I’m hopeless. I promise to post a blog every Sunday night or Monday morning to provide my faithful readers (don’t laugh) with some predictability. And yet I posted mid-week last week. And I didn’t post Sunday. And here I am posting mid-week again. No doubt I’ve created mass confusion in your respective lives. And for that, I apologize. But it’s the holidays, right? That gives me some leeway, doesn’t it?

I’ve been awake since 5 a.m. Eastern time, which is 3 a.m. Mountain time, the zone in which I now sit and type. And it is indeed Mountain time because I am, indeed, in the mountains. The rocky ones, to be exact. We arrived this morning and now I sit in a house in the middle of ski country (courtesy of Dave’s father, God bless him) and try to rally my sleep-deprived brain cells to write something interesting and worth reading.

It’s harder than you might think.

But before I begin, I have to get a little housekeeping out of the way: I promised my brother-in-law Dan (the elder of the three Lyons boys) that I would dedicate this blog to him because he’s kind and generous and got Dave and me a $100 gift certificate to a really nice wine vendor for Christmas, while Dave and I generously got him nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. He drops a Benjamin on us and we give him a hug. We are a whole new kind of asshole.

So, like a kindergartener, I’m making him a gift. And because the only skill I have is writing, he gets a blog. Just for him.

But it’s not going to really be about him. This isn’t DanTalks.com after all. But it’s inspired by him. Because what I’d like to write about is how much I suck at giving gifts.

If you are my friend, you know this: I never give gifts. Well, almost never. Occasionally, inspiration strikes. For instance, recently my friend “Lee Ann” celebrated her 40^th birthday. You might recall from At the Crack of Dong that Lee Ann is the one who thought my dawn simulator was actually a dong simulator. So for her birthday, I made a special weeknight trip to The Pleasure Place in Georgetown, where I bought her a vibrator. Not just any vibrator, but a huge, flesh-colored, vein-mapped dildo. I strode confidently into the store, browsed the wall of fake phalluses, made my selection, and took it to the counter, where the friendly gay cashier took it out of the package and slipped batteries into it, then asked me to hold it. They do this because (and you’ll be glad to know this if you’re in the market for a vibrator) you can’t return them. So I held onto it and he turned it on and it did, indeed, vibrate. (When I recounted this story to Dave, he asked me if I told the cashier it was a gag gift for a friend. “No,” I replied, “because no one ever believes anyone who says it’s a gag gift for a friend.”) Then he told me as he was putting it back in the package to wash it with antibacterial soap after using it. I’m not sure why, but this spurred me to ask him if it was submersible. (Dave: “You asked a follow-up question? Why? Are you planning to use it underwater?”) “No,” the cashier told me, “it’s not submersible. Just wash the shaft to the base.”

“Okay,” I told him. Glad we were square on that point.

I walked out of the store with my $20 dong simulator that was too big to fit in my purse and headed to CVS to buy the second part of the gift: a battery-operated Christmas candle to duct-tape to the dildo—thus making it a combo dong/dawn simulator. I returned home and sat on the couch, putting the gift together, giggling the whole time. Dave stared at me a little suspiciously and then said finally, “I’ve never seen you put this much effort into a gift in your life.”

He’s right. Because I don’t give gifts. It’s not a conscious choice. I seem to have a mental block when it comes to gift giving. Part of it is just because I’m not a shopper. I spend literally no time in stores outside of the grocery store and, occasionally, Target. So I don’t have the opportunity to see things and think, “So-and-so would love this!”

But is that really a good enough excuse? Shouldn’t I at least make an effort?

This Christmas Eve, Dave and I were wrapping gifts and congratulating ourselves on what a great job we’d done getting gifts for our parents and the kids. And I realized at that moment that I didn’t get Dave a gift. Nothing. Not even a card.

“Crap, Dave,” I said to him. “I didn’t get you a gift.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “We said no gifts this year.”

“But you got me one, didn’t you?”

Silence.

“Dave! That’s not fair! We said no gifts and you got me one.”

“No, that’s not true. Technically, I didn’t get you a gift…”

“Good.”

“…the kids got you a gift.”

“Dammit, Dave.”

My thoughtlessness extends beyond gift giving. I don’t even remember to say things like “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” or—worst of all—“Happy Birthday.” My best friend in the whole wide world who has been my best friend since college has a birthday the day after mine, and still, I forget. Luckily, she forgets mine, too. We usually end up talking to each other a week later and one of us tells a story that starts, “Well, I went to dinner last week for my birthday,” and then the other says, “Oh God, I totally forgot. Happy birthday,” and the other says, “Yeah, you, too.” This is a big part of the reason we are best friends.

I’m not sure my other friends take it so well. And I don’t blame them. I make sure to let any serious friend know early in our relationship that I don’t remember birthdays and I suck at buying gifts. I make it clear that if they’re in this for the loot, they best keep moving. So my friends’ expectations are mercifully low. Snake-belly low. But I’m not sure low expectations are the best foundation for friendship.

Sometimes I’ve considered changing my ways. I tell myself that I could keep a calendar of birthdays and anniversaries. I could easily set up email reminders. It would require almost no effort at all. But I can’t bring myself to do it. It would just feel forced and insincere, like when John McCain smiles. When it comes down to it, being thoughtful just isn’t me.

So I try to be a good friend in other ways: I’m a good, non-judgmental listener. I don’t give my friends unsolicited advice. I love them, unequivocally, for who they are. I never say things like, “No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to put on weight!” And, occasionally, I mention them in a blog. Like I’m mentioning Dan. Because that’s the kind of friend I am. I hope that’s enough. I’m banking on it.

I’m breaking my once-a-week rule and writing today because, frankly, I really didn’t write on Sunday. I cheated and went into the archives. So I owe you one. Plus, I feel compelled to write something about Christmas or, er, the holidays, since this is the season in which we find ourselves immersed or surrounded or pulverized by, depending on your outlook.

This might surprise some of you, but I actually love Christmas. Yes, it’s stressful, and yes, it’s overly materialistic, and yes, those “he went to Jared” ads make me barf in my mouth every.single.time…but aside from all that, there’s so much about it that I absolutely adore. And I don’t just mean in the secular, families-get-together, spirit-of-giving, lots-of-time-off-work way—although all of those are biggies, too. But the main reason I love Christmas is simple: Jesus.

I really hope some of you did a spit-take or choked on your bagel when you read that, because that was totally the effect I was going for. But, snare trap aside, I’m not being sarcastic. It’s true. When it comes to Christmas, I love Jesus.

For those of you who don’t know me, let me explain why you should have spewed coffee on your computer screen:

I’m an avowed agnostic. I don’t claim to say there isn’t a god, but I’m not willing to bet my life that there is one, either.  Ergo, I’m not a Christian. I don’t believe Jesus was the Son of God and, consequently, Jesus Christ is not my personal Lord and Savior.

If you are a true believer and horrified by what I’ve written, let me try to put your mind at ease a little: I didn’t come to this non-belief system lightly. I was raised Catholic and was actually quite devout as a child. I prayed every single night and went to Mass every single weekend (multiple times during Christmas and Easter weeks). I did all of the sacraments through confirmation. My family would regularly say the rosary together.

But sometime in high school I started questioning what it was all about. The logical side of me had a hard time fitting Jesus and God into the world. I started asking those questions that have led doubters away from faith since the beginning of time: “If God is all powerful, why does He allow so much suffering in the world?” “If God is all forgiving, why is there a hell?” “If God is all loving, why didn’t he give me bigger boobs?”

I didn’t give up on God right away. Just the opposite. I tried really hard to make God make sense to me. I started going to church more often to look for answers. I went on a weekend youth retreat (which included sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya, just as you would imagine). I talked to my parents about it. I talked to my friends. But nothing I could find answered my questions satisfactorily. So around my junior year of high school, I declared that I was an atheist and stopped going to church. This was right around the same time I became a vegetarian for six months and discovered Ayn Rand. To my parents’ credit, when I told them this, they said, simply, “Okay.” They didn’t argue or try to convince me otherwise.

In fact, shortly after my defection, my mom was at a church ladies luncheon and one of the other mothers asked her where I had been. “She’s decided not to go to church anymore,” my mom replied.

The mother, horrified, said, “I can’t believe you let her do that! Why don’t you make her go?”

“Because she’s old enough to make her own decisions about things like this.”

Go, Donna!

Besides, my mom knew by that point that trying to make me do anything was a really, really bad idea. Dave has often said the sure enough way to get me to do something is to tell me to do the opposite. A comment like “Gee, Laura, I really think you should spend more time with your horse and less time with the children” would likely result in Chama’s sale and my third pregnancy. I’m not proud of this. My epic stubbornness is probably my worst characteristic—and believe me, there are a lot of competitors vying for that honor. And, no doubt, this stubbornness is a big part of why organized religion and I don’t mesh. Quite simply, I don’t want to be told what to do or what to believe, by anyone, including God.

Nonetheless, my atheism softened, becoming agnosticism by college. By my early 20s, it had softened even more to a quasi-faith. As I stumbled along, trying to figure out my path through life, I felt something lacking and turned back to the church. I started praying again and saying the rosary. I even started going to Mass again—every weekday on my lunch break. I realized one of the things I hated about belonging to a church was actually belonging to a church. I’m not a joiner, so I had no desire for the whole community aspect of religion. Going to Mass midday during the week meant I sat in the pews almost entirely alone. I got to really listen to the readings and the homilies and think about how they fit in to my life.

