A Cloud-Road

On Saturday, a Spring storm rolled in.  I watched from my place beside the nurses' desk as the wind tossed tree branches from side to side.  I know that the winds here don't compare to those that rake the midwest, but to me, it was an impressively ominous sight.  Just before my shift ended, rain appeared, which quickly turned to snow.  Though I was a little nervous to drive him in a blizzard, the storm served only to lift my spirits.

As it happened, I had only to fight my way through the spray of white for ten minutes or so, after getting on the freeway.  As quickly as it had appeared, the snow was gone and rather than driving under an overcast sky, I found myself  in direct, unimpeded sunlight.  In fact, it was so bright and insistent, that the roads began to steam.  It was one of those moments in which I wished very much for a camera, two free hands, and the expertise necessary to capture the scene.

At first, they were just ghostly wisps, drifting across the ground, but the vapor began to rise rapidly off of the asphalt, twisting with the moving air.  It became so thick that, at times, I couldn't see any more than a hundred feet into the fog.  If I looked from side to side, though, I could see perfectly the houses and mesas in either direction for miles.  Only the blacktop interstates were misty white.  It was like driving along a cloud, a tunnel of sun-warmed storm.

Doorknobs and Grown-ups

The adventures never seem to cease, out here.  And they come at us when we're least expecting them.

If you're wondering whether that is what you think it is, you're probably right.  It's an apple, mounted where our doorknob should be.

Or, more appropriately, two apples where our doorknob should be.  What would you do if you fell asleep working on your computer, woke up at about 1:00 AM, decided to check on your baby before officially going to bed and found that your door had fallen shut and the doorknob jammed, locking you in your own bedroom?

You'd knock the screen out of our window and clamber out and around to the front porch, obviously, glad to have forgotten to lock the front door for once.  Or, more appropriately, if you were four months pregnant, hopefully your husband would be around to do that last part for you.

Once you had gotten the bedroom door open - a curiously easy feat from the kitchen side of it - you would remove the doorknob, naturally.  The only remaining dilemma would be how to block light and sound from coming in through the round hole in your door.  The easy solution, a wad of grocery bags, just wouldn't do.  It would look tacky.

So what do you do?  Decorate with fruit,. of course.  Two apples and a skewer - or sturdy plastic straw, or whatever - and voila!  Problem solved and door decorated.  For a few days at least, until the apples begin to get soft and brown on the inside...but that's another story altogether.

I said that adventures keep finding us out here, but for once I don't think I mean in 'Somewhere.'  This time, I mean the wild ride that is adulthood.  When you're a kid, adventures are something that someone reads to you from a book, or something that you paint with watercolors, or something that you dream up with your running feet and whooping yells.  Sometimes, it's like that for grown-ups too, where you're inventing an adventure or fueling it with hard work and imagination; but sometimes - often - it's more like finding out that you're out in the open water now.  Adventure finds you and you roll with it and learn to laugh.

Looking Up by Looking Down

Good morning!  In case any of our friends to the north are wondering, Spring has fully descended upon us here in Somewhere, complete with occasional rain, windy afternoons, and lots and lots of warm, buttery sunshine.  Little bits of - yes, green! are beginning to appear here and there, and I'm finally acquiring an eye capable of seeing them from day to day.  The past couple of weeks have been full of walks.  Addie loves to be outside - where else can you find so much dirt to taste and little sticks that can be used to poke just about anything? - and almost has sufficient stamina and focus to get from our house to the school track, where we usually meet her dad for an afternoon stroll.

I took a moment, the other day, to flip through the pictures on my camera, and realized that the little girl in those pictures taken back in October was a very different one from the girl walking beside me on these walks.  The baby in my kitchen cabinet, gleefully sorting through cooling racks, cutting boards, and casserole pans is already fading to a shadowy memory beside the vibrant toddler she has become.

The girl who is now napping in our second bedroom is as mischievous as she can be, always looking for a way to get mom or dad to say in a scary voice, "Hey!  Where do you think you're going?" before chasing her across the house, ready to tickle.  She's full of new words and signs - some that we've taught her, and a few of her own making - and she's learning how to get what she wants, even when her parents think they've laid down the law.  She blows kisses pretty liberally, and when in the right mood, she gives the sweetest hugs, complete with little "ahhh" sighs to mimic mom's and dad's.

Someone's got to help dad eat his breakfast.

