Leaving the Lazy S Ranch in Meridian Idaho for the City Life in Boise

                                                                    Wings on Fire

                                                      
    In l974, we went "back to the land" in Meridian Idaho.  Not that we'd ever been there before. And not that we understood exactly what that meant.   To go back to the land was a dream, the ideal life maybe, for the two of us, having survived with our marriage intact at the beginning of the seventies.  In Madison, Wisconsin, with anti-war demonstrations, the hippie era, the chaos of it all, we had become politically crazy, or at least unstable.   We had read too many subversive texts (From the Land and Back, Five Acres and Independence, and The Whole Earth Catalogue).  We thought too much about a simpler life rather than the big city lives we had grown up with, and we dreamt way too much about going to a smaller town where we could have more space around us, like a rural setting in Idaho.
    "How could you," my mother said over the phone," get all that education, all those degrees, and still end up on the farm." 
     "It's the west, Mom, and it's called a ranch," I said, correcting her.  "Well, a small ranch of five acres," I said, correcting myself.   
    My Polish mother and my Italian father didn't get it.  They saw us going backwards in time, thrown into an unfortunate  reverse set of possibilities, one that reminded my mother especially of my Polish grandmother on a farm near Warsaw.  But I didn't see this woman doing backbreaking work, bent over rows of beets or carrots.  Instead,  I saw her as a young woman, strong, growing up there, changing with the times, heading west.  It didn't matter to me that my only memories were of how I saw her in her seventies, her richly wrinkled face,  with wisps of gray hair, floating free from her red baboushka.  I had no trouble imagining her tending an abundant garden, milking cows or planting wheat or barley.  Okay, so she had turned her back on the farm, the cows, and the crops.  She too was searching for a different kind of life.   
    Via a freighter, Grandma landed at Ellis Island in l908, hoping to hang her own hat on a brass post in a house in a city.  Her dreams had shifted to self-sufficiency, independence, freedom from the land, from the old country..
    Not for us though.  Paying inadvertent homage to an ancestral past, we wanted to go back to the land.  Overeducated, (six college degrees between the two of us) with a passion for books, we became novice land lovers.  At thirty years of age, our childhood imaginations of the west were still fully intact.  The frontier held shimmering images of cowboys and cowgirls with cap guns as six shooters..  A real estate agent walked us across a piece of property, showing us a  not too detailed map of the Oregon Trail, cutting across one corner of it.  Some money down and a land contract bought us a place in history.  I was convinced.
    It was the kind of space that didn't irrigate well (not that anybody for the last twenty years had tried) and one that you couldn't even see with all the overgrown weeds and alfalfa with roots going down deep, deep, deep to water they found on their own.  It was a huge trapezoid that had to be burned from green to brown for us to be able to see what was there.
      The day of the big burn we hoisted new shovels over shoulders not made for them and grabbed the rented burner.  Making a noise like some prehistoric monster, the wand on the burner had a mind of its own.  With flames roaring down the irrigation ditch,  the fire took off leaving us in the dust of dirt thrown from shovels when we tried to keep the fire on some sort of path.   Moving with the flames, created back burns.
    Anxious to see the lay of the land, we burned up the weeds, old and alfalfa, and were pleased that we were half-finished.  Then the fire chose to make its own path, accompanied by the not yet understood daily westerly wind, and the fire headed out right across our property line to the neighbor's field. 
    "Quick, where are the hoses? " my husband asked, really to no one in particular.  Who had a hose that was 700 feet long?   
    "Hoses?"  My question hung in the smoke.  You just can't know enough before you start a burn.  By the time we were finished, we had obliterated the landscape of green, both on our property and a quarter of the one to the east.  All lay black.  Such a large empty space. Quiet.  Burnt ash makes no sound in the wind.
    Leftover smoke from smoldering grass drifted across our faces and off towards the Boise front, where Shafer Butte wore a light cap of snow.   Some of the grass had turned to grey thin lines of ash curled in on themselves.. The field mice had disappeared, heading east, before the line of fire and the smoke.  We had scourged the earth.  We were so pleased with ourselves, with grimy shirts and shorts, and slightly burnt tennis shoes. Red bandannas, tied around our heads, were caked with sweat.  We were ready for our next adventure.
    Which meant that we needed a place to live.  You can't just go to the land, without a place to live on the land.  Over five years, we built a strong study Cape Cod home in the middle of the desert, with small windows facing west, an unplanned cooling feature along with the basement. 