It was deeply rewarding. I felt that I had a renewed understanding of the role of religion in people’s lives and the meaning of faith. During this time I also read the book Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington about his accidental spiritual journey while writing about Pentecostal snake handlers for the New York Times. In it I read something that I found so deeply beautiful, I’ve never forgotten it: “Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.”

I began to believe that. But I still didn’t really believe in God. I also became increasingly disillusioned with the Catholic Church and its views on the role of women. And its homophobia. And its stance on birth control. These had always bothered me, but I was able to look the other way, telling myself my faith was not about the church’s politics. Besides, at the time I was going to Mass at the Catholic student center on the Berkeley campus—which was so liberal it made Universalists look like Oral Roberts’ devotees. But then came the clergy sex abuse scandal and I just couldn’t turn a blind eye to that.

So I stopped going to church and saying the rosary and praying. And I haven’t done any of those—not with any real conviction—ever since.

Occasionally I’ll do a kind of meditative pseudo-prayer session, but I don’t really talk to the capital-G God, thanking Him for His blessings and asking Him for things. When I try to do this, it feels forced and manipulative. I just can’t believe that, if there is a God, He cares about what I’m thinking. Moreover, I can’t believe a god exists who picks and chooses whose prayers to listen to. I bristle when people talk about the power of prayer in healing their sick child or dying sister. I always want to ask them: “What about the mother whose sick child didn’t recover? Did her prayers not count? Did she not pray hard enough? Did she not love God enough so He let her baby die?”

This is when believers talk about the importance of faith—the mystery that Dennis Covington wrote about. Shouldn’t I get that? I believed it at one point, didn’t I? But it just doesn’t make sense to me. The fact is, I can’t square an all-powerful, all-loving, all-forgiving God with the reality of the world.

So I’m agnostic.

Yet I have a nativity scene, which has caused no end of commentary from the friends who’ve come to our house this holiday season. My friend Cy saw it and said, simply, “Wow.”

“What?”

“Why do you have a nativity scene?”

“Why not? I have a Christmas tree.”

“Yes,” she said, “but even Jews have Christmas trees. You’ve got baby Jesus in a manger. What’s up with that?”

Because, at Christmastime, I love Jesus. I love the Christmas story. As drama goes, you really can’t get much better. Here was this pregnant, unwed teenager who was forced to travel miles on a donkey (we owned a donkey when I was pregnant with Noah and I actually rode her for about two minutes—and I have to say, Mary had one hell of a journey), only to be forced to give birth in a stable, among the animals, and lay her newborn baby to sleep in a feeding trough. Any woman who has given birth can imagine how scary all of this must have been for her—especially at a time when more women and babies died in childbirth than survived.

And I love the metaphor of Jesus’ birth: that this baby brought light and hope into a dark and angry world. Because babies always bring that with them, don’t they? No matter the circumstances of the pregnancy or the birth, no matter the situation of the parents, no matter the child’s future: that moment of birth holds so much promise. It is a beginning in its purest and most eloquent form. I remember Dave and I looking at Noah’s perfect little feet after he was born and Dave saying all he could think about was all the places those feet would walk, all the paths they would take him down. The beginning of life is an undiscovered sea, an uncharted desert. And each time we embark to discover it, we hold our breath, wondering what we’ll find.

So this is what I think about when I hear the Christmas story. Whether or not Jesus is the Son of God is irrelevant to me. What matters is what his birth symbolizes: life anew. So I decorate my house and display a nativity scene and tell my kids that the most important part of Christmas is Jesus. Because I believe it.

I’m a little reluctant to post this, but here we go. This is a short story I wrote a dozen or so years ago as part of a fiction writing class. Since then, about once a year I return to it and make small revisions and tell myself that someday I’m going to turn it into a novel. I went to look for it the other day when I wrote the blog post that mentioned the play Our Town–because I also mention it in this story. Anyway, here it is. I should warn you, it’s long. And it’s flawed in many ways. But there are still elements that I like and, well, frankly, I just couldn’t bring myself to write something original tonight. If this is not your cup of tea, not to worry. I’ll get back to writing about the minutiae of my day-to-day life soon. Oh, and merry Christmas or happy Hanukkah or happy holidays or whatever it is you might celebrate this time of year!

—-

HOLDING JULIE

I am watching a young girl on a horse. Or, rather, a young woman. She’s eighteen years old. Her hair is short, too short for her round face. And dark. She is sitting on the horse’s back. Very still. It is night. Late. Or early. It’s hard to tell. It is the time of night when everyone is asleep. The world seems empty, except for her. She can feel the warmth of the horse against the inside of her thighs. I’m not sure what she’s wearing. Perhaps jeans. Perhaps an old t-shirt and boxer shorts–the clothes she sleeps in. Yes. She is wearing thin boxers. The spine of the horse presses against her pubic bone. Typically it would be uncomfortable. But not tonight. Tonight it feels reassuring and strong.

I watch this young woman kick the horse gently to move forward. She gives a slight click-click of her tongue. She’s timid. Not typically. But tonight, on this horse, in the middle of the night, she is cautious, wary. Not afraid. But Careful.

The horse moves quietly forward, his neck rocking with each step. He too is wary. He is uncertain. Except for the light of a half moon, it is dark. The darkness warrants caution.

The meadow is hushed as if in anticipation. The pulsing hum of the crickets seems softer. The shrill buzz of mosquitoes is muffled by the humid southern air. The fireflies keep their distance in the dense forest that encircles the meadow. The horse takes all of this in. He breathes evenly. He smells the damp air and the damp earth and this strange girl on his back. He breathes in all of this life around him and walks cautiously forward. The dull thud of each hoof like a heart beat.

I’m wondering why the girl is here. I’m watching her silent figure move with the rhythm of the horse and wondering what brought her to this moment.

***

It is earlier in the day and Julie Sattler has had enough of her parents. She has been in the car with them for God knows how long, making the uneventful drive from New Mexico to Tennessee. As if it isn’t lame enough that she has had to endure the boring landscape of the southern plains, but Julie’s dad has refused to stop somewhere and pay the measly sixty bucks for a room at a Days Inn, so she’s been in the car for-fucking-ever.

Not to mention the inane conversations her parents were having–about directions and gas mileage and–the constant source of contention on any Sattler road trip–speeding. In Arkansas, after Mr. Sattler receives his second speeding ticket of the trip, Julie’s mom decides to recount every ticket in Mr. Sattler’s rich driving history. “…And remember that time in Florida?”

“Oh, that cop was full of shit.”

Mrs. Sattler cuts him a look. From the back seat, Julie can’t tell if it is disdainful or playful.

“What?!” Mr. Sattler takes his eyes off the road for a moment and meets his wife’s sideways glance.

“You say that about everyone who has ever told you you’re wrong.”

“Bullshit.” He waves a dismissive hand in her direction.

“Exactly my point.” Mrs. Sattler folds her hands in her lap and levels her eyes at the ribbon of asphalt stretched out before them.

At this, Julie puts on her headphones, looks out the window, and mentally removes herself from the car. When her parents try to talk to her, they are met with an indifferent look that tells them they can’t be heard above the blaring of her music. This goes on for a few hours, until her father reaches to the back seat and taps her on the shoulder–breaking her dull stare out the window at the endless miles of fence posts and weary farmland. Julie lets out an exasperated sigh and lifts the right headphone off her ear.

“Your mother was talking to you,” her father says without removing his eyes from the road.

“What?” The tinny music from her headphones fills the car.

Her dad catches her eye in the rearview mirror. “Why don’t you take those headphones off for five minutes and find out?” His voice is even, but his eyes tell her not to challenge him. His eyes tell her that she will walk the rest of the way if she doesn’t drop the attitude and show a little respect. She knows he means it. Once, when the family was driving home to Albuquerque from Julie’s grandparents’ house in Santa Fe, they passed a carnival in a mini-mall parking lot. Julie, who was five years old at the time, saw the swirling lights that reminded her of Christmas and begged her parents to stop. Her father said no. She threw a tantrum of immense proportions–literally kicking and screaming with all of her might, with all of her already stubborn will, determined to get her way. Her father said fine, she could go to the carnival. He stopped the car, let her out onto the shoulder of the road, and drove away. She probably only stood there for a couple minutes, but in her memory, it was forever. She watched in panicked disbelief as the car holding everything she knew in the world moved slowly in to the oncoming traffic and drove away. She didn’t cry. She just watched. Horrified. It wasn’t until the car returned after circling the block that she began crying–more out of anger at having been tricked than out of relief.

She climbed into the car, still hiccuping for breath. Her mom handed her a tissue. Her dad looked at her through the rearview mirror. “Did you learn your lesson, Sport?” he asked with the contradictory traces of triumph and shame in his voice.

Julie nodded, cognizant even at that age that she had suffered her first defeat.

Julie remembers this as she sees her dad’s gray eyes in the rearview mirror, telling her to talk to her mother or else. She turns off her portable CD player and removes her headphones. “What?” she says again with as much sincerity as she can muster.

