So a couple weeks ago I volunteered in my kids’ classrooms. As you might have guessed, this is rare for me. I’m not really the volunteering type—especially when it comes to kids. Last year, I volunteered to chaperone Noah’s kindergarten class field trip to the Air and Space Museum. The resulting headache lasted three days.

Still, I think it’s important that I make the effort to volunteer in their classrooms for no other reason than Noah and Gwyneth love it. Really. Their faces light up when I walk into the classroom. They run to me and throw their little arms around my waist as if they haven’t seen me for weeks, as opposed to that morning over cereal. They take me by the hand and introduce me to all of their friends. It’s precious, and I remind myself this won’t last. Someday, I’ll walk into their classrooms in my mom jeans and a sweatshirt that says, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays,” and they’ll slither under their desks in embarrassment. So I should seize these moments while they last.

But I’m me so that means I only require myself to seize the moment one day a year. And a couple weeks ago was that day.

I took the “ripping off a Band-Aid” approach and decided to volunteer in both classes the same day: spending the morning in Gwyneth’s kindergarten and the afternoon in Noah’s first grade classroom.

My job in Gwyneth’s class was to read with the children. Or, more accurately, to listen as the children read to me. Each child has a folder with short books at his or her reading level. One student at a time would come sit with me on the couch in the back of the classroom, where they would read their books to me. I would then go back through the book and cover the pictures and point to single words asking them what they said—testing whether they could recognize them out of context.

I had Gwyneth read to me first. A quick disclaimer: Like all parents, I think my kids are exceptional. And they are. They both read and do math above their grade levels. They’re smart kids and hard workers. So I wasn’t surprised when Gwyneth flew through the three books in her folder with sentences like “I want to go to the park,” and “I like to ride trains,” without stumbling on any words. When I asked her to read the words to me out of context, she could. I told her what a good job she did and then sent her back to her table as I quietly beamed.

Then, one by one, I had the other kids come to the couch with me. First, let me say this: children have no sense of personal space. Every time I would sit on the couch, I would make sure to sit a good body-length’s distance from the child. But, without fail, every single kid would scoot next to me, lean against my arm, and put a hand on my knee that had no doubt just wiped off a viscous string of snot. Part of me was a little grossed out (kids are so germy), but mostly I just found it funny. All I could do was imagine adults behaving the same way: walking into meetings and sidling up next to their co-workers until they were practically sitting in their lap saying, “Okay, should we go over those reports now?”

But back to the reading…

The first kid who read to me after Gwyneth was a boy I’ll call “Jonah.” Now I readily admit that I was anxious to see how the other kids read in comparison to my daughter. It’s petty, I know. How many times have I told my children that how they compare to others shouldn’t matter? “There will always be someone smarter than you and always someone less smart,” I say. “What matters is that you’re trying your hardest and doing the best that you can.” Yeah, sure. I mean, I believe that, but I also believe it’s innate in humans to judge our own success by measuring it against others’. After all, if everyone gets a gold star, is the gold star really worth anything?

Maybe it’s best that I don’t volunteer in my kids’ classrooms more than once a year.

So Jonah and I sat down on the couch and I pulled the first book from his folder. I knew immediately that any delusions I might have entertained of Gwyneth being the smartest kid in the class were about to evaporate. Compared to Gwyneth’s six-page books that boasted a whopping six sentences, Jonah’s books were the kindergarten equivalent of Moby Dick. The first sentence of the 16-page book was something to the effect of: “Once there was a fisherman who lived with his wife in a hut in a small village by the sea.” It was easily a second-grade level book, if not higher. I was half-expecting it to say something about “maritime trade agreements” or the “economic impact of climate change on commercial fishing enterprises.” I mean, seriously. Jonah read through this book with words like “enormous” and “ocean” without even stuttering. I told myself that he probably just had the story memorized…until I noticed that he accidentally skipped a sentence. After he finished, I went back through the book, covered the pictures and pointed to individual words, expecting him to falter when they weren’t in context. Uh, no. The first word I turned to was “enormous.” Jonah read it easily.