    In l975, during the first winter in the shell of that house, the wind whistled through boards. A cube of butter on a plate, sitting on a plywood counter, froze.   It's hard to spread frozen butter on toast made on top of a Coleman stove.   Blackened toast doesn't taste so good that way either.  Temperatures dropped to zero at night and climbed up into the teens by late in the day.  I dreamt of a house with several fireplaces, wood cracking, heat, and indoor pipes with water running. 
    My parents bought us a refrigerator because they couldn't stand that we were using a cooler with ice and leaving other food outside in a world we labeled The Big Freeze.
    Cold too much for too long, we voted against waiting for some sort of proper central heating system.  A wood stove took over, loaded with coal, warmed our lives.   We never thought that hard hunks of coal would keep us so warm. My mother knew and told us a thing or two, without my asking.
    "Grandma has a coal stove, "she said over the phone.  "In the basement of her home.  Remember?   The coal bin hasn't been used much since she's had the house modernized with a gas furnace.  She wouldn't think of using the stove for heat anymore."
    "Mom,"I said, "the stove works just fine. We're pretty warm most of the time.  We can cook on it, and we don't have to use the camping stove anymore."  Somehow I forgot to tell her that we also had electricity, black wires that snaked through studs, one specifically for the toaster.  The other for ceiling light bulbs.
    My mother wasn't through talking.  She talked about how Grandma cooked on a coal stove and how she hated the gas stove upstairs in the real kitchen.  The new stove never did bake good bread.  Ah, the old stove.  At last, I thought,  my mother was coming over to our side.
    With some insulation, wall boards, and a fire down below, we curled up, cocooned in our long johns in a bed with a white down comforter, strangely like Grandma's rust-colored one on her old feather bed.  .   
     I waited for water.  My husband plumbed.  Matches, blow torches, copper tubing.  Water finally running, but only cold.   A heavy cast iron white tub delivered upstairs could be filled with hot water from pots on the stove.  Unfortunately, the tub wouldn't stay warm, not like the tub with a special heater, that we have now in our Boise home.  Still, we could take lukewarm baths and then voila, more pipes and then hot showers.
    Outside, spring came and went, and our acreage was filled with blown-in tumbleweeds that stood raked in piles over twelve feet high.  By then, we were seasoned fire fighters, with water hooked up to hoses.  We had blue work shirts, long pants, clunky books, gloves, and his/her own favorite shovels. 
    Somehow, we had become more cautious around a blaze, more respectful of the power of flames.  We were part of the culture of the west.  We knew about range fires first hand, and we knew that even if there were no trees to burn, fires could sweep through so fast, that you'd never have time to figure out what to do if you were caught in the middle of a field burn.  Summer newspapers highlighted fires and fire danger.  And so we became afraid, and rightfully so, of misguided fires.
    So much so that when the foothills were ablaze one summer day and a sky glowed red with heat and pungent smoke filled our nostrils, we convinced ourselves that the fire could jump the Boise River.
    "Well,  Boise would have to burn first," I said.
    "Well, yeh, it could -- all those frame houses with wooden shingles," my husband said.
    We looked up at our own roof and pulled the hoses out from where they lay perpetually coiled.  But you cannot seriously figure out distances easily here when the land flattens out and goes on forever to the horizon.  That which we thought was so near was so far away that planes dropping retardant were mere dots against the sky. 
    Year after year, until year V on the ranch, we burned off the old oat hay, the crop, to which both came to realize we were allergic.  Finally, we moved to something more civilized, more permanent, as we understood that the burns, the black, the haze settling in, were just not us.  Even though shovels no longer weighed heavy on our shoulders, other objects, like irrigation tubes kept us in l03 degree heat for too long each time we had to set pipes.  
    Yet, we were hooked to the land, craving self sufficiency (with two other full-time jobs). From the south along the Snake River,  rumblings of the wine industry in its infancy reached our ears. We read books on grape cultivating and  grape grafts.  A new crop.  We would be part of a burgeoning industry of Idaho growers.  Twenty seven hundred grape vines in quart milk containers entered the ranch and took their places in not so straight rows of  steel posts, trellises and guy wires. 
    We became vintners with a crop that, we were sure would yield a great harvest.  Wine grapes were going for a thousand dollars a ton.. Quick calculations meant that four acres would generate us a good chunk of money indeed.  Such is the wish of dreamy academics to imagine such a thing possible.
    We bought a green and yellow, repossessed John Deere, with all its parts and some to spare.  Running on diesel, the tractor flew down the field with smoke curled up in small plumes and away from its exhaust.  We had it made and just had to watch the money roll in.  And we would be somewhat more self-sufficient.  I was convinced. 