“Did you pack that sun dress I bought you at Dillard’s?”

“Yes.”

“Did I tell you how much I paid for that?”

“No.”

“Only seventy-five dollars. I couldn’t believe it. It was marked down from a hundred and twenty. It’s such a pretty dress and the color looks so good on you…”

For the rest of the trip, Julie listens patiently to her parents and responds tersely–although not impolitely–to their questions. Inside she can feel her heart freeze into a solid block. By the time they reach her sister’s place in Tennessee, she is ready to scream. Of course, so are Julie’s parents. But she doesn’t know that. All Julie knows is that her parents don’t understand a thing about her, and that is unforgivable.

But Julie isn’t thinking about this when they arrive at her sister’s house. She’s just glad to be the hell out of that hot, stuffy car. Although the August Tennessee heat isn’t much better. The air is thick and moist and the white-hot sun forces her to squint her eyes so hard her cheek muscles quiver. As soon as she steps out of the car, she feels the beads of sweat make a salty mustache above her lip. Her t-shirt clings to her back and she has to peel her shorts from the backs of her legs. But still, it’s good to be outside and to stretch and breathe air that hasn’t been filtered through some nasty car engine. And, of course, it’s good to see her sister, who is walking out of the house with two German Shepherds and a husband behind her.

“I thought you’d never make it,” Michelle says with a slight drawl unfamiliar to Julie’s ears.

“Neither did I,” Julie replies as she dramatically rolls her eyes so Michelle won’t miss the point.

Michelle looks at her tired family with their obviously frayed nerves, tosses her arms up as if in surrender, and says, “Well, let’s get out of this heat.”

The icy cool of the air conditioner makes the hairs on Julie’s arms stand at attention. She blinks away the brightness of the outside, trying to adjust to the darkness of the living room. I wonder what Julie sees as she looks around her sister’s small house. This is the first time she’s been here. Her sister had dropped out of college the year before to marry Dan, a guy she’d met while she was in Las Vegas for spring break with some girlfriends. He had won a trip there from the auto plant where he worked for having the fewest product defects or something like that. Julie doesn’t remember the details. She just remembers her parents going through the roof when they heard that he worked at an auto plant. “Probably some UAW son-of-a-bitch,” her dad had said. So there they were, Michelle and Dan, at a crap table or something just as sleazy, and who knows what happened. All they know is that Michelle came home all starry-eyed and ga-ga over some guy. Michelle and Dan wrote and called each other every day for about a month and then, out of the blue, Michelle announced that she was quitting school to go live with this stranger in Tennessee. Her parents thought she was nuts. Julie was in her room with the door shut the night Michelle told her parents she was leaving. The screaming was so loud, Julie didn’t even have to turn down her stereo to hear the threats of disinheritance and the “you’re-ruining-your-life” refrain echo through the stairwell.

But Michelle did it anyway. And here she is, a year later, living what seems to be a pretty decent life. And even Julie has to admit that Michelle looks better than she ever has. She’s lost the extra twenty pounds she put on in college and she has a healthy sunburned strip on each cheek. Her sleeveless denim shirt shows off her newly muscled arms and the tan line across the center of each bicep. The house is another story. It’s nice, but too sparse to be homey, with its 1950s green Formica kitchen table standing where the formal dining table should be, and a gold and brown monstrosity of a couch with a faded red stain (ketchup or blood, Julie wonders) on the cushion. A Lazy Boy from the early 80s–by far the newest addition to the house–sits alone in the corner like a disruptive child banished from the rest of the group. The walls are bare, except for a single watercolor painting of the meadow behind their house. There is an audible gasp when Michelle announces proudly that Dan painted it. So the UAW son-of-a-bitch is a painter. Who would’ve guessed?

“Michelle, you’ve done a really nice job with the place!” her mom blurts out a little too enthusiastically.

Julie can tell that Michelle is wondering what she means by that. But rather than ask, she gives a humble shrug: “Yeah, well, you know. We try!” She tries to match her mom’s enthusiasm but doesn’t quite make it.

They all stand in an awkward silence, not so much trying to think of what to say as how to say it.

Julie’s dad jumps in first, “How about a beer, Dan?”

Dan looks startled. Perhaps he was distracted by the needling silence and didn’t expect a break so soon. Perhaps he is surprised that his father-in-law drinks beer. This is only the second time they’ve met, and there was no beer at the first meeting. It was the previous May, after Michelle had withdrawn all of her savings and flown to Tennessee to be with Dan. She had been there only a few weeks when she called her parents to ask if they would come to her wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Sattler responded with a measured “of course” that shocked the hell out of Julie and probably floored Michelle. So they flew to Tennessee at the end of May–leaving Julie behind to study for finals–and stood quietly by their daughter as she vowed to love, honor, and cherish the UAW son-of-a-bitch. Their graciousness, however, had its limits. Mr. Sattler didn’t give Michelle away. (She didn’t dare ask him, but he certainly didn’t volunteer.) And they didn’t give the newlyweds a gift.  But, still, they attended–which is more than Julie thought they would ever do.

I wonder what Dan thinks about the Sattler family. He doesn’t reveal much. Julie thinks his silence makes him mysterious. She thinks he chooses not to talk and carry on because he knows so much more than the rest of them. Perhaps. Or perhaps it means that he has nothing to say. I imagine that he would rather not be here–with the Sattler family. He would rather quietly remove himself and observe from the sidelines, like I’m doing. But he can’t. He’s an integral part of the story. And being such, when Mr. Sattler asks him for a beer, Dan raises his eyebrows in surprise and then mumbles, “Yeah, sure,” and turns toward the kitchen with Julie’s dad following behind.

This cues Michelle to quickly offer her sister and mother something as well. Julie can tell that she is disappointed in herself for not thinking of it sooner. Michelle always furrows her brow and gives a half, twitching smile when she feels like she’s screwed up. Julie can’t help but feel sorry for her. Michelle ticks off the drink options like a waitress reciting the evening’s specials: “…orange juice, iced tea, Coke, water, milk, and…I guess that’s it.”

“An iced tea would be great,” her mom says.

“Yeah, me, too,” Julie adds. A wave of sadness envelops her. She doesn’t want an iced tea. She doesn’t want to talk about how nicely her sister has decorated her house. She wishes they had never come.

Michelle tousles Julie’s short hair on her way to the kitchen: “Any boyfriends, Jules?”

Mrs. Sattler perks up. She has been snooping around Julie’s bedroom for the last six months for any hint of Julie’s life outside the house, for any hint of what she does late into the evenings. She knows it’s sneaky and distrustful, but she can’t help it. Julie’s silence, punishing them for God knows what, leaves her no other option. It’s not that Mrs. Sattler doesn’t ask questions. She does. Loads of them, all the time. How was school? What’s she been up to? How’s her friend Robin? And she’s not being accusatory either. She genuinely wants to know. But Julie only shrugs her shoulders and gives cursory grunts of response. Mrs. Sattler can’t help but be concerned. She never brings home any friends, much less boys. On the rare occasions when she is home, she just sits in her room with the door locked, playing that horrible grunge music, or whatever they call it, reading books Mrs. Sattler vaguely remembers studying in college, and writing in her diary.

Julie’s diary. What her mom would give to read that diary. Whenever she goes into Julie’s room on one of her fact-finding missions, she sees the bright fabric-covered book lying on her bed table, typically open, inviting her to take a peak. She never has. But she has looked at it from the doorway, too far away to read the small, slanted words rushing across the page. She has closed her eyes and willed the words to lift off the paper and float through her, revealing all the deep secrets her little girl, her baby feels she has to hide. Drugs? Deception? Sex? She hates to admit it, but it’s even crossed her mind that Julie could be a lesbian. It’s awful to think, she knows, but Julie doesn’t help matters, with her short hair and pierced naval and combat boots and baggy jeans. It’s such a shame, too. She’s a pretty girl with a nice figure, if only she would put a little effort into it. But things will change. Now Julie’s on her way to college. Everything changes in college. Maybe she’ll meet some nice boys who will bring her out of her shell. Or maybe not. After all, she is going to an art school. Who knows what it’s like there. There are no athletics, Mrs. Sattler knows that. There are no sororities or fraternities. Mrs. Sattler can’t imagine what they do for fun. She just hopes that Julie will take her nose out of her books and wipe that angry look off her face. She can’t stay mad at whatever it is forever. Or maybe she can. This is the thought that always makes Mrs. Sattler turn the light out in Julie’s room, leave the diary untouched beside her unmade bed, and walk away.

Julie is aware that her mom is dying to hear whether or not she has any boyfriends. She can feel the needy pull for information well up inside her mother and reach across the distance between them and summon the Truth out of her. Julie won’t give in. “Maybe, maybe not. Why do you care?”

“Fine. Don’t get so snippy.” Michelle’s upper lip curls and her nostrils flare a bit.

An instinctive, warning “girls” comes from their mother and immediately opens the silent space between them all once again. Michelle disappears into the kitchen just as Dan and Mr. Sattler return with their Coors Lights in hand. They stand, sipping their beers, rocking back on their heels, and looking at the floor.

