Just a Workin' Girl...

Day Two.Five: Arrive Utah.

The hotel manager thinks I’m a prostitute.

I arrive wearing jeans, flannel shirt and a pony tail. As I’m checking in the manager asks me how many keys I need. Since I’m staying so long, I say, probably two. He asks what my stay here is about, travel or business. I say I’m a working girl. He laughs. I unload a ridiculous amount of luggage.

My son arrives. He wants to take me out for dinner. I dress in what I have readily available. Grey cargos, black cami, jean jacket and flip flops. I notice the twenty pounds I’ve lost when the cargos keep slipping down my hips. I try to make up for the dressed down attire by adding extra accessories. Lots of bracelets and dangly earrings. I fix my makeup. Nothing can hide the fact I’ve cried for a week, but a little eyeliner helps.

Total, we’re in my room for about 20 minutes. He’s concerned he might run into someone else from the company we both work for (he doesn’t want to get looped into visiting) so he acts antsy. I’m whining about the budget busting tires and not paying attention to what I’m doing. As we’re leaving, I realize I’ve locked my keys in my room. I stop at the front desk and ask the manager for another. While he’s getting my key, my son gets a generous hair up his nose and hands me four hundred dollars with no explanation. Then, because he is notoriously uncomfortable with emotional scenes, he says he’ll  see me outside.

I turn to face the manager, who looks from me to the door where my son just left, and then back to the wad of cash in my hand.

I’m speechless. I’ve only been in town for 15 minutes and I’ve scored a 400 dollar client.

I laugh.. nervously.

Oh what the heck. I don’t even try to explain: I just take the key and leave.

I may be a hooker, but at least I’m expensive.

Off the Reservation

Day Two: The Rez.

Shiprock, NM is not a user friendly town. In fact, nothing from the time I left Farmington until I hit the Utah state line was friendly. Not one safe stop. So glad I didn’t get a wild hair and drive it at night.

Utah is beautiful. It’s like Taos without the hippies. Santa Fe without the liberals. Sort of like, what NM would be if it was part of Texas. (After making that statement, I am now certain I have no friends left…)

Moab was amazing. The roads, however are not. My truck had to hold its breath and suck in its gut to get through some of the passes. Forget eating or radio. Both hands on the wheel at all times. It snowed on me as I crested the mountain.

I arrived at my hotel exhausted, dirty, thirsty, hungry and road weary. And within 30 minutes, the hotel manager had decided I was a prostitute. But I’ll tell that story tomorrow. I’m going to bed.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life - Oh Yay!

Day One: Depart NM.

I cried from my house to Albuquerque. Then I bought new tires.

In fact, I’m buying them right now. Two. E load range. Ten ply. Don’t ask me what that means. It’s just what I have to have on this truck since I drive on dirt roads and haul goosenecks full of cattle. Five hundred bucks out of the budget. Surprise. The tire-guy probably took advantage of me. But that’s his problem. Not mine.  

I’m in my truck – the monster. The plan was I’d take Luke’s because it has a backseat and gets good gas mileage, but you know what they say about plans. The starter went out right before I was going to leave. So now I have to unload my suitcases (5) every time I stop.

By the way, driving a diesel, standard, big old honking rig in traffic is not fun. Not fun at all.

I stop in Farmington. Try to sleep so I can leave early the next morning. One observation: I will never stay at a Holiday Inn again. Kids stay free=adults don’t sleep.

Prologue

The beginning: I’m not even going to try to make this pretty. I’ll just spit it out fast and get it over with.

Last week was a whirl. Divorce, creation of an LLC, taxes and all the paperwork associated with those things. Packing a life’s worth of crap. Unpacking. Culling. Packing again. Still too much stuff. Starting over. And all the while, fighting to swallow the lump that is growing in my throat like an undercooked dumpling.

It’s normal to be sad, I tell myself.

It’s normal to be scared.

It really is over. Twenty eight years of marriage, gone.

I spent several sleepless nights worrying over such ridiculous things as how to keep my suitcases from falling out of the back of the truck (at 3:00 AM shutting the tailgate didn’t occur to me) and whether I would be able to go through the mountainous passes of Utah without deliberately driving my truck off the edge of a cliff. Finally, I lost the struggle and took Tylenol PM. By then, the lump was monster-sized.

I’ll be alone… Like, really alone. The Discovery Channel has taught me well: it’s the lone straggling moose that gets eaten by wolves. What if someone breaks into my motel room and kills me? What would happen to the ranch? The mortgage? I should get insurance. That takes too long. I’ll get accidental insurance before Term life kicks in. And I should make out a will.

