So as you’ll recall, I volunteered in both Noah’s and Gwyneth’s classrooms last month as part of my annual Pretend-to-be-a-Good-Parent campaign. I talked about the experience in Gwyneth’s class here, so now it’s Noah’s turn.

A couple weeks earlier, I received an email from a mother of one of the other kids in Noah’s class asking for volunteers for a “science” segment on animal habitats in which parent volunteers would lead a group of kids on a nature walk. Now I put science in quotes because he’s in first grade. I don’t recall learning any science when I was in first grade. My dominant memory of that year was leading a charge of The Girls’ Group (of which I was a founding member and self-appointed dictator) on the playground in pursuit of The Boys’ Group and falling face-first in a puddle of mud, which drenched me head-to-foot. I had to spend the rest of the day in the nurse’s office sitting in my underwear while my clothes dried on the heater. There was no science learning going on in my first grade class, I’m pretty sure.

But back to Noah…so I emailed her back and said I’d love to volunteer (don’t laugh). I like animals and the outdoors, so I thought this was a well-suited opportunity for me.

So the Big Day, I walked into the classroom and introduced myself to the other parent volunteers—the organizing mom and a father. “I’m kind of nervous,” I admitted almost right away because I’m a firm believer—despite mountains of evidence to the contrary—that saying the awkwardness aloud makes it less awkward.

Luckily, the other mom admitted being nervous, too, saying, “If I were giving a presentation at work, I wouldn’t think twice. But this has me kind of scared.”

The father is a regular weekly volunteer so he gave the other mom and me a sympathetic “yeah,” but I could tell he really wasn’t scared. And the reason was this: All the kids clearly thought he was the coolest grown up IN THE WORLD.

As soon as he darkened the door, all the kids in the classroom flocked to him like the Pied Piper. “I want to be in your group, Mr. X!” “Can you please pick me, Mr. X? Pleeeeease!” And then there were the little inside jokes: “You won’t get me this time, Mr. X!”

“Oh, yes, I will!” Mr. X said, lunging playfully at the kid, who ran away shrieking with laughter.

Oh great, I thought. We’ve got ourselves a rock star.

But, you know, Mr. X deserves it. If he willingly volunteers in the classroom every week, then he absolutely should get the unwavering adulation of the children. He’s earned it—believe me and the two extra-strength Excedrin I took when I got home. But seeing how adored he was made me realize that’s what I was nervous about: I wasn’t scared that I wouldn’t be able to teach the kids what they needed to know about the food, shelter, and water animals require to live. I was scared the kids wouldn’t like me.

As we all know, I’m not very natural with children. When Noah and Gwyneth have friends over to the house, I’ve noticed that they always look at me out of the corner of their eyes—in the same way we’re taught to look at wild animals, as if they’re afraid direct eye contact will result in a foaming mouth, a low growl, and snapping jaws.

I really didn’t want that to be the case on this day. I was there representing Noah. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t want his friends to say after I left, “Wow, what’s it like having her for a mom?”

I vowed to put on my kindest mom face—and hoped desperately that I didn’t look like John McCain smiling at a political rally…or anywhere else, for that matter.

First, the introductions. The children of the other two parents introduced their mom and dad first. “This is my dad, Mr. X. He likes coffee.” “This is my mom, Ms. Y. She likes to read.”

Then Noah introduced me: “This is my mom, Ms. Laura. She likes to ride horses.”

I sighed in relief, thankful he didn’t say, “She likes to sleep and eat croutons straight out of the box.”

Then we each got up and talked a little bit about animal habitats. I asked the children what kind of animals lived around the school and where might they live. You’ve got to love kids. In addition to the obvious—squirrels, deer, mice, turtles—a few kids also shouted out “Lions!” “Monkeys!” “Kangaroos!” I don’t think they were kidding.

I wrote down on the chalkboard everything they said. I’m not sure why because, with my atrocious handwriting, I’m certain they couldn’t read a word of it.

Next we broke up into groups and headed outside. I embarked with my intrepid explorers to the part of the school grounds far from the madding crowd where there are a lot of bushes and trees and, inexplicably, a big pile of mulch. I brought a pencil and notepad to dutifully record our findings—praying to a god I’m not sure exists that we found something…anything…so Noah could go back to class proud that his mom led a successful expedition.