A moment later, Michelle comes back from the kitchen with her fingers stretched around three cold glasses, their sweaty condensation dripping down her wrists, and distributes them carefully to Julie and Mrs. Sattler, who nods and smiles and says “thanks so much” in a way that makes Julie’s stomach turn.

They sip their drinks.

The air conditioner stops.

“Here,” Michelle pulls the four chairs out from around the kitchen table, “take a seat.”

Mr. and Mrs. Sattler lower themselves carefully into the chairs, making too much of a fuss about it, relieved to have something to do. Michelle and Dan also sit, completing the misshapen circle that Julie imagines would be the configuration of a group therapy session. Relieved that there is no chair for her, Julie walks over to the beat up Lazy Boy in the corner, picks up the copy of Field and Stream that sits on the end table, and begins reading. She sees her mom purse her lips and narrow her eyes. She can almost see the words that undoubtedly perch on the edge of Mrs. Sattler’s lips escape her mouth and fly across the room: How many times have I told you it’s rude to read when other people are having a conversation in the very same room? You need to learn some manners, Julie. You’re not a child anymore and this type of behavior is inexcusable. But Mrs. Sattler keeps the words caged behind her lips and instead takes another sip of her iced tea.  Julie raises the magazine in front of her face and smiles behind it.

Julie doesn’t really read the magazine, of course. Like she could give a shit about an article discussing the finer points of how to catch a cutthroat trout. But it keeps her out of the lame excuse for a conversation the rest of the family is having–about the local economy and the countryside and, Mr. Sattler’s favorite, the weather. Instead, Julie glances at pictures of men holding rifles like toddlers on their cocked hips and advertisements for camouflage vests. The pictures and words float in and out of her without ever finding a place in her mind to settle. Instead, she keeps thinking of Michelle’s question: “Any boyfriends, Jules?” and wishes she had told her yes.

***

The fact is, Julie does have a boyfriend. Or did. The fact is, she spent every spare moment she could get away from her freak parents with him. The fact is, he was the center of her life. Dru. It used to be that when Julie would think about him, her knees would go weak. Literally. Like in the movies. She would get a hollow nausea in her gut and her heart would feel like it was being sucked to the back of her spine.

They met at a poetry reading at a cafe across from the university seven months before. Neither of them were reading. They wouldn’t dare. They were so above that need for public approval. Anyway, it wasn’t like their eyes met across the smoky cafe and fireworks went off or any cheesy Hollywood thing like that. Their introduction was pretty boring, actually: a mutual friend who was there with Dru introduced them and they all shared a table. As they watched these people nervous as cats sweating through some god-awful poem about their last love affair or coming out to their parents, Dru rolled his eyes and looked at Julie, “Give me a fucking break. What a load of shit.” Julie laughed and at that instant fell in love. She knew it immediately. She could no longer meet his gaze without a sudden flash of self-consciousness sweeping over her. She found herself leaning back in her chair and arching her back in a way that made her small breasts look larger beneath her white t-shirt. She smiled more.

From then on, Julie’s sole purpose in life was to see Dru, to love Dru, to make Dru see and love her. She would show up at places she thought he might go. Every time she would step out of her house–to get the paper, to go to the mall, to see if the mail had come–she would imagine him behind her, watching her. Sometimes she would be so convinced by her fantasy that she could feel the weight of his eyes on the back of her head as heavy as sin, only to turn around and find an empty space amid a dozen non-Dru faces. Dru, of course, had no interest in her. He had quickly forgotten her as soon as they met and hadn’t given her another thought until he bumped into her at a bookstore. Of course Julie was prepared for him. Her entire existence the previous month had centered around this very moment. She would not let it go to waste.

She approached him. “It’s Dru, right?”

“Yeah.” Dru answered before he looked up distractedly from his book and gave her a blank look.

“I’m Julie. Joe’s friend.”

“Oh, right. The high school girl.” He turned back to his book.

Julie couldn’t tell if he was being dismissive or sarcastic. It didn’t matter, she loved this part. “Right. And you’re the asshole college guy.”

This got his attention. He closed the book, not even taking the time to mark his place with his thumb (Julie noticed this) and turned to face her full front. He smiled. “What was your name again?”

“Julie Sattler.”

I’m not sure if Julie is aware that she has this attraction to boys who care nothing for her. I’m not sure if she knows that she gets a rush of adrenaline watching them ignore her and then shocking them into noticing her. It seems that she must. She’s self-aware, but she’s also young. Youth has a way of skewing perception.

This wasn’t the beginning of their relationship, by any means. But Julie felt that it was the beginning of their Connection. It took three more chance meetings over the following month (Julie knew now to look for him at the bookstore) before she decided to ask him out. Julie was masterful at asking guys out. She could do it in a way that made them totally unaware of what was happening to them. “Me and a group of friends are going to see a band play at Julio’s on Thursday, you should come.” That was the typical line, or something like it. She wouldn’t force an answer. She would simply show up at the bar by herself (she didn’t have many friends to speak of, and of the ones she had, none of them were skillful enough to sneak out of the house, roll the car in neutral down the street, wait two blocks, jump in, and start it) and wait. It didn’t always work. A few times the guy didn’t show up, but she usually met someone else to keep her entertained for a few hours. But with Dru it did work. Julie felt her throat immediately go dry when he walked through the door. She took a quick sip off her Jack and Coke, lit a cigarette, and looked away. She pretended not to notice when he stood at the edge of her booth.

“Hey, where are all your friends?”

Julie turned, curled up her bottom lip and blew smoke from the corner, and smiled. Ironically smiled, she thinks. “Oh, shit, who knows. They probably didn’t have the guts to get away from their parents on a week night. You know how lame high school kids can be.” Another ironic smile.

Dru looked uncomfortable. He knew he’d been tricked.

“So are you going to sit down and have a drink or are you afraid to be seen with me here by yourself?”

This artificial challenge was not lost on Dru. But he couldn’t help but be charmed by it. No guy can really resist the flattery of an over-eager girl anyway. Besides, it was a good band and she wasn’t bad looking. Actually, now that he really looked at her, she was pretty cute. Her hair was too short, but she had a nice face–kind of friendly and open. Her nose was kind of small and pug-like, but her eyes and lips were nice. Brown eyes. Dru liked that. There’s something predictable about brown eyes. Honest. And she had a nice smile. And, let’s face it, she had a pretty nice body. Not like a model, or anything, but, you know, well put together. Kind of small, but strong. Nice tits.

He sat down. “How did you get in here by the way? How old are you?”

“Seventeen. Fake ID. How about you? You’re not twenty-one. You may be a cool college guy, but there’s no way you’re twenty-one.”

“I didn’t say I was. Fake ID.”

That led them into a discussion of where they got their fake ID’s, how realistic the pictures looked, what they cost, and so on. Within an hour they were both too drunk to pretend that they weren’t attracted to one another. Julie knew after the first thirty minutes that this would be the beginning of a lifelong, meaningful relationship. But still, the kiss surprised her. She was busy making fun of some asshole dancing in front of the band (on an empty dance floor) with his hands waving above his head shouting, “Play Stairway! Play Stairway to Heaven!” when Dru grabbed her face–literally, between his two hands like a forties movie–and stuck his tongue down her throat. Well, it was nicer than that. Gentler than it sounds. But it shocked the hell out of her. And little shocks Julie Ann-Marie Sattler. Luckily, she was too drunk to show her surprise, and she immediately returned the ferocity of it. So there they sat, in a smoky, loud bar, hands all over each other, making out like high school kids. That’s how Julie described it in her diary, always seeming to forget that she was a high school kid.

Dru wanted to take her back to his dorm room that night. He kept saying something about his roommate being a really heavy sleeper. But Julie was smarter than that. She knew that if she stayed out all night her parents would certainly notice, and then she would be grounded for the rest of her life and kept away from Dru forever. This was the man who was going to backpack through Europe with someday. She was not going to take any chances. Instead, they settled on some aggressive fondling in the front seat of her Volkswagen Jetta before she carefully drove home, watching her speed limit and keeping a steady eye on the yellow line to her left.

Over the next seven months, Dru and Julie were an item, as her mom would have called it. Julie would tell her parents she was going to her friend Robin’s house after school and then meet Dru at the movie theater or the cafe across from the university or, when his roommate was gone, his dorm room–where they would make love amid the dull stench of dirty laundry, cigarette butts, and wet towels.

But then Julie got her acceptance letter from the North Carolina School of the Arts and everything changed. It was only April, but her imminent departure clung to their relationship. She begged Dru to go with her, to try to transfer. She started looking into nearby community colleges for him. She sent away for brochures from every school and even offered to get money from her dad to help him pay. Every alternative she found, he refused, until Julie realized that Dru just didn’t love her. It hit her when she was driving home from his dorm room one night after a particularly nasty fight. It was raining–a severe New Mexico spring rain, with whipping winds and the occasional ball of hail bouncing off the windshield. Coupled with the darkness, it was too difficult to drive so she pulled over. She turned off the engine, bringing the windshield wipers to a halt mid-swipe, so they lay in crisp parallel lines across the glass. She sat there for a long time listening to the rain slap the car with each gust of wind. She was very still. The inside of the windows became thick with the moisture from her breath.