What if my house burns down while I’m gone?

What if I can’t do the job? I’m older now than I was before. I’m less … festive. My new boss is my old boss but grouchier. He told me to leave the ‘smart-mouth’ at home. I don’t know how to do that: I think I might have to kill her. She tends to go where I go.

Then comes the crying. Once it starts, I can’t stop. I cry in the tub. I cry in my sleep. Cry when I walk by the picture of my used-to-be happy family. Cry. Cry. Cry.

I hear the voice of others: You can’t drive a stick shift. You can’t haul a gooseneck. You can’t live by yourself. You can’t load hay. What are you thinking?

But I did.

Now, it’s my voice that won’t shut up: You can’t live alone. You can’t earn your paycheck. You can’t be divorced. You can’t…you can’t…you can’t…

I didn’t just get a divorce. I gave birth to it. Five years of labor. But I made it as fair as I could. I tried not to become bitter and vengeful. Tried not to give my ex an excuse to be bitter or vengeful. Tried not to be  that ex-wife. I did that.

I structured the LLC. By myself. I drove the restoration of a house that no one thought could be restored. By myself. I sold my car. I bought a truck. I fed the cows and loaded the hay and unloaded it again. By myself. I lived alone. Without electricity, then without water, then without heat. I did that.

I saved as much money as I could. I ate beans. I worked every odd job that came my way. I slept cold, woke cold, chipped ice off the inside of my windows so I could see out. I began to work out and lift weights so I could get stronger physically because I was unraveling emotionally faster than I could tie the ends back together. I did that.

I can do this. I can.

I will.

I have to.

I’m scared.

That Which I Have Feared The Most ...

That which I have feared the most is upon me.

The other night, it happened. The perfect storm of fear. After working in town all day, I came home to an empty house, which is my lot in life right now, and not such a bad thing most days.  But that night I was a bit on edge already, and cold. There was a distinct note of Poe whispering through the tops of the trees.

Moths fluttered nervously in my belly. I stoked the fire and fixed a cup of coffee, determined not to give in to anxiety. Hard winds buffeted the little house. Overhead, the elms bowed and swayed, flailing the roof with their branches, cold fingers scratching against the windowpanes. Outside, the drizzling rain turned to ice and then to fat, greedy snowflakes that hung heavy on the electric lines, pulling them to the ground.

Lights off.

In the dim light of the fireplace, I found a couple of candles and some matches. I pillaged about by candlelight for the phone book. Not knowing where the lines had gone down, I needed to contact the electric company to tell them I was out.

No luck.

Plan B entailed doing the thing I’m trying not to do these days: calling my almost ex for help. I picked up the phone, hesitating. Should I? Should I not? What about the water in the well house? The pipes are wrapped in heat tape and if they freeze again…. I flipped the phone open, surprised to find I had no service until I remembered the booster was electric.

No phones.

The sound of heavy footsteps overhead turned my blood cold. Several years back, one of the neighboring ranchers was robbed. When the local sheriff investigated, he found footprints on the roof, indicating the thief had laid in wait for the house to be empty.

I fear stalking more than anything else.

Ice slapped the glass next to me. I jumped and let out a muffled whimper. Full-fledged panic grabbed me by the throat. What if someone was out there? What if they were on the roof, waiting?

I was fifteen years old again, in East Texas, living in a ramshackle house on the bad side of town. There was a man outside my window, his palm  pressed against the pane, melting the frost. My throat closed. I was literally frozen in fear. My hear t raced. My head felt light. I had to breathe. I had to run. I had to do something…

And then the most amazing thing happened.

I stepped outside of my trembling body and had a talk with myself.

Here’s the deal, chickie. You aren’t fifteen, by about thirty two years. You aren’t in Texas and you aren’t on the bad side of town. You’re a big girl now. You live alone in the country. Your power is going to go out sometimes. You lived without it for ten flipping years, so what’s the big deal here? It’s nearly 9. Quit being a pansy and go to bed.

The roof creaked again, directly overhead. I chewed the inside of my mouth. To Pansy or Not to Pansy?

And if there’s some idiot on the roof, he’s going to slip on the ice and fall to his death or be beaten to a bloody pulp by the elms, which is what he deserves anyway. But he is for dang sure not getting in this house with all the windows painted shut and deadbolts on the doors.

That chased my fear away like a fishwife with a broom. I put on my jammies, stoked up the fire and took my own advice. I went to bed.

I woke up a couple of times, the sound of creaking rafters and groaning tin like something straight out of Alfred Hitchcock. But I just smiled as I imagined the trees protecting me, beating the intruders away. Snuggling deeper beneath the blankets, I closed  my eyes and slept like a baby while the little fella in the holster stood guard, tucked away on top of the nightstand.