The kids dug through the mulch and found worms! Praise Allah! I wrote WORMS in the notepad and asked the kids what the worm’s habitat was. DIRT. Why? It has WATER and FOOD and PROTECTION FROM THE SUN. Score one for Ms. Laura who likes to ride horses.

Next we found BIRDS in BIRDHOUSES. Yes, they’re manmade, I explained to the kids, but habitats nonetheless. After all, they provide PROTECTION FROM PREDATORS and WARMTH. We got to see a mother bird fly from the birdhouse as her babies poked their heads out. Score two!

The kids then found ANTS and STINK BUGS and a SQUIRREL’S NEST. Yes, yes, yes!

When the kids’ attention would begin to wander, I would snap them back to the task at hand. I wasn’t mean, but I wasn’t going to tolerate any disorder in my ranks, either: “No running on the soccer field.” “Keep your hands to yourselves.” “No interrupting.” “You. Yeah, you. I’m talking to you. Care to join us?”

But all in all, I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I maintained discipline without being rigid. I don’t think I scared anyone. I don’t think any of the kids would go home that night and talk about “Noah’s mean mommy.” It was all good.

And besides, we found some cool shit, right? So I led the kids back to the classroom feeling triumphant. That was until we arrived and I realized we were the first to return. Although we were gone from the classroom for a good 15 minutes (the time we had allotted), we were the only ones there. I felt the quick twinge of failure. It’s so typical of me: rush through things…rush the kids along…don’t waste time exploring…check the boxes and move on to the next thing. I had images of the other parents meandering unhurriedly from one tree to the next—letting the kids poke their fingers in all the holes and talk about things that weren’t related to animal habitats. I bet they let them run in the soccer fields and grab at each other, too.

Five minutes later, the doors burst open, through which charged the kids from Mr. X’s group, their faces flush with heat and excitement. “We saw deer!” They shouted. “Two of them! It was so cool! Deer!”

Of course, I thought. I should’ve known, shouldn’t I? Of course Mr. X’s group would find deer.

I looked at the faces of the kids in my group and could see the disappointment fall across them like dominoes. All of a sudden the worms and birds, of which they had been so proud and impressed a moment ago, were nothing more than, well, worms and birds.

After everyone assembled back in the classroom we all talked about the different kinds of things we’d seen. As the kids from my group shouted out their discoveries, I could see that they weren’t nearly as disappointed as I had projected onto them. Because, it turns out, they’re kids. And, really, kids don’t care that much about worms or birds or even deer.

That night, I asked Noah if he and his classmates enjoyed the nature walk. “It was great, Mom!” he said. “Really great!” Hearing that, I felt my insides open up a little and a sense of pride fill the larger space.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” I said. “What was so great about it?”

“We didn’t have to do math! We ran out of time!”

Yes, of course. For the kids in Noah’s class that day, I wasn’t cool or interesting or a great teacher. I was nothing more than a way to get out of math. And that’s good enough for me.

I noticed while I was washing my hands that the toilet paper roll wasn’t on the toilet paper holder. The empty cardboard roll was still there instead, stark in its nakedness. And I realized that this was the case in every bathroom in the house: all of the new rolls of toilet paper sat perched on the skeleton of the last roll. I had a sudden urge to go through the house and correct this—to discard the old and put the new in their proper place. Because it’s not about just the toilet paper. (It’s never about just the toilet paper, is it?) It’s this life that so often feels like it’s flying faster than I can manage it…

Today I ordered new underwear for the kids (and, yes, I ordered it because I refuse to go to the mall unless under the threat of death—so the $5 shipping is absolutely worth it) and I asked Noah if he wanted the kind with patterns and pictures or plain white. “Plain white,” he said.

He’s seven, and he wants plain white underwear.

At that moment I wanted to freeze time and tell him he couldn’t grow up anymore. I, who have dreamed of my children’s eighteenth birthdays since the day they were born, wanted to stop the clock and maybe even turn it back a few clicks to a time when Noah would have wanted trains or cars or aliens or footballs on his underwear.

But I can’t, of course. Every parent wants to do this at some point in their children’s lives. It’s the occupational hazard of being a parent, I suppose…the knowledge that these small creatures will keep growing and slowly shed the accoutrements of childhood. We know that it’s just a matter of time before we ask them if they want to snuggle on the couch and are met with eye rolls and a shudder that starts at their earlobes and ripples down to their toes. Babies grow up. Old people die. It is the same as it ever was.

