We are the only Americans and we feel slightly off-kilter, out of place.  American is such a THING in the greater world, I often sense.  Different in perception than being “from” anywhere else.  Maybe it’s my own sensitivity, but I’m grateful for the delightful British friends, Chris and Barbara, who sit to our left.  At least we are not the sole reason that the group conducts the conversation in sometimes halting English instead of French or Spanish.

The conversation at our end of the table turns to why Americans and the British (often) aren’t as fluent in languages as the rest of the world. Certainly Europe.  We agree that it’s not necessarily haughtiness or a disregard of the value of learning other languages, at least not entirely.  We laugh at our dismal education system and exchange tales of years of language classes in school that left us with nothing to show for them.  “It’s isolation, too, in part,” Barbara and I muse.  It’s changing, but it’s hard for Europeans to comprehend how LARGE the U.S. is and how far, geographically and financially, people can live from another culture.

Sophie listens to us now, her conversation with Miguel and Constanze in French complete with expressive hand gestures at an end.  She purses her lips and shakes her head, her blue eyes flashing mischief.   She sits back with her wine glass in one hand and makes that slightly dismissive, very French wave with her hand, part disdain, part teasing, part rude gesture.  “Ooooo,” she trills in beautifully accented English, “you want to learn French?” She leans towards us, confidentially, “you take a French lover.”

We laugh and laugh.  We’ve had a lot of wine.  Though it isn’t for me, I can’t disagree on the effectiveness of her method.

It’s a big world out there and I’m glad and grateful for this moment to be a part of it.

“Obrigada,” we say, as we stumble up the stairs in search of our chilly, charmingly Mediterranean, tiled rooms.  “See you in the morning.”