No Laughing Matter

We joke about it because joking makes us feel a little less worried.   We give our lapses in memory cute little terms like "senior moment" or we say things like, "I finally got it all together but I forgot where I put it."  We find humor in what scares us sometimes, or in what puts us all on par with one another as imperfect beings who occasionally forget things.  In my field of work, I hear jokes like this every day, but I also witness the devastation a blighted mind can create in the world of a person, a family, a community.  Let me tell you, it's nothing to laugh about.

Often people with dementia posture with humor when they fear others notice they might not be remembering things well.  Some laugh too much, some crack little jokes that might or might not make sense to us.  Others try to turn the tables on us and with their laughter, attempt to make the snafu seem as though it's ours.  People who work with dementia patients, either as nurses, nursing assistants, therapists or activity directors also turn to humor.  At times, laughing is the only way we keep from crying.  Coping with humor often makes the tougher things in life more palatable but using humor in the wrong ways can cause us to not take diseases that cause memory loss as seriously as we should.

What if we lived in a world where our memory lapses weren't joked away?

Every day I watch dementia take more and more away from people who were once intelligent, lively, loving, trusting and confident.  I see it destroy decades-long relationships as spouses trade in their marriage roles for caregiver and patient roles.  That's not to say that caregiver and spouse are mutually exclusive, but with Alzheimer's or any other dementia, a husband, in the end, isn't caring for the same wife he married, nor a wife caring for the same husband.  They watch that person slowly die away as their brains become ravaged by a disease that takes the very essence of who they once were:  Their memories and life-lessons.

Use this link to donate to The Alzheimer's Association today.

By the later stages, a person with dementia might not recognize a spouse to whom she's been married for thirty years or more.  A husband might not remember the home he built for his family.  A mom might call her daughter "Mother" or a father might call a daughter by his wife's name.  The caregiver's life is often chaotic, stressful, depressing and anxiety ridden.  Caregivers are faced with financial struggle as resources get stretched thin and their loved ones require more and more care.  Eventually, the person with dementia can no longer be left alone for any amount of time.  Finding affordable paid caregivers is a tremendous hurdle for most families and our current health system offers little to nothing in the way of resources for these folks.  Watching someone you love disappear behind a disease is not funny.  Watching them become strangers to you, as you become a stranger to them, no laughing matter.

It's time we stop joking about dementia and get serious.  We need to stop accepting dementia as a natural part of aging; it isn't.  We need better resources to help the families who are in the trenches now and more education to aid in early diagnosis and intervention.  We need to live healthier lives and do the things we know can decrease our chances of having Alzheimer's as we age.  We need to understand that Alzheimer's and some other types of dementia are not merely diseases of age at all.  People as young as 30 have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.

Do you know the 10  Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's?

If you're looking for a charity this Christmas, I encourage you to donate to the Alzheimer's Association.  The Alzheimer's Association provides education, support and tangible resources to help people with Alzheimer's as well as their caregivers.  They fund research into prevention as well as finding a cure so that future generations can live without the fear of forgetting the people they love.

A Bunch of Crap

"Everything I have is crap," he said to me, sitting across the table from me at Waffle House with the iPhone in his hand that I ordered for him as a special Christmas surprise last year.  It isn't an iPhone 6 or an iPhone X or whatever.  I bought him the same version as mine--the one I bought over 6 years ago now. 

Two weeks ago I went to Old Navy on my day off.  I searched through boy's jeans for a good hour, digging for his size, making sure the wash on each pair was different.  I remember in third grade, my mom bought me 4 pairs of the same jeans.  Same color, same pockets, same everything.  Within a few days kids started teasing me in a mean spirited way, about wearing the same jeans every day.  My mom sewed cute patches on the back pockets so they all looked different, alas, her effort came too late.  The teasing never stopped all year long.  I try to spare my kid the indignities I suffered as a child.  I buy him the REAL Nike's, not the knock offs with the upside down swoosh that my mom bought me.  He wears Wal-Mart shirts, or thrift store shirts most of the time, and never complains about them.  That day at Old Navy, I spent over a hundred bucks on jeans and a couple of long sleeved shirts.  I left there feeling like I was winning at the Mom Game.  For the last couple of weeks when I pick him up at school or watch him getting out of the car in the mornings, I think about how grown up and cool he looks in his new duds.  He's one of the best dressed kids at his school, if I do say so myself.  

In his room, he has an XBox One that he got for Christmas two years ago.  Last year he got a compound bow and a boatload of video games.  The XBox takes up most of his free time lately, although I try my best to put limits on the time he spends with it.  He enjoys it mostly because his friends get on and they can all play together.  Over the last six months I have bought 4 new sets of headphones for that thing.  Last time I bought one, I told him I was not buying another, so he better take good care of it.  Often I say to him that we are fortunate people because we have everything we need and a lot of the things we want.  I say this to him because I want to instill a spirit of gratitude in him.

Turns out, I'm not winning at this Mom Game.