I can’t change that.

But I can change the toilet paper rolls. So I do. One by one, I go to each bathroom and slide the cardboard tube off its plastic spring-loaded cylinder and replace it with the new roll. It’s a mediation of sorts and I’m ashamed by how satisfying it feels. And after I’m done, I go to my office and I make a list of all the things I need to do this week. And I pay bills. And I answer emails. And I file paperwork.

And for a fleeting moment I believe that I’m in control of it all. I’m holding my finger on the second hand of the clock and daring it to tell me otherwise.

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?

I’m on deadline, which means I don’t have time to write my blog…at least not until later this week. So I offer you a little something that always brightens my day…

A Short Story

Cindy was starting to get breasts, there was no doubt about that. And it was about time. Most of her friends had started to develop in the sixth or seventh grade. Everyone in her gym class wore a bra. Actually, she did too, but she didn’t need one. The polyester triangles of fabric puckered pathetically under her cotton T-shirts. But now, the pink circle around her nipples was widening to the size of a quarter and protruding just enough to stretch the fabric of her training bra so it was tight and smooth across her chest.

As Cindy stood naked in front of the mirror, she said three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, asking God to make her breasts full and round, like Jennifer Hamm’s. She also prayed that she would start her period before the school year ended in exactly one month. She was certain that she was the only girl in the eighth grade who hadn’t started yet. Not that she wasn’t prepared. For the last two years, she had carried a tampon wrapped in tin foil and tucked inside a box of pens to keep it hidden from the boys who routinely stole her purse in math class. Of course, Cindy wasn’t sure if she would even know how to use a tampon when the time came. She thought about carrying around the directions, but they wouldn’t fit in the pen box and anywhere else would have been too great a risk.

Cindy looked long and hard at herself in the mirror—at her square hips, flat butt, and round, pot-bellied stomach. She didn’t look a thing like the girls in Seventeen magazine or the copies of Playboy her friend’s father kept in his garage. And even if she had a nice body, her hair was enough to scare anyone away. In an attempt to look like Jennifer Hamm, who had long, blond hair with soft, loose curls cascading down her back, Cindy got a perm. It turned out that her hair was too short and the perm was too tight, so she looked like a brunette Orphan Annie. Braces filled her big mouth. Cindy tried smiling with her mouth closed, but the braces just made her lips stick out funny.

She turned to the side and looked at her profile. She sucked in her stomach as far as it would go. She said the Apostle’s Creed and asked God to make her stomach flat. When she finished, she looked at the clock. She had only five minutes before she needed to meet Robin to go to the pool. She quickly slipped on her swimsuit and looked at herself one last time in the mirror. The suit did little to hide her inadequacies. She thought for a moment of not going—of calling Robin and making up some excuse. But she knew Robin would know the real reason and tell Cindy she was being stupid. Of course, it was easier for Robin; she had her period and small, perky boobs.

—-

Cindy rode her bike to the corner where Robin was waiting for her, wearing her bathing suit and flip-flops, with a towel draped over her neck, just like Cindy. They pedaled fast to the neighborhood swimming pool. It was the end of May but already hot and humid, as it was most days in southeast Texas. They rode fast past the big houses with their broad green lawns and heard the splash and calls of swimming children in the backyards. The trees that lined the street sagged under the burden of Spanish moss that hung from their branches and cut the yellow afternoon light like fingers.

Cindy stood in the pedals and pumped her legs harder. She loved the feel of the wind in her hair. She loved the whirring sound of the tires on asphalt. She loved the dryness that crept into the back of her throat and the sweat on the back of her neck under her hair. She sat back in the seat and leaned forward, pedaling faster after Robin, who led the way.

At the pool, Cindy and Robin staked out a spot on the grass far from the water’s edge and laid on their backs in the sun. After about twenty minutes, Randy Olson, Pete Waters, and John Meeks—the most popular boys in the eighth grade—walked into the gate and ran to the high-dive. Cindy couldn’t believe it. There were no popular girls there. In fact, there were no eighth-grade girls at all, except for Misty Marsh, who was a total dork and there was no way they were going to pay any attention to her. Cindy thought now was her chance for them to notice her. Randy was in her history class, so he knew who she was, but he never talked to her. Sometimes she wondered if she was invisible.