Foundations

In a lot of ways, people remind me of houses.  They have mostly the same things, walls and windows and floors and such.  Some are fancy, some are plain.  Big.  Small.  Tall.  None of that matters.  What matters is how long the walls stand, or how straight they are, or if the doors sag or the roof caves in before its time.  It hardly seems fair, but the most important part of a house is the part you can’t see—the part that’s hidden beneath all the stuff that doesn’t last.  Before the first nail is nailed, before the first rock is set, the future of that house is decided. 

That’s how come I think houses are like people.

I was grown and married before I gave much thought to the fact there were things about me that I couldn’t change.  By the time I figured it out it was too late: the soul of my being was set in the stony canyon ridges, its roots twisted deep as any juniper stump.  I hadn’t asked for these things anymore than I’d asked for the blue of my eyes or the shape of my nose or the color of my hair.  Just like that, someone else laid the foundation, and it was all over and done before I learned to speak a word.  It wasn’t fair.  Wasn’t right.  But still and all, I had to believe that God had allowed it; I had to believe He had a hand in all the things that built my soul the way it was, for the simple reason that if he didn’t, he wasn’t much of a God. 

I was thinking on this the other day while I was gathering cattle off the East Point.  I think better when I’m sitting on a horse, don’t know why that is, maybe because looking out between a pair of ears is like a compass, it makes things come clear.  I was trailing an old one-eyed Hereford cow that knew the country better than even me, and that was saying something since I’d run these hills every day of my life. 

Anyway, my horse kicked an old can and I perked right up since cans were a sure sign we were coming up on a dwelling.  Skeletons of soddies and old rock houses littered these canyons like ghosts in a graveyard, showing themselves plain as pie when the sun was slanted just so, and then spiriting away as soon as the shadows shifted.   

I was curious, so I left off on the Hereford for a while and started tracking the house instead.  Jiblets of broken glass, a rusty can, a shiny piece of metal hidden beneath the scrub oak.  Sure enough, we rode through a clearing and down a little draw and there it was: three walls, a window and half a roof was all that was left of it.  It had been a one room soddy: a homesteader shack no more than twelve by twelve foot with about a low roof made of cedar vigas laced with latillas and covered in sod.  It was different, though, in that it had fancy paned windows and most homesteaders didn’t have any kind of fancy left by the time they made it this far west. 

I rode up to the window where the glass had once been and looked inside. Through the empty pane, I could see clean through to the other wall and out, beyond the clearing, to where a line of junipers rimmed the canyon.  I could see the inside of the house and the outside at the same time. 

I shifted and peered through the other side.

It occurred to me while I was standing there looking though the thick, bubbly glass at how the whole thing changed, how the lines of the doorway swerved drunk-like, how the horizon seemed so much farther away and blurry; that some people were like that house.  They had good walls and a good roof.  Worked hard, sweated hard, and had something to show for it.  In a day when other people were doing without, these folk always had food on the table and shoes on their feet.  Some people aren’t sick once in their whole life.  Never got hurt.  Never even had a headache.  They go to their graves with all their hair and all their teeth and a mind was sharp as a blade of sawgrass. 

But in the end, none of that matters a whit if the foundation was wrong to start with.  As hard as they work, they can’t keep all four walls together. 

In that way, I’m like that house. And that makes me angry.  And that is the part of my mixed up foundation that I carry in my soul. 

This idea came to me clear.  I think it was because just that same morning, when I stopped in town to get supplies, I ran into a man in the General Store and you know, standing there talking to a stranger, I figured something out: I didn’t know my own self.  I only knew part of me, and that probably the worst part there was to know.  But this man, he knew me different.  Different, because he was standing outside, looking in through a fancy glass window—a thick bubbly pane of glass that blocked out the bad and let him see something in me that I’d never seen.  Something good.

Don’t get me wrong.  The biggest part of me still thinks my walls are crooked.  But now there was another part of me—a soft, sprouting part—that was jealous that someone else knew be better, and that part treasured in my heart the hope that maybe I was wrong: maybe there was something—even if it was tiny, God, even just a whisper—of good in the seed that had been planted in my mother’s womb. 

Unfortunately, I learned, as I got older, that whether there was good in me or not wasn’t the thing that I should be pondering.  I should be worrying on the trouble I already knew was there.  Shoulda kept my eye on that, so when the day came for it to bear fruit, I would be ready for it. Be prepared. 