At the Waffle House, tears sprung to my eyes so fast I couldn't hold them back.  The waitress put my scrambled eggs and hashbrowns down in front of me and suddenly I felt too sick to eat, so instead, I watched him devour the chocolate chip waffle and his own hashbrowns.

His words stung my heart worse than that wasp sting I got  on my thumb a few years ago when I moved an old grill out from under the deck and discovered a nest of angry bees. My mind flashed back to another moment, maybe ten years ago with Sylia.  We were walking into Wal-Mart together.  I don't remember why we were shopping, but I remember the words I heard her say as we walked past the greeter and into the front section of the store where large TVs were displayed along the side.  "Everything we have is crap anyway," she said, and I felt that same sting.  It said to me that nothing I could give my children would ever be good enough.  Nothing I worked so hard to attain, the material things, the thought I put into everything I did for them, the sacrifices I made so I could give them more than I was given as a child--it was all just crap, it would always be just crap.

Lately I think a lot about my financial situation.  I consider going back to full time work and look all the time for jobs that will pay a salary higher than what I average now between disability and my part-time job.  I contacted a mortgage broker a while back, ran my credit report and asked for his help so I can buy a home for us again--get us out of this tiny house and into a place where we can enjoy the company of a dog again.  Turns out my credit wasn't as bad as I thought, but it isn't good either.  I never heard back from that broker, which tells me that my prospects for buying a home must be grim.  Already discouraged, my child's words plunged me beneath a deep wave of defeat from which I fear I may never rise above again.

After a few minutes of watching him eat his waffle as though he were raised by cavemen, I said, "I give up."  I got my phone out and read my emails, trying to distract myself so I could stop crying.

"I'm trying to be grateful for what I have." He said to me, looking at me as though I had offended him with my tears.

"Trying?" 

"Yes, I'm trying!" He said.  "You're saying I'm wrong for trying to be grateful!"

Even this exchange digs at a familiar wound, healed over or so I believe, with thick emotional scars.  I feel the pangs of it though, the argument turned around and upside down so I'm left believing myself the offender, owing an apology.  Only now, I see this for what it is and I know better than to respond.

"Are you done?" I asked him.

"Yeah." He took one last sip of his coke as I grabbed the yellow ticket and headed for the register to pay.  

In the car I thought of things I wanted to say to him, but I said nothing.  Everything I could think of would come across as guilt tripping or self pity, or both.  We rode in silence as I drove him to his sister's house and dropped him off.  

"I love you." He said, as he got out of the car.

"Love you too." I sad back.

I drove myself to the store and wandered around for a couple of hours, not really shopping for anything.  All I could think about were those words, hurled at me for the second time from a child of mine for whom I apparently could not give enough.  An old friend used to say that if one person gave him negative feedback about himself, he took it with a grain of salt, but if he heard that same feedback from two people, he took it to heart.  I guess that stuck with me because hearing a second child tell me the life I've given them amounts to a load of crap made me see myself more clearly as the half-ass person I've always known deep down I am.  

Today I slept most of the day, then got up to watch the grandchildren for a while.  I never got dressed or showered and now it's bedtime.  I plan to crawl back under my covers tonight and welcome sleep.  I wish I could sleep for a year--let my phone battery die and close my bedroom door, draw my curtains tight and hide, hide away.  

In a fire safe on the top shelf of the hall closet, a will I drew up five years ago sits.  It states that, should I meet an untimely death before my boy is 18, his sister Hannah will become his legal guardian.  He loves her so much, and I see her working so hard at life, overcoming obstacles, diving towards her dreams.  I wondered yesterday, as we drove home, whether my boy would feel happie.r and less like his life were crap had I chosen to forego my life-saving dialysis treatments five years ago?  Did I, by fighting nature, deny him a better life?  

I cannot know the answer to that.  I chose to live and to keep trying at life, this boy of mine the only motivation that keeps me tethered to that machine or to this life.  And yet, for all the effort, everything stares back at me, just a bunch of crap.

I get it.  I woefully understand his point of view.  I just don't know how to change it.  I don't know how to be more than I am or how I can give more than I do.  I hope and dream that life will throw me a bone and I'll get to see Charlie graduate from high school and go off to college.  In my farthest and most wishful dreams, I imagine someday holding his first child in my arms.  I know it's not likely to happen--that last tiny grandchild nestled in the crook of my arm, but I like to dream it anyway.  I like to think we can at least ride the tide of crap to the day he's free of me and able to make a life he feels proud to live.  Maybe he can overcome my dearth of ability to give him more than crap and maybe I'll get to witness it all.  Either way, I hope for him.

Perhaps, if nothing more, my ineptitude will show him how to do better when he is grown.  I hope it serves some purpose, because right now, looking up at the world from beneath this suffocating sea of failure, I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling pretty hopeless.  Maybe the kids are right.  Maybe this life, because of me, is nothing but a bunch of crap.  Maybe that's all I can ever manufacture from my ever-shrinking ability to even provide for myself or my kid.  

