Strange December

At dawn I drove the girls to school through a landscape covered in thick white frost. Everything still and glistening. The grass here remains green, and the kudzu, and there are green leaves on two trees in my backyard. It is a strange December. I don't know this place where I am. The bare winter woods, the mild afternoons, the humidity gathered every morning on my windows. I feel dull about Christmas and don't know what to blame--my total lack of shopping, our new home here in the semi-south, an artistic holdout between the deeper dixies of Georgia below and Virginia above. I haven't seen my husband since approximately December 5th and I miss him, and I'm so proud of him, and I'm just floating along. Brevard suffers a depressing lack of Christmas lights, almost nobody has bothered. Myself included. It had occurred to me the night before, as I sat ensconced in a knit blanket before my two lit trees and the Christmas special of Downton Abbey, that it's up to me to create Christmas this year, for the first time in my life. I can't arrive at my mother's or sister's house and find Christmas achieved (and it is an achievement, women know this) as I always have in the past. I have to achieve it myself. I dropped the girls at school and drove home as the sun hit the frosted hills around me, a dazzling winter white glittering in the near distance. It felt good to breath in the cold air. Inside, I sat by the living room window and watched the sun illumine spider webs still spinning in the trees and I thought about rib roasts and wine cakes and wondered what the hell I was going to do.

Then, distraction: a youtube video of Jimmy Fallon brings back a memory of summer. It was July, we were moving across the country. I was in the van with my children, alone with them as I would be for the next two months. We had stopped for gas in Overland Park, Kansas. Carly Rae Jeppsen was playing on the radio, it was our first day of driving. Evening was coming on, we were already road weary, we were shooting through the Midwest in search of St. Louis, in search of a new home. I was happy as I always am in a car headed somewhere new. Before I knew all the wonderful things Brevard held waiting for us, before I started saying "girl" and "y'all" and "for a hot minute" like a loathsome poseur, the maps app on my phone took us on a detour through a neighborhood and we rolled all the windows down and danced in our seats. It was free slurpee day at the 7-11 we gassed up at and we sucked down our circus-colored drinks and smiled as the snowy sugar soothed our aching bones. We rounded a corner and a hideous bug, a flying spider with a lobster shell, shot through the open window and Ayla began to scream. iPhone, Slurpee, steering wheel--which to release? "Kill it, Indy! Kill it! Take off your shoe and kill it!" I yelled. Screaming, Indy did. This girl who tells me she isn't brave beat the monster to death with the back of her sparkly jelly. The colossal skies of the west were still above me. It is amazing how much your life can change and still be exactly the same. In minutes we were back on the highway, speeding east across a curved and welcoming land. Before you came into my life I missed you so bad, I missed you so, so bad.

Horn Dance

We live in a shady glen here, surrounded by trees, but if I press my face to the  glass in the front and back of the house, I can see the hills. If I am mindful, I remember to look at them in the morning, when they are blue and gray, or frosted, like today. In the afternoon they are naked, drastically different hills from their lush and wanton summer selves. Across October, they spent a few weeks turning yellow and orange. Then one morning I woke to find all the leaves had dropped, except the red ones. Now they display fantastic tangles of bare branches and tufts of peacock-shaped crimson, a somewhat Suessian landscape, gray lines exploding with rainbows of red. In the late afternoon the sun wraps the hills in gold and crimson, the long white trunks luminous and glowing, anyway, in the dying light. If I bend down and peer through the arch of trees, I can see the pale cornfield two houses down. Today it is tipped in frost.

 I love these autumn woods far more than I loved them in summer.

Yesterday I stood gazing at those hills, at my neighbor's tree which was, indeed, copper like a trumpet call against a bright blue sky. I was thinking about worth. I'm not feeling worth much myself these days. Moving for my husband's job has brought on a bit of role confusion I did not anticipate. I got a job of my own and then had to turn it down, because getting a brewery up and running is placing extreme demands on my husband's time, and he can't commit to being home with the girls in the evenings nor on the weekends. I'm not making any money off my writing, which I set out years ago to do. I want to feel worthy. I don't want to get a job. I want to experience all the world at the same time I want to hide away from it like a hermit in the forest, alone with stories and poems.

There are three things I don't know: I don't know how humans survive the things we do, I don't know why my blogs always sound so melancholy when the heart of me is stupidly idealistic, the third thing I forget. This morning I woke early and went down the hall to find my husband gently waking our daughters, who were nestled into bed together. Moving here has bonded them, I think. They can often be caught hugging one another, fondly cradling and stroking each other's flushed pink faces. Behind them the morning sun shone bright through the window, over the white frosted grass, and backlit them all in heavenly light. For three nights in a row, I dreamed of paths. One through a thick forest of bracken and bramble, one through sinuous brick streets of an old European city, one through canals overgrown with weeping trees and low-slung magnolia. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am a Gemini. There will never be a singularity to my nature. I have a twin that dwells in me. When I proclaim this to my husband, he keeps a straight face.