    Somehow, though, as we hoped for a miracle crop, we must have known that the land could only do so much for us.  From that field of green vines, we could look back and see that huge shapes concealed our home.  Over seventy-five trees and shrubs blocked the bright desert sun.  Bright red and orange tulips flopped on tall stems close the house, white star magnolias touched a northeast corner, lazy locust flowers hung in huge spicy  clumps from trees shading a vegetable garden..  A Japanese pond with bridge and water fall whirlpooled light and outlines of gold and orange koi.  We had filled the space of our lives. 
    Into that space, two wood ducks with fiery red eyes would land in the pond every March..
    So each year, we waited for them.
    They haven't come yet?  They should have been here by now?  My questions bounced across the thin sheet of ice over water.     They came.  A bullfrog entertained us in April.  We learned to wait patiently for his chant. 
    We took bets on who would hear the first meadowlark   Pheasants that had avoided hunters each October, squawked through the spring and summer.  And the grapes grew.   The tractor kept the weeds down.  The drip system kept the grapes happy.  
    The first harvest time in the cold snap of a September frost came too fast for us.  With neighbors, we picked bunches quickly.   Held in our hands for just seconds, a grape clusters became treasures in weight and light and color. The first crop of  Chardonnay went to St. Chappelle. 
    The crop wasn't big that year.  From then on, sometimes there was a good year, sometimes not.  And the prices dropped. More grape production in the Napa Valley, Washington, and Idaho halved the price of grapes.  More zero degree temperatures and little water in winter meant ground kill.  With grapes killed to the ground, we started over, bringing the grapes up again on the trellis from small green vines poking from the earth.  We were two years away from a crop. 
    Around our house, trees grew past twenty-five feet.  Lilacs hit ten feet.  Violets and violas perfumed the Japanese garden.    And we put in more and more plants. We lived on a desert "oasis," a place that diffused the heat and acted as a green barrier against surrounding dry fields, and firebreak for flames that might come from the west.  Sprinklers watered the garden.   Forget-me-nots near the breeze way wall came back year after year, more profuse with time passing.
    The years went by.  Tiger swallowtails, bits of yellow flew brightly around under the canopy of sycamores and Carolina poplars.  Then one day, we woke up.  Something was different. It was  summer, and we walked out into the hot desert air, and then turned back under the shade of the trees.  We sat near the pond and we talked about the land, the grapes, the last crop. 
    Well,  it wasn't as good as the one before, and the crop before that not as good as the one before that.  The winters seemed more severe.  We were old hands, pioneers meting out the hard punishment, berating ourselves for not being able to subdue the land, take it over, make it our own.
    All the leaves would be falling soon.  Like all farmers, we were constantly thinking of the next season, working and worrying ahead of it   It would take days to rake millions of leaves from  sycamores, maples, poplars, and locusts.  At thirty, days seemed to stretch to infinity, but at fifty-four, they ended too quickly for us.  We thought perhaps we could leave the land, that we had been somewhere, figured something out..
    Later, in that summer of l997, a flicker of a shadow crossed the lawn.  I looked up to  the bright orange and black wings of a Monarch butterfly.  I walked below it, dazzled by this color in all the green, and I followed it around the Japanese garden. As I walked around our house and stood at the edge of the pond, I saw another.  Then another.  Then more. Wings on fire.  Seven butterflies danced in the sky over my head.  Psyche, I thought, our souls on the wing.  It was the perfect time to think about saying goodbye, to let go of the land.  
    Now I look down at the city of Boise or straight out at the sky, brushed with red and orange, a touch of aqua above lavender.  The ridges of the Owyhee Mountains peek out from the distance.  Most mornings, a pink dawn flames across the sky.  With binoculars, I am on lookout, checking, just seeing what is out there really.  Sometimes I see wisps of smoke.  Fires from barbeques mostly, but once a house going up -- terrifying smoke in the distance. 
    I am keeper of the sky, like anyone who wishes to stretch their arms wide.  The foothills that I saw from our country home for so many years, are now familiar terrain where we walk.  The rounded hills surround me, pull me towards them, but we don't need to lay claim to them.   Far to the west, the wide open sky caps the horizon line, where we lived on five acres that we once called home.  We paid our dues, farmed the land, felt our earth beneath our feet.
    Memories of the pioneer spirit go with me.  Some wind must have pushed us to the land, propelled us forward to the years spent there.  Now a gentle breeze moves strands of my hair, beginning to turn grey.  It is the same wind.  I am convinced. 