A stinking pile of crap.

Funny

Tonight I got hooked on a new Neftlix show with Jerry Seinfeld called "Celebrities in Cars getting Coffee."  Sounds about at boring as watching paint dry, I know.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear their conversations, which didn't consist of one comedy schtick after another, but actually showed the comedians engaging in some fairly deep conversations about life and the oddities of every-day living. 

I found myself laughing at Jerry's evaluation of himself as a shrink and the advice he'd give everyone--"Just get over it!" He says, and we all laugh because we know that at some point in our lives, everyone encounters that friend to whom we want to say, "Just get over it already!"  But we don't say those things, no out loud anyway.

The biggest takeaway for me were the conversations with every single...passenger??  Guest?? about the struggles of breaking into the business.  They spoke of butterflies, of shaky knees, of feeling small and insignificant.  They talked about the times they bombed on stage and their frantic efforts to save themselves before they were eaten by the hungry audience of wolves looking for laughs, not jokes that flop.  They talked of numerous rejections and bad reviews and even their deeper emotional experiences.  Ellen opened up about once wanting children, but seemed to take Jerry's advice about letting her wife get more horses instead of having children.  Apparently Portia can't abide the joyful sounds of children playing in the pool.  There's a good joke in there somewhere, Ellen.

The common denominator for all these folks?  They started poor, unknown, and some of them, unliked. But they could see the humor in every day life--the humor that escapes most of us because we only see it at face value.  Comedians can be deep thinkers sometimes.  That's why they notice things that most of us never think twice about.  They call us out on our own silly human foibles, they make us laugh at ourselves and our families and the world in general for being so incredibly screwed up!  And most of all, no matter how much they're heckled, no matter how many bad reviews they get in The Times, and no matter how many times they flop on stage, they never give up.  There's always another stage, another joke, another human incongruity to exploit and laugh about.  We are their material.

Tonight though, I started to feel as if they could serve as my example.  There's something amazing about the talent of being funny.  I used to think I had it, but the years have taught me that I am much too moribund to turn life into one big joke.  To beat all I've ever seen though, I still find myself wanting to try.  Comedy though, seems to be a gift bestowed on few--the Fools of our modern day possess and air of sophistication and intelligence that comedians of the past never had to consider. 

So though I used to fancy myself a Lucille Ball or a Carol Burnette, I realize I'm a red head of a different breed--only funny when I don't mean to be, which I think means people usually laugh AT me, not with me.

But...Because I watched that show, I will vow to keep on keeping on.  I will write my sad, heart wrenching stories anyway, and maybe somewhere, find room for a funny tale or two along the way.  It won't be Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen funny, but maybe my own brand of funny won't be so bad after all.

Wish I had a joke for y'all.  I'm all fresh out.

Gone Home

I got lost yesterday.  Not lost in  just the usual way that people get lost, but lost all the same, in some long neglected place in my past where I faintly recall an indescribable feeling.  A part of me recalled a way of being years ago, that somewhere along the way, has begun to elude me.

Perhaps we all get such familiar yet unnamed stirrings of emotion when we travel back to where home began.  I knew when I woke up, my plans for the day but my mental preparation notwithstanding, the day turned into something of a cord, stretched between then and now over which I traveled with rubber-band like tension pulling me back to the present when all I wanted was to reach for the past.

One of the surest bets in life is that none of us will make it to our graves without regrets, mistakes or losses.  The abominations of humanity, they keep us humble and give us pause when no matter how we play our cards, they remain inevitable.  For years I prided myself on my regrets and missteps.  I thought they might someday define my life as one well-lived.  Instead, I drive home from work some days with a heavy lump at the center of me, making me heavy in my seat, making my legs too feeble to even lift me out of the car when I get home.  And carry me to what?  My legs.  To a tiny kitchen, too small to turn around in, a messing living room that hasn't seen a vacuum in how long?  To a couch, three years old, already beginning to take on the shape of my ass where I sit too long, watching make-believe lives run themselves out in a few hours at most, while my own passes by like a parade just outside my door.

Thus, the spiral of thoughts begins when I travel too close to my origins and cannot, hard as I try, scrape something of the warm and kind and good together to keep for myself when I turn to walk away.

In the last four  years I've stood by the gravesides of both my parents, trying to squelch the flood of emotion that begged to escape me.  I push it away when it wells up in my eyes as I wash dishes or remember an old song.  My father used to press his lips together, hands trembling, as he tried to swallow back tears that already were escaping his eyes.  It never took much to  make him cry.  Maybe he gave that to me, that uncontrollable well of emotion that springs from my eyes, and maybe my red faced shame when I wipe my eyes of them are gifts from him as well.

