beyond the dark road home

 In the back seat there is a deep discussion going on. 

It started innocently enough when Sophie looked out the window and said, "That is where my ex lives." 

It took me a second to process her 12 year old words spoken in full adult tone. I was wrestling with the sudden vision of Sophie in the backseat of my car wearing a smart skirt, high-heels, knees together, playing with a strand of peals hanging from her neck. Her dark hair in tight sensible bun, saying my ex, the bastard took all the china too...
  
I had barely gotten my head around what she had actually meant, notes & lockers, awkward smiles full of braces & blushing, when Beach asked, "Why is that your exit, you don't live there?" 

The next few miles were spent with Sophie trying to explain she had said "ex" not "exit" and Beach trying to understand how her friend having an ex made anymore sense than having an exit.

"Who has an exit?" Sophie demanded. 

"I have an exit," Beach answered, "Exit 17."

So they agreed Sophie could have an ex and Beach an exit then they got down to the business of dreams. 

It is more of a ritual than a habit. The two of them in the backseat telling each other what they had dreamt. Like confession, it has been 3 nights since they last shared....  

Their chatter matches the rain falling against the windshield. It is late and I am tired and the whole valley is sick, so the fact that I am too doesn't seem to count for much. The girls are hungry. Sleepiness hangs in their eyes but they talk loud and fast over each other. Their words are running full sprint into the cold.

The lines on the road blur in the mist of headlights. The conversation in the backseat is about ghost dogs visiting in the night.

As we make our way home we drive under the shadow of the mountains already tucked in to a thin spring sheet of snow. 

The ghost dogs are barking to be let out for the night.  

I listen to Sophie talk about Annie Dog showing up in her dreams: the smells and the feelings. I listen to Beach talk about how the details of the morning Kilo slipped the fence filters into her dreams: the colors and the darkness.  

I have always told my kids the only thing I know for sure about what happens after something dies is it will smell bad. But as I listen to them weave through the veil of 'here' and 'not here' I start to wonder about the way dreams can touch you long into the day. 

I will never again be so innocent as to be a believer and yet driving these 2 little souls around is pretty damn close to seeing into the mind of heaven. 

Even if it is only a dream and all the ghost dogs are quietly sleeping.

Dear Friends at Best Friends Animal Society,

It is heart breaking to write you to say that Kilo was hit & killed by a passing car yesterday morning at the bottom of our street.  He had slipped out one of the open gates as we loaded for a river trip.  The thing is Kilo never wandered; he hardly left my side.  All he ever wanted was to be next to me, on top of me, or under me.  

All I can figure is Kilo didn't know where I was because the morning routine was altered.  He must have left looking for me, following the path he & I run together.  

We will never know why yesterday happened.  The car who hit him did not stop it was early and dark so I must assume they didn't see him- being negative won't help us now.

Kilo will not be returning to Angel's Landing he wants to be with me.  I burred him in the corner of my garden so he no longer has to wait at the garden gate for me to finish watering.

Thanks for all you did to unite us.

His life was his own & he graciously shared it with me.

Misty Brown 8/25/2011

child of mine

This child of mine, she is afraid of ants.

In the wind the grass around us chatters like school girls. There is a Hitchcock feel to the place. Old rolling super-eight with its flickering frames. The sun is hot, the wind cold. The light falls like breaking waves. 

She has my temper: smoldering & subversive, easily turned inward. Her dad's powerful build. And my mother's soft heart.

She walks out across the dry pond laughing at the idea of it. "It is like walking on an elephant." She says. Her hand against mine is strong and rough- pitted from the bars, dry from the work.

She started the day with one pink plastic nail. The last of her prize fished from the row of boxes at the swap meet. A small set of fake nails: a fantasy fraction of femininity. All that a dollar could buy her. She wore them for Easter. Pretending to be something more delicate and fragile for just a day.

This child of mine is afraid of what she can feel, but cannot see.

cutting corners in the dark

I listen carefully to the things he isn't saying. I crawl down inside the deepness of his silences. I swim cold among all the possible words that could fill the well back up. And I wonder. 

"This is the third time you have smacked your head on that hen house.  You would think HE would do something about it by now..." 

He sounds angry and tired. Head injuries tend to make him nervous; the unknown makes him cross. Distance, even crosser. 

"I was rushing to get to work. Anyway I can't see in the dark. Besides Doctor, it is not polite to cyber stalk" 

I can picture him sitting behind a large cherry-wood desk holding his head in his hand. Running his fingers through his hair. 

Seeing him so clearly sends an eclectic rush of pain up my back.

"I'm not saying... I'm only pointing out...Misty."

He softens his voice, "Do you ever wish you would have chosen differently, chosen me?" 

I can remember the way the air in the room would change right before he would come around a corner.  

"Did you really just ask me that?" 

"No, because I think the answer would crush me." He exhales. "You look different. You look happy. I need to know..." 

I remember how hearing his name in conversation would pop the same color through my mind as does the moment a match catches on the camp stove's blue flame, igniting at my fingertips.

He breaks,  "I have to go. You know, I'm sort of important around here for all the saving lives stuff that I do."

"Please, you have to understand." 

He cuts me off, "No, no, I don't. You never talk to me. I never know how you feel. I always have to find it out from someone else. I can tell there is something going on with you but I don't know what it is..."

I can remember the weight of just standing beside him.

If I could undo the dam for him I would. I would tell him I was thinking about him when I came up a little too early under the the corner of the chicken coop roof.

I would tell him that yes, I did love him, but I don't anymore, not like that. I haven't for a long time. 

But when I did, there were no silences in my head. I had so many words I was drowning in them. And to me he was bigger than the desert.   

"Misty, please just tell me this, are you in love....?"

And I remember believing I would never be capable of loving someone like that ever again. Turns out never is a very long time. 

"Yes Dear, I'm afraid I am."

my peeps

 Conner, get off your sisters!

 Conner,you are still doing it!

 Baby J, look this way.

 Both Alexis-es, smile.

I think I got it...

... and Beach is out of here! 

easter-west

words in a two mom town

Sarah:   

Beach and Sophie want to have a sleepover here...they are rehearsing a play. It's a western

What do you think?

Misty:  

Westerns are complex..

Yes, to the sleepover. 

If I have been home sick most of the day can I go running now that I feel better? And they have gym tomorrow morning at 8 am.

Sarah:  

Yeah and they are really fucking it up. But they are laughing hysterically while doing it.

Absolutely you can go running under any circumstances as long as you're not dead. So I think you qualify.

I promise to get the girls to gym on time.

outlying

I lean out the open car window and announce,

Blue is my favorite color but that color there is the absolute best. 

I let my hand ride outside the car surfing the wind. 

My hold on the steering wheel fleeting and loose.

He laughs and names it savanna.

I squint and say, savanna-yellow.

You used to call it savanna-gold, he reminds me.

I shake my head. 

I know when I said that... it was late September. 

We were on the foothills in a field of knee high grasses, planning our lives together. 

I was starving. 
The front of my shirt dotted with blood from a nose bleed. I had spent the night before in the ER and had no business being out in the sun running, but I was.

I had reached a thinnest with my body that was unbecoming. 
People had started to question me about it.

I know, things have been rough but it's under control now, I would say. 
it's all under control
I got this
I'm fine

But gold has never been the right word, I tell him. 

It is not golden; we were... gold is solid but workable- soft.

This color is luminescent and consuming. 

It changes like water.

And disappears like light.

You can hold onto gold, this you can't.

He pauses, then it is misty-savanna.

I laugh, yes, it is and it goes very well with misty-blue.

If I was god I wouldn't live in the sky. 
I would live in the wind.