The Shadows of Children in Cabo San Lucas Mexico

                         
 Blue egg shells clung to broken yokes on the marble floor.  A bit of fluff lay nearby.  The couple--Marjorie and Richard--looked up at the birds, diving and circling around the beams that held the marble pyramid above the hotel lobby.  But Lupita, taking them on a tour of the Cabo San Lucas Hotel, was already down the open hallway, and Marjorie and Richard quickened their pace to keep up.
 "Here is el doctor," Lupita said, pointing at closed doors.  "He is on duty twenty-four hour a day.  Here, the health spa." She pointed at another closed door.  "You can sit in the spa hot tub for as long as you want.  Just a few nuevo pesos."
 Richard and Marjorie, their heads bobbing like pigeons, eyed the closed doors, as if they were waiting for doors to be opened and scenes to unfold.  Here would be the doctor curing gringos of la turista; there, the hot tub with people laughing and sinking down into the water.
 "This is the weight room," Lupita said directly to Richard, speaking in Spanish only to him, having learned that the Senora was not speaking, would not even try to speak the language of Mexico.  She opened the door half way so that they could see that indeed there was an exercise machine, one lone bicycle in the center of mirrored walls, looking as if there were hundreds of machines going to infinity.
 Richard pulled Marjorie back, whispering in English, "Looks like I work out alone," he said.
 Marjorie shrugged.  What could she say?  Another hotel, another place to get used to.  What was the purpose of all of it?
 Lupita chattered along now in English, describing the gardens, the waterfalls, the four hundred rooms.
 "The rooms have separate beds," she said, "double beds."  When Richard and Marjorie didn't answer, she continued, "The ones over the golf course do, where you can hear the great crash of all the waves."
 "Si," Marjorie said, as if she knew all along that this would indeed be the case, but these were the first words she had spoken since she'd stepped from the bus to marble floor of the hotel lobby.  Yesterday, she was convinced that her heart had almost stopped, seeing the ghostly white animal, walking out in front of the rocking unstable bus, standing there, ignoring the horn, waiting until just when it seemed that the bus would crash into it, to saunter across, swing its head, its bell ringing, its tail slapping, as though that slap could push it forward faster.  The bumper of the bus slipped by with few inches to spare.
 She had spoken then, to Richard, asking him for Spanish words that would describe a ghostly cow, and she put them together as vacca fantasma, a strange and dangerous image --something that could run out in front of you, kill you.
 It was right after the cow stepped out that the headlights flashed on the white cross on the side of the road, and Marjorie felt herself becoming afraid, the kind of paranoia that she couldn’t resist.  She gave herself over to the shadows inside herself.  She simply quit talking. 
 Now they were at the second hotel in two days, and this time traveling in daylight, she saw the white cross again, and though afraid because she didn’t know what it meant, she let it float through her mind while she followed Lupita and Richard.  Could someone be buried there, right on the edge of the road.  Who?  
 Lupita, anxious to have her potential hotel guests take part in the hotel services, addressed rapid fire questions to Marjorie, since now the Senora was also talking.  Marjorie, however, did not think that one word of "yes" in Spanish meant Lupita should think she, Marjorie, should  take a bigger share of the conversation.
 "Are the children at home?"  Lupita asked.
 "No, No, not at home,"Richard said in English.
 Marjorie could tell that Richard didn’t want to leave her out, wanted to keep her talking, moving away from the silence that she imposed on herself.
 "Are they with their abuela?” Lupita asked.   “The grandmother,” she continued, translating with a smile, that Marjorie knew was meant to be warm, but to her came across as patronizing. 
 "No, no, grandmother," Marjorie said, trying to smile.  "Both of our parents are dead."
 "That must be hard for the children," Lupita said.
 Richard launched into soft Spanish, saying what Marjorie knew without his translating as soon as she heard the words, ninos and ninas.   "There are no children," he said in English, and Marjorie stiffened and stopped.  Was he going to tell their whole life story to the hotel hostess? 
 "Then your house is empty of light," Lupita said, with the calm matter-of-fact tone of someone in a culture that had decisions weighed and balanced before birth, a pattern that she could simply fit into at a specific point in time.
 Marjorie wanted the conversation moving somewhere else. 
 “What’s that cross on the side of the road?”  she asked, expecting a long explanation of some part of Mexican culture.  Instead, Lupita looked away.  “That . . .  that cross is for my boyfriend,” she said slowly.  He killed himself riding his motorcycle.  It is three years ago now.” 
 I am so sorry,” Marjorie said, now uncomfortable that she had asked, feeling as though she was taking something in, and at the same time, that something was pouring out of her from somewhere deep, disappearing into the desert air.  She didn’t know what else to day.  Richard led her out into the tiled main hotel balcony, set with tables with umbrellas.
 Marjorie’s eyes caught the blue of the ocean beyond the white bird cages that stood covered with scrolls of flowers and leaves.  Two yellow parakeets sat in the cage, their little feet holding tight to wooden dowels.  They made half chirps as she touched the cage.
 But that blue beyond!  To her, it seemed to stretch out farther than she really wished it would go, to a never-never land, past and through all trips, all the oceans of their trips.  Horizons from Richard’s way of seeing, coping with the world.
 Her arm was being pulled by Lupita, who pointed out, way past the pool, past the carefully situated palm trees, to the invisible world beyond.
 “We even have whales here, Senora,” she said, then turned.  A phone rang in the lobby behind all of them, and Lupita, with apologies in Spanish and English, clicked in her high heels back to the phone. 
 After they checked in, Marjorie and Richard went to their new room. Richard tipped the bellboy, and Marjorie walked to the open balcony and looked out at the magnificent gardens.  Green, green, green, she saw, and beyond the bluest-green of blues to hold in her mind forever. But what would they do for two whole weeks in this room?  Why had she agreed to come here instead of vacationing in Seattle, in a world, even if it wasn’t what she expected in life, was one they shared together.