I sat at a funeral yesterday, not of anyone I ever knew or loved, but a funeral nonetheless.  The deceased, the sister of my friend, I traveled there with him to show respect and to support him.  I listened to the same sermon preached at every funeral, of life and death, then life-eternal.  At one time, those ideas gave me peace; now they fill me with doubt.  "Why do we think so much of ourselves?" I wonder.  "That once we are, we cannot imagine a version of reality in which we no longer exist."  And then I wonder, if we all believed in this life as much as we want to believe in the next, how would we live it differently?

I must admit, I might change a few things, but overall I think I've landed exactly in the spot meant for me.  Over the years many paths opened themselves to me, but I chose this one or fate chose that one and I rolled with it.  Some things in this life we get to control, and others, well, we just have to accept.  Sometimes I accept without a fight and other times I wrestle with an unbeatable foe before finally surrendering, skulking away with my fists still clenched in defiant indignation.  A healthy bit of anger at life can be good for us, after all.

If you came here looking for a hopeful message, I'm afraid you might leave disappointed today.  All the words I can offer today spring from a well of my own discontent.  As I scramble to hold onto any semblance of good in myself or in my choices, or in this simple life I somehow managed to scratch together for me and my boy, all I can say to you is, find something solid and sure and love-filled in your own world and hold on tight. I plan to do the same.

Rainy Afternoon in A Small Town

I walk into the corner drug store to pick up my prescription.  Well, first I try to pull a door that's clearly marked "Push" because the doors are hung backwards and they always mess with my brain, despite that I've been to this store a million times.  Behind the back counter, which is ten steps from the door, Brenda smiles at me.  We exchange pleasantries. She invites me to the next Lion's Club event and reminds me, “We always need good new members!”  Unlike Walgreen's, when I go to the Corner Drug I never have to give my name and address or tell the cashier whether I'm picking up or dropping off.  Brenda already knows

Standing by the register, Frank Crowe leans on the counter looking at me sideways and nods a hello without speaking.  I give him my tight lipped smile--the one where I don't show my teeth, then stick my debit card into the machine which takes an incredibly long time to complete my transaction.  I stand impatiently, tapping my foot as I wait for the beep that tells me I can retrieve my card.

Behind me, I hear the door squeak open again, Betty Looper.  I swear she's always in the Corner Drug.  Always picking up some prescription or another. She’s old.  No one knows really how old, but no one remembers a time when she wasn’t around either.  She’s like a permanent fixture here, just like that statue that stands crumbling and decaying in front of the court house of some old Civil War hero on his horse.  Nobody knows when it was erected and nobody knows when it will finally finish falling apart, but we all can see that its inevitable demise is nigh. 

 How many medications can one person even tolerate, anyway, before medicine is no longer a good thing?

Finally, Brenda hands me the little white paper bag, stapled at the top, with my bottle of pills inside.  With it in my hand, I turn and head out the door.  The pills rattle as I shift the bag to my left hand and start digging for my keys in my purse. I can feel old Frank's stare at my back.  Betty, ignoring me, presses onward, Brenda now turning her focus to her. 

“Now Bettty, you ain’t give us ten minutes to get that medicine ready before you come runnin’ over here.” She says to Ms. Looper, trying to sound like she’s teasing, but I can tell she’s more than a little put out.

Standing by the door, thumbing through some dusty old greeting cards, Estelle Cantrell looks up as I pass.  Her gaze is quick, but measuring.  She looks me up and down, making her judgment fast and sharp.  I don’t know what she thinks of my outfit or my hairstyle today and that’s probably a good thing.  I wonder what she’ll tell people about me?  I can just hear her now.  “She was in that store and out of it like she was on her way to a fire or something.  Ain’t no sense in anybody being in that big of a hurry.  If she put near as much time into ironing her clothes and fixing her hair she might not still be single.”

Honestly, I feel violated, like the simple act of refilling my blood pressure medication should come with some degree of anonymity or at least without judgment. But then in a small town, you tend to get the illusion that everyone knows too much about you.

You come to accept it, expect it after a time.  At first I found some comfort in being recognized, and in knowinmost every face I see.  It was almost like the feeling of home--like walking in every door to find family and a big casserole dish full of mac and cheese that everyone intends to share. Fresh gossip, thinly veiled as concern would fill the air with a familiar chatter that almost made you feel like you’d gone home for Sunday dinner.  I felt I sat among my own, adopted into this motley crowd of small town folks--hometown folks, only it's not my hometown.

They all seem to eye me in a sidelong way, even the ones who've adopted me.  They seem to accept me, even care about me, but then I remember the thin veil that covers most everything here. I’m recognized but not truly known and that confuses me more than the backward-hung doors at the Corner Drug.  

If I speak up too often or too loudly, I feel their eyes narrow and their lips purse with disapproval. 

"You're not from here." They're thinking.  

They say to each other, "She's not from here. She has no clue what she's talking about."

As if one small town in the South is so different from any other. 

 There's a kind of Southern pride, a false sense of originality that every little tucked down here below the Mason-Dixon wants to claim as theirs.  Like the way we all drink sweet tea, or the way most of us think grits are breakfast food only. 

