Turning Upside Down

I walked to the mailbox when I got home today. There were no bills, no personal letters, no sales fliers. It was empty. I turned and started up my front walk. But because I am not empty, I was overcome with the notion to try a cartwheel. I haven't tried one in years. I am 39, I am wearing a skirt, I have an incompletely healed incision on my bikini line, but I went gracefully into a tumble I did hundreds and hundreds of times as a girl. Bare foot, hand, hand, bare foot, bare foot. Maybe my panties are not a secret to the neighbors should they have been watching. I really don't care. I have good news inside of me and I want it to show on the outside.

Thank you, Susan, for the house and the porch and the swing and the gathering. Thank you for the monsoon.

Thank you, Dawn, for the mountain top whispers and all the stars and for sharing your own story.

Thank you all for your energy and prayers, for your encouragement and vibes. Thank you for believing everything would be okay.

Everything is okay.

And I can still turn a cartwheel.

Whooo hoooo!

How to Quit Feeling Sorry for Yourself

I drove a total seven hours to get there and it should only take five. Much of it in rain so hard I could barely see the tail lights in front of me. I took one wrong turn on a drive I could do blindfolded any other day, and I only took that turn because I was so rattled by a phone call. And I knew the phone call would come. One day. The phone call about how he didn't love me "that way." Just not that day, just not in the pouring rain with two little girls who kept crossing the center line of the backseat and whining and fighting and asking if the rain would stop and asking if we were there yet. And so whether my tears or the rain blurred the road made no difference. The noise from the backseat and the back of my head was a tug-of-war between reality and the fictional dialogue I should have had... a mix of all the stuff I wish I'd said to him interspersed with pleas to "get along, girls, we'll be there soon."

Even after we drove up the drive, even after I saw my dad come down those steps in the blue glow of my headlights, even after we fell out of the car and into our pajamas and into the bed... all of us into one bed, me and the girls, I couldn't sleep. I lay there under my Daddy's roof listening to the rain and thinking. About lots of things. Mostly about all the things that have gone wrong lately. I wonder if I will ever be in a decent relationship. I wonder as I lay there if I will ever get it right. I wonder if I have ever done anything right. The tears rolled quietly from the corners of my eyes and into my hair and onto my pillow. It is raining outside, and down my face, and in my head.

I am back in my own house tonight. I am looking at the pictures I made. There they are, standing at the edge of a Louisiana watermelon patch, bathed in the setting sun, two things I've done right. I realize I am in a good relationship: I'm a mom. The tears roll down my face again. But this time, it's good.

Home

I'm going home. Louisiana home. Family reunion home. I'll be among the people I came from. I'll be looking at their faces and seeing parts of my own. I'll be hugging the old gently and grabbing the young by their middles to swing them around and tease them about school and sports and how much they've changed. I'll eat homegrown this and homebaked that until I burst.

My dad will ask me how I'm doing now that I'm on my own at least a dozen times. With that serious look on his face. I'll say, "fine, Daddy." I'll sit by him on the couch and we'll find a John Wayne movie on tv if we're lucky. "Shane" if we're luckier. We'll say all the good parts out loud together and everyone else will abandon the living room.

I haven't wanted to go home for a while. But something has turned in me. Now it's a longing. I see each familiar mile between here and there flicking by in my mind already. I see the interstate give way to the highway and the highway turns just so and there is that curve by the fairgrounds and then the long driveway. I see my dad come out of the house and down the steps of the porch. He's been looking for us. I'm home in my mind. Now I just have to get there.

Father's Day

Thanks, Daddy. I love you, too.

The Left and Found at Chevron

A trip to the gym and I will sweat out all my frustrations and world weariness. Only I don't. I carry out all I carry in and trail behind me my two girls like droopy ducklings back to the car. We load up and pull out of the lot.

We stop to fill the car with gas. I hate this chore. The car is so greedy. The car just consumes and wants more from me like everyone and everything else. I sigh and clomp to the pump. I go through all the proper procedures to feed the car. It seems to take so long in the simmering, cicada sizzling, late afternoon. I'm sure I got the slow pump and my car is totally empty as usual because I put off filling up until completely necessary. Finally, with sweat rolling down my back, the nozzle clicks to indicate that the car is engorged like some tick on a dog. Done. Or nearly.

To make the annoyance completely absurd, I can't get my receipt out of the convenient, at-the-pump, printer. I struggle to grasp just the tiniest edge and try to pull. But the receipt is wedged up inside the machine. It is my nature not to lose a battle and I use my key to try and coax the paper further from the slot. I waste precious minutes of my life on this task in the sweltering Houston heat. I cuss at the edge of the paper and I decide time is indeed too precious. I slide defeated into the car. As I pull the seatbelt across my sweat-beaded body, I tell the girls I'm sorry to have taken so long, but I was trying to get the receipt out of the pump.

My oldest daughter Eleanor cocks her head slightly and quizzes, "You can return gas?" I pause. I flash-consider my habit of shopping and then finding purchases too extravagant, or too big, or too small, or too... well, returnable. I snort. I start to laugh a little. Eleanor smiles and blinks and me oddly. She starts to giggle, although she is only laughing at my laughter; she doesn't even understand her own joke. Now the sheer joy of truly laughing for the first time in too long takes over. My youngest daughter Emeline joins in, too, because laughter is just infectious. I explain to Eleanor what is so funny about her joke, and the three of us sit in the car in the gas station, laughing like we haven't in weeks. Heads back, eyes twinkling, in my case, tears streaming. A man passes by our car and sees us and grins. We must be a sight.

I wheel us into traffic and head toward home with a smile still clinging to the corners of my eyes. I keep glancing at my girls in the rearview mirror. Eleanor is looking at me, smiling, and I think she is so relieved to know I can still laugh. I slide back the sunroof and I swear there is a now a hint of laughter in the song of the cicadas, buzz band of summer's swelter, and I vow to let a little of the stuff I've been carrying around inside of me blow out and stay behind with that receipt stuck in the pump.