Travels With the Red Velvet Buddha

There he was on the top shelf of a second-hand store in Kingman, Arizona. I had no doubt that he would come for what remained of the trip. The niche in the backseat of the rental car seemed custom made for him. Though he did get rattled to the floor on a washboard road somewhere in Death Valley, making a terrible metallic clunk like a hubcap falling off, he was reinstalled without complaint.

We saw many wonders.

In the entrance of La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona 

Front entrance, La Posada. 

La Posada will become part of an annual pilgrimage, I think. Google the art of Tina Mion if you're in the mood for a weird and wonderful journey. She and her husband rehabilitated the ruined hotel over many years, and it serves as a gallery for her paintings. It's still a work in progress--and a wonder.

More wonders:

Did you know there was a yin-yang rock at the mouth of Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley? Maybe the red velvet Buddha knew, but I didn't. And how about this?

I don't know what a flagellated eukaryote cell is, but that's how un-evolved many of our current politicians seem to be.

Rhyolite, Nevada was once a prosperous bustling place. Now it's not. This could happen anywhere, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Did you know there are fish swimming in Death Valley? They are living fossils, their population once reduced to merely 50.

Some of them are Sapphire blue.

I love to stay at interesting places. I didn't stay here--it's been abandoned for years.

But I did stay at the Amargosa. It has an astonishing story. Google Marta Becket.

And if you're a billionaire or a talented grant writer, start your life over near Death Valley and fix this place up before it returns to dust. They have the most luxurious sheets and towels, but the building needs help. I hope to stay there again.

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Tears

This post comes to you from my condo in St. Paul, Mn.--a condo I bought back in 2008 pre-economic downturn against the advice of my trusty financial advisor. He was right.

But post-divorce, I was making all kinds of crazy plans. I would have taken out a jumbo loan and financed the Taj Mahal at an interest rate high enough to reach the moon if I'd thought it was the solution to how shitty I felt back then. Daughter M was not doing the best in those days either, and I think living here was some sort of balm--as much balm as a physical thing can be for a hurt that's not at all physical. She lived here for three years, and now the other daughter, C, is living here with her husband. With my mom in a nursing home in northeast Iowa, the Twin Cities are now a good gateway to visiting her.

The frozen rural place/a.k.a. Iowa--taken on the road trip with C and her husband to see my mom

Photo of my mom and me taken yesterday. 

It was -28 degrees today in St. Paul. I went out for a walk. The sidewalks were dry and clean. With my eyes watering from the cold and my frozen tears sticking my eyelashes together, I thought about  my complicated history with Minnesota. I came here for college in 1970 just weeks after signing the final paperwork relinquishing my son for adoption. The next year I had major surgery on my spine and a month later my father died suddenly of a heart attack. The following year there was another back surgery. Thirty years later I came here again and again post divorce. I've walked in every type of weather. I've walked in deep into the woods and on country roads in the pitch black winter night while the sky was ripped apart by shooting stars. I've walked ankle deep in the mud on a lakeshore, along the Mississippi River in driving rain, in downtown St. Paul bathed in Christmas lights. I've walked drunk. I've walked sober. I've walked wailing out loud, talking to myself, while plotting mayhem, and while plotting my own destruction. Today I just walked, glad to be out under the sky.

Today, walking in St. Paul

Walking is what I do. Sad, happy, mad, glad, tired, wired, here, there. 

And while I've shed plenty of tears in California, somehow I always feel happier there.

Last month walking on the beach in Cambria, CA

And tomorrow, I'll be back in Margaritaville (a.k.a. Ventura County)

Though I have to disclose that this photo was actually taken in a Mexican Restaurant in Dubuque, IA

Another road trip photo--just because.

Leaving Albuquerque

power lines in the Albuquerque dawn 

I dreamed I died last night.

Terminally ill, I invoked the right to die and took a large capsule of morphine. People knew I was going to do it. But I did it without much fanfare. Oh, by the way, I told one of my daughters. I took the capsule and tonight when I go to bed, I won't wake up.

