...and lived to tell the tale

Let me just say in defense of my daughter and I, that we are wonderful planners and organizers, but just not when we do things together. Each of us just assumes the other has taken care of everything and we both jump in the car and head off to have amazing adventures. That’s how I found myself driving back from Shenandoah Park late Sunday night wearing only a thong and a wet tank top. Now no poker was involved, but that was the story I planned to tell my husband and/or the police if we were pulled over. The weekend started off low key enough, with my girl and I making a decision to start on a detox diet to lose ten pounds each. When Saturday came she was feeling a little depressed and decided she would join her father and I at our favorite bar for dinner and drinks instead of taking her usual trip to meet the boyfriend in DC. No, alcohol is not really on the detox diet, but well, we decided to continue that on Sunday. Her brother came too, and a middle aged couple tried to get them to come party with them after the bar closed. Fortunately no one was drunk enough to think that was a good idea.

On the way home we discussed plans for a hike the next day. It seemed like a wonderful proposition at the time. We just needed to get up and be on the road by 6:30 and drive somewhere vaguely to the west. When the thunder awakened me at 6 the next morning I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to go back to sleep. Around 8 the girl knocked on my door and asked me if I was ready to go. But it’s raining, I told her. We can’t hike in the rain. Oh, rain is no problem she replied, besides, it’s going to clear up later. I have no one to blame for deciding to wear my Lucky jeans with their delightful water absorbent qualities. I just did it because they make my ass look good. Around 5 that evening they were not looking all that hot, sagging below my ass and wicking water into my hiking boots. It didn’t really matter though, because in the process of fording the same raging stream five times in the course of the hike, the boots had water sloshing over the tops anyway. Now I didn’t have to walk through the water, but so many slippery rocks were positioned just beyond my leaping ability, and with the alternative to missing them being the possibility of being washed downstream and over a waterfall, so time after time I decided to put my foot right into the relative safety of the river rather than on a precarious rock. It’s funny how those survival instincts kick in.

Looking back I realize all the signs and portents in the heavens were telling us not to head out Sunday morning. Aside from the hangovers and the late start, the first thing we discovered on the road was that both our ipods were out of power. No problem, says my sunshiny daughter, we can just play the “who can find the worst song on the radio” game. That would have been more fun if the folks at the Car Pool I went to on Saturday had replaced the radio antenna after they washed my car. With only very local stations coming in all we heard were the flash flood watches for the Shenandoah Valley, the direction we were heading. I did mention to the girl that White Oak Canyon was, well, a canyon, and the radio said that’s what we were suppose to avoid. Oh, she says, nothing is going to happen. Don’t worry. That’s about the time the car ran out of gas. She had the nerve to accuse me of not wanting to hike as we sat there stranded on 64. I promised her it was not duplicity, but stupidity that had made me miss the blinking light on the dashboard. I’m not sure if angels or demons sent our salvation, but a nice lady stopped within 5 minutes, took the girl to the next exit for gas, brought her back, and then offered my son a job. We were on our way with only a thirty-minute delay.

I would loved to have recaptured that thirty minutes 7 hours later when we were struggling uphill on Cedar Run, hoping to make the car before sunset. Of course, neither of us had a watch, and our cell phones had long ago ran out of batteries while looking for service in the wilderness. With the overcast skies, the only way we had of determining the time was the fact that the deer had awakened and were browsing in our path. Wet and cold, we staggered on in the downpour with our own private thoughts. I won’t say my whole life flashed before my eyes, but I did entertain the thought that I might not be around for the birth of my grandchild. That was the driving force that kept me putting one foot in front of the other for the last mile.