"If you ain't from 'round here, you caint understand our way o’ life." They all say.  "We don't need no outsiders a comin' in, tellin' us how to do things."

Sometimes I think if it were up to Southerners we’d all still be using privies and drawing our water from backyard wells.  We’d be sending our womenfolk down to the river to wash clothes and making them cook on one of those old wood cook stoves.  To the chagrin of many, the Yankees somehow succeeded in modernizing the good ole South—even the small towns out in the middle of nowhere, like this one.

Progress is still a dirty word in the South and in small-town Southern America in particular.  If you speak the language of change, you are marked.  In the old days, you'd have been run out of town on a rail. Nowadays, you just get gnawed to pieces by gossip.

Along with the overblown sense of pride and originality you'll find in every tiny town, you'll find at least a fair amount of poverty.  On hillsides and hidden behind thick stands of pines, trailer parks stand like ancient ruins, their roofs tarred over, the windows held together by duct tape and a Sunday morning prayer.  They, and the people who occupy them are the landmarks of true Southern living.  Dirt driveways with deep ruts dug out by rain.  Clunker cars that just barely get folks to their jobs and back every day and  kids that spend too much time home alone...this is the reality of life in the Ruins.  

It wasn't always so.  Many years past, there was commerce here.  Factory jobs, hardware stores and green grocers, a post office and a cafe.  Now, shuttered and crumbling store-fronts sit empty, save for the ghosts of the past that dart with quick shadows across the sidewalks, specters of a place that used to exist.

Change came here, but it came like a thief in the night.  No one discussed or planned it.  It just came.  When the shoe store closed, everyone just drove on to the next town, to Wal-Mart or to Sears, where they could buy shoes and a dress in one place.  When the post office closed, a church moved in.  Slowly, change crept up each street, boarding up windows, every boutique, every beauty shop and every hardware store's sign permanently turned to read "Sorry, We're Closed."  That kind of change came easy.  It was gradual and since no one talked about it, no one had to actually see it happening.

Thing about change is, it's always happening.  

I drive across the street to pick up some Cokes and a frozen pizza for dinner from the local grocer.  The gals at the register say hello as I choose a buggy and go browsing through the aisles, picking up things I never intended to buy.  This store is old, too.  It's dingy and the floors have a peculiar hollow sound under the clomp of my heels.  The produce is limp, spotted bananas, potatoes growing eyes, mold on the blueberries, I decide I'll stop at the farm for fruit.  

I grab my milk and eggs and head to the register, where in line ahead of me a woman I recognize is already waiting.  I'm trying to remember her name when she speaks to me.

"Good to see you again.” She says kindly.  

"You too!" I say enthusiastically.  I'm probably smiling too big as I grapple for her name, or where I know her from.  

I'm relieved when she turns back to her groceries, laying them on the belt that doesn't work anymore.

I too, start to set my purchases on the belt, separating mine from my stranger-friend's with a yellow ruler someone left at the counter for that purpose.  When it's my turn, I use my arm to push everything closer to the cashier.  We make small talk as she rings up my milk and eggs, and I realize I forgot the Cokes.  Too lazy to bother with going back to get them, I tell myself I need to cut back anyway.

"Have a good weekend now!" The girl behind the register whose face but not name I know,  says.  

"You too!" I reply pleasantly.  I can't wait to get my things into the car and head home.  

As I make my way out the door, pushing the buggy with one hand, shoving my debit card back into my wallet with the other, it starts to rain.

Big, warm drops of water fall heavy on my back, soaking my silk blouse until it becomes my epidermis. It sticks tome, a purple skin, translucent enough so my bra shows through it, and every bump and curve of my upper body to boot.

I stand in the open, loading my food into the car, the deluge causing my hair to drip into my face. Now my skirt is soaked as well, the thin white linen like wet paper against my skin becoming cold and uncomfortably heavy. 

By the time I'm done I'm thoroughly wet and exposed. My light summer outfit gives me little in the way of modesty now that it's drenched.  I walk anyway to the buggy stall, with my head held high, dripping hair and running mascara notwithstanding.  Out the corner of my eye I see two men I recognize sitting in an old Buick, watching me.  When I look their way, they do not avert their gaze.  Behind the windshield they must feel like invisible voyeurs.

Sopping wet, I finally open the driver's side door of my car and try to quickly get in, my wet skirt restricting my movement. I immediately steam up the windows with my body heat and warm breath. 

I take a minute to shake out my hair, wipe the water and makeup off my face with a fast food napkin, take a deep breath.  I turn the key, flip on the defrost and the wipers, put the car in reverse.  As I start to back up, I look over my shoulder and see him there, just sitting in his truck, waiting, watching.

The thing about small towns is, you sometimes run into people you used to know.  You see them hiding behind end-caps at the gas station, and in their pickup trucks sometimes.  You should learn to be on the lookout for them, but sometimes you forget.  