This morning when I awoke, I felt weighed down. The responsibility of love is not a weightless thing.  It has heft and substance and every morning we pick it up again--if we are so blessed to awake and have love in our lives.

The road trip  continues. I'm off to see friends, friends of friends, and family. Places familiar and new.  Sights seen and unseen. Connections winding tighter. The power of love anchoring me to this earth and rising upward and beyond the known world.

Do you see the outstretched hand? 

Report from the Universe

I'm thinking a lot bout the big picture these days. Love. Luck. Beginnings. Endings. The never-ending. Everything.

I went to see my mom in the nursing home Thursday evening. She hadn't been served her nightly glass of wine. Her toenails needed cutting. Stuff. Took care of it. She looked good. The food looked good. She ate well. The nursing home is the most attractive nursing home I've had any experience with. (There have been four.)

When I went back the next morning, she looked even better. She seemed more engaged and awake than she's been in ages. She said the words my friend while referring to another resident. Over the past few years the only times I've heard my mom use the word friend in reference to friends of hers is this: All of my friends are dead. A person can be 91 and make a new friend. How about that?

New things are constantly occurring.

I'm on a road trip. New things outside the car windows every second. Car windows are my window on the world right now. The first night on the road was at my brother's house. The next night, a town called Liberty. Yesterday a quick stop in a town called Kismet. Last night, a town called Liberal. I'm not making this up.

I wish you liberty, kismet, and liberal doses of love.

Living with My Mother at 37,000 Feet

Here's picture of a dove. Whatever.

There were 20 people cued up for wheelchairs at the Southwest terminal at LAX. There was a roped off seating area and a maitre d' at a podium, taking names. This is the beginning of the future as the baby boomers age. Most of the wheelies were 2 or 3 decades younger than my mother. I am so grateful for my healthy body.

At the gate, there was a culling of the herd. "Who can walk onto the plane?" a chipper young woman asked, scanning the 10 or so wheelchairs at the gate. Her eyes brushed over the top of my mother's white head. When we got to the aircraft door, the young woman who'd wheeled the chair down the jetway didn't ask. She commanded, "Take my hand," she said at the doorway of the aircraft as she handed my mom off to the waiting flight attendant. Bless all these people. They make me want to skip and sing while tossing 20 dollar bills in the air.

We're fairly good at this now, my mom and I, on our third trip east, but once again my mother has said that she's never flying again. It's hard. I could rant about the specifics of that, but I won't.

Already, in the midst of this small torture, we're planning a trip to Iowa for my sister's 40th wedding anniversary. "Should I drive her there by myself?" I asked the charming and kind M as she drove us to LAX  this morning?  M explained to me how NFL teams choose their rosters. "They look for the best of the best overall players," she said. "Or they go for a specific skill set." You need a partner with a specific skill set." She said I should find him and get that road trip in motion.

Okay.

Here I am. A 62-year-old version of gorgeous. I need lots of time to myself to write and think. I do yoga. I do T'ai Chi Chih. I love to walk on the beach. I'm a lazy and healthy cook. I'm a reader. I like poetry. I'm learning to ballroom dance. I'm not getting married unless you're a billionaire. You can like what you like. I don't have to love it. We just have to like each other. And there's that road trip. There'll be a lot of bathroom stops and we'll be off the road every evening in time for a cocktail. We won't get started again until after breakfast. 400 miles per day absolute fucking maximum. Go ahead, tell me your interested. I dare you.

In Which Three Generations, Two Hearing Aids, and an Oxygen Machine Go on a Roadtrip

Deja vu, right? Yes, except that this time we were driving east and the trip was a mere 400 hundred and some miles.

We attended a ballet recital.

And a birthday party.

Sat around the dining room table and talked and talked and talked, marveling at luck and love.
Lost a hearing aid. Found a hearing aid.
Almost had, not one, but two car crashes.

Tilted at windmills.
Saw a rainbow.

Dropped M at the airport.

Drove the PCH for the last leg of the trip.

Home.

photo credit for PCH photo: jhandleman.blogspot.com. 