Cindy turned to Robin. They covered their mouths and giggled.

“Let’s go off the high dive!” Cindy jumped up off the grass.

“Are you kidding?” Robin grabbed Cindy’s ankle. “They’re going to know we’re going over there to see them. And besides, do you really want them to see you in a bathing suit?”

Cindy looked down at herself and saw her pathetic little girl breasts and her round stomach and wondered what she was thinking. She wished she had brought her T-shirt, then she could have put that on over her swimsuit. She grabbed her towel and tied it around her waist, and then sat back on the grass with Robin and watched as the boys did cannonballs and jack-knifes off the high-dive. Cindy imagined having a beautiful body and no braces and wearing a bikini. She imagined walking by and hearing them say, “Is that Cindy Singer? Wow!”

After watching the boys for a half-hour, Robin suggested they leave. “Your legs aren’t going to tan with that towel wrapped around your waist anyway. Let’s go to the Stop-n-Go and get some Jolly Ranchers.” They put on their flip-flops and stood up, brushing off the backs of their calves that were thatched with the imprint of the grass.

As they walked towards the exit, they noticed Randy, Pete, and John following behind them—not directly behind them, but close enough. Cindy’s heartbeat quickened. She wondered if they were coming to talk to them. She licked her lips so they would be shiny and pulled the curls of her bangs individually to try to straighten them. She prepared to turn around and smile. All of a sudden, the boys burst into a cackling laughter. She wondered if she should turn around. Were they laughing at her? Maybe they were just trying to get her attention. She looked over her shoulder casually. They were looking at her, so she smiled.

“Hey, Singer,” Randy said, still laughing and pointing at her, “you’re not supposed to go swimming when you’re on the rag.” Cindy laughed with them, not sure what they were talking about. Just then, Robin grabbed Cindy by the arm and pulled her into the bathroom next to the exit.

“Oh-my-god, Cindy!” Robin’s look was horrified. “You started!”

“What?” Cindy laughed nervously, trying to make sense of all that had happened–and was happening still–too fast–like someone had pressed the fast-forward button.

Robin pulled the towel from around Cindy’s waist and there, on the back of it, right in the middle where Randy, Pete, and John could plainly see, was a spot of blood the size of a margarine cup. Cindy couldn’t say anything. She just stared at the perfectly round blood stain and burst into tears. All of her planning, all of her preparation, all those years of carrying a tampon in a box of pens, and this had to happen. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to die. “Get in there,” Robin spun Cindy around and shoved her toward a stall. “Go in there and take off your suit.”

Cindy collapsed onto the toilet and began sobbing, deep and full. “I can’t believe they saw. I can’t believe they saw,” she said over and over again. She buried her head in her hands, hoping it could hide her, make her disappear.

“Just give me the suit.”

Cindy handed the suit under the stall door to Robin. As Robin ran the suit and towel under the faucet, scrubbing them together to get out the blood as she had done to her own clothes a number of times, Cindy sat shivering on the toilet, replaying the events in her head. She thought of going to school on Monday; everyone would be talking about it. Her sobbing grew even more violent.

“Here,” Robin handed the suit and soaking towel back under the door and then dropped a quarter in the sanitary napkin dispenser. Robin handed her a pad. “Put this in your bathing suit and tie the towel around your waist.”

Cindy did as she was told, unquestioning. The pad was stiff and bulky. It rubbed her inner thighs. She emerged from the stall, her face blotchy from crying. Robin stood outside the stall door, smiling, “Well, at least you started your period!”

Cindy laughed and started to cry again at the same time. She slapped Robin on the arm. “Shut up!”

“Let’s get out of here. You can come to my house. It’s closer. And you can borrow some of my clothes to go home.” Robin turned to walk out of the bathroom.

“Robin!” Cindy grabbed her arm. “They could still be out there!”

Robin peaked her head around the corner of the bathroom door. “They’re here, but they’re at the high-dive. They won’t see you.”

They rushed out the gate, looking over their shoulders to make sure the boys weren’t watching, and unlocked their bikes chained like prisoners to the rack. Cindy swung her leg over the narrow seat and sat down. The bulk of the pad and the wet towel were uncomfortable. They pedaled slowly to Robin’s house, stopping every few blocks so Cindy could adjust the towel or, more discreetly, the pad, which was causing small welts on the inside of her thighs. As they made their way slowly to the house, Cindy remembered the ride to the pool just a few short hours before. When the wind made her throat dry. When the sweat ran down the back of her neck. When she could pedal as fast as she wanted.