Good for Jonah.

I mean that. I really don’t harbor any resentment toward this very sweet, very smart kid. I’m okay with the fact that Gwyneth isn’t the class genius. I’m not the kind of parent who thinks academic brilliance is the key to a happy, fulfilling life. In fact, I often think the opposite is true. Regardless of Gwyneth’s reading level, she’s a well-adjusted, engaged daughter with a kind heart.

This last point was driven home when one of the other boys in the class came back to the couch to read with me. I introduced myself as Gwyneth’s mom and he said, “Oh! Gwyneth is always nice to me.” I thought it was an odd statement to make, but as I read with him, I realized he probably said it because it’s the exception, rather than the rule. The boy was socially awkward in a way that I guessed made it hard for him to relate to his classmates. I imagined him struggling to fit in with his peers and being made fun of on the playground. My heart broke for him.

But, “Gwyneth is always nice to me.”

It reminded me of a few weeks earlier at Noah’s Tae Kwon Do class. Prior to the start of class, a group of kids, including Noah, were sitting on the mat talking. Cole, the son of a friend of ours, had just joined the class and was sitting off by himself. Noah had met Cole a few times but didn’t really remember him (having last seen him a year or more ago). I was busy checking my email or talking to Gwyneth, so I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on until Cole’s father walked up to me and said, “Can I give Noah a huge kiss?”

“Why?” I asked.

He told me that when Noah saw Cole sitting by himself, Noah turned to him and asked, “Do you want to join us?”

These are my children. And this is why, when it comes down to it, I really don’t give a shit what level they read at. It is their hearts, wide open and brimming, that make them exceptional. And I bask in the glow of it.

Next week: Noah’s class.

During a dinner party with friends a couple weeks ago, a conversation ensued about whether Dave (husband) thinks I’m the funniest person he knows.

This was a set up. Or rather, a distraction from the issue at hand…which was that I made the mistake of saying in front of our friends that I thought Dave was one of the top five funniest people I know.

Top five.

Seems like that should be good enough for most people, but not Dave…who rightly observed, “Top FIVE?! That’s not even a bronze medal!”

To which I replied, “How do you know? Maybe you’re in second place.”

“Because,” he said, “then you would’ve said I was one of the top two funniest people you know. If you say ‘top five,’ you’re implying fifth.”

To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I said this. I’ve proclaimed many times over the course of our almost 14 years of marriage that Dave is the funniest person I know—because he is. And, yet, that night, for some reason I still don’t fully understand (but am blaming on the copious wine), I decided to demote him.

When I could feel the flames licking my feet, I decided to turn the question around. “Well, what about me? Am I the funniest woman you know?”

“Yes,” Dave replied, without even stuttering.

Crap. “Okay,” I said, trying to gain at least some semblance of ground, “but am I the funniest person you know?”

Pause.

Dave stammered for a moment and then managed to sputter out, “You’re in the top five.”

“Ha!” I said victoriously.

While Dave and I were arguing, much to the delight of our dinner guests, our friend Juan leaned over to Derrick and said, “But I thought Laura was a dude.’”

This elicited howls of laughter from the group, particularly from Derrick, who I think nearly choked on his steak.

So this is an ongoing joke among pretty much all of my friends—particularly the guys: that I’m really a man. The reasons for this, from what I can gather, are the following:

1. I have a very crude sense of humor. Much like a 12-year-old boy, jokes involving bodily functions and “that’s what she said” make me laugh. Every.single.time.


2. I don’t like most stereotypically “girlie” things…spa days, shopping, The Bachelor.


3. My wardrobe consists of jeans. And T-shirts. And more jeans.

I’ve been this way most of my life—and the “I thought Laura was a dude” jokes have followed me since high school.

I’ve often wondered why this is. I mean, I’m not the only woman with the qualities listed above. I know plenty of women who are just as crude, who don’t like shopping, and who wear jeans—yet are not teased constantly about being a guy. It’s enough to give a girl (?) a complex.