I drive home, amused a little that those two guys in the Buick thought they were so hidden as they watched my practically nude body walk across the parking lot.  I feel that sick sensation, deep in my stomach, or in my uterus, or maybe my heart even, when I picture him waiting in his truck like a little kid thinking he’s hidden behind a sapling.

On my drive home I think over the past.  I recall times when I felt less of a stranger, but orbited a much bigger world.  I realize how, as I’ve shut myself off from people, my new world seems increasingly, painfully small.

Maybe I’m merely the shadow of something now. A dream that once was, or a place that used to be alive with movement and color.  Now I am that foreigner--not from 'round here.  Constantly seen, always recognized, but never, ever really known.

By the time I’m home the rain has stopped.  The sun threatens to pop back through the clouds as I unload the groceries and haul them inside.  I try to put them all away before I go change, but the air conditioning chills me to the bone as it permeates my wet clothes.  Home, no mac and cheese, no fresh gossip. No prying eyes or judgmental stares. Just me, in my wet clothes, a pile of groceries at my feet that I probably will never eat.    

Home Sweet Home...Or Not

My Boy. 

My challenge.  To lure him from the comfort of home takes a kind of skill at which I must constantly evolve as his parent.  In an announcement the night before, "We are spending the day out tomorrow."' I tell him so he won't get up and immediately engage in combat on Fortnite, then give me grief about leaving the house.  

Inevitably, while I shower, he connects with his friends and the match begins. 

"Fifteen minute warning," I tell him as I throw open the bathroom door, my hair still dripping.  I know I'll take longer than fifteen minutes to get ready, but still...

"Are you dressed?" I call to him as I load up the car.

"Yes mom!" He answers, the eye-rolling coming through in the tone of his voice.

"Shoes?" I ask. 

"Not yet." He sighs, realizing we really are about to leave home for the day.

In the car we make jokes and listen to history podcasts.  Once in a while he gets animated, telling me about something that happened at camp, or about some element of Fortnite that's similar to the podcast story.

We eat French fries, wiping salt on our pant-legs.  

He is fascinated by the long straight hills on highway 11, leading to the lakes.  When we finally get to the 

swimming hole, he's hesitant to get in.

"Let's just sit on the edge and put our toes in." I suggest. 

"Okay." He reluctantly agrees.  But before I know it, he's climbing on the rocks, out to his waist in his regular shorts after refusing to change into his swimming trunks. 

Whatever makes him happy.

I'm happy.  The cool water on my feet convinces me to change into my new red swimsuit and jump in.  

The rocks challenge me, but once I make it past them I'm swimming in water far deeper than I even want to know.  I remember this, or rather, my body remembers.  It remembers how to tread water,how the lake doesn't burn your eyes like a swimming pool.  My feet remember how to reach themselves toward the deep water beneath me, to find the coolness in its depths   My arms remember to stretch out like wings as I lie back and let the lake  catch me, and I float like a forgotten piece of driftwood for a while.  

My boy.  I have to encourage him to come to me in the deeper water.  On our blowup float we kick around the edge of the shoreline, his confidence growing with every minute we spend in the blue-green waters.  

When we start to pack up to leave he wants to know when we can come back again.  

"Soon," I said.  "Maybe even Tuesday."

"Ugh!" He eye rolls at me. "I really wanted to stay home on Tuesday!"

Where Should I Go But To The Lord?

Today I asked where the Lord was and a preacher came running.

Short of breath, with a damp, sweaty shirt pulled over his body, he said he was there to answer my question.

But he never did say where the Lord was.

He only asked, "What can I do?"

So I one-arm hugged him, despite his sweaty shirt, and said , "You're kind for coming, but there's nothing you can do."

"I'm here to help," he insisted, staring at me through his rectangular new glasses.

"Really," Said I.  "I'm fine."

But in my mind I wondered, was he telling me he's as close to the Lord as I'm ever going to get?

Because I remember long afternoons, much like this one, filled with hard work and music and Nature, that seemed to draw the very breath of God across my own damp skin.  

The Lord seems closer to me in the chirp of crickets and the croaks of tree frogs than in the hot wind of a preacher, hurrying to let me know where the Lord is.

There's a sunset to this day.  Blessed day!  It has an ending abundantly more beautiful than its beginning.  And isn't that the way of life, after all? 

I sit here on my front porch, listening to the night chorus tune up for its performance, to begin in earnest once the sun goes behind that hill over there.  

God's breath is cool, a comfort at the end of a hard journey, even one that only lasts from daylight to twilight. 

The reflection of all things holy, shines back at me from every window.  For it's in the growing, the tending, the dying and the rising up again that the Divine makes itself seen and known.

If one only cares to truly find it, or know it, or take it in.

The Lord abides in the grace it took for me to live this, this minute by minute bit of survival.  In the work of my hands that ache and beg me to quit.  In the fruit of my labors, that bid me keep going.  In the mercy of a sun going down, the heat of a July day finally relenting.