I’ve had it. I’m actually surprised I made it this long—that I was able to endure the seemingly endless days that bled into one another like some sort of Jean-Jacques Rousseau film. (Okay, in truth, I’ve never watched a Rousseau film. I actually have no idea who he is. I googled “French absurdist filmmakers” and his was the first name that popped up…although he’s really Belgian. But this alone should give you an idea of my state of mind lately.)

I’m of course talking about the snow. In case you hadn’t heard, the east coast was walloped last week with two back-to-back storms that resulted in the shut down of the federal government for almost an entire week. The kids have missed seven straight days of school (today, although a holiday, was supposed to be a snow make-up day, but it was—whadayaknow—canceled due to—wait for it—snow!). If you count the two weekends we’ve been snowed in, the children have been home for 11 straight days.

I think those of you who read this blog regularly know a few things about me by now:

1) I like horses.
2) I like to sleep.
3) I have a very low tolerance for spending lots and lots of time with my kids.

And I have to qualify #3 because that’s really about me, not my kids. I need a lot of alone time to function in the world. There’s really no one I can spend that much time with without growing tired of them. And really, my kids are great and actually very low maintenance. As I write this, they’re downstairs playing nicely together. Oh wait…no, they’re not…I just heard the television.

Me: “Kids, who told you that you were allowed to watch television?”

Silence.

Me: “Since when can you watch TV without permission?”

I was answered with a chorus of very unconvincing “sorries.”

Sigh.

They know I’m weak. Like a lion watching the lone antelope limping far behind the herd, the kids know I can’t hold out much longer. Any semblance of routine and discipline I’ve worked hard these six years to establish is one juice box and a snack-pack of Hershey kisses away from crumbling. At this point, I’d let the children draw on the walls and set the living room couch on fire if it means I get fifteen minutes of uninterrupted quiet.

So, yes, the snow. I actually did quite well for the first week of it. There’s no getting around the fact that the snow is beautiful. When I woke up in the morning, I would look out the window ready to grouse and grumble, but then be so taken by the pure white landscape filling the window frame that I couldn’t help but whisper—usually to the dogs—“Isn’t it beautiful?”

And the fact that we had so much snow meant no cars were out, which meant I could walk the dogs all over the neighborhood down the center of the street. The night the last storm hit, I took the dogs out around nine o’clock. The snow was falling in giant, pancake-like flakes. No one was out but us. It was absolutely silent. I could have walked forever.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the kids love the snow. Our neighbors built the equivalent of a skeleton track in their front yard, and every day the kids would trek down the street with their sleds in tow and spend hours zipping down it like they were training for the Olympics.

And because the government was closed, Dave was home from work for the week. So we’ve had FAMILY TIME like nobody’s business. We played cards. We baked. We cooked. We watched movies together and ate popcorn. We shoveled snow. We drank hot chocolate. Seriously, Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better scene—except for the parts where Noah would serenade us with arm-fart covers of “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. I commented to Dave how rare it is to have time with the kids where we’re forced to do nothing. Even on vacation, we’re usually running from one place to the next. But being snowed-in, running wasn’t an option. Our lives, typically scheduled to within an inch of our lives, all of a sudden had no boundaries. We didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. No Tae Kwon Do. No Ballet. No horses. No buying snacks for the Valentine’s Day party at school. No homework. Aside from the little bit of work Dave and I were able to squeeze in from time to time, we did nothing for over a week.

But we all knew I couldn’t enjoy it forever. A refrain throughout Dave’s and my life together has been, “What fun is vacation when you don’t have anything to compare it to?” Whenever we’ve had stretches of unemployment or slogged through too-long, too-boring vacations, we’ve said how important it is to have the routine—and work—of normal life from which to take a break. Otherwise, it’s not a break. It’s Groundhog Day.

And that’s what these snow days have become. Nothing distinguishes one day from the next. Thursday night as we were going to bed, I said to Dave, “I can’t believe tomorrow is going to be exactly the same as today, and exactly the same as the day before that. When is it going to end?” Even the dogs have had it. Our young dog Clara, who spent the better part of the first five days of snow bounding through it like a sled dog (in fact, I even bought her a harness and hooked the kids’ sled to it), now stands on the steps leading out our back door with a kind of bewildered “not-this-again” look on her face.