As she sat there, she went over and over in her head the exact words of the fight. She didn’t see Dru’s angry face or her own, only the words scrolled through her mind like a movie script.

Why are you being so difficult about this, Dru? I’m trying to find ways that we can be together, isn’t that what you want?

Silence.

Then: I don’t know.

Silence.

Then: Fine. You don’t know. Well, I’m going to go home and you can sit here and figure out what you want. Until you do, don’t call me. I don’t want to see you.

Julie knew that was a mistake. She knew as she walked out that she would never hear from Dru again. She knew that she would wait by the phone for the next four months for his call to tell her, yes, yes, he did want to be with her. Forever. Always. The call would never come. Panic overwhelms her. She wants to rewrite the script. She wants to take her words away. She wants to say: You don’t know? That’s okay. I love you. I’ll wait. She fucked this up big time. She considers turning around, driving back and apologizing, groveling for him to take her back. But she doesn’t. Instead, she keeps rewinding to I don’t know. It sits in her mind, printed on a blank white page. And then she realizes. She realizes that Dru doesn’t love her. Not as much as she loves him. Not even close. The realization chokes off her breath. She tries to swallow, but can’t. She opens her mouth to gasp for air but instead releases a long, low howl that fills the car despite the sharp cracking of rain. The cries come from her in aching sobs. And as she cries, Julie realizes that no one will ever love her. She realizes that she will be alone forever. Still crying, she starts the car and begins driving home.

***

Julie stares at a picture of three men surrounding a dead deer with a gunshot wound straight through its chest. An unexpected sadness overcomes her. She puts the magazine down and shuts her eyes. She wishes she’d told Michelle the truth. She wishes she’d told her about Dru–even if it meant telling her mother, too.

Michelle excuses herself from the group and goes to the bathroom. Thankfully, everyone takes it as some sort of cue to disperse and busy themselves with other things. Mr. Sattler begins calling the office and checking his voice mail. Mrs. Sattler says something about making more iced tea and ducks into the kitchen. Dan goes into the garage with no explanation.

When Michelle emerges from the bathroom, she is pulling her ponytail through a rubber band. “Where did everyone go?” she asks when she sees the abandoned chairs.

Julie opens her eyes, “I don’t know.” She notices that Michelle has let her hair go straight. No more $100 perms. She probably can’t afford it. And even if she could, Julie wonders where she would go to have it done. She didn’t see any salon on the way to house. Actually, she didn’t see any town to speak of, just an old feed shop and a Dairy Queen.

Michelle stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the empty room. She looks tired. Julie half expects her to collapse right there and start crying or faint or something. But instead she turns to Julie, “Do you wanna go see the horse?”

“Okay.” Julie leans forward, using the momentum of the rocking Lazy Boy to thrust her out of its deep cushion.

“Mom–” Michelle calls into the kitchen, “we’ll be in the pasture.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Sattler calls back from behind the swinging door, then adds more perkily, “Have fun!”

Julie gives a half-hearted “yeah” and follows Michelle to the back door. Actually, Julie would be just as happy to stay in the air conditioned house. Horses bore her–with their apathetic gaze and earthy smell. She didn’t always feel this way. As a child, she adored horses, finding in them a certain magic unmatched by the rest of the world. Each Christmas, she would beg her parents to buy her a pony, only to be disappointed to find instead a new bike or Big Wheel underneath the tree. She spent all of her allowance on model horses and horse books and horse posters. What was amazing was not so much her fascination with horses, but that it was sustained only by annual visits to her uncle’s ranch in northern New Mexico each summer, where she and her sister would spend the entire trip riding his two Appaloosas bareback across the rocky mountain trails. When they would leave, she would cry and solemnly stare out the car window the rest of the drive home, remembering the sound of hooves like a drum roll across the dry desert floor.

But then Julie got involved in acting in middle school and, in an instant, the magic of applause from her otherwise indifferent classmates eclipsed the magic of horses. I can see her first performance, as Emily in Our Town. She got the part because she could speak louder than anyone in her class and could memorize lines easily. But Julie knew it was more than that. I see her standing on stage during the scene when Emily has a chance, after her death, to go back to the world of the living, return to the past, and witness her twelfth birthday. She’s in a long, blue dress, with a long, dark wig to cover her already short hair. The words fly out of her and float across the stage into the dark sea of the audience. She feels timeless. She has reached the part of the scene when Emily realizes the horror of reliving a life that has already ended and decides to return to the grave. The audience is silent. It is Julie’s favorite part. She has practiced it countless times–not only at the group rehearsals after school, but at home, locked in the bathroom in front of the mirror. When she was afraid her sister might be listening, she would lower her voice to a whisper, which made the words seem sadder somehow: Wait! One more look! Goodbye! Goodbye, world! Goodbye, Grover’s Corners–Mama and Papa–Goodbye to clocks ticking–and my butternut tree! and Mama’s sunflowers–and food and coffee–and new-ironed dresses and hot baths–and sleeping and waking up! Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you! She would throw her arms open and spin in a circle and real tears would come to her eyes. On stage, I watch the dress twirl around her in magnificent sweeps of blue, like the tide folding over onto itself. For a moment, everyone seems to believe. Even the bullies who long ago gave up believing find themselves in that rare moment when the imaginary becomes real. When the curtain falls and rises again, Julie bows before the crowd and feels their furious clapping, secretly telling them all, Don’t let me go. Hold me. Hold me. And they do.

Since that moment, she hasn’t had much interest in horses. Occasionally, she would see an old cowboy movie with horses running at full speed across the prairie, and she would remember the feel of the wind whipping around her head and the sure, fast gait of the horse beneath her and she would get the urge to ride again. But it passed.

As soon as Michelle opens the back door, a blast of heat and humidity hits Julie square in the face. She is literally stunned by it. Michelle must notice this because she smiles and says over her shoulder, “Get used to it. North Carolina isn’t much better.”

“I know,” Julie quickly replies. But the truth is, she doesn’t know. She’s never been to North Carolina. For the first time, Julie lets herself wonder if she’s made the right decision. She worked so hard to get into the School of the Arts, to doubt her decision now seemed like a betrayal. For over a year, every effort she made was toward the singular objective of getting into that school. She spent hours after school each day rehearsing for competitions, directing other students, and even writing and performing in her own play when no existing script gave her the character she wanted. By the time she flew to Los Angeles in early spring for the college’s regional audition, Julie was certain she would be accepted. She walked into the small classroom of the high school where the auditions were being held with a confidence she didn’t know she had. A panel of five acting teachers sat with bored stares in chairs too small for their middle-aged bodies. They had already endured a full day and a half of anxious high school students delivering painfully rendered monologues and songs. They were in no mood to be charmed. I’m not sure if they were charmed by Julie. If not charmed, something must have struck them–her enthusiasm perhaps or her seeming desperation–because a month later she got an acceptance letter. Julie still carries it with her, as if without the piece of paper, it wouldn’t be real.

Julie and Michelle stand at the open gate of the pasture watching the dark brown and white Paint graze quietly. The sun was starting to go down, giving the sky a soft pink haze, so different from the blood-red sunsets in New Mexico. They stand there for a while not saying anything. The two German Shepherds pant behind them.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Michelle keeps her eyes fixed on the horse.

“Mm-hmm,” Julie barely replies.

Michelle turns quickly to Julie, smiling broadly, “Do you wanna ride him?”

“Not really,” Julie shrugs. “It’s too hot.”

“Would you quit whining–”

“I’m not whining!” Julie bristles at the accusation. She hates being falsely accused.

“What’s your problem?”

Julie’s heart grows cold and distant, like it had in the car earlier in the day. “I don’t have a problem,” she says. “I just said I didn’t want to ride the goddamned horse.” She keeps her voice even. She is making it clear that this does not matter to her. She doesn’t care.

“Mom was right, you are becoming a pain in the ass.”

Julie stares at Michelle, wondering where this shit is coming from. She can feel her throat burn and is afraid she’ll start crying. “Fuck you.” She turns around and walks purposefully into the house. But it’s not her house, and she has no room to go to. Quickly, she finds the bathroom and slams the door behind her. She leans onto the sink and bites her lip. I will not cry. I will not cry. Not that she even knows why she wants to cry. I mean, shit, her mom has called her worse than a pain in the ass to her face. But still, she feels the choking gasps for air come faster and faster, until tears blur her eyes. She can hear her mom and Michelle talking in the kitchen. She catches only a few sentences amid the ebb and flow of their muffled voices: …such an attitude…so angry all the time…smart girl…too bad…leaving home…she’s scared… and agreement yes, she’s scared.

Julie sits on the edge of the bathtub, biting her bottom lip. She wants to scream at the top of her lungs that she’s not scared. She’s just sad. Sadder than she’s ever been. She wants to tell them that they’ve never understood her and never will, and how Dru was the only person who ever really got her—and then he didn’t want her. She wants to tell them how unlovable that makes her feel. How unlovable and utterly alone. But she doesn’t. She just sits on the edge of the tub and muffles her sobs in her hands.

***

Julie has been lying awake on the couch in the living room for what seems like hours. The rest of the house is asleep. Only the slight rise and fall of breathing that swells the walls and the low buzz of the air conditioner break the lonely silence. She’s tempted to turn on the light and read her book, but she knows it will wake her mother. And besides, she’s too distracted to read.