The Lord was in the sweat I washed down the drain as I stood naked before God in my shower, singing to keep from weeping.

The Preacher, well he left as quick as he came, no doubt running off intending with all good will, to carry the Lord with him, on his back or in his sweat or in his gaze. 

But the Lord didn't leave with him, anymore than the Lord hitch-hiked in on his shoulders.  

Bless his heart.  He doesn't know.

The Lord is found, for all of us, wherever we last left her.

Abberation

The driveway seems ordinary at first.  A mailbox sits to the left of it, with a newspaper slot underneath, which usually is empty.  No one really takes the paper anymore, not even country folk.  They've never felt too keen on keeping up with politics or local crime statistics.  Heck, they don't even consider that crime even happens in their neck of the woods.  And when I say woods, I mean woods.  You find yourself put at ease by the smoothly paved drive for about the first quarter of a mile as you wind your way past horses waving their long tails in the sunlight, baby goats butting one another, a few chickens, literally crossing the road in front of you.  Then, and gradually, the pavement turns to just tar and gravel, bumpy, unkempt and crumbling in places so badly that you find yourself dodging potholes.

After you pass the fork where one part of the drive way hangs far to the left and a tree sits right in the middle of your way (I always imagine it's like the Scarecrow) the pavement ends altogether and you're driving on a dirt pathway, marked by ruts made by other vehicles.  The rains of spring-time do a fairly good job of eroding the roadway, leaving gullies and ruts that you must navigate--some of them you must drive straight through, hoping the bottom of your car doesn't drag the ground or that you don't get stuck.

"Whose idea was this anyway?"  He asked.

"Um, I think it was yours." She answered with a smirk.

"Oh yeah."  His boss told him about this place, a smart little cabin by a lake, deep in the woods away from civilization.  He offered the weekend to them, saying they'd come home feeling recharged--that nature would do them good. 

But her husband wasn't a nature freak like the beaus of her past.  He was a city boy, more comfortable on a subway train than in a tent.  Since they met, he took up hiking with her, bought camping equipment, a jeep.  In it, they kept a supply of last minute outdoor gear.  A small tent, a flashlight, a sleeping bag for two, matches.  As they set out for the weekend adventure the small cache of equipment behind the back seat, smashed beneath their luggage seemed inconsequential.  Thanks to the cabin, they wouldn't need it.

No one gave them a clue as to how long the drive up to the cabin might be.  They made that first turn onto the smooth pavement of 132 Pine Knoll Drive at sunset.  As they drove through along the roughly largely unkempt pathway deeper into the canopy of the forest, night time seemed to descend upon them almost  preternaturally.

"I think we need the headlights." She urged.

"I can see just fine and I'm the driver," he quipped.

"Well, maybe you can put them on for me then," She teased,"because I want to see where you're going."  She didn't want to admit it, but she felt nervous.  Her hands were folded tightly on her lap, as though she were trying to keep warm.  Really though, she needed them there so she could feel a sense of control over them.  The last few months their marriage seemed adrift, or more like they were adrift from one another.  Their jobs, the kids, the way life never really turns out the way you plan it took its toll on them day after day. Deep down, she had such high hopes for this time together that she felt anxious about saying or doing something to mess it up.  So she kept her nervous hands in her lap and plastered a smile on her face, hoping that somehow she could infuse the air between them with hopefulness, even romance.

Just as he flipped the headlights on, three deer appeared in the middle of the drive. He slammed on the brakes, the jeep sliding a little sideways across the dirt and gravel roadway.  The deer stood for a moment, frozen, like they say, in the bright lights of the jeep.  He honked the horn at them, waved his arms almost like he was trying to make them laugh, then yelled at them, "Shoo, shoo!  Go away!"
 After the deer sized up their jeep, they went on their way, across the driveway and through the thick woods, their white tails disappearing into a ravine.

"Ah nature!" He said with a big smile. "I'm feeling high already, just from the fresh air." He joked with her.  She knew he'd rather be pacing a city street filled with smog any day than to find himself surrounded by thick forest and the company of wild animals.

"Well I think they are majestic and beautiful."

"They are, They are." He agreed enthusiastically before shoving the jeep back into gear and continuing ahead, hoping that soon they'd reach the cabin--a sign of civilization, or at least some semblance of it, with indoor plumbing and a stove on which to cook dinner.

"I can already tell we are in for a great weekend." She chattered excitedly.  "Breakfast in bed, horseback riding, night swimming, it's going to be amazing."

"Breakfast in bed, huh?" He asked, amused.  "Who's going to get breakfast in bed?"

"Well," She answered sheepishly, "I was hoping maybe..."

"Breakfast in bed it is, my dear. If we ever get there..."  She could sense the irritation in his voice.  The driveway was beginning to seem impossibly long and more difficult to traverse the farther they went.

"Yeah, if we ever get there." she agreed.  "This is a really long driveway."  Her hands, still in her lap, she began to pick her cuticles nervously.  She knew her thinking tended to delve into the irrational at times.  Of course the driveway has an end, she thought to herself it can't just go on like this forever.