 Richard came up behind her.  "It's a nice room," he said, kissing her neck.
 Marjorie pulled away.  Green, green, green.  Richard didn't see the colors.  The light and all the shadows, intruding on the light.  The world looked best to her when desert light came alive from the giant transplanted palms and cactus.
 "Look," she said, "a nest."  Swinging between those banana leaves, a little hammock of yellow relaxed in space.
 "A nest," Richard repeated.
 She turned to him and touched his arm.  He wrapped himself around her, and she felt safe, and almost said that to him as she leaned against his arm.  Secure, she let him get closer to her. His hand touched her breast.  She knew she was saying yes, but her voice was silent.  She wasn’t really saying anything at all. 
  They made love quietly, slowly, and afterwards, Richard lay there next to her for the longest time, saying nothing.  Finally, he asked, "So what do you think?"
 "About what?"  Marjorie did not want to be drawn into something unawares.
 "About our new digs.  Better than the hotel we tried yesterday, isn’t it?” Richard asked.
 "Si, of course," Marjorie said.  She rolled from the bed and slid into her robe.  She stepped out onto the balcony to study the small nest.  A tiny beak popped up.
 Richard, now beside her, turned her away from the nest.  "Over there, way beyond in the garden," he said, his eyes staring far off, a smile taking over his face.
 There Lupita stood pointing in the direction of el doctor and the spa, and they both knew exactly what she was saying.  They laughed almost at the same time.  Marjorie felt the weight that she was never aware was there until after it was gone finally lifting.  She walked back into the room and dropped her robe.  She anointed her body with sun tan lotion.  Richard slid it on in places she couldn't reach.  She smoothed the smell of coconut oil over his back and down his legs.  Now they both wanted to be at the ocean, as close as possible to it now, and they dressed without talking.
 A few sunbathers gathered under the small palapas near the shore.  A yellow dog and a black dog eyed Richard and Marjorie.  Marjorie felt the yellow eyes go back deep inside her brain to somewhere primitive.  She did not look at the dog again. 
 Richard tossed his towel down, took off his watch, and buried it in the corner of the towel.  "I don't need this," he said.  "We're not on any time schedule now."  
 Now Marjorie felt funny with her fanny pack, an unnecessary add on, hitched around her middle.  But she just shrugged her shoulders, and loosened the belt a little.
 They took off across the hot sand, walking in the water, running up, running back to miss the shallow lapping of the waves.  They passed the so green, almost too green golf course with the dry sparse desert hills beyond, and headed further west up the coast.  Beyond the jetty, the waves picked up power and pushed their way to shore, thumping, then vibrating the sand.
 They had not gone far, when Marjorie saw shadows pass by her. She turned.  The same two dogs they had seen earlier, plus three more, encircled them.  She pulled her arms in close to her sides.
 Richard waved the dogs away.  The dogs moved a few paces away, then came back.  "They're just touring the beach," he said. 
 One of the dogs, the yellow one, Marjorie could see, was pregnant.  She moved toward the water.  "I'm jumping in if they get any closer”  She headed toward the water.  The dogs followed her to the water.
 "They think it's a game," Richard said. “Let’s just keep walking.”
 Marjorie and Richard were separated now, but they tried to head down the beach.  The dogs barked.
 "They aren't attacking," Richard said.  "They're holding us here.  Wave your arms."
 They waved their arms.   The dogs barked and held them in place.
 "That's not doing it," Marjorie said.  "You said beach dogs was harmless.  You said they wouldn't harm a flea.  You said they --."
 "Marjorie," Richard said, his voice slipped from warmth to ice.  "Quit it.  They're just dogs. We can outlast them.  They've got to get bored.  We don't have any food or anything."
 They stood still, silent, with the dogs barking and nobody else on the beach.  Then one of the dogs started whimpering and took off with only the yellow dog left.  Finally, she trotted away, her heavy body, swinging low against the sand.
 "Should we go back?"  Richard asked.
 "No," Marjorie said.  "I'm not scared anymore, but I don't ever want to go through that again."
 "It's something to tell home about," Richard said.
 Marjorie felt herself slipping back into some space inside herself where she could be very quiet and alone, with the door shut.
 They walked on and soon had almost forgotten the dogs.  The sea glitter had stolen both their hearts and refused to give it back.  They sat in the sand and watched the horizon, scanning for nothing in particular, noting a fishing boat, a sailboat, fish jumping and the small birds that dove and skimmed above the water and refused to be pulled into the waves.
 Marjorie thought she heard Spanish and giggles.  No.  Yes.  She stood up.  Two children ran across the sand, their dark bare feet, kicking up sand, their bodies as they broke out of shadow and into light, so rich and deep a color that it took her breath away.  Dark eyes squinted up at her.  They were so close.  She backed up.  They moved even closer.  Richard sat watching, his face and eyes laughing as the children plied their trade.
 They surrounded Marjorie.  Smiling, she still put out her hands as if she could keep them at a distance.  "Chiclets, Chiclets," they chanted with big smiles, white t-shirts and shorts up and down.  They did a little dance around her, shouting, "Por favor, por favor.  It’s cheap gum.  It's good gum."
 Even though she was smiling, Marjorie felt strained.  Her face froze into a pasted smile, and she reached into her fanny pack and handed the children some pesos. 
 The children looked at the money, counted once, then again.  They screamed and handed her all the gum they had and left.  They yelled back, "Gracias, senora, you are a beautiful woman.  You are a wonderful woman."
 Marjorie stuffed the Chiclets in her fanny pack.  She sat down next to Richard.
 Did he miss children more than she?  He was always more comfortable around children than she was even though he said that he didn't know quite what to do with them.  But neither of them would have known what to do with children.  It would have been an experiment for them, like any other two first time parents.