But, okay, I don’t mind. Really. I think it’s funny and I actively play into it. What does bother me is how frequently I feel like I’m more man than woman…that I might have two X chromosomes, but my second X leans heavily toward the Y.

Before you start worrying that this blog is going to be about my pending sex change operation, let me put your mind at ease. I don’t feel that conflicted. I am very much a woman. It just sometimes bothers me that I can so much more easily relate to (stereo)typical male feelings, including:

1. A reluctance to have children: As many of you know, I really struggled with the decision of whether to have kids. Dave absolutely wanted them; I wasn’t so sure. Although I know in theory there are women who share my experience, I don’t know any of them. Among my couple friends who have kids, either both wanted them, or the wife wanted them more. This might be because women are more likely to have the final say in this matter—so for those women who were, like me, in the maybe-to-no camp, the “no” prevailed and they are now childless. I’m not sure. But it bothers me that more often than not, when I hear couples having the Great Children Debate, the father-to-be is the more hesitant one—and I more closely identify with him.

2. A disinterest in most things domestic: I don’t really care what we eat for dinner or whether you put your feet on the coffee table. I advocate putting all clothes in one load in the washer under the pretense that it saves water and electricity, but really it’s just because I’m lazy. Beyond a very basic desire for things to look nice (decent art on the walls, attractive furniture) and a strong tendency toward OCD-like tidiness (not cleanliness—I can tolerate the balls of dog hair rolling across our hardwood floors like tumbleweeds in the desert; but I can’t tolerate stacks of paper on the table), I don’t care what the house looks like.

3. An affinity for sophomoric comedy—mostly cartoon-based, like The Family Guy. I don’t think I need to say any more than that.

I’ve wondered more than once if someone were to describe me to a stranger without identifying me as male or female, would they think I was a man or a woman? I suspect the former.

While this frequently makes me feel like a freak of nature, I have to remind myself that it’s actually a healthier way to be. I read once that the more androgynous a person is, the happier they are. It seems that when we’re able to shrug off traditional gender roles, we free ourselves up to become more complete human beings—ones who are governed by our own needs and desires, and not by the vagaries of culture.

I often think of this with my own children, when I discourage them from getting sucked into the “boys do this” and “girls do that” mode of thinking that predominates the early years. And I’m proud that I can be a living, breathing example of how people don’t fall into neatly defined categories. Because few people do. The fact is, most everyone I know—both women and men—cross gender boundaries: I know men who love romantic comedies and cooking, and women who love football and Howard Stern. I know men who define themselves first and foremost as fathers, and women for whom their careers are paramount. I know women whose sex drives eclipse their husbands and men who wish their wives would cuddle more.

So while I might share more traits with men than the average woman, I take comfort in knowing that pretty much everyone falls somewhere along what is a very long and messy continuum. And we’re a much more interesting species because of it.

But all that being said, I’m not willing to give up my womanhood just yet.

This past weekend I volunteered at the Fun Fair at my kids’ school and was able to talk my neighbor R.J. into attending for a while (a victory given he hates crowds and things with the word “fun” in them). My volunteer shift was spent in the beanbag toss room, where I handed tokens to kids who successfully tossed said beanbags into three baskets. The other volunteer was a man who said to one of the children who won, “The lady over there has a token for you.”

When R.J. heard this, he burst out laughing. “Lady?” he mouthed to me.

Yes, lady. Maybe I’m not such a dude after all.

The kids walked home by themselves the other day. This was not a sanctioned walking-home-alone. This was a “mommy shows up late to pick the kids up from school and they’re gone” walking-home-alone.

Have you ever seen a really, really mad gorilla? Me neither. But I can imagine what they look like: bloodshot eyes, bared teeth, long arms waving in the air like Slinkys.

Ok, after I found the Slinky ad on YouTube, I searched for “angry gorilla” and this is what I found:

First, let me say for the record I wish this gorilla could have been successful in his attempt to smash through the Plexiglas. I wish he could have grabbed the punk who was teasing him, pinned him to the floor—along with his giggling parents—and then thrown them around the room a bit…not to the point where they were actually injured, but to the point where they crapped their pants.