She gets up and walks into the kitchen. Her bare feet stick to the linoleum, picking up bread crumbs and small pieces of dried spaghetti as she walks. She turns on the light above the stove and looks for a glass to get a drink of water. She checks the clock on the microwave, 1:55. This time tomorrow she’ll be spending her first night in her dorm room. Her heart sinks back against her spine, like it used to do when she would see Dru.

She forgets about the glass of water and instead turns to look out the window over the sink. The pasture lies beyond the backyard in the uneven darkness. Julie thinks of the horse and wonders if he’s sleeping, with one hind leg cocked in rest. She imagines him standing there, out in the open in the middle of the night. She wonders if he’s afraid. She turns out the light above the stove to get rid of the glare on the window. She strains her eyes to see if she can make out his painted figure among the fence posts and hovering trees. She can’t see him. Anywhere.  She looks again, wondering if his dark brown and white coat is just blending with the shadows cast by moon’s light through the trees. Nothing. All of a sudden fear grips her throat. She wonders if Michelle was distracted by their fight this afternoon and forgot to close the gate when Julie went into the house. She imagines the horse wandering off and roaming the unknown hills alone. She imagines his fear. She imagines the whites of his eyes. Panic seizes her. She hurries to the back door, slips on her sister’s mud-covered boots, and rushes outside. She runs toward the edge of the pasture. She moves forward in long, fast strides, but feels motionless. The boots slip on her bare feet and rub the insides of her calves. The air is thick and heavy. The dogs sense her fear and begin pacing up and down the length of their pen, growling lowly. Finally, she reaches the fence and stops. Her heart is pounding. She has run only the short width of the backyard, but her t-shirt and boxers cling to the film of sweat that already covers her body. Her eyes dart around the pasture in nervous anticipation–looking for the open gate and the missing horse.

Then she sees him.

He is standing in the corner, under the oak tree. Indeed, he blends with the shadows. His leg is cocked, as she’d imagined, but he is not sleeping. Her sprint toward him had obviously interrupted his rest and he stares at her, blinking. Relief rushes through her. She scrambles carelessly through the wooden fence, scratching her leg and back in two places, and walks quickly toward the horse. He is uncertain of her. He brings his hind leg square with the others and raises his head, preparing to flee. Julie slows her pace and outstretches her hand. She puckers her lips and makes kissing sounds, like she used to do to ease her uncle’s horses’ worry. The horse relaxes somewhat and stretches his neck forward to smell her. His breath is warm– warmer than the humid air that envelops them like a womb. He raises his head above hers and smells her hair in long, purposeful breaths.

Julie reaches out her other arm and strokes the side of his neck. With each long stroke, she tells him not to be afraid. She tells him everything is okay. She stands there, with this horse, in silence for a long time. She’s imagining what it would be like to ride him. A small part of her remembers the thrill of riding, but more keenly she remembers the peace of it. She remembers the gentle comfort of the rocking body. The unspoken agreement between rider and mount. The feeling of wholeness.

Perhaps it is a yearning for that wholeness, that comfort, that makes Julie climb into the low crotch of the oak tree next to the horse and stretch both arms over his back. Perhaps it is the memory of peace that gives her the strength to throw her torso onto him and swing her leg over him. Whatever the reason, Julie sits, slightly out of breath, atop this horse without a saddle or bridle. She gathers his mane in her fingers. It is coarse and sticky. She eases him forward, tapping her heels against his girth and rocking her hips. He begins walking. They walk together in slow circles around the pasture.

I wonder if Julie’s mother is watching her–if she heard the back door open and went to the kitchen and looked out the window over the sink and now watches her daughter and the horse move in the darkness. Or maybe her sister or father–or even Dan–watches her now and wonders what she’s doing. I don’t know. But I watch her.

I am watching this young woman on a horse. In the middle of the night. In a hushed meadow. As I watch her, I see her future spread out before her like the horizon. I see love unfold and then close in on itself time after time. She will be hurt so much, in ways she can’t possibly yet know. I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her it will be okay. I want to protect her from it. I want to spare her the pain. But she will have joy, too. She must know that there will be joy.

As Julie moves in the darkness on this horse, I whisper Don’t let me go. Hold me. Hold me. And she does.

Quick note: Because I’m getting so much spam (I didn’t know there WAS a female viagra until now), I’ve changed the settings on the blog so you have to become a registered user to comment. It’s easy and doesn’t require much info. Just scroll down to the right and under “Meta” you’ll see “register.” I think you’ll be able to figure it out from there because you’re all very smart people. Thanks!

[Note: I’ve decided to start posting to the blog just once a week, on Sunday night or Monday morning, so I can focus on getting some other work done. So look for it then. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the RSS feed and then you’ll know when I post. Now on to business…]

I’ve always wanted to be that mom. Even before I had kids, I wanted to be her, and foolishly thought I might be…The mom who’s kind and patient. Who encourages her kids’ creativity by letting them use the kitchen as a chemistry lab. Who finds a learning opportunity in every skinned knee or glass of spilled milk. Who lets them have a worm farm in the living room because nature is too beautiful to be left outside.

But I discovered within about a week of Noah learning to crawl—and have rediscovered almost daily since—that’s so not me.

I’m laid back on some stuff. I brought home a snakeskin from the barn once and let my kids keep it in a Tupperware tub in the playroom for a couple weeks. And I let them dress themselves, weighing in only when hypothermia or a decency violation is a real possibility. I laugh when they fart in the tub because fart bubbles, no matter what, are funny.

But those are the exceptions. And even when I am being the open and accepting and hemp-wearing mom, I have to consciously work at it. It takes everything I have some mornings not to say, “Gwyneth, you’re dressed like a cross between a homeless person, a superhero, and a tranny.” Or, “Noah, you’re never, ever going to find a fossil digging that hole in our backyard. Just give up already.”

This hit me square in the face this weekend, when we spent two days doing the following: cutting down a Christmas tree; decorating said Christmas tree; making cookies; and cleaning—nay, gutting—the kids’ rooms.

I wanted Cool Mom to show up this weekend. I really did. Instead, grousing, controlling, buzzkill Mom arrived in all her bitchy glory first thing Saturday morning, when we went to a tree farm out by the barn to cut down a Christmas tree. The kids ran up to every tree shouting, “This one! This one!”

Me: No, not that one.

Them: Why?

Me: Because it’s too tall. –or—Because it’s too small. –or—Because it’s got too many brown needles.

When we finally did find the right tree and cut it down, I admonished the kids for touching it too much. Seriously. Touching it. As if it was some sort of rare work of art that would be ruined by skin oils.

When we got the tree home and began decorating it, I actually yelled at the kids because they were taking the fragile ornaments out of the boxes and then—gasp!—rushing to hang them instead of putting the little plastic things that hold the ornament back in their respective boxes.

Then there was the joyous tradition of cupcake and cookie making, which I managed to suck all the fun out of, like a leper at a lotion convention. Noah helped me make the cupcakes and I found myself totally annoyed by the fact that he kept smelling the batter. Why do you care if he smells the batter? I kept asking myself. But I did care. A lot. “Noah,” I finally said, “could you please stop sniffing the batter?”

Him: Why?

Me: Because it’s gross.

Him: Why is it gross?

Me: I don’t know. It just is. Stop.

That was Saturday night. Tonight both Dave and I made cookies (me, peanut butter; Dave, candy cane) and I actually felt relief when Gwyneth said she wanted to help Dave instead of me. (Noah was busy watching the Redskins game.)

But probably the biggest appearance of buzzkill mom was during the great room cleaning. It started with me telling Noah that if he didn’t clean his room, the fire marshal was going to come in and condemn it. Yes, it was an idle threat, but not much of one. You literally couldn’t walk through Noah’s room without stepping or tripping on something. Let me give you a quick inventory of the contents of Noah’s floor:

1. a Playmobil set up of an airport, complete with an almost full-size Boeing 757
2. a full battle scene created with those little miniature soldiers, cavalry, artillery, concertina wire, and fort walls
3. 8 – 10 cardboard boxes that have been cut open and various pictures of athletes (football players, basketball players, hockey players, swimmers, runners, etc.) from magazines taped to them so they’re standing up—also known as a poor man’s diorama. I was really impressed with the first one he made, which was a very detailed football field. He colored the cardboard green, placed the players in various locations around the field, and found pegs to make goalposts. Dave and I praised him profusely for his creativity and hard work. Our encouragement made him decide to do more—but quality quickly took a backseat to quantity. As fast as I could drink a 12-pack of Diet Coke, Noah would cut up the box and tape a single picture to it, calling it a work of art. These boxes carpeted whatever inch of floorspace was left.
4. Crap. Not poop, but just piles and piles of papers and books and magazines and birthday party favors and fake teeth from Halloween.

Gwyneth’s room was not much better. In fact, in many ways, it was worse: brimming with enough bite-size Polly Pockets and Barbie shoes and necklaces and bracelets to make it one huge choking hazard. Her clothes (of which she has too many) were shoved into drawers that wouldn’t close. Stuffed animals were piled ten deep on top of one another on her bed, eerily reminiscent of a recently discovered mass grave.