Finally I hear it, above the sound of the awakening owls, the noise of cars passing on the parkway. We crested the hill and there sat my sweet little red car and it had never looked so good to me. We pulled off our shoes, wrung out our socks, and wished we had the foresight to have packed dry clothing. I took off the soaked jeans jacket, then the jeans, and my extra shirt. We turned the thermostat in the Prius up to 85, but because we were going downhill with only the electric motor going, the car did not warm up rapidly. Shivering, we drove slowly down the parkway in a cloud, trying to avoid omnipresent deer herds making suicidal dashes across the road. The fog on the narrow winding highway parted occasionally and the evening sun lit up spectacular views of the valley like a Hollywood set. We pulled over to take another picture, but the camera battery was dead. “We’ll just have to keep this one in our head”, I said, “but we really have to bring extra batteries next time.”
“Right,” she replies “along with extra clothes, charged ipods, a radio that works, a watch, and gas in the car. Don’t you remember the last time we did this and we both said we’d make sure the next big adventure was better organized?”
“Yeah, I remember. We’ll probably be saying the same thing after the next trip too.”
“You’re right Mom, but think about it. We’ve done the two hardest trails in Virginia.”“…and lived to tell the tale,” I replied, finishing her sentence. Like two warriors around an evening campfire, we spent the rest of the drive home talking this one into legend.

Deer in the Headlights

First I want to apologize in advance to anyone I might offend, so if you’re sensitive about death or rednecks or plastic flowers, go your way in peace and read no more. Evidently I am morally bankrupt and I've decided to make fun of dead people. Not a dead person I actually knew in life of course, but one whose grieving family and friends determined that the highest and best way they could memorialize him was to buy a couple of fake deer, some crosses and plastic flowers, splash some red paint on a piece of plywood, and set the whole thing up on “dead man’s curve” here in the heart of redneck country. When I first saw the makeshift pseudo grave almost a year ago it was not so elaborate, but bit-by-bit it has evolved, even changing with the seasons, perpetually new. It was easy to ignore until this past Christmas when the first deer appeared. I just marvel at trying to imagine the thought process of the mother or girlfriend coming upon the pint size Blitzen at Wal Mart.

Jamie, choking back tears, says to Summer, “Ohhh, would you look at that? Remember when Joe brought home that big buck on the first day of hunting season?”

Summer, visibly moved, agrees, “Joe sure loved to hunt him some deer. Let’s buy it and put it out under the cross.”

Of course this is an imaginary conversation and I’m not disrespecting their grief. It is real and honest and painful, but these are not the type of people who set up scholarship funds for their departed loved ones. They are the type that just stuff that deer into an over sized plastic bag and throw it in the back of their pickup truck. I guess the girls thought one deer was not enough for Joe, or else one of them got jealous that someone else thought of it first. Either way, the fake stone plastic deer in a permanent resting posture appeared sometime in February. I'll have to give them credit though becaue they took down the tinsel, poinsettias, and ornaments right before Easter and freshened things up with the jonquils. They might have been having trouble making “Brownie” stand steadfast through the winter storms, because it appears that a metal weed whacker handle or some such instrument has been positioned at the deer’s posterior.

Now if all this weren’t amusing enough, I showed the picture to my younger son, thinking he might get a giggle out of it. He looked puzzled for a second, and then said,

“So someone hit a deer and died, and they made a memorial?”

“Well son, I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think so.” I replied, getting into the spirit of his dry humor.

He continues, “I guess that would be a little morbid, wouldn’t it. Maybe they killed a deer there and the monument is for the deer.” I looked again.

“Well, I guess that could be, after all the second deer is white and ghostly, plastic, but painted to look like simulated concrete.”

“Wow,” quips my boy, “a simulated concrete deer. What will they think of next?”

“Yeah, great isn’t it. It gives the appearance of permanence, and it’s easy to carry down a winding hill on a narrow road.”

There is nothing to say after this except trying to cipher the rest of the names of the loved ones, since neither of us knows the real story. I googled “spontaneous roadside memorials”, thinking I might not be the only one puzzled by this phenomenon. It seems like some scholarly type in UK is doing research on the very subject. Who knew? He sort of blames it on the Mexicans in a back handed way. Well, very back handed actually. His exact words are:

“In the United States elaborately decorated roadside crosses marking violent deaths are most common in the Hispanic Southwest, especially northern New Mexico. Research indicates that the antecedents for these descansos or cruces can be traced to a medieval Spanish practice of erecting crosses at the sites of violent death.”