Seriously, I hate it when people tease animals, especially at zoos where it states very clearly: “DO NOT TAP ON THE GLASS.” “DO NOT TEASE THE ANIMALS.” “DO NOT BE AN ASSHOLE.” In an alternate universe, those people live behind the glass and gorillas are banging on their homes, à la Planet of the Apes. But I digress…

Okay, take this angry gorilla and multiply him by about a thousand and you’ll get an idea of what I looked like when I got home on Thursday and found my children waiting for me in the front yard.
But let me start at the beginning…

Most weekdays, about 45 minutes before it’s time for me to pick up the kids from school, I take the dogs for a walk in the woods behind the elementary school. I time it so I’m finishing the walk right when school is letting out. I meet the kids at the corner, where they’re waiting near the crossing guard, and we all walk home together—two kids, two dogs, and me. We’ve been doing this practically everyday since the school started in September.

But on Thursday, I was a little late—emphasis on little. By the time I got to the corner, school had been out for a whopping three minutes. I waited at the corner, watching the children pour out of the doors of the building, looking for Noah and Gwyneth. They never came.

As any parent who has been in this situation will tell you, it’s hard not to imagine the worst in cases like this. I consider myself rational and measured and know intellectually that chances are, the kids are fine. But on a gut level, I imagine white, windowless vans driven by men with mustaches, or speeding cars careening around corners just as my children step off the curb.

More than likely, though, they’re fine. They just got confused, I told myself. Maybe they started walking home on their own? I began to walk toward home, but I didn’t see them in the sea of kids making their way down the sidewalk. So I got out my cell phone and called SACC, Gwyneth’s after-kindergarten program from which Noah picks her up everyday before meeting me on the corner.

“Did Noah pick Gwyneth up today?” I asked the man who answered.

“I didn’t see him,” he said, “but he usually does, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. But Gwyneth is gone, right? I mean, she left?”

“Yes, she’s gone.” I could hear the worry creep into his voice. “Why? Is she not with you?”

“No.” I replied. “And neither is Noah. I’m not sure where they went.” By this point I had turned back toward the school and was walking briskly across the street—practically dragging my dogs, who were hot and tired and ready to go home—to kiss-and-ride, the semi-circular driveway where parents pick up their kids. Maybe for some reason they thought we were meeting there today?

I hung up with SACC and asked the teachers who were on duty at kiss-and-ride whether they had seen Noah and Gwyneth. They said no. I think they started to ask me a follow-up question, but I was already rushing back toward home. I looked at my watch. School let out at 3:55. It was almost 4:10. It would take me another five minutes to get home. That was 20 minutes of not knowing where my kids were.

As I walked home, I got out my cell phone to call my neighbor, Beth, who picked up her kids around the same time and often walked home in step with us. I called her house. No answer. I called her cell and got a “this cellular telephone is no longer in service” message. I wanted to scream. Instead, I started jogging. My poor 13-year-old dog, Barrabas, looked at me as if to say, “Since when do we jog? I’m the equivalent of a 90-year-old man and you expect me to run?” He trotted as far behind me as the leash would allow, his collar nearly slipping off his head.

I turned the corner of our street and strained my eyes to look down the block toward our house. I saw a few kids and an adult standing across the street. As I got closer, I could see the adult was Beth, my neighbor, who was waving at me to tell me everything was okay; the kids were there.

As I approached the house Beth said, “I was just about to call you,” but I didn’t let her finish. I pointed to my children, who were standing in the front yard completely oblivious to the shit-storm that was about to descend upon them, and said, “You guys are in so much trouble.”

Noah, always quick on defense, replied, “But you were late!”

“I was three minutes late, Noah,” I said. “Besides, I don’t care if I was late. You’re not supposed to walk home alone.”

