Snowbird, Utah (getting date night right)

 Snowbird Cool Air Concert Series: The Deslondes

sort of date night...

...well I mean there were drinks and kissing.

And we were alone at the lake but it was more for Moses, 
the old dog who we believe is doing some of his "lasts" in life.  

As for the other old dog BC, he had already blown his chance for a night of romace by suggesting that while Beach is away at gym camp we go to dinner at his mom's house. 

A suggestion that was met with "are you kidding me?" Followed by a brief lesson of our dating history over the last year: 2 dates attempted, I completed.

 ...So after a nice movie and a dinner at home we took the dogs to the lake for a sunset dip. FYI it was a little chilly up there in the mountain in the shadows!

Like I said sort of date night, lots of laughing at ourselves, and a beautiful sunset.

all the colors and they're off!

On Friday we dropped the Little Giants off at the SLC International Airport. 

They are off to Region One Gym Camp in Southern Cal. for the weekend.

Beach and Sophie hadn't seen each other all week. Sophie has been away at a sleep-over camp at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon. They were super excited to be together again. 

Of course, some drop-offs are easier than others. The older teammates get dropped at the curb but some of the younger ones (by age or by heart) their parents tend to linger.

Eventually, excitement wins over trepidation.  

Then there is the business-end of flying off to camp lead by our amazing owner & coaches. 

 Photos they sent from the plane <3 

down the rabbit hole

The skin where she dug her nails into my arm still stings.

It’s a coincidence.  All of it is. The bike, the backpack, the long blood-red painted nails…ten years to the day of my sister's death and I am sitting in the gutter beside a weeping, wasted woman with long brown hair and soft brown skin. The air around her is thick, wet & foul -and so familiar.  All of it is familiar.

She tries to bum a smoke off me. I tell her I don’t smoke but she asks again. The second time I say I don’t smoke it sounds very self-righteous to me so I add, “I love the smell but I just never started…” like it was some kind of a failure on my part to not smoke.

She says, “Shut the fuck up, white girl” and laughs. 

She asks me how she looks. I tell her she looks like shit and I offer the glass of water I am holding.  When she takes it our hand brush and I feel instantly sick to my stomach.  

Before I came to sit with her on the side of the road I had stood in my yard watching her struggle to drunkenly bike down 10^th West. In the amount of time it took me to go water the garden, she had made very little progress.

When I returned to look for her she was sprawled in the gutter right across the street.  I tried to decide what I should do. Tried very hard to talk myself into doing what the other neighbors were doing, ignoring but I couldn’t.  

I set my beer down, hiding it before heading out to her. 

Having obviously lost the battle to leave it alone I returned to the other argument I was losing with myself tonight: I really wished I hadn’t turned down the chance to sit on the hillside and listen to Willie's music carry itself through the crowds at red butte, over the fences and up to the music surfers collecting on the east belly of the shoreline trail. I should have figured out a way to go…I shouldn’t be here doing this, not tonight.

The glass I gave her was my sister's.  I don’t drink out of it even though tt’s been in my cupboard for 10 years.

The woman cradles her backpack kneeling beside her bike crying about her children.  She tells me I don’t know her. I tell her that is bullshit. She doesn’t know what I know.  She laughs and tells me, “Shut the fuck up, white girl.”

Then she offers me a shot which I accept because I don't want to rude. But I am grateful when she rummages through the backpack and comes up empty.

She cries about her daughter and about a list of drugs she can't stop doing and men.  None it makes sense but it doesn’t have to because I’ve done this at least as many times as she has.

I tell her what I know is what it feels like to be a woman sitting on the side of the road crying that nobody sees.

She counters, “That’s not me, because you see me.”

And I tell her, “What I see is my sister. She died 10 years ago today from a drug overdose.”  Now I know that part might be a little inaccurate because also (mostly) she drank herself to death.  

I tell her, “I know she didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to leave her kids, she would have stopped if she could have, she did the best she could…”

“We do,” she said, “We do the best we can.”

I convince her to let me walk her home. She asks me for money. I tell I don’t have any aware of how angry this makes her and I prepare for anything. But the anger blows over, “Shut the fuck up, white girl, you don’t have money?”

“I did,” I tell her. “My boyfriend gave me 60 bucks today but then he asked for it back.” 

She shakes her head at how pathetic she thinks that is but then she agrees to let me walk her home.  She attempts to mount the bike and falls. I offer to walk it for her. She lets me but when I start off holding my sister’s glass in my hand. She tells me to leave it. I stutter before placing it in a spot I hope it will be okay.  

l walk the bike as she stumbles down the street barefoot and dirty towards her house, around the corner and halfway up the block.

She asks me again for a smoke. She asks me again for money.  Her hands out like she about to pat me down or worse. I do it for her. I let the bike fall against my hip and I smash the pockets on my shorts to show her they are empty.

“Shut the fuck up, white girls,” she says starting to crying again. She grabs my arm and digs her nails in as her young daughter, a kid a year younger but a head taller than my own child pops out onto the sidewalk before us.

“Mom, where have you been?” She asks blinking in the sunlight.

Her mom tells her she found a white girl. The daughter’s expression is practiced and flat. I hand her the bike while in my mind I wonder if I could keep it- it’s a nice bike and I really use a nice bike.

The woman begins pulling me towards her but I look at the front door of her house weighing the risks of what could be behind it. I picture Beach back in my yard lying in the hammock reading and I decide to wiggle free.

I back out into the street and tell her goodbye from a distance she can't make without stumbling. She hisses something about her neighbors being a threat to me. I can’t help but to laugh. She doesn’t notice and tells me she will watch me to make sure I make it passed them without trouble….

I run her street, a lot. I know every piece of it, every house, every tree, & every leaning mailbox. Walking it, away from her, is soft and milky like the edges of a sleeping baby's dream… I turn the corner safely back on 10th. The air here is different. I take a big breath in slowly letting it out. 

I collect my sister's glass off the neighbor’s grass. Cross the street and go looking for my beer.  

weekending