Last Words

I’m that woman in the car next to you at the stop sign.

I didn’t pull forward immediately and you honked to let me know you were waiting on me. 

I get it.

We’re all on a schedule, some tighter than others. Some less forgiving. I get it.

You drive by and I note the ear thingie. Blue tooth.

When I was born, the phones were big and black and heavy. They were fixed to the wall. There was no call waiting or forwarding or voicemail.

Just plain old ring ring party line.

My dad is going to die. 

I am going to lose my father. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow.

You’re sitting next to me in your army ranger uniform and you fidget your wedding ring with your thumb. Whatever you’re thinking, be thankful. Be thankful you’re going home to a spouse. Be thankful.

You called me this morning and I was a little bit scatter brained and you sighed. I know. I wasn’t on point. I wasn’t super sharp. I hesitated.

I’m in a hotel room on an island 4000 miles away from my kids.

And my dad...

I left him a message this morning. I love you, Dad. It might be the last words he hears me say. 

You know what? Whatever you said to your dad or your spouse or your kid last....those might be the last words they hear you say. Make them count.

And one more thing...

Look at the person next to you. You don’t know. You just don’t know what they’re dealing with. 

Be kind. Smile. We are all just one breath away from forever.

We Were Supposed To Grow Old Together

Driving around the north shore of Oahu today, I couldn’t help but note the dichotomy of the scenery, with jagged mountains vaulting into the sky, piercing the clouds on one side and the ocean foaming and clawing at their base on the other. In between, in the middle of a mighty battle, the highway meandered naively through bohemian villages filled with architecture that never left the 60’s. Tiny huts nestled alongside billionaire’s estates without a care.

There was a time I would have envied the money. I would have felt the unfairness of being born without a silver spoon. 
But not today. 
Today I envy the huts. 
Not so much the homes but what I imagined behind the peeling paint of the walls. 

The husbands and wives who have grown old alongside one another: couples who don’t notice the wrinkles or the grey hair because it happened slowly and alongside a lifetime of memories.

I envied that.

I wanted that.

I was supposed to grow old with my lover who called me by a pet name and knew how I liked my coffee and never left me in care of the keys.

Those couples in the hut - they have something that is beyond value. They have something priceless. 

And yes. Today I envied them. I envied the hell out of them.

Aloha

  

Aloha.

Hello and Goodbye, all at the same time.  

I ought to be good at it by now. God knows I’ve had enough experience...

And yet, saying goodbye is still so fucking hard. Too hard.

Damn.

Today I start my Aloha tour, touching base with the places and people who have meant so much to me these last few years. 

Places and people who have changed me.

For the better I hope.

Places I’ll never see again.

People. 

Sigh. Damn again.

Sitting in the airport, I can’t help but think of five years ago when I arrived on island wearing a sweater and jeans and boots and make up and all the things I haven’t worn since that day.

I was wrapped up so tight. 

So uptight. 

I didn’t know how to laugh or play or relax. 

Hawai’i has taught me those things. 

Lying on the beach beneath a gentle sky with the sand warm beneath my skin... feeling the ocean tide pulling away my stresses, I was changed. I am changed.

I belong here now. In some strange way, I will always belong here.

And like every other time I have fallen in love, I’m leaving it behind.

And some people wonder why i am the way I am.

This.

This is why.

A lifetime of saying goodbye is why.

Damn.

The More Things Change ...

Hi again. I used this blog throughout the transition from married to divorced to single to ... me. And I used it again through my transition from the working girl to career woman. I never thought I would come back to this place, but here I am.
I’m transitioning again and I’m so not comfortable with it.
I’m also a little bit bereft I guess.  I lost my best friend and that loss definitely left a mark. But that’s a tale for another time.
Ahh.
Like so many times before, I’m jumping off into the great unknown. Except this time it is an unknown that I actually know a little bit about. I know there will be religion. And winter. And traffic and cities and people and all the things I left behind.
Wish me luck.
I’m going to need it.

Roots

 

Excerpted Fiction

 

Father was hard and cold and meaner than a snake during shedding season and I cannot remember a time when I did not hate him. In days to come I would forget his face but his hands would remain stuck in my mind like a splinter, those big, thick squares of leather, calloused and stained with tobacco, nails chipped and curled under on the corners like talons.