Beth told me she was walking a ways behind the kids and that Noah was very good about stopping at the corners and looking both ways. I thanked her for waiting with them and quickly escorted Noah and Gwyneth inside, who were now aware of the aforementioned brewing shit-storm and completely silent as a result.

Before I tell you about all the screaming and crying that ensued, let me admit right here that I overreacted. The kids, after all, were fine. A neighbor was with them; they were careful crossing the streets; there were no white vans or trips to the ICU. In the grand scheme of terrible things to do, walking home alone is very low on the list. But I couldn’t get out of my head what if—what if they hadn’t been fine? What if my neighbor hadn’t been with them?


This is what I shrieked at the kids like the out-of-control gorilla before sending them to their rooms, tears streaking their faces. I then stood in the kitchen for a solid five minutes, literally shaking.

Protecting kids is tricky business. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I believe parents today (including myself) over-protect their children. Just two days before, I was telling Dave how I think the kids are old enough this summer to play on the school playground by themselves. I was remembering that by the time I was five—Gwyneth’s age—I was going to the park without my parents. At seven—Noah’s age—I was riding my bike around the neighborhood all by myself. When I was just a year older than Noah, I rode horses bareback all day alone at my uncle’s ranch. Dave, too, remembers doing more by himself when he was our kids’ ages than not. We both agreed that those were really important moments of growth for us. They taught us to put into use all the advice our parents had given us over the years. They taught us to be independent and trouble-shoot problems and take care of one another. They taught us to think for ourselves.

I remember when I was four years old and living in California. My sister, Amy, and I were playing by ourselves at the park, when Amy fell off the monkey bars and broke her wrist. The two of us had to figure out what to do…which, by the way, involved accepting a ride home from a strange man. (Granted, we lived on a military base at the time, so the environment was a little safer than it otherwise might have been…but still, it cracks me up that this was the choice we made and my parents were fine with it.) Then there was the time I was five years old and riding my bike with my brother around our neighborhood in Florida. I fell and scraped my knee so bad, it looked like someone had taken a melon-baller and scooped a chunk of skin out of it. As I stood there screaming, my brother dutifully looked for the missing chunk of skin on the ground—convinced, as was I, that we could find it and put it back in its place to speed the healing. He didn’t find the skin, but he did carry me home that day.

I’m probably not doing a good job arguing in favor of letting the kids play alone when the two stories I drum up involve substantial injury and a ride in a car with a stranger. But I remember those events because they forced us all to rely on ourselves and each other in a way we never would have been able to had our parents been around. There’s something to be said for skinned knees and broken bones when they teach you important life lessons.

And there’s something to be said for my kids making the decision on their own to walk home by themselves when I didn’t show. They took initiative. They took care of one another. They looked both ways before crossing the street.

But what if. This is the speech I gave them after I finally stopped shaking and made them write out 10 times, “If Mom is late picking us up, I will go to the office or SACC.” And not just the scary what ifs—which I didn’t dwell on lest I scare the crap out of them—but the more realistic what ifs: “What if I was stuck somewhere and wasn’t able to get home for one or two hours? What if I never showed up at the house?”

Knowing my kids, if that had happened, they probably would have been resourceful enough to figure it out. They probably would have gone to a trustworthy neighbor’s house and asked for them to call me. But what if, what if, what if?

On Saturday, two days after The Event, I took Gwyneth to her ballet class. We were running behind and I knew that, by the time I found parking in the overcrowded lot, she would’ve been late for class. So I dropped her off at the curb. This felt like a big deal to me. The ballet studio is not right by the road. To get to it, Gwyneth would have to walk around to the back of a building and then down a flight of stairs. All told, she would have to walk about 100 feet by herself. “Do you think you can do it?” I asked her.

“Yes!” she said enthusiastically.

“Okay,” I said. “Go straight to class. Don’t talk to any strangers.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

She stepped out of the car with her pink satin ballet bag slung over her shoulder and an umbrella propped open over her head. I watched her walk down the sidewalk until she disappeared behind the building, at which point I drove away to find parking. When I got to the studio, I found her waiting outside her classroom door with her ballet slippers on.