I told you it was scholarly and back handed. I will say that he gets very creepy at times, probably the results of researching this subject for too long. I have determined to give up on further analysis before I am tempted to click on his link for “The social (and legal) life of corpses”. Some things I just don’t want to know.

My dream life has always been lush and intriguing, even when my waking hours were bleak and tedious. I named this blog based not only the figurative awakening I experienced over the last few years, but on the literal fact of when I write my best, early mornings. Upon waking, my one thought is always to tell the stories of the night, having consolidated the scenes from the day before and combined them with other memories; I am overflowing with words. On days when I cannot write at dawn, I often still make an attempt in the evening, but with the house busy with people and my mind full of the cares of the day, the words come slowly, like water dammed and reduced to a trickle. Normally I awaken naturally between 5 and 6, having not needed to depend on an alarm clock since my first child was born. On those exceptional days when I try to stay in bed and sleep, most usually at my husband’s urging, dreams rise and explode like skyrocket through my brain, waking me over and over, normally urging me to rise and greet the day.

This morning I could not blame my husband for my lying late in bed, as he was not there when the alarm went off at six. He had been with me the night before, but as is his want, he walks in dreams, literally, the sleeping potion to which he is still addicted holding him in its unrelenting gripe. Sometimes I wake to look for where his nighttime journey has taken him and find him sleeping in curious places in uncomfortable poses. This morning I had been sleep deprived all week and had no interest in hopping out of bed at 6 or searching for him. In fact, I have no idea why the clock was set for that time as it was most certainly not so my husband could greet the dawn. I only know I had an overwhelming desire for a large boulder to pound the inopportune timepiece to very small bits. I settled for yanking the plug out of the wall after hitting every button and switch with no result, and went back to dreamland. The reason for my reticence to wake was the dream that held me in its grip. Since it was sexual, I guessing you might like for me to share.

He was standing in the shower, the vague amorphous man that generally haunts my dreams, a composite of all the great men I’ve know in my life. His features blur and almost disappear when I try to focus on his face, his form, but he is not a “pretty boy” of the type my gay friends describe with a hint of disdain in their voices. He is most assuredly masculine, strong in mind and body, a bit rugged, perhaps even a little dangerous. I somehow know him well, but his face and figure always vanish from me on rising like mist evaporating from the river. His mouth and hands beckon me, and responding to his naked body I step into the tiled enclosure. It is not the small shower in my house, but the one in the hotel where my husband and I spent the weekend. There is ample room for two to play. I am naked of course, and free from inhibitions, I stand facing him, devouring him first with my eyes. He is my perfectly engineered fantasy, so we find no need to talk. I know him intimately as I know my own mind and body. Indeed, I cannot speak as I am on my knees before him, my mouth engaged, the water falling in cascades over my back. At the same time I am an observer, watching his face, seeing the ecstasy written there and mirrored on my own. He pulls me up suddenly and lifts me off my feet, his strength overwhelming, my objections weak and futile. His hands cupping my bottom, my legs wrapped around his waist, the pattern of the tile makes an imprint on my back as our bodies melt together in total harmony. I know when he enters me I will explode immediately, but as I gasp with pleasure, as I pull my in my breath with anticipation of that first second of pain and the pleasure that will most certainly follow, I hear the sound of classical music. My perfect phantom lover fades like fairy gold in daylight and I am awake begging my husband to turn off the alarm. Seconds pass before I realize he is not there, roll over into the hollow he leaves in the bed, and start flailing ineffectually at the radio.
In the silence that follows I try to find my capricious dream lover again, but he is mercurial and I lie frustrated and half asleep for another hour. My husband stumbles to bed sometime after six and I remember muttering something to him about the radio. He wonders why I am preoccupied when he finally arises around 12:30 and comes to kiss my neck as I pound away on the keyboard. I know I can’t blame him, but I am irrational today. Most likely I will apologize later, as is our pattern, but not now, not now.

The sound of one hand waving

becomes deafingly enormous when it is your first grandchild.