(Our older dog, Barrabas, has been unimpressed since day one.) They keep waiting for me to put on my riding boots and load them in the car to drive to the barn, but that hasn’t happened in ten days because the roads to the barn have been impassable as well.

In a perfect summation of what this snow has done to our spirits, my neighbor Cy sent an email the other night: “I’ve even lost the will to drink.” To which my friend Lee Ann replied, “I haven’t lost the will. We’ve just run out.”

I was ready to take the dogs for a long walk and never return.

Luckily, our friends Heather and Vince came for a visit from Philadelphia this weekend, reminding us that life existed beyond our single, half-mile block. It was like Noah (of the Bible, not my son) seeing the dove with the olive branch in its beak for the first time that signaled to him the floodwaters had receded. The end of the snow tunnel was, however dimly, in sight.

We got a babysitter Saturday night and went to the city with a group of friends for dinner and then to a bar to watch a band. I drank and danced and reveled in the fact that I wasn’t at home watching Ella Enchanted and eating my bodyweight in popcorn yet again.

…and then came the email yesterday afternoon from the school district telling us schools would be closed Monday…and the weather report predicting another snowfall, albeit lighter, tonight. And with all this went my sanity and any hope that life will ever return to normal. The dove with the olive branch in its beak just took a nosedive into a snow bank. But, alas, I still have my will to drink.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. And I realize I should write now about Haiti or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Democratic Republic of Congo—or any of the other hundreds of places in the world where death lurks in every corner. But what’s actually been preoccupying me lately is the death of horses. And I want to say right here that I believe the death of a human being—whether hundreds of thousands or one—is more tragic than the death of an animal. But I also believe that whenever a soul leaves a body—whether that body is two-legged or four-legged, or crawls or runs or slithers or flies—there is a mourning. It means a subtraction from the sum total of life in the world, and I grieve for the loss. I feel this way even when I kill bugs.

So the reason I’m so preoccupied with horse death lately is my friend Stephanie in Charlottesville called a few weeks ago and told me, through a voice choked with anguished tears, that the vet would be coming in a few days to put down Dee Dee.

Dee Dee was my first horse. I don’t want to bore you with the details of how Dee Dee came to be my first horse and then came to be my friend Stephanie’s horse, so let give you an abbreviated version: Shortly after we moved to northern Virginia from New Mexico, it was clear that Dee Dee, who by this time was 24 years old, was ready to retire. As luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, lived just three hours south of us on five beautiful acres, and was looking for a horse to do some light trail riding and be a safe first horse for her two sons. I offered her Dee Dee. She took her.

When Stephanie called to tell me Dee Dee was going to be put down, I wasn’t surprised. She had just turned 29 years old, which puts her, in human years, solidly in her mid- to late-80s. Few horses live that long. I last saw Dee Dee in November, when we went to visit Stephanie and her family for the weekend. Dee Dee still looked remarkable for her age, but it was clear she was declining. She had lost weight and was losing her eyesight. When she would walk, I could tell her hind legs were stiff and likely hurting. Stephanie and I talked about it and I told her if she was still my horse, I would have her euthanized now, while she was still relatively healthy and happy. The alternative was to risk a catastrophic event—colic or a fall on the ice and broken pelvis—that would force the issue and put her through unnecessary trauma and pain. The fact was, she couldn’t live much longer. It was better to give her a peaceful, pain-free death.

Stephanie agreed in theory, but as the person who had to make that very real decision, it was torture. She had a horse who, by all measures, seemed okay. How could she make the decision to end her life?

***

Dee Dee was, quite simply, an exceptional horse. I’ve ridden probably fifty horses in my lifetime, and I’ve never known one who was as kind, trusting, and willing as Dee Dee. She took me over my first fence. She carried me over miles of trails. She would be the guest horse for anyone who came to visit. She would give pony rides to my nieces and nephews. She taught Dave how to ride. She was the first horse both of my kids ever rode.