“Where are your boots?” I asked.

“They’re in the dressing room with my ballet bag, where we always leave them,” she told me.

“What about your umbrella?”

“I left it outside with the other umbrellas.” Then she looked at me seriously, “You’re not supposed to bring them inside, Mommy.”

“Okay, good,” I said.

“I didn’t really know how to close the umbrella but I didn’t ask for help because you told me not to talk to strangers, remember? But then I figured it out.”

“Good job,” I told her.

I watched her walk into class, lock step with the others, then I went to the waiting area, where I sat down with my book in front of a bank of video monitors that beam out to waiting parents the goings-on of each classroom. I would look up occasionally and see Gwyneth jumping and spinning across the floor. At the end of class, they turn out the lights, so the only thing visible on the monitors are the girls who dance by the doorway—catching the ambient light as they go by. I watched as girl after girl appeared briefly from the darkness and then disappeared again. But Gwyneth never emerged. She must have stayed in the dark corner of the studio, dancing in the blackness, far out of my sight.

My homesickness always hits in the spring—which is strange because spring is actually New Mexico’s worst season. The only season, in fact, that pales in comparison to the mid-Atlantic’s. Spring in New Mexico brings winds that whip sand into your eyes and ears and hair. It is sometimes cold, sometimes hot, sometimes wet with snow or rain, sometimes impossibly dry—all in the space of 24 hours. Spring may be known as an unpredictable season the world over, but in New Mexico, spring is beyond unpredictable. It is schizophrenic.

Yet without fail, since leaving New Mexico six-plus years ago, spring is when I begin to feel the dull ache deep in my chest, a longing for home so much it hurts. I suspect my friends are beginning to avoid me this time of year because they know where the conversation will inevitably turn. I’m convinced that if I explain it right—if I just tell one more story just so—they’ll understand why I will never feel at home here in suburban Washington. Home will always be 1,902 miles away in Chimayó, a remote village in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains with a population of 2,000, where Dave and I lived for five-and-a-half years.

Like other rural communities, springtime in Chimayó means the resurrection of everything dormant. It is when fields that have lain fallow during the winter are tilled;  when apple blossoms begin to peak through their cocoons; when the thin reeds of grass paint the desert floor sage. But, more than all this, it is when the acequias are cleaned.

The acequias are an elaborate system of ditches that pull water off tributaries of the Rio Grande to irrigate the farmland. First dug by Spaniards who settled the area in the 1600s, the acequias make farming in an otherwise arid landscape possible. But in order for them to work effectively, the sediment and rocks and tree branches that gather in them over the winter must be cleared.

So each spring, every able-bodied man who lives on property with water rights is expected to take part in the ditch cleaning, or pay someone else to do it. It is a full day of back-breaking labor—literally digging ditches beginning at eight in the morning and ending no earlier than five. It’s a hell of a way to spend a Saturday. Sadly, employment opportunities in Chimayó are limited, so it’s easy enough to find someone to do the work for you…at a cost of just $30—less than $5 per hour. Every white person we knew in Chimayó paid someone to do it.

So imagine my surprise our first spring in Chimayó, when Dave told me he was going to do the ditch cleaning himself.

“Are you insane?” I asked.

I didn’t doubt Dave’s physical ability to dig ditches for eight to nine hours. He’s always been very athletic and strong and I knew his body could handle it. But I was less confident his body could handle the pummeling I felt certain he would get from his fellow ditch diggers. The fact is, Chimayó has a very rough element. It holds the title of the city (for lack of a better word) with the highest number of drug overdoses per capita in the nation. Not surprisingly, crime is a real issue. Murder is a too frequent headline in a newspaper that boasts a readership of just hundreds. I imagined Dave, in all his whiteness (and Dave is very white…white-blond hair, fair skin) showing up at the ditch digging with a bunch of ex-cons psyched for the opportunity to earn $30 to buy their next hit of heroin.