At a year old (plus a few months), Addie is all about sharing...especially when someone tries to give her food she's not interested in eating.  She has acquired a taste for pickles, though, and a love for grapefruit that comes and goes.  

Mom's attempts to tame her hair, which is finally long enough to tangle, have also caught her interest.  She's more and more willing to sit patiently while I comb and spray and fix rubber bands into it and once in awhile, laughs delightedly upon seeing the result in the mirror.  Pretty trinkets - usually bracelets - are also becoming popular items.  

As we set off on one of our walks last week, I found that my gaze was turned downward almost throughout.  While I was surrounded by the arid landscape that I am still slowly learning to appreciate, my view consisted mostly of a little head, almost as high as my hip, with two little ponytails, jutting out at slightly odd angles from either side; it was of two little feet, shod in bright little shoes, that move with ever-increasing certainty along the roadside; a little hand that, with a little insistence on my part, holds on to mine.

During the first couple months of the year, after having returned from a long Christmas vacation with our families, I found myself constantly nauseated, exhausted, and chilled, despite the mildness of the winter.  My feelings about our home here (as well as my attitude about mostly everything in my life) plummeted and hung low for weeks.  Yet, now that I am re-energized, free from the cold that kept Addie and me indoors, and awakening to the changing seasons, it's as though a shadow has passed from my life.  We've crested the lip of a deep, and, walking alongside my daughter, I see all of the aesthetic I need for the moment.  

Despite my dreams of greenery and mountains, I'm realizing that this is a time in my life that I will look back on with fondness.  Not just this time, either, but this place.  This safe, sturdy home, these brush-clad mesas, dusty highways, and thorn-studded paths are and will have been the context in which I watched my baby grow into a little girl.  They have provided the backdrop for her first steps, first words, and for the hundreds of little discoveries and developments that come with each month of her life.

I've been reminded often, of the importance of optimism and the need 'to look up,' and for so many weeks, I could only respond to those encouragements with the cold counter, "Why?  I won't like what I'll see."  A few days ago, I finally began to understand that sometimes, looking up means looking down.  The opening of Springtime has been like waking up from a long and tedious dream, and blinking, bleary-eyed, and looking down to see the little girl who has all along been walking at my side.  It's been like waking up to realize that I am passing through one of the simplest and best times of my life.

Update

Well, obviously consistency isn't really my thing.  The past seven weeks have been non-stop running, and our lives have been taken up with some very fun things, such as visiting our family, being visited by some of our favorite cousins, and a trip to the big city, an ultrasound (pictures to come...someday...), as well as lots of reading for me (ahh, books. *happy sigh*).

And then there have been some not-so-fun things, like job training (which by itself isn't so bad, but considering that every shift ends with a forty-five minute drive home in the middle of the night...well, it has its up-sides and down-sides), and an almost-two hour drive into the New Mexico desert to get my not-second, not-third, but fourth set of fingerprints done in order to obtain and keep the aforementioned job.

All in all, we have had a wild couple of months, and admittedly, since things have finally stabilized, I've been pushing all thoughts of blogging from my head with a guilty sort of feeling.  Now that I've come to it, I do feel like the sheepish prodigal, returning slowly to the all-embracing internet.  Yep.

So, to maybe make this worth your while, I will share some things that I have learned in recent weeks:

1. Those razors that you buy for traveling?  You know, the really cheap ones that are typically quite dull?  Well, sometimes they aren't.

2. Babies Toddlers and long car rides can work.  With a little faith, a lot of graham crackers, and an old cell phone.  Preferably one that still plays snazzy ringtones.

3. I now understand the small-town girl in a big city thing a little.  When you're the one driving and navigating through a town like Phoenix, it's a whole different experience than when your parents are doing it for you.

4. If you are going to work in a long-term care facility with patients who don't all necessarily speak English, it would be a good idea to learn a few words in their language.

5. Small children are rapidly evolving creatures.  Just because you could close the toilet seat to keep her out of the water before, doesn't mean that that will work now.

6. Crayons are magical.

7. So is chocolate.
...OK, maybe I already knew that...

8.There is nothing wrong with having a hot dog for lunch.  It doesn't matter how old you are.

9. I will probably never grow out of loving fairy tales.

10. You can travel the world by going to the zoo, even if the lions, tigers, and bears are sleeping.  If you don't have a zoo, you can travel the world be watching Planet Earth.  You don't even have to buy a plane ticket. :)