And yet none of that really describes why she was exceptional. This is just what she did, not who she was. The essence of her was much greater than that…

Our property in New Mexico was bordered by a narrow, fairly deep irrigation ditch. The only way to get off the property was to either drive across the cattle guard that lay across it, or walk across a small, very old, very rickety footbridge that was about eight feet long and only three feet wide. Within a few days of Dee Dee’s arrival in New Mexico (from California, her home state), we decided to take her across the footbridge. This was a really bad idea. The bridge was barely strong enough (or wide enough) for a full-grown human to cross safely, much less a half-ton horse. But I was stupid and didn’t realize this, so I led her across it. She hesitated, but trusted me and followed. The bridge held.

The way back, however, was different. Once again I crossed first and once again she hesitated. Once again I encouraged her to follow me, and once again she did. But this time, the second her hind legs were on the bridge, Dave and I heard a crack. The wood buckled and broke to pieces under her feet. She fell into the ditch. She managed to pull her front legs onto the other side of the bank, but her hind legs were caught. For a frantic minute, she struggled to pull herself out. She snorted and dug her front hooves into the dirt, but kept losing her footing. The whites ringed her eyes. I dug my own heels into the ground and leaned back on the lead rope that was attached to her halter, hoping if I could bring her head far enough forward, she’d have enough weight in front to pull herself out. I pulled; she continued to scramble for purchase. Finally, she lunged forward and dragged herself out of the ditch. I was relieved, but as she walked away, she hopped on three legs, refusing to put any weight on her left hind. I looked under her to see a deep cut on the inside of her thigh and blood running down her leg.

We called the vet, who drove out to the farm to look at it and assured us the cut wasn’t bad. She would need a few weeks off for it to heal, but no muscles were torn. She wouldn’t need stitches. Still, it was clear she was in pain and I felt terrible that I was responsible for it. After the vet left, I stood with Dee Dee for a good while, my face pressed into her neck, whispering my apologies. Every instinct in Dee Dee told her not to cross that bridge—but she ignored them and crossed because I asked her to.

A few weeks later, after she was healed, and after we had built a strong, solid, wide bridge with rails that the horses could cross, I led Dee Dee up the driveway to it. As we approached, she stopped and stretched out her long neck and snorted at it. I stepped onto the bridge and told her, “Come on, girl. It’s okay. I promise.” She took one hesitant step, and then another, until all four feet were on the bridge. She stood there for a moment, and then tentatively walked across it.

This was the essence of Dee Dee: her willingness to trust the people around her again and again, even after they’d betrayed her. But she did it with a certain dignity. She didn’t follow blindly. Rather, she had the air of a monarch who bends to the will of her subjects because she knows her duty is to serve.

***

Stephanie called me the afternoon Dee Dee was put down. “She’s gone,” she told me quietly. It was clear she had been crying, but it wasn’t the anguished sobs of her earlier phone call. It was a cry of grief, unadorned and unburdened.

She told me how, a few hours earlier, when the vet came and inserted the first syringe to sedate Dee Dee and the second syringe to send her into an irreversible anesthetized sleep, Dee Dee quietly bent her legs and laid down with the dignity that had accompanied her the span of her long life. She told me how peaceful it was and how she could feel her spirit leave her. She told me how it was not so much a death as a moving on, a transition from one place to the next.

I’ve written a lot here about my agnosticism and reluctance to believe in things I can’t see, including heaven. Yet for some reason, whenever an animal I’ve loved has died, I have no problem imagining it in paradise. I can easily imagine Dee Dee in a field with endless green grass and clover, in a herd where she is most definitely the boss, perhaps with a foal at her side. There are no flies in this place and no predators. Mostly, she spends her time grazing and galloping with the herd and taking long naps in the sun. Occasionally she jumps a log on the ground because she remembers how much fun that used to be. And she eats the apples and carrots the kids bring to her, and she’ll even take them for a ride every now and then.

But even as I write that, I doubt it’s true. It’s not that Dee Dee’s spirit doesn’t live on. It does. But it’s not in a place. Where Dee Dee lives is in the lives of all the people who rode her throughout the years. All the people, like myself, she ferried over their first fence—giving we earthbound mortals the sense that, for a moment, we were flying. All those she took exploring over unknown hills and across vast deserts. All those who rode her in horse shows and won ribbons that they hung on her bridle and could see in her a pride that told them on some level, she knew she had won. Where Dee Dee lives is in all those who asked her to trust them, and felt her whisper a quiet “yes” in reply.