woke this morning…deep sleep,  usual vivid dreams.  Put kettle on,  come here and nothing.

  well,  no Internet.  Looked at the "tower"…no internet light.  Picked up phone,  no dial tone.  Looked out the window.  No world.  No world beyond the immediate space of the yards.  Beyond,  the horse pasture next door,  the alfalfa fields,  the road beyond,  the over the freeway foothills,  on to the RIM.  Gone.   A dense grey FOG.  No shapes.  Nothing.  I thought….wouldn't you know it.

Drank my tea quietly,  thinking.  This is how it could have been.  Presuming this to be temporary,  this morning,      but,  letting myself realize that this is how it could have been.  Actually, still   could BE.  

Many people around here live without Internet.  Many in the World live without Internet.  Up on the Navajo Nation Alamo Rez there is no Internet.   It's something to take in.  How little you would know and be affected by the rest of the world.  Your world would be your yard.

So that,  but also it stood in contrast to what's happening now.  The singularity of it,  the isolation,  compared to what we in these last months have conjured.  The contrast…bas~relief….  Here with Tay and Tazmeena.  No larger world.   There,  that Hill,  all we imagine.

But it was Sydney's birthday and she'd called the other day for me to come for breakfast.  So i just went and we had spinach/kale/cheese balls,  sauteed zuchinni ,  and when Jamie came,  Talulah's other mother,  she made quinoi waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.  Sheila,  Sydney's marriage  partner made a secret coffee.  Then Pat came.  I really had never met Pat but have heard her name over and over from them,  Pat has been a long time friend and i immediately liked Pat because she was my age and even more,  My SIZE.   So we sat at the really small kitchen table and on the steps down into the kitchen and ate with our fingers and  then i went out back with Talulah and the dogs and watched her,  who is almost now 13 years old do cartwheels and headstands.  I found that so totally satisfying.  We didn't talk much.  But it was so totally satisfying.  I told her about Emrie.  And how watching her,  i thought about how Emrie one day will be almost 13.  

When i got home the Internet was back with it's green steady eye.  The phone.  Almost as if it hadn't happened.

Travis and Everett came and finished off the electric on the Horse Trailer.  Put the new tires on,  minus one lug nut that was back at Travis' home in a pocket somewhere.  But close and we went to Bills and hooked up and brought back the Homemade Trailer of such Effort.  Brought the old cowboy's truck to pull it but it's now staying here….his truck.  It will pull the Horse Trailer like it did when Jenny and i brought the Goats back here from California 5 years ago.  Circle….circle is circling.

 

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License Plate.  Legal.  SO hard won.

 

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Old Cowboy's truck.   He's bought it when he sold his parent's ranch in Colorado.  When his mother died.  It was the first truck he'd ever bought.  Cash.  He first tried Prescott Arizona but no and ended up in Socorro.  I began working for him the first summer he arrived here.   Some years before he died he quit driving.  Had backed  up into a car in the lumberyard parking lot.  Said they had parked wrong,  but he quit driving.  After that,  i would drive it to my job in San Antonio once a month,  to "give her a good run".  Couple of years before he died he signed it over to me but kept it in his driveway in Socorro.  Which was fine with me…i don't consider vehicles to be landscape items.  It's a big truck.  Wouldn't have wanted to park it outside the fence like i do the Toyota and the Honda.  It's a 1994 Chevy Silverado,  4 wheel drive.  Has 38,ooo miles on it which includes the trip Jenny and i made to California and back 5 years ago with the Goats.  I just told him i needed it for the weekend.  Didn't tell him the truth till we'd made it back.  

 

 

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10 responses to “closer.”

  1. Mo Crow Avatar

    Gosh, good score with the truck, what a beauty for delivering the goats to their new home & loved hearing about the birthday gathering! I was thinking about you walking on flat desert land for so many years, the steep country will be challenging, it’s a good thing you have a good walking stick. One of my gardening customers recommended standing on one leg with your eyes closed for as long as possible (it’s quite surprising how difficult it is at first!) then try the same with the other leg to improve the sense of balance as we age.

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  2. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    The fates seem to favor you and good that they do even when they don’t seem to be…they DO. You might think of yourself as Fates Special Child (even as an old woman). The timing of it all is still just right.
    PS Thanks to Mo I’m going to start working on my balance with my cane.

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  3. Linda Avatar

    The old cowboy was a huge blessing in your life. Couldn’t always see that then, but now it is so obvious.
    Things are coming together one day at a time.

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  4. cynthia Avatar
    cynthia

    i keep reading the last two sentences and smiling..they so beautifully balance all the effort and hard work and concreteness of the truck and the license plates.the goat boat and the tires..
    gentle day grace

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  5. ali Avatar
    ali

    It’s so good that the things that matter work out.
    Loved the story of the birthday breakfast – with cartwheels, and thought how the simplest things are even more special when they come at times of stress, uncertainty, or on the brink of big change.

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  6. grace Avatar

    All these ways We take care of EachOther….offering experience,
    advice, comfort

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  7. grace Avatar

    we seem to have reached some kind of uhhhh, Pause Button…
    and yes…the old cowboy…he is a part of so many people’s
    fates now…many…i wish i could see his face to tell him..

    Like

  8. grace Avatar

    and it’s days later and all my good work is completed, and
    i wait.

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  9. grace Avatar

    it was. it was almost like a scene out of a movie

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  10. grace Avatar

    i’m not sure how slopie the slope is….

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