But I didn’t and I wasn’t.  It sprouted up when I was least expecting it and, so help me God, it surprised no one so much as it did me.  It split my world clean in half.  There was before it happened.  And then there was after.  And there was nothing else. Just an emptiness big as the sky.

I Need a Hero Part III

I was raised in a church that had no problem scaring the devil out of its flock. Sunday nights were set aside for confession. Public confession. Picture the actual naming of sins. And sinners, too, for that matter.

We had two choices: either skip sinning or skip church.

For the record: I skipped a lot of church.

The God I met there was a confusing deity, loathe to strike you dead, but always willing to do so if the sin called for it. If possible, Jesus was worse. Jesus was the hand-wringing son, the hapless groom with cocker spaniel hair who couldn’t keep his sheep under control so he had to carry them around everywhere on his shoulders.

I  might have gone on forever fearing the Father and ignoring the Son, but life drove me to the Bible in search of something, anything to explain this God that I could not love but could not leave either.

My sons were victims of violent crime. I was the victim of violent crime. During the years that followed, I lived in the book of Job. That was where I met God the Father who fights for his kids.

And later, during the divorce that followed, I met Jesus, the son that’s neither helpless nor hapless nor blonde. He is a strapping friend with an infectious laugh, the type who, as soon as he shows up, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work fixing things.

One reason it took me so long to discover Real Jesus is I avoided the reading Bible. I used to try and consume it as if it was a book. A novel with a million subplots and characters all mixed together and a timeline that is not anywhere near consecutive. And don’t get me started on all those Blahblah-ites. Anyway, it wasn’t working for me until I decided to approach it like a puzzle or a code. I figured out the Bible uses types and foreshadowing for the same reason Jesus used parables (and I used bribery with my kids) - as a way of telling a story within a story all the while trying to hold the attention of a two year old.

The Bible can be distracting, frustrating, even downright confusing at times. But then one day you’re reading along and click the light comes on.

It happened to me a couple of years ago in Genesis. I was reading about Adam rescuing his bride and it occurred to me: Hey, Jesus has a bride too. (Light bulb comes on) Given to him by his father. And hey, like Eve, she’s got a problem with fruit.

Suddenly, I became an onlooker, watching Jesus stand at the same crossroads where Adam had made his famous choice, facing the same decision: Live forever in heaven with his Dad or make himself like his bride and become one (dying, rotting, decaying) flesh with her.

I found myself secretly rooting for the bride. I can’t help it. I always go for the underdog.

Pick the bride, Jesus. Pick the bride!

And surprise! He picked the bride. Not like this is a revelation or anything. I mean, we all know how that turned out. Score for the church.

Stop.Think about that for a minute...

He did what?

I think this is where we have all (and if not all, at least I) have lost the ability to marvel. It’s like we hear that and we think, ‘Whatever. It was all predestined.’ And we miss the weight of wonder.

I don’t think it was that easy. I don’t believe Jesus had a contract with God that said, “You go down there and play the hero. It’s all rigged anyway, so even though it’s going to get tough, just remember when you get back I’ll have the lights on and dinner on the table.” I don’t believe the plan of salvation was a stage, arranged to make Jesus appear heroic when in reality he knew all along he had a clause in his contract that protected him should things go badly.

I don’t think there was a backup plan. Like Adam, Jesus had to go solo, banking everything against the character of his Dad.

His bride or his Dad? Thirty three years with his wife or eternal life with God? Sweating over a chisel or kicking back in heaven watching Earth Tivo?

It was his life or, well, let’s get down to the nitty gritty here - mine.

He could have chosen another bride, you know. A prettier bride. A more faithful bride.

And yet, he picked me.

And yet, he loved me.

And yet, he didn’t abandon me.

Jesus gave up everything he knew, everything he had, with no money-back-guarantee. He walked out of heaven and into Mary’s womb, not knowing if he’d ever see heaven’s gardens or his Dad again, because he had to rescue me, his aging, unfaithful bride.

Often, I think back on my date with Jesus. How almost vulnerable he sounded.

I love you. And even if you break my heart every day, I’m not going to stop loving you. I’m never going to leave you.”

Divorce literally breaks your heart into little bitty pieces. My mom told me once it was as if a tornado had swept through my house and smashed every single picture of family onto the floor. And now I was standing there, holding a broken frame, trying to put the pieces back together. I remember she said, “Even if you succeed, it won’t be the same. You can’t unbreak it, honey.”

I thought I would die from the pain.

Now, take that kind of heartache and multiply it exponentially because Jesus has fallen in love with every person ever born. And every time he does so knowing they will break his heart. Over and over again.

He’s either crazy or totally committed. But I know this, he’s the kind of hero I want to worship.