Right now they were clamped on the reins, the four long straps of leather squeezing through his fingers the way the mud down on French Creek squeezed between the toes of my bare feet after a hard rain. The mules, Big Jack and Little Jack, were laying hard against a juniper stump; though I suspected even with their simple way of thinking they knew it wasn’t going nowhere. It was a stubborn thing, the stump, and big—bigger than me—with roots that probably twisted down a hundred years or more, gnarling underground between chunks of solid stone. I imagined the roots like arms and hands and fingers, all holding on for dear life and I was torn between secretly hoping they would never let go and just wanting it to all be over.

The mules eased up and the reins dipped with slack. Sweat dripped from their bellies, their flanks, their eyelashes. It ran in rivers down their legs, pooling beneath the hairy fetlocks and darkening their hooves in stripes. Their nostrils flared like bellows. We’d been clearing all day without so much as a drop of water and it was pure awful hot—the kind of hot you can only feel in the bottom of a canyon in August under a big fat New Mexico sun. The kind of hot that makes your brains soft and your eyes blurry. The kind of hot that makes a body think crazy thoughts.

Father grunted a curse and both Jacks flinched, trembling in their harness, rat-tails clamped tight to their hind ends, mealy muzzles pursed into beaks of fear. I watched the golden arc of their flanks quiver; saw the half moon of terror rise in their eyes as they anticipated the sharp bite of Father’s whip and I found myself wishing Big Jack would nail my father in the chin with one of his plate-sized hooves. I measured the distance in my mind. Yep, a good kick would knock his head clean off his body and then some.

“Hyaw.” Like gravel, Father’s voice scraped across my ears followed quick-like with a pop of his whip. My insides jumped. I looked across at my sister, but she cut her eyes away. She was different now, all filled with secrets and lots of stuff I didn’t know and couldn’t do anything about anyway. I was learning that sometimes it was best if you just didn’t know such things at all.

The jacks dug in again, haunches hunkered deep, necks bowed. Leather strained. Hooves grated into the rocky soil. Again and again, the same thing, until I had to bite my lips to keep from shouting out, had to twist my hands into fists to keep from yanking the reins out of Father’s hands, to turn and use them on him, to tell him I’d like to see him pull a tree out of the ground roots and all.

And then, just as suddenly as the crazy thoughts had come upon me, they were gone. With a pop and groan, the stump broke free and the mules let up and I was mighty glad I hadn’t done any of the things I’d been thinking on.

“Ho,” Father barked. Both Jacks froze in place, ears flopping back and forth. One of Big Jack’s legs still trembled in mid air. Maybe it was from the effort, maybe relief, but I knew better. He trembled cause he was scared. Scared he didn’t do it good enough or fast enough or right enough to please Father. I knew that feeling: I knew it well. We lived in it, my ma and my sister and me. We didn’t talk about it, not ever, so I don’t know how they dealt with their fears, but as for me, I hid. During the day, I hid in plain sight by working hard and being quiet and doing what I was supposed to be doing all the time. But at night it wasn’t so easy. At night I snuck out to the barn to see the mules and also so I wouldn’t have to hear things I didn’t want to hear and it seemed like they understood why I was there. I told them they were good. I told them they were the biggest, best pair of mules in Territory and I wouldn’t trade nothing for them. Nothing.

“Git yer heads out of the clouds and get that cleaned up.”

We jumped and hurried to the stump right fast, me hacking away at the clumpy roots with my axe, my sister dragging the loose stubble to the side to be burned. How I didn’t chop her hands clean off, I don’t know. Never thought about it til later. Father said to do it and we did it. We did whatever Father said.

Whatever he said, just the way he said, or we paid the price.

And sometimes, we paid anyway. Especially my sister.

Jigging at the Bit

I’m breaking up with Vegas.

These days I walk a fine line; a fine line I tell you. I go about my daily business as usual, but just beneath the surface boils an eager anticipation of the future. It isn’t bad, but it is distracting. It’s a willingness, a hunger, a craving for change that leaves me restless at night.

I recognize it from my other life.

It’s the heart racing power of 1200 pounds of muscle between your knees, sidling, prancing, snorting in frustration. Head tossing. Mouthing the steel – testing the tension on the reins. Asking when, when, when can we go…

I used to be the one holding the reins which was kind of fun, but now I am the one jigging at the bit. And it is Not Fun.
If you just showed up in this story, let me give you the rearview mirror version.

For twenty eight years I was a rancher. That went to hell in a hand basket and I hit the road with a new job. I fell into Sin City working a mine site about two years ago and so help me God, I’ve been hunting a way out ever since. Not that I don’t like my job (although for a while there it was touch and go). Not that I don’t have nice digs, or plenty of food. Not that my needs aren’t met here. More than met. Exceeded.