 Marjorie didn't say anything about that to Richard.  Things were not right.  For her anyway.  She pulled on his arm.  "Let's walk further to that rock."
 "That's miles," said Richard, an expert on how far away things were.
 "Well, close to it then, as close as we want to get," Marjorie said.
 They walked for another half hour and the rock grew larger, but they were no where near it.  Again, they sat and watched the sea.  Richard made an hour glass of his hand and let sand flow to form a small pyramid below.
 "Bits of time," he said.
 Marjorie nodded, hearing what she thought was bells, but it was more like jangling.  Bracelets?  Marjorie and Richard, startled now, looked behind them.  Trudging toward them under many blankets was an old Mexican man.  He smiled an empty smile, void of teeth and asked, "A blanket for you, senora, for the bed of your casa."
 Backlit, as he moved closer, the old man appeared bigger and more powerful than he had before.  Marjorie and Richard started to get up.
 With his hand, the old man waved them back in place.
 "From my casa to your casa," he said, waiting.
 Marjorie and Richard tried to get up again.
 "Sit, por favor" the old man said.  "You can choose from there.  It's a beautiful blanket, yes?  He pulled out another one and fanned it across the sand.  Then another, and another. 
Marjorie saw more men coming across the sand.
 "No, no blankets," she said to the old man, but loud enough for the others coming closer to hear.
 "Only twenty American dollars, senora," he said.  "We have a small one for children."  He pulled out a small blanket with a grey coyote on it, turquoise and red stripes.
 "No," Richard said.
 The other men trudged closer.  Bright blankets waved in space. 
 "No," Richard said, pushing himself up.
 The old man put his hand on Richard's shoulder. "Perhaps, if you don't like my blankets, you will like those of my brother or my cousin." 
 Richard dropped back, his muscles were tense.  Marjorie saw that same look on his face when he was a Golden Gloves champ in college, coming up after being knocked down, ready for bear, to win.  She too started to get up too then, with one knee on the sand, and she pushed on the other.  Her hand reached out to Richard to stay him, to stop him.  She touched his arm, pushing against it.
 Richard pulled away, rising, and she felt herself being dragged up next to him. The old Mexican touched her arm, and she said firmly now, "No, no blankets." 
 Richard pushed the old man away, and the old man, losing his balance, went down among his blankets.  The other men moved in, upset. 
 "No blankets, no blankets," Richard said, over and over.  He started toward the old man, to pull him up, but the old man sat.  “It is nothing, senor, and he waved him away.
  Aware of how deserted the beach was except for them and the blanket sellers, Marjorie grabbed Richard’s arm and dragged him down the beach back toward the hotel.  "We don't need blankets, none, ever," she said, yelling back at the men. 
 Loud Spanish followed them, then was covered in the crash of the waves.  Out of breath, they stopped.
 "I've got to sit for a minute," Marjorie said.  She looked back. The men had disappeared.  Richard smoothed some sand, and they sat before the surf again.
 "It's not okay, is it?" he said.
 "You mean about the Mexicans?" Marjorie asked.  "It's a good thing you didn't deck one of them. You'd be in a Mexican prison."
 "I don’t mean that,” he said, " I could have taken them all on. I mean the other thing."
 Marjorie didn't answer.  She had thought they faced everything, solved it and moved on, but now she knew he was right.  She didn’t know if she could face it now.
 She imagined her feet in the water--in the sea with that soft warm feeling washing over her.  That's what she wanted.  A dream she had the night before flowed before her.  In the dream, a grizzly bear came out of pine trees, padding toward her, where she sat at a picnic table.  It came so close, so close she could smell its scent, and she turned and ran, not in control of her dream, totally immersed. . . .
 Richard pulled her up next to him and they ran to the water, covering their feet.  A huge wave crashed toward them, and they both ran backward, half wet, and screamed, making themselves afraid, then laughing.
 "Sit down," Richard said, pulling her down on dry sand.
 Marjorie sat down, aware Richard was getting more directive in his twenty-five years of living with her.  She decided she really would have to assert herself more.
 "I am sitting because I want to sit," she said.
 "Good," Richard said, smiling.
 "Yes, good," she said, looking at him more closely now.   He was greying at the temples.  His moustache was totally grey. 
 "You are the greying of America," she said.
 "You too," Richard said, pulling one strand of her hair, separating it from the others. 
 "I refuse," Marjorie said, but she saw herself as she had earlier in front of the mirror in their room, streaks of grey coveting her brown hair.  Her green eyes would never go with grey.
  They sat, staring at the sea again.  Marjorie began counting the waves, trying to see if she could predict which would be the tallest, the biggest one to pound on itself before pulling back.
 . . . The bear had almost gotten her in her dream, but then she had changed it into two baby bears.  When she walked toward them, she saw them tossing and tumbling on the grass.  She saw sharp, sharp claws.  Then the bears darkened, becoming shifting shapes that finally turned into shadows, like the shadows of the children on the beach.
 "You're not over it either," Richard said.  We just weren’t able to have children.  You have to snap out of this somehow.  You can’t let some past you never had haunt you forever."
 Before Marjorie could say what she thought, say what she really felt, or even decide no to say anything at all, a yellow butterfly flew up and down in quick arcs heading toward the waves.
 "No, if it goes that way, it will be killed,” Marjorie said, her body stiffening in place.  "The salt spray...."
 The butterfly flew above the waves, darting this way and that, and then Marjorie couldn't see it anymore.  A pounding, vibrating wave, came to them, and they jumped up, moving away from the rush. 
 Marjorie saw a bit of yellow, struggling, pulled out to sea.
 "You have to face where you are in time, square in your teeth," Richard said.
 "Not now, not now," Marjorie said, knowing that she had to, that she must, but getting up and running down the beach toward the hotel, toward the lush, green, green, green, and the pyramid of a rust-colored hotel, to where the breeze would come across the balcony and she could remain hidden from the shadows of children.