Now I realize I’m stereotyping. Many people who participate in the ditch cleaning are surely fine, upstanding citizens who are upholding a centuries-old family tradition of participating in the community event. But I knew plenty of the scarier part of the population would be there, too. At the very least, Dave would be an outsider, and I worried what that would mean for him.

The morning of the ditch cleaning, he readied himself. He put on his well-worn Carhart overalls and work boots, which, thank God, at least made clear that he was used to working outside. Then he filled his Camelbak (a backpack with a bladder in it and tube that runs over the shoulder) with water and ice cubes. Next came the sunscreen, which he applied like spackle. Finally, he found his Epi-Pen and inhaler (bad allergies) and put them in the pocket of his Gortex raincoat.

I watched this the way a wife watches her husband packing his rucksack before he ships off to war.

Dave smiled and said, “I’m sure every man in Chimayó is doing the exact same thing right now.”

***

We drove towards the place where the ditch cleaning would start. I say “towards the place” because we actually had no idea where it started. The only communication we’d seen was a hand-written flyer posted on the bulletin board of the post office that said (in Spanish): “Ditch cleaning. Rincon de los Trujillos” and the date. Dave asked our neighbor Seferino where he should go. He told Dave it started in Cordova—a village about five miles up the highway from Chimayó—but he couldn’t tell him where exactly. “Just drive up the road and you’ll find it,” he said.

So I drove Dave “up the road” that leads through Cordova. Sure enough, after a few miles, we saw two men and a boy whom I guessed was about nine years old walking with shovels in their hands.

We pulled over and asked if they were headed to the ditch cleaning. When they told us yes, we offered them a ride if they’d show us where it was.

“I won’t say no to that!” said the man I assumed was the grandfather.

They piled into the car and soon I heard the unmistakable hiss of a can popping open, followed by the smell of beer. It wasn’t even eight in the morning.

“Breakfast of champions, bro!” one of the men exclaimed as he knocked back a Budweiser in a matter of seconds. “Want one?” he asked Dave.

“No, that’s okay, I had oatmeal,” Dave said.

They all laughed.

These guys didn’t worry me. They seemed harmless. So, they were drinkers? Drinking was the past-time of choice in Chimayó and, although it was certainly the cause of a number of social ills, it didn’t bother me much. I guess when you live in a place where the community health center hosts a mobile needle exchange at the bottom of your street every week, a little drinking doesn’t seem so bad.

I drove them as far as I could, until the road started getting too narrow and too rough for our 1984 Nissan Sentra. I stopped and they disembarked. Dave closed the door and leaned in the window. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll see you at some point, I guess.”

“Okay,” I said tentatively. “Don’t get killed.”

***

Dave survived. And he survived the following three years, as well. I have no doubt his willingness to participate in the ditch cleaning instead of paying someone with dark skin to do it earned him a respect in the community we otherwise never would have had.

But our final year in Chimayó, he didn’t go. Noah had just been born and we were too frazzled and sleep deprived to imagine it: I couldn’t imagine surviving a full nine hours alone with a baby, and Dave couldn’t imagine mustering enough energy to make it through a day of hard labor. So he paid someone $30 to do it for him. I’m not sure Dave has ever felt so ashamed to pay someone for a service in his life.

The ditch cleaning always ended right in front of our property. That afternoon, our last spring in New Mexico, we could hear the rhythmic ping of metal shovels hitting rocks drawing closer and closer. Eventually, we looked out the window and saw the group of more than 30 men standing waist-high in the ditch that bordered our property; their arms and shoulders rising and falling in time.

We didn’t know then that it was the last time we’d see it. We didn’t know that in a few days, Dave would get a call offering him a job in Washington, and that, in less than six months, we would be selling our house and property and moving to northern Virginia. We didn’t know that we would leave behind a rural life that bows to the will of the seasons for an urban life that, thanks to concrete and gutters and asphalt, gamely ignores them. Water now comes from a hose or faucet—not a ditch that has seen the turn of a thousand shovels. And whenever I think of that, I wonder why a life that has been made so much easier and more comfortable by modernization feels so much harder and more difficult?