I just don’t belong.

I am a straggly mutt that strayed into the Kennel Club and can’t find the exit. I’m the homeless man outside the Casino. The prostitute in church. Like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, I have learned the jargon, the fashion, the ways of the city… but I open my mouth and the world around me jars to a halt.

It is City Mouse meets Country Mouse and I am the Country Mouse.

I don’t know what’s next for me and that is kind of making me crazy, I admit. I know I’m not going to be transferred to the outback. I know they won’t send me to the Middle of Nowhere. But wherever it is, it won’t be here and that’s okay with me.

I’m through with silicone breasts and tummy tucks and acrylic nails and hair extensions and men that look like women and women that look like skeletons. Don’t get me wrong – what happened in Vegas won’t stay here. Someday I’ll share the stories. But right now, I can’t.  I’m too ready to move on. Move forward. I’m ready to be anywhere but here.

That worries me for about a million reasons I can't explain, but if you're a horseman, you already know.
To put it plainly, I'm jigging at the bit. And that, my friend, is a bad habit. A waste of time that gets you nowhere and does not always end well... for the bit-jigger.

On Seeking Purpose and Not Finding It

I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose lately. About how we all have one. About how maybe we live it out, in spite of our mistakes and our best intentions.  In spite of ourselves.

About how we are all chosen for a purpose … and how we foolishly think we have a say in how everything is going to play out.

About Why.

And as usual, the hazy chaos of my thoughts finally settle like dust and find truth in the familiarity of a corral.

The gate fell open with a creak and the metallic chime of chain against pipe. All heads raised at the sound, ears swiveling inquisitively toward the source.  A lanky sorrel with a crooked blaze took one shuffling step forward to greet me. I slid my hand under his chin, up around the strong curve of his jaw to his ears. He nuzzled my shoulder affectionately. I ruffled his mane and ran my hand along his back but passed him by.  He was a good horse – had a nice smooth trot that covered the distance without reorganizing your organs, but a little bit clumsy at times. Definitely not suited for the job at hand. 

Next to meet me was the stocky roan. This bad boy had a chest deep enough to drive a Mac truck through.  He was my first choice for pen work but his hooves were soft. Even with shoes, it would be unkind to take him up the canyon. Maybe even a little dangerous – nobody wanted to take a spill onto a solid sheet of rock and I sure didn't want to take the chance of hurting him. So, I passed him by with a pat on his butt.

I needed a specific horse today because I had a specific purpose.

I found him standing quietly in the corner, hip cocked, head down, eyes deliberately averted, pretending he was not The One. A black tipped ear tracked my approach and at the last moment he took a step to the side in a half-hearted attempt to escape. An unspoken disapproval was exchanged and he halted, turned to face me, let me slip the rope under his jaw and around his neck.

To anyone watching it would appear the choice was random. In reality, it was anything but. I knew the bay: knew he had a trot like a jackhammer and could be stubborn. I also knew his hooves were like iron and he was sure footed as a mule. It might not be fun, but he would finish the job.

Though our lives may appear to be random, I don’t believe they are.  Just as the bay didn't choose me that day, the Bible says we did not choose God.  God chose us for reasons known only to Him. He knows things about us that even we don’t know.  He knows our strengths.  He knows our abilities.  More important: he knows the job that needs to be done and selects us with that specific purpose in mind. 

There are so many things I don’t understand. Why am I alone at this stage in my life? Why do have this sudden exchange of people I interact with daily? Why do none of them speak the languages in which I am fluent – Horse, Ranch, Art? What is my purpose in this place that is so very foreign to me?

I mull over this particular quandary a lot. On the drive to work. On the drive home. On weekends, when I hide in my apartment because I'm weary of the very strangeness of my life. I am like a dog, turning in circles, trying to find a place to rest. In the end, I have to admit – I have no clue. I simply don’t know. I can't know. I'm not equipped. That’s the point where faith comes in, I think.  Faith in something bigger, something smarter: I thank God for that faith because it is the only thing that gives me rest. 
And like that bay, when I feel his approach in the dusty corral I can turn away and try to escape or I can stop, turn, let Him slip that rope halter around my neck and follow him into the next great adventure.

In the words of Rich Mullins - I can’t see how you’re leading me unless you’ve led me here. Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led… and so you’ve been here all along I guess. It’s just your way. And you are just plain hard to get.