Lucy: Lost and Found in Ethiopia

Lucy: Lost and Found in Ethiopia


We can celebrate who we are
With our thumbs up.
Ah, that we have thumbs to use.
It’s the way we began
With flakes and hand axes
Around fires.

In the once upon a time of stories,
The magic of a gathering creates
Dancing diamonds of light
On walls in old caves far in the past.
Now we go back to ancient times
On computers.
We connect right now,
Right in the exact moment
Of finishing a sentence.
We chatter our way with keys,
And leap into the virtual reality
Of it all,
Of the desert, of the dig,
Of Lucy, found

Grandpa at the Idanha Hotel, Boise Idaho

                 
                GRANDPA AT THE IDANHA HOTEL

                           Grandpa at the Idanha
                           One Saturday night.
 
                           In front of an old mirror.
                           He boogied,
                           He stretched,
                           Turned around.
                           Did a limbo rock
                           Up/down the stairs,
                           Turning all around.
                          
                           His grandson,
                           In bright red knickers,
                           Doing the same,
                           The best he could.
                           Facing the same mirror,
                           Turning around,
                           Up/down,
                           Round and round.
                           
                           To Gene Harris on piano,
                           And Larry Boyd on bass.

Lightning Strike

Lightning Strike

Lighting struck the ground
In Mary Ellen’s backyard
And we all went over,
Stood in a circle around
The big black spot
Where the lightning had burnt the grass.

The sycamore split, black, with its leaves
Still bright green.
The trunk jarred into jagged edges
With misshapen limbs.

Mary Ellen got out her baton.
Did a routine,
Tossing silver as high into the air
As the tree once was.

Only now she didn’t have the tree
To call attention to her great feat,
So when it came down,
Even after being maybe higher
Than the tree was before,
We couldn’t tell for sure.

The baton came tumbling and tumbling
In slow motion and Mary Ellen
Put out her arm, poised to catch it.

We held our breath.

And it came down.
Just as she was about to get
Her hand around it,
The baton did a little jump away.
One rubber end
Hit the ground and bounced up
And turned over and over,
Until it settled on the burnt spot.

Mary Ellen went over and picked it up,
Tossed her hair back
Over her shoulders
Laughed and threw it even higher,
And it came down, down, down,
And this time she caught it.

We clapped and let out our breath.

And spent the afternoon
Circled around the dead tree
With Mary Ellen practicing over and over,
Never missing her toss again that day.

View from the Russian Front

By happenstance, we found ourselves in St Petersburg,  Russia shortly before Thursday, May 9, 2013, in the celebration for Russians for the end of the Great Patriotic War and what we call the “Siege” of Leningrad" and the Russians called “the blockade”, carried out by the Nazis during World War II.  Over a million people died, in the town designated then as Leningrad.  Hitler, determined to starve the Russians, did not succeed, and the city survived and marched on. And, with the l989 revolution, retrieved its original name. 

It was a time of ceremony, marches by the various military branches, including the veterans of World War II, and a time of the gathering of thousands on the streets.

We were there too, a day before, trying to find an entrance to the Hermitage among yellow barricades, set up to allow the military to practice in the magnificent square where a statue of Peter the Great towers from above. Young and old , military personnel in uniform stood in groups, waiting to march to designated positions.

And on the day of the parade on May 9th, we joined the ceremony and at first were a little apprehensive, many “what if’s” going through our heads, but then seeing families, children hoisted on shoulders to see over the crowds, couples, and an unobtrusive police presence, we relaxed in the event. Everyone likes a parade.  Lots of music, lots of noise, and lots of good will.  We too saluted those who fought, and were aware from a reprinted article in the St. Petersburg Times, that over 500,000 Jews served in the Russian Army during World War II.  Who would have known that?  We felt privileged to be able to honor all of those who served.

And when it was over, we walked with a huge crowd through a very narrow fence entrance into the park to leave, and again we felt hemmed in  and thought “what if, so close to all these people,” but we all shuffled forward through the narrow opening, and out, and everyone as the Brits would say, behaved splendidly.

Fireworks at night over the river, at l0 pm, barely getting dark as white nights approached, crowned the evening.  Men in their twenties feeling no pain, drank their way through the evening cheering each set of fireworks, with a loud hurrah, and made it even more fun for us.  We were two of very few Americans in a crowd of thousands. 

The fireworks over, we headed back to the Petro Palace, our hotel  on Nevsky Prospect, enjoying the night air, and the feeling that we were a part of an important memory about the evils of the past, the loss of soldiers and those who died in the blockade, and the recognition of the survivors  and the possibilities of goodness and good will in the present and future.

A Letter from Panama City July 9, 1965

                              A LETTER FROM PANAMA CITY
                                                    July 9, l965

Dear Shirley,

You won't believe the turn
Our vacation has taken.
              
Out in the middle of nowhere,
Your sister Janet was her usual self.

Five-- Janet and I plus three men,
Rubbed sweaty shoulders,
Swayed and bounced on cracked leather
Across tree roots and over muddy hollows,
Hearing sloshing against the wheels
Feeling the car, leaving the road
(Such that it was).

Juan (who spoke Spanish) unshaven,
In a white t-shirt, old brown corduroys,
Drove us into the dark forest.

Around a tight turn was a Quonset hut,
Battered automobiles, vintage l950's
Parked.  Not in rows.
Scattered over a clearing
With piles of debris shoved
Toward the edges.

I checked my gold watch. 
Expedition time so far: Two hours.            
The men (one of them also knew Spanish)
Handed Juan money. 
Another paid more.