Flow Chart for Traveling with My Mother

My mother has smoked since she was 14. She's 88 now, and quitting is a tired subject. In addition, she's somewhat frail and needs a walk-in or roll-in shower with a shower seat. She walks very slowly, and really can't walk very far unassisted. I tried sleeping in her room (non-smoking) the first night on the road. I would get up when she got up and walk her down the hall and around the corner to the smoking courtyard, I thought. At 3:30 a.m. she stood up and shouted and waved her arms around. I think she was asleep. She shouted again a couple of times an hour later--still asleep and dreaming, no doubt. My daughter M, who has traveled with her grandmother prior to this this trip, said, "Yes, she does that every night around 3:00 or 4:00." Thus, my enthusiasm for sharing a room with my mother waned.

The second night we got my mom a room with a door that opened to the outside. I slept in the other room with my daughter. My mom could then quite ably walk herself outside for a smoke without much risk of taking a fall. In the morning I was a new person.

The third night was more difficult. The door to the outside in my mom's room was heavy and hard for her to open. Utah state law required that she smoke 30 feet away which meant a stumbly path into the parking lot. M borrowed a plastic chair from our balcony and set it around the far corner of the motel just a few feet away from my mom's door where she could light up out of sight. Still the doorway had an awkward sill that we worried about. Hence the flow chart.

And so tonight, our last on the road, with thanks to the fact that Las Vegas is apparently a mecca for smokers, my mom has a smoking room on the first floor with a roll-in shower. I won't tell you about the crazy part. About how I accidentally made the reservation through Expedia instead of directly with the hotel. Or how Expedia fucked it up. I will just say that a wonderful desk clerk named David fixed everything that Expedia botched.

Now, on a less mundane note, the west is full of wonders.

Rivers crossed today: Green River, San Rafael, Virgin (several times,) Muddy

Most disconcerting sign: CAUTION! BRIDGE DECKS AHEAD!
Ensuing dialogue: "Google that for me, M."
                              "Sorry, Mom, no 3G."

Good-bye Nebraska/Hello Colorado

This is Nebraska.

This is a coffee break.

This is a rest stop.

This is Colorado.

This is the unexpected beauty you sometimes find while traveling.

Rivers crossed today:
The Platte (at least 5 times), S'Bra Middle Creek, Blue, South Branch of the Crooked Creek, Deer Creek, Beaver Creek (3 times) Spring Creek, South Platte River.

Junk food eaten (by me): Coca-cola, a Snickers protein bar, a Starbucks scone, Planters trail mix.

Report from the Road or A Lot of Water Under the Bridge

When I uttered the words, "three generation road trip" during a conversation at my brother's kitchen table a few days ago, my mom said, "Gee, that makes me feel old!" Tonight at dinner in Omaha after our first day, I explained to my ex-sister-in law and my niece that my mom had already been driven from Maryland to Iowa by her sister, that I had flown to the Twin Cities from California, rented a car, and driven to Iowa, then back to St. Paul where I met my daughter, and the two of us got into her car and drove back to Iowa where we picked up my mom in my hometown and the three of us began the long drive to California. Somewhere in the middle of this conversation, I felt old. Fossil old. Cooling crust of the earth old. Dirt and dinosaur old. All of those miles already and today just the beginning of the 30-hour, three generation road trip?!

Here are the rivers I've crossed since I drove out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport:
Minnesota, Straight, Shell Rock, Cedar, Maquoketa, Wapsipinicon, Mississippi, Iowa, Des Moines, Racoon, Middle Racoon, Middle River, East Nishnbotna, West Nishnabotna, Missouri, Little Papillion Creek.

Here we are having an organic lunch on a farm near a little town outside Des Moines. Just as M. and I began to bemoan the narrow prospects of road food, I saw a sign that read, "Organic Farm Restaurant."

It was fabulous. It was started by a doctor--who's now a farmer, I guess.

Now all four of us (that includes my mom's oxygen machine--I call him Mr. O because he rides in the back buckled in like a person) are safely tucked in for the night.