The past few weeks, I would find myself walking past their rooms and looking the other way because the clutter made me want to scratch my eyeballs out. It doesn’t help matters that we have a very small house, and that Christmas is just around the corner which means we will soon be adding even more crap onto the piles of crap that already exist, and that I have a slight case of OCD.

When the kids were younger, every few months after I dropped them off at daycare, I would go through their rooms with a garbage bag and mercilessly throw stuff away. They would come home and marvel at their clean rooms, but never ask where anything was. I can’t get away with that anymore, lest I want to spend the next several weeks hearing, “But that was my favorite [piece of crap] ever!”

I tell myself that they have every right to be incensed. I shouldn’t go through their things and unilaterally decide what goes and what stays. How would I feel if someone did that to me? I need to involve them in the process. I need to get their buy-in. Besides, involving them gives them more ownership and might make them more inclined to keep their rooms clean in the future.

But, oh man, do I suck at it.

This is how most of the conversations went with both Noah and Gwyneth…

Me: Do you want to keep this paper towel roll that you made into a telescope by drawing a spaceship on the side of it with a ballpoint pen and tying a piece of string to it?

Them: Yes. I love that!

Me: Do you ever play with it?

Them: No, but I love it!

Me: Why?

Them: Because it reminds me of when I made it.

Me: But do you need to be reminded of when you made it? I mean, was it a really great day or something?

Them: Mommy. I love it. Please can I keep it?

Me: But you never.play.with.it.

Luckily for me, I have a husband who is infinitely better at handling things like this than I. “I tell you what,” he says in a voice lion tamers use to calm their beasts, “since we don’t have room for everything, why don’t we put some of the stuff in boxes and put them in the basement. It will be like a library. When you want to play with it again, just bring something else from your room down to the basement and you can have the other thing back. What do you think?”

Them: Yay!!!!

Me: So all this stuff is going to be in our basement now?

And it is. For now. But it’s worth it if it means that we can walk from one end of the kids’ rooms to the other without suffering a knee injury. And, I’m happy to say, we can. At long last, the floors are completely clutter free. All the little pieces of toys are either in Tupperware tubs or Ziploc baggies. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. I have seriously walked into both of their rooms several times over the last 24 hours and just stood there, soaking in the neatness. The perfection. The labeled Tupperware. The folded clothes. The straight line of Barbies on the dresser. It feels almost Zen like.

But I have to ask myself if someday I’ll regret this. When my kids are grown and gone, will I look back on these days and think, I can’t believe I gave a shit about their rooms being messy.

It reminds me of my favorite scene from Our Town, the play by Thornton Wilder. In it, the main character, Emily, dies in childbirth and goes to heaven. Soon after she arrives, she decides that she wants to go back to Earth for one day—her twelfth birthday—to relive it. So she does. And as she’s there watching her younger self come down to the kitchen for breakfast and her mother and father are there telling her to hurry and get ready for school or she’ll be late, she becomes increasingly distressed. She sees how hurried everyone is and how distracted and how inattentive they all are to each other. Finally, she shouts in frustration (although they can’t hear her), “Look at me! We don’t have time to look at one another!”

I think of how rarely I spend time looking at my own kids. Really looking at them. I stood tonight in my children’s clean rooms and soaked in their orderliness. But how often do I stand in the presence of my children and soak in their beauty and warmth…their very being? Not nearly often enough.

More and more, I find that parenting is a constant struggle to balance who I really am with who my kids need me to be. The fact is, I will never be the mom who is cool with the worm farm in her living room, or dioramas carpeting every inch of the floor. I will always want my home to have at least some semblance of order and sanity.

But my kids need to know that it’s okay to be messy sometimes. They need to be given the freedom to dig in the dirt, and stick their noses in the cupcake batter, and never throw away that crappy arts and crafts project simply because it reminds them of when they made it. They need to be given the freedom to be children. Because maybe that’s when we see the world the most clearly, in all its infinite beauty.

Yesterday Dave and Noah went to the Redskins game, which meant Gwyneth and I had a full day to ourselves to spend however we pleased. We decided to go to the barn where I board Chama The All-Powerful and Extraordinary Thoroughbred (as I believe he refers to himself when I’m not around). Now, before everyone gets all up in my kitchen about the fact that I took my daughter to the barn on this special day together, I want you to know that it was her choice. Granted, I could have steered her to something else. I could have suggested we go ice skating or shopping or to the seventh circle of hell (oops—that’s redundant…I already said “shopping”). But I didn’t. She suggested the barn and I jumped at the chance because (and it won’t surprise you to find out my motives were selfish) I had to shave off half of Chama’s fur.

Quick explanation (and for my non-horse-loving readers, don’t bail…this post isn’t about horses, I swear): In the winter, horses grow thick, furry coats to protect them from the elements. But if you exercise a horse during the winter months, they get super sweaty, which puts them at risk of getting a chill and getting sick and costing you a small fortune in vet bills and antibiotics. So every winter I do what’s called a “trace clip” and shave the bottom half of Chama’s body. The top half stays furry to provide some protection.

It’s a long process. First you have to bathe the horse. Then you have to let the horse dry (which takes a couple hours). Then you have to clip the horse, which can take, depending on your skill and the horse’s willingness to stand still (both of which are limited, in my case), anywhere from one to two hours. So you’re essentially committing a full day to do this. And it’s rare that I have a full six to eight hours to spare hanging out at the barn. So I saw this day with Gwyneth as the perfect opportunity to have some quality mother-daughter bonding time while checking this chore off my list of things to do. This is called multitasking, or killing two birds with one stone, or being self-serving.

I woke up yesterday and checked the forecast for rural Maryland. At 9 a.m. it was 25 degrees. It was expected to warm up to a balmy 35. Oh, and it had snowed about six inches the previous day. Not quite ideal weather for taking your five-year-old on an all-day excursion to the countryside. But the sun was shining and the wind was calm, so I figured it couldn’t be all bad.

I dressed Wyn as if she were headed out on Shackelton’s polar expedition: tights, leggings, pants, boots, undershirt, overshirt, sweater, coat, gloves, hat. Then, anticipating these all might get wet, I brought a second pair of tights and leggings and pants and shirts and gloves and hat.

So we got to the barn and our first order of business was to take the dogs for a walk through surprisingly deep snow (I’m terrible at estimating these sorts of things, but I’d swear it was a foot deep, not six inches). Wyn’s boots were almost immediately soaked through. Despite all my planning, for some reason I forgot to bring her waterproof snow boots and instead brought her faux-suede Uggs from Target, which are as effective at repelling water as the Secret Service is at repelling unwanted guests from the White House…ba-da-bum (God, I suck at topical humor). So Gwyneth’s feet were already wet and cold, and it was only 10:30.

But she didn’t complain. At all. In fact, she didn’t complain once the entire day.

And I’m not sure why…because it wasn’t what I would describe as a really fun day for a kid. Giving a horse a bath in 30-degree weather and then spending a couple hours shaving him isn’t, I don’t think, on most kids’ wish lists. And Gwyneth isn’t even a horse-crazy kid. She likes them, but she’s not one of those girls (like I was at her age) who would sleep in the barn and eat grain if given the opportunity.

Maybe she didn’t complain because I let her get hot chocolate and pancakes for lunch at the restaurant about 20 minutes from the barn, where we went while Chama dried off after his bath. Or maybe because we listened to Hannah Montana the whole way to the barn (folks, that’s 45 minutes of listening to, “All right! Come on, everybody! Woo!”) and the High School Musical soundtrack the whole way to and from the restaurant (that’s another 40 minutes of listening to, “Woo! All right! Here we go, everybody!”). Or maybe because being smack in the middle of horse country on a cold, sunny day following a big snow is probably one of the most gloriously beautiful places in the world to be. Seriously. I felt like I was living in a Currier and Ives painting. But I don’t think Gwyneth really noticed that as much—except when I would say, over and over again, “Look at how beautiful everything is! Do you see the snow on the trees? Doesn’t it look like flowers?”

After Chama was clipped and Wyn and I swept up the small mountain of fur that had accumulated on the floor, I tacked him up for her to ride. Both Noah and Gwyneth have ridden Chama several times before. Although he can be a hotheaded nut job with me, he’s always exceptionally quiet and calm with the kids. I think he knows they’re small and vulnerable—and that I would put him in a can of Alpo if he ever hurt them. Thus whenever I put them on his back, he dutifully walks in little circles and over poles on the ground (that he usually spooks at when I ride) as if he was a hired pony at a kid’s birthday party. I walk alongside him the whole time in case he misbehaves, but he has never even so much flung his head when the kids are astride.

So I helped Wyn put her little pink helmet on over her pigtailed head, and then placed her on top of Chama. I handed her the reins while I held onto the lead rope and we walked through the snow, down the hill, to the indoor arena. After about 15 minutes there, I led Chama out of the arena and up the road toward the barn, with Wyn still in the saddle. We came to the top of the hill, where there’s a turn in the road and a row of horse trailers, which partially obstructs the view of the rest of the road. Just then, another boarder and her horse came down the road, appearing suddenly from behind the trailers. At this, Chama forgot that he had my five-year-old daughter on top of him and the whole Alpo thing and spooked, leaping sideways. It wasn’t a huge spook, but big enough to unseat Gwyneth. I turned around just in time to see her sliding off his side. Chama is 16.1 hands, which means his back is five feet, five inches tall. This is the height from which my daughter was falling headfirst to the ground.