The cab sidled in next to other rusted heaps.
The driver led us inside.  .  
There, silhouettes, silent for seconds in the smoke
Hunched over a long bar.
             
Shirley, you know how Janet argues
About every little thing.
She's not known for sailing
Through the rough and tough times of traveling
Without a to-do about something. 



So Janet decides she wants to sit "way over there,"
Way past all the men at the bar who then
Had the chance to give us
The once and twice over.
              
We crossed the squeaky wooden floor slowly.
Men, white teeth, high cheekbones, dark skin,
Older, maybe in their thirties, good-looking.
(You know how some Spanish men are).
But there were others--
Not the kind you'd want to come home to.

The three businessmen came after us.

We sat down at the first knife-gouged table.
Chairs swayed too easily.  I am not that heavy,.
But before I knew it, I was on the floor
Being helped up by the three men
Who came with us and Juan.

My white linen suit was smudged with dirt
And when I sat in a different chair--
(I sat on the edge of the seat)
My sleeves picked up dirt from the table.             

Ron, the Spanish-speaking Canadian, in our group,
Ordered five beers.  The beer came in bottles,
Wet, with labels coming off, 
Opened at the table.  No glasses. 
They were used to Americans.
              
The taxi cab driver hunched over,
Whispering to Billy Bob,
A thirty-five year old man from Texas cattle country.
Billy Bob laughed, pulled out a fifty dollar bill,
and said, "Let's go to the back."

The men pushed back their chairs.  More squeaks.
An empty chair fell over.  They weren't made that well.
              
Being agreeable, to the men I said, "OK," and Janet,
Being Janet, said,  "I like it here.  That's nice music."
It wasn't nice music.  A scratchy record
Over a loudspeaker.  You could hardly
Make out the words of "Mr. Sandman."
Not stereo.  Hadn’t reached the jungle yet.
              
I dragged Janet, and we followed
The three men, (the other man was Sheldon
From New York, fabric business)
Down a long passageway.
Bits of dusty plaster covered a stained red carpet.
Walls had holes with chicken wire showing through.
From old fights, maybe.

          
Perfume floated through the hallway.
We walked past shut doors without doorknobs.


The three men stooped, then disappeared
Through a low doorway.  Janet and I were
Close behind.  One light, I mean light bulb,
Hung from a cord in the center of the room.

We sat down, up against a wall.                   
The words of Mr. Sandman muffled behind thin walls.
We were gathered together in a row.
Facing pink. 

Pink walls met a pink carpeted floor.
The chairs, upholstered but soiled,
Had pink flowers embroidered over holes.
The door on the other side of the room
Glowed bright pink.  

The most obvious and important pink
Was the round bed in the middle.
Pink sheets, pink pillowcases,
Pink satin blanket, (looked hot to me),
Ruffle pink.  Overpinked.
                                                           
Janet wasn't speaking.  She had settled
Into a wobbly card table chair.
The men weren't making any conversation.
They sat. Quiet.  We all sat. Quiet.
Mr. Sandman scratched on and on
I played with the zipper on my purse,
Running it back and forth.

A woman's voice laughed from behind a closed door.
That made me jump..
Janet still hadn't said anything to me.
She seemed content.                        
              
I whispered to Ron, sitting on my other side,
"What's going on?"

“We have about a few minutes to wait,
Then it will start,” he said.

I turned to Janet and whispered,.
"Don't you think we ought to wait in the bar?"

She sat there, ignoring me..
I leaned closer and touched her arm..

"Janet, I think we ought to wait in the bar."

              
"No, let's just stay here for a few more  minutes," she said.
 (Is Janet dense or what?  She's your sister, Shirley.)

I said, "Janet, I'm going back to the bar,
And I think you should come with me."

Reluctantly, she began to listen to me.
Behind the door, the woman's voice
Was joined by a man's.            
              
I pulled Janet up, mumbling to the men,
About hunting for a bathroom.  I hauled Janet
Out.  I heard the other door open.
Two voices, male and female, entered the pink room.

But we were down the hallway.
Janet, being Janet, yelled at me
For pulling her away from the show. 
               
Back in the bar, we sat at the same table.
A man came up and pinched my arm.
Janet didn't see it.  She was looking at a man
At the bar who was looking at her.

"The music is romantic, " Janet said.

"Janet, we're leaving,"  I said.
"Not without the men," she said.
“We can`t leave them out here
 In the middle of nowhere."
              
Juan appeared from the passageway
And leaned over us. Obviously,
Having drunk more than beers.                                                                                      
He led us to the cab, put us in the back seat,
And, in very clear English, said,
"Stay put. Not safe."

The windows were open.
He locked the doors.
              
Expedition time: Four hours.

The men came out.
They didn't say anything
About anything.  They made small talk
And joked about women always having
To go to the bathroom.
 
Janet said she wouldn't speak to me
For the rest of the cruise.
She said I ruined her
Trip.  She's just not used to traveling,
Being ready for whatever happens.
Like I am.           

If Janet doesn't talk to me
There are plenty of other people
To talk to.  We have about six days
And three hours left on our cruise.
With or without Janet talking.                
     
See you when I get back.
              
Love from south of many borders,

Eve