i feel like i want to kind of get these details over with. what has become interesting to me in doing this is that i am curious what i see as the big picture of it all, from this vantage point. so...i'll do this and then read back over it, see what i think.
my beloved Fern. many many miles. i had left the Airstream with some people in Arizona. by this time, pretty much all the money from the sale of the house was gone. i went up near Santa Fe, to Cerrillos actually, Madrid. worked for a woman who owned Tapestry Gallery. also part of my pay was to ride with her a couple times a week. i hadn't been on a horse in years but i rode. oh, did i ride. she had arabs and we would run the dry river bed of the Galesteo River at break neck speed. this might be one of the most totally amazing things i found self doing. i never fell off. and i took my "dolls" to the Opera Flea Market north of Santa Fe. i don't remember exact things about any of this whole thing, just have these moments that are representative of certain parts like photographs that are in a memory album. they are clear. but a lot of details are forgotten. actually were forgotten when they happened. they didn't seem important. but for some reason i left and came down to Albuquerque where i stayed in a household of several people. Large house in South Valley, beautiful really. i rented a room. this is where i got Ebie
this is where she stayed there...with some horses and a pig. the sign...half of the message i'd seen many times on the side of a building in Detroit when i'd lived there in my early 20's...the size of a billboard. it said: " if you lived here, you'd be home now".
So...it's some months since i left the Second time and my daughter called. She's Coming. and she did. the house wasn't it for 2 very young kids so we moved together, and Ebie some distance south. somewhere along the line here, a friend brought the Airstream back from Arizona for me and after a while i moved again and again and i think again. this was one of the places. El Cerro Mission.
i shared caring for the kids when daughter was working and going to school. the three of us, me and the kids lived equally in the Airstream and outside under some pinion trees where we built a little world of rocks. outhouse. no electricity. for a while we had a spotted burro, Jack. the kids rode him around. but as it always happened, just when you get a Place right, you have to move. the land is sold or the people want to move there themselves having seen how really wonderful it is. So i moved to the last place, just before Polvadera. because of needing to be in touch for the kids, i even paid the phone company to install a phone pole, run phone line. i fenced it for the dogs. started to get settled in and again. the people decided to build there. ok. and i had "taken up" with the person i married. he was living with me. and the property was sold again. we had a month to move. i looked everywhere and couldn't find a place to go...where i could live in the Airstream, take the dogs, that had Open Space around it until a friend suggested talking to an old man she bought her house from. Sy Cisneros. an old land grant family. owned tons of land and developed some. phone call. meet at a freeway xit, look, an acre with an electric pole and a septic tank set. at that time there was no one else living close. just Space. he didn't even ask our last names. meet him at the .... what do you call it"....i can't remember the word...but the official place in town...Socorro Abstract?...something like that, meet him the following Monday. sign the papers. $500 down, $128 a month. shake hands. mano a mano. we did.
there was nothing here. for a long time, years, i would bring rocks home. i decorated the sand with rocks. we had 6 months to move in a "proper" trailer according to the land covenent.
but at first, the airstream, the "asylum" and Fern. Polvadera is Spanish for Nothing But Dust.
and now comes the tricky part. i guess what i really want to say here is that he taught me how to make a life with Nothing. how to live with what you could find around you. how to Make Do. and in an epic way. i was totally absorbed in it all. and slowly there came to be a Place. with Stuff.
and Deb Lacativa...i planted zinnias, hollyhocks and a tree. he built me a gate. there was a clothesline. then more stuff.
he could fix anything. i bought this Bluebird school bus above. it had inset twinkle lights around the windshield. and along the rim of the sides at the roof. a Fiesta. the guy i bought it from was from Oregon. the plan was to fix it up and use it as a mobile art gallery. and quite quickly the acre filled up with vehicles that had Potential. and...of course, junk tires. Stuff. i borrowed the money for the "proper" trailer i found from a woman i worked for taking care of her son with ALS. doing the home care in exchange for payments. when it first came here, after my living in the airstream for 4 or 5 years, it felt HUGE. and really, in comparison, it was. i made furniture out of those bananna boxes i'd moved from Michigan with. What else should i say here.
How long was it. i guess maybe 4 years? it might have been only 3, but ...i was totally completely happy. we drove the little toyota all over New Mexico. we slept outside on the earth. camping didn't include a tent. he laughed at me. sky was good enough. and it was. we were great working partners. building partners. cooking partners. living partners. he was right. i had never allowed a man to be a partner, a real partner before. even when i was married to my kids dad. so it
GLOWED.
until it began not to. and i don't want to say a lot about this right now. and maybe i won't really at all. but it all began to crumble. EXCEPT FOR THE PLACE. the earth here, the bushes, the trees, the gardens. they would change, but GREW. and over the next however many years, his love of drugs made him sick. sicker and sicker. and about 3 years? maybe two? before he died, they, the doctors said he would. they gave that time frame. i think they said 2. he stretched out to be 3. and he finally died. and here i was. am.
daughter lived about 70 miles north. she went back to Michigan with the kids for a while. got married, moved back to about 70 miles north. the kids grew up. and about 4 years ago, she got 2 goats to eat the weeds on her land here. and it all began for her. as her marriage fell apart, she became more and more immersed in Goats, in the dream of creating a real dairy herd. and she began to do that. i'd listen to her for hours talking about it all. i'd go there every few weeks and help. but then awhile ago it became clear that she needed to leave her marriage and she and the Goats went to California where her daughter and grandson were with the Intention of continuing her Dream there. she had transferred in her job but it all fell through and we brought her and these Goats back. I can't tell more of that story, it's not mine, but hers. so i can just tell it from a year ago spring. when the Goats got here. She's working two jobs and in Graduate school. the intention at the moment is when she's finished with graduate school, she will again Set Out for California. She'll take the Goats. Try again. that might be in a year ?
so. there we have it. About How grace Ended Up in Polvadera With Goats. now i'm going to read it all over and see what i think.