On and on they drove as night fell in earnest. Tree frogs and crickets began to serenade them from the darkness as a dampness seemed to soak into their clothes.  Not even  the moon helped to light their way.  The stars were extra bright, with no city lights around to lessen the view of their glow.  She leaned her head against the window of the jeep, looking straight up at the stars, trying to find the big and little dippers.  She remembered doing the same thing as a child, on the rides home at night with her dad.

They rode in complete silence, a tenseness in the air between them, not with one another, but about the situation they were in.   They hung so many hopes on this reunion with nature, with one another.  To fail at it--to end up lost,in it would ruin their entire plan.  She could already imagine the argument, them blaming one another for the wrong turn, the address written down incorrectly, the big joke his boss played on them.

She remained hopeful though, as they rounded one curve after another with no cabin in sight.  He began to wonder if their directions had been wrong.

"We've been driving for about seventeen miles already--slow driving too because this driveway is horrible."  How long had it been since his boss came out here, he wondered to himself.  "We have to be there soon.  Do you think we took the wrong turn?" He asked.
.
"I don't think so.  The directions said, 'turn left at the mailbox marked 132 Pine Knoll' and that's what we did.  Maybe we should have taken the right fork back there at that tree?  Should we turn around?"

"Turn around?" He asked sounding incredulous. "After we've driven all this way? No way, we are committed now.  We either find the cabin tonight or we find a place to set up camp."

"I'll see if my phone has a signal out here." She dug in her purse and found her phone, the phone she promised not to bring.  He didn't even feel annoyed at her for breaking her promise.  He was just hopeful that she could find a signal and perhaps access her GPS so they could see how close they were getting.

"Well?" He asked, stopping the jeep.

"Nothing." She looked worried and disappointed.

"Hey, don't worry," He told her.  "We have this under control. I brought plenty of supplies and if we have to, we can find a place out here in the woods and camp out for the night, find the cabin in the  morning."

"Yeah?" She asked, hopeful.  "We could have a romantic camp out?"

"Absolutely!" He grinned.  "I even brought those candles that keep mosquitoes away.  We can eat dinner by candlelight."

"What dinner?"

"Oh...um, well, I got your favorite chocolate, some graham crackers and, lets see, a can of sausages" His lip curled in a cute sort of way when he said "can of sausages."

They both laughed.

"Okay then." She smiled, "Let's do it.  Let's have a camp out right here in these woods!"

He drove a little further on until he came to a flat piece of road with a small clearing to the right.  "There's enough room for the tent over there," he pointed, "And look at all that fallen brush, perfect for our campfire."

Before long their tent was erected, their campfire glowing in the black of night--the New Moon graciously lending an air of romance to their adventure.They had one flashlight with batteries and the headlamps of the jeep to help them navigate their way around putting up the tent and gathering their firewood. 

Together they ate the bar of dark chocolate, washed it down with lukewarm champagne straight from the bottle.  Cuddled up under a blanket by the fire they talked about nothing and everything.  They ignored the sounds of coyotes in the distance, the crackle of deer feet along the fallen branches in the deep woods around them.  They didn't hear when the mama bear wandered across the drive behind their jeep, stopping to sniff for food before she passed it up, taking her cubs with her into the other side of the forest.

Oblivious to the sound of an owl swooping down to catch a mouse just outside the zipped up haven of their tent, they made love without restraint, the creatures around them, ignoring the noises they made.  Nature accepts nature as it is, the sounds and sights, nothing warranting judgment or diversion.

Aberrations, though, hide among us as much in the perfunctory and expeditious tasks of suburbia as on the wayward path of a driveway that leads to nowhere and an aberration moved among them in the deep forest that night.  Not quite human, not quite beast, it stood at a distance, leaning against a sycamore, waiting for the sounds from the tent to fade, waiting for the lumbering sounds of sleep to take them over as their campfire began to fade under the star-dotted sky. 

News reports all say that the tent was found with all their things inside--a double sleeping bag, a purse with a dead cell phone, a box of unopened graham crackers, some canned sausages and two sets of clothes.  An empty champagne bottle lay on the ground by the smoldering fire, as though it were abandoned in the middle of a game of "spin the bottle."

Their jeep had four flat tires.  The keys for it were never found and there were no footprints on the driveway going in or out.  They had seemingly disappeared into the forest, no sign of either of them anywhere.

Just around the curve from where they stopped to set up camp, the porch light of the cabin still glowed, awaiting their arrival.  Inside the door, a vase of  fresh white lilies sat on the kitchen counter. Beside them, a card in a yellow envelope with her name scrawled on the front, was never opened, never read. Along the edge of the lake, a tall figure walked in a long stride, its footsteps leaving no trace in the mud around the shoreline.  Fog hung heavy over the waters, and the coos of mourning doves began to fill the early summer morning air.