When my dad was here I told him about my guilt over my decorative, garage-sale antlers. Guilt that an animal had to die, to sacrifice this blood and bone, so I might adorn my house. My dad told me this wasn't necessarily true. He told me that in the deep of winter, deer actually shed their antlers. They drop them in the forest like offerings, unconcerned, unburdened, and grow new ones again come spring. The people of long, long ago would walk through sleeping forests, gather these things that nature had surrendered, take them home to fires and turn battle-bone into a sacred dance.


Lay down locked horns and dance.

Here is why my blogs sound the way they do: everything is so beautiful it hurts.

Vesuvius Erupts

I tell myself we are living like bohemians which isn't true, but it helps. See, it's ok for bohemians to do things like spend their last fifteen francs on a box of red wine. However, this behavior is inexcusable in parents. So you see what I mean.

The real bohemians are Mermee and Trey Bien, and I mean to write about them but not today.

I keep trying to write you a lovely blog and nothing comes out right.

I think it must be because I am stressed as heck with job interviews--especially with people calling me in to interview for positions that may or may not actually exist ("Well Ms. Tuttle, we don't know if we're going to have fairies--I mean, we don't know that we aren't going to have fairies, do we--and so, saying we did actually have fairies: would you make a good one?")--and trying to find a house, worried about living on a smaller income, finding a school that will still take Indy (ha! That's a joke).

This stress had lead me to do such things as, well--spend my last fifteen francs on red wine, buy three fancy bars of chocolate, write snarky emails to strangers, laugh helplessly by myself in public, buy Pop Tarts, let papers with sensitive information (such as Mr. V's social security number) fly clear out the window, and watch Bones.

I don't know if you watch Bones but my crush on Mr Special Agent Booth came and went like Rocktober. All was well until this: we learned Booth looks down on organic food, judges even vaguely kinky sex, and thinks only skinny gals should love their own bodies. Seriously? This show is written for women. I am fairly sure there are only three men watching this show. This is who you give me for a romantic male lead? Mr "lose ten pounds get your pansy ass out of the farmers market and don't look at me in the eye"? Who writes this show, Stephanie Meyer? Try harder next time.

Then you read the actor cheated on his wife and even that little bit of you that remains sickly attracted to Booth flies away like sensitive information on windy days.

I'm breaking out. In one day I fed the girls both McDonalds and Chipotle. Along with the Pop Tarts I bought Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. If these aren't signs of mass systematic failure, I don't know what is. All systems overload! Vesuvius forgoes bananas for fruit loops, are we sure she has not been assassinated and replaced by Vesuvius from the Alternate Universe? The library called to inform me I would be sent to collections for an item that I lost and I blew my top.

I also got the fines removed and the fees waived. And no collections for me. Library Fascists.

Things like this are my lifelines: At Target there is a row of motion sensitive baby dolls. Every time we walk past them, they start to shake their heads about and wiggle their limbs and make creepy fake cooing noises.

And every time, Indy looks at them mistrustfully and tells me, "Those babies gonna kill me".

She's not scared or anything. Just acknowledging her own fate.

Now if only I could know mine.

Thank goodness I have a husband who makes me Cuban pork sandwiches and margaritas for mothers day.

And who allows me to select myself this little treasure.

Now we must collect them all. Mustn't we?

Don't Make Me Go To Vegas

We had cause to drive to Longmont to look for homes.

All the places we could afford were sad looking. Crummy is the word. Someone had bikes on their roof. All manner of trash and debris in the yard. Mr. Vesuvius looked at me and I wordlessly shook my head. I pretended I was on MTV True Life. I could imagine the camera following behind us. Close up on the peeling paint and threadbare love seats sitting on the tiny porches. Then it would close up on my face and all the world would know my pain.

(That was me being dramatic).

Then we made a terrible mistake. I spotted some tiny but promising houses tucked behind the restaurants and shops on the cute Old Town street. We drove back for a closer look.

Cheery homes, yellows and greens, a park, an abundance of flowers. Women with babies in bjorns and golden retrievers trot trot behind. Everything gleaming in the sun. Shoot. I began to cry.

Then I told myself I was being silly. Who is completely happy with their home? Who wouldn't trade up, if they could? Even the rich people there would probably trade up for a Villa in Italy. Which just shows you how ridiculous it all is.

And yet.

Mr. V steered us toward a little bungalow. "Is it yellow?" I said.

"I don't know if it's yellow. What does it matter if it's yellow?" said Mr. V

"I keep picturing a yellow house. I thought maybe if it was yellow it would be a sign. I believe in signs now. It's my new thing."

The bungalow was not yellow, but it was perfect. Sweet block with sweet little homes and massive storybook back yards.

No longer available.

There was nothing else to do. We hit the road. Took a spin through Lyons where everyone looked up to see if we were someone they knew. Kept going straight on to Estes.

Estes. There were elk in the park. We had a look. Walked to the river. I thought of my dad. The girls bounded about on the boulders. Such an excellent and satisfying exercise. Brain plus body. The mountains surrounding were all snowy and cloudy. All pre-Aslan Narnia.

We procured ice cream. We headed for home. The gas tank warning light ding-ding-dinged. I told Mr. V to stop for gas. Surely there will be a place along the way, he said. I raised my eyebrows.

There wasn't. But you know what?

We made it on empty, all the way down that mountain. Made it exactly as far as we needed to go.


--Over and out.