Luckily, it was a slow fall—more of a slide than a crash. And by the time she hit the ground, it was her bottom, not her head, that impacted. I think I did something really calm like shout, “OH MY GOD!” at the top of my lungs.

She stood up, looking a little surprised by the whole thing. “My pants are muddy,” she said.

“That’s fine,” I said, breathless. “Are you all right?”

“My coat is muddy, too.”

“That’s okay. Are you all right?” I asked again.

She looked at me a little puzzled about why I would be so concerned. “I’m fine,” she said, nonplussed.

I took a deep breath. “Okay. You really should get back on Chama,” I said, expecting resistance. “I know it’s scary to fall, but you don’t want to end your ride being scared. So let’s get back on and walk back to the barn. He’ll be okay. I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, reaching up for me to lift her back on.

I did and she rode the rest of the way back, chattering away as if nothing had happened: “Mommy, tomorrow I’m going to wear my blue dress to school if it’s clean. Did you do the laundry today, Mommy? Because if I can’t wear the blue dress I’ll wear the pink one. But I need to wear my leggings and those are muddy, so maybe I should wear pants instead…” and so on and so forth.

We arrived in front of the barn safely. As I lifted Gwyneth from the saddle, I realized that my hands were shaking. “My goodness,” I said, “that really scared me.”

“What?” she asked.

“You falling off.”

“Oh.” Then she laughed. “I’m the kid and I wasn’t scared. You’re the grown up and you’re scared?”

I wanted to say, “Yes, because I understand words like ‘head trauma’ and ‘spinal cord injury.’” Instead I just said, “You’re right. It’s scarier for grown ups.”

The sun was beginning to set. I put Chama’s blanket on him, fed him his dinner and then put his halter on to lead him down to the field he calls home. To do this requires walking a ways down another hill that’s quite steep and the snow quite deep. I didn’t want Gwyneth’s feet to get wetter than they already were, so I asked her to stay at the top of the hill, by the barn.

As I descended the hill, I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. We’d been at the barn for six hours. The temperature was dropping. I was cold to my core. I could only imagine how cold Gwyneth was. I opened the gate to the field and took the halter off Chama, who went galloping toward his friends on the far side. I started the trek back toward the barn, anxious to get back to Gwyneth and get her in the heated car. Just then I looked up to the top of the hill and stopped. There Gwyneth was: running back and forth through the snow, her arms outstretched like she was flying, her little body silhouetted against the sky that had now turned a deep indigo, her pigtails trailing behind her. She was not a little girl at that point. She was a spirit. She was the snow and the wind and the sky—bold and fearless.

That’s my girl, I thought.

[Note: Some of you may have already read a version of this when it was posted briefly last week. I took it down and made some changes.]

Last night a friend was telling me about a job her husband might take that would result in him living away from the family during the week and commuting home on weekends for the next two to three years. It’s a really, really great job opportunity for him but, understandably, my friend doesn’t relish the idea of essentially becoming a single mom until 2012.

“Have you ever really wanted something for Dave, but simultaneously not at all wanted it for yourself?” she asked.

The answer, of course, is yes. And I doubt there’s anyone who’s been married for more than a year who wouldn’t say the same thing. Because that is, in fact, the essence of marriage. The second you stand before your mate at your wedding and say, “I do” (or whatever vows you wrote yourself based on a haiku by Masaoka Shiki), you give up the right to make decisions based solely on your own dreams and desires. It’s the hardest thing about being married. Because the moment one spouse asks the other to give up something, anger, bitterness, and resentment lurk around the corner, growling lowly and threatening to pounce.

I would love to say that this isn’t an issue in my marriage. That I realize resentment only poisons relationships. That whenever I’ve had to give up something for Dave, I’ve done so happily and without a trace of bitterness.

Uh, yeah. Have I mentioned before that six years ago Dave’s job required that we leave our beautiful little farm in northern New Mexico to move here, to the suburbs of Washington, DC?  Have I mentioned that our property abutted public land with endless hiking trails and that we kept our horses there and that we awoke every morning to this view?

(okay, the rainbow wasn’t there every morning, but you get the idea)

Have I mentioned that what was supposed to be a two-year assignment is moving into its seventh year? Have I mentioned how many things I don’t like about living here? If not, here’s a quick list:

1. too many people
2. too much traffic
3. too much crappy weather
4. too many rules (don’t get me started on the leash laws)
5. too many really angry people (Dave and I were talking about this the other day—wondering if there really are a higher percentage of assholes on the east coast, or if it’s just the sheer number of people gives us a larger representative sample? But that’s another blog post.)
6. too few opportunities to be outdoors
7. too little open space
8. too many mosquitoes
9. too many parents who tell their kids, “Excellent fine motor skills!”
10. oh, and it’s the suburbs

Now I worry that I sound like a really miserable pain in the ass. So let me counter this with a list of things I do like about living here:

1. great friends
2. great horsey world
3. great schools for the kids
4. great newspaper

That’s about it.

Needless to say, I’m not one to suffer in silence. So, yes, Dave is keenly aware of my list of grievances. That’s not to say that I harp on it daily. And even when we do talk about it, I recognize that I wasn’t dragged here by the hair, kicking and screaming the whole way. I agreed to the move. And even though the list of things I like about living here is short, the first three are weighted pretty heavily. So it’s not like I’ve been mired in a deep depression the last six years, cursing my unlucky fate.

But…the fact remains that I left a place I loved to move to a place I don’t. And when we moved, we didn’t give up just a home and a different landscape. We gave up a way of life—days that were spent almost entirely outdoors, either working on the property or riding our horses or hiking in the mountains that were only a forty-minute drive away. Part of this was because we didn’t have kids at the time—or barely had kids (Noah was five months old when we left)—but part of it was because of the reality of where we lived.

I’m most struck by how different my life is now from how it was then when I take out the garbage. In New Mexico, the night before garbage day, I would haul the cans out to our truck and load them in the bed, and then drive to the top of our long, windy driveway, where I would unload them for the garbage trucks to empty in the morning. Packs of roving dogs routinely toppled our cans and tore the garbage to shreds (one of the things that would be on my “don’t like” list about living in northern New Mexico) so I would secure the lids with bungee cords and walk back to the truck.

But before I climbed in, I would always stop for a minute and just stand there. The air would be cool, because the high desert air is always cool at night, and smell alternately like juniper in the summer, piñon in the fall, snow in the winter, and apple blossoms in the spring. Dogs barked in the distance or coyotes sent up their yapping calls. The acequia (an irrigation ditch that lined our property) would be running with water, babbling along in its best imitation of a mountain stream, reflecting the moonlight if there was one. If there wasn’t, I would turn my head to the sky and see stars so thick I could barely find the gaps between them.

And as I took all of this in, I marveled at how seamless it all was. There were no margins or borders. The air and the water and the coyotes and the apple blossoms were all inextricably intertwined. They couldn’t untangle themselves even if they tried. I think at this point I could feel my heart actually swell in gratitude for the privilege of living in this beautiful place, of being able to consume this visual poetry on a daily basis.

Here, taking out the garbage involves simply rolling our cans to the end of our driveway. I almost never stop. I almost never look up. And when I do, I rarely see more than a handful of stars, their light straining through the atmosphere. There’s no babbling acequia. No cool desert air. No smells beyond the ubiquitous dampness of the mid-Atlantic. No sounds beyond the hum of the freeway that ferries its burdensome load a mile from our house.

And I know my inability to see the beauty in this is not because there is none, but because I lack the creativity to. I know that if I just stopped comparing life here to New Mexico and lived in the moment, that I would appreciate more what’s in front of me. Maybe I would notice the way the streetlight reflects off the asphalt is its own kind of poetry? Or the way a cat skulks across the street and under a bush? Or maybe I would hear a bird make its final call of the night? But I can’t. When I look at life in the suburbs, I see only gridlines and rules and a sky devoid of stars. I see a life hastily plucked from the natural world and told, “This is how you should behave.” I see edges, stark and razor sharp.

So I grumble. And I moan. And, sometimes—okay, more often than I should—I outright bitch about it.

I’m working on it. Honest, I am. I’m trying to remember that life takes us in all sorts of directions for all sorts of reasons, and we’re happiest when we accept the unexpected shifts and roll with them. I remind myself that there are no borders in any life—including life in the suburbs of Washington, DC.  That the only margins that exist are the ones I draw myself. And the sooner I erase them, the more content I’ll be.

And, most importantly, I remind myself that just as I have given up so much for Dave, he has given up so much for me. Once, during one of our many conversations about this, Dave correctly observed, “Marriage is not a spreadsheet.” And it’s not. We can’t put all of our sacrifices and indulgences into separate columns, tally them up, and claim victory or defeat. All we can do is promise that we’ll try our best to balance our own happiness with that of the person we love. To see the things we give up not as deficits, but deposits. To say, “I do,” year after year, long after the wedding is over.