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.

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.

Home again, Home again, splishity-splash

After driving a round-trip of 800-plus miles, enduring a deluge complete with hydro-planing, a brief dust storm, wind gusts that brought Oz to mind, road construction that squeezed a billion trucks and my tiny Prius into one lane, and, last but not least, a trucker who tried to render C. and me into roadkill, I am back in my own kitchen stuffing myself with some fabulous bread that the man who loves me brought over last night. I am drinking my home-made latté and still savoring how far beyond wonderful it is to visit family, come home and sleep in my own bed, and then wake to a man who has already enjoyed his morning coffee before he crawls back under the covers scented with that morning elixir  I crave at first consciousness.
C. is fond of saying "I love my life!" when joys, big or small, rise up in her daily goings-on. And that's where I am this morning. In my kitchen, loving my life as I type at my breakfast bar next to a newspaper clipping from the L.A. Times. A few weeks ago Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous poem, "God's World," was printed there, and I cut it out and laid it next to the phone where I knew I would run across it now and again.


O world, I cannot hold
 thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide
  grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and
  rise!
Thy woods, autumn 
  day, that ache
  and sag
And all but cry with 
  colour! That gaunt
  crag
To crush! To lift the 
  lean of that black
  bluff!
World, World, I cannot 
  get thee close 
  enough!"

"Trailer for sale or rent...I'm a man of means, by no means, King of the Road..."

I hate the uppity descriptor "trailer trash." In a society where consumption is king, there's an innate prejudice against people who make do with less.  

My sister lived in a trailer for the first several years of her marriage. I was twelve years old; not too far from having packed away my Barbie dolls, and to me, the trailer was like a Barbie Dream House  on wheels. The wheels are a key component, I think. Mobility is the antidote to being tied down. Who the heck doesn't want to pull up stakes and head for the highway now and then?

I got to live in a trailer my junior year when the enrollment of my college skyrocketed. In a stop-gap measure a dozen or so trailers were hauled onto campus complete with gas barbecues installed in the tiny yards. My front windows faced a stand of giant evergreens, and the kitchen, dining,  and living rooms were wide open to one another so the place seemed spacious. The bathroom was set up like a motel bathroom with the sink in its own separate alcove in the hall outside the toilet and shower. Perfect for  four college girls sharing one mirror. Even then I would have liked to hook my little home up to a truck and pull it down the road just for the adventure.

Nowadays, trailers are known as mobile homes or manufactured homes. My brother has lived and worked in a big mobile home park for decades at a fraction of the cost it would cost to live in a regular house. My mother lives with him, and its narrow hallways and efficient layout are perfect for a somewhat frail 86-year-old. As my brother recovers from hip replacement surgery, the compact floor plan is good for him, too. A narrow hallway  less than the width of your wingspan is great if you are unstable or hurting. Too much space is the enemy of the old and the impaired, but the American  dream tempts us constantly with more and more as if down-sizing were an admission of defeat.

I visit my brother's place regularly now that my mom lives here. During this stay I've resolved to walk in the evenings and traverse every street in the mobile home park. What has struck me so far is that within the confines of the park, there are neighborhoods with their own character. I've already picked out my street--where I would live if I lived here. For some reason, I have fantasized  about living just about every place I've ever been. I sometimes wonder if it's some kind of disorder. Promiscudomilcilitis is how I think of it.

One of the distinctions between neighborhoods here has to do with lawn ornaments. I'll write about that tomorrow. If I haven't hooked this place to a truck and pulled it off somewhere.