pretending

08/02/2016

pretending

so the month of July has passed. July...Monsoon they are synonymous in N Mex. This year, not. There was ONE rain....the 4th of July.

Every day almost there is commotion over there at the Rim, late afternoon usually, all manner of dark clouds with brilliant white outlines, Thunder, lightning, Wind picking up pushing and pulling trees, bushes and plants, hard. Throwing sand, knocking things over. There's not so much electrical storms in California, so at first the kids were afraid. I was outside doing something, came in to find them huddled in the bathroom because they'd been told that it was the safest place. I told them it really didn't matter, in this tin house, that there really wasn't any safe place not even outside. But that we don't have tornadoes here or earthquakes, normally, so we could just watch the Storm and wonder at it. I told them about the mammary clouds, how they portend the worst, and after a couple days, we'd go outside to look for them. We watched the Goats, how they simply continued doing whatever it was they wanted to be doing and we sat with them. Let them teach us.

But it never rained. That once on the fourth, we were in town, in Socorro at the celebration there and there was no rain there, only on the way home did we see the arroyos running across the roads, how the road here was a river running. But it was over by then. No rain on our skin.

Somewhere along the line i asked them if they had an understanding of the words Climate Change. Destiny responded emphatically that they "save the hard stuff for third grade". Neither of them are there yet and i let that be a sign, to leave it alone. In three weeks there's not enough time for "the hard stuff". But as time passed, i told them things about how things ordinarily are here in the 20 some years i've lived here, how it was in the beginning when i came. Showed them pictures. Told them about Monsoon and why it matters. Driving around we looked at the desert landscape and talked about how everything we saw was dependent on Monsoon rain. We looked at how they stand, waiting, conserving, all the bushes, Grasses, scrub trees, waiting for water from the sky.

I told them how this Place is really, artificial. We looked at the picture again of how it was in the beginning, and that it was only because i planted things and give water that things came to want to Gather here. To thrive. Next to the Goats, they loved the toads, at first wanting to uhhh, interact with them and i was clear that they were not to. That they could squat as close as they could get, that if one seemed ok about it, they could touch it lightly with one fingertip but no more. That everything here is No More and No Less than one another. Toads, ants, bees, beetles, spiders even the centipedes that would show up sometimes in the places they played. No Kill. No Disturb, even. Stand back and see how they run to safety.

On the night when we were all sitting outside in the dark, when Alyssia had come with Jeff and Fate

and the other adult who is too complicated to explain her connection, sitting under the old apricot tree, Destiny called out that she'd found the first toad of the evening and Lisa, the other adult said

"Grab it! Bring it here so i can see it!"

Julian's voice came from the dark.....quietly Sure: "We don't do that here".

So, we did some fun stuff, but not a lot. Mostly we just were here, like everything else. The fact that every day the temperature hovered around 100 degrees was limiting. The fact of Destiny's ADHD was limiting in that things i'd though we would do didn't happen. No sitting drawing and making books. No sewing more than a stitch or two. No sitting working on reading, looking at the National Geographics for making collage. But they DID spend hours "making worlds". There are so many holes and tunnels and piles of dirt and sticks out there, and Tay helped.

and they're gone now. just a little over a week and i have had so many feelings. Truth is, if i didn't have children i would be happy as a clam to live out my time here, to continue with all i started on and on for the rest of my time. But i do have children. And there's a lot they don't know. Will never know maybe, about how life can be lived. You have to have patience for that and i think be Old or they can't hear you. You have to tell them by telling stories. Your own stories about when you were their age. You have to let them see you stand up to and disagree with other adults.

if things go how it seems they will go, soon enough, my daughter Jenny will come for her Goats. She will have found land there. It will be enough land so that if it goes that way, Alyssia and her kids can live a couple acres over. and somewhere in the acres over, the old nana can live and be of use. I have wandered around since they are gone, wandered in my quiet, wandered in my solitude, and asked that old question that has always been with me since a child....about Purpose and Use. It seems to be answering its self. And not being much for Pretending, i won't. I wish they all would come in this direction. Then i could have both worlds. But they won't and and over time, when it's time, i will defer. This isn't a Happiness in the moment. and i have been kind of stuck in the whatever it is that isn't Happiness for this last week, but looking this morning at Jude's post, the combination of forms and colors in the last pic there, i commented that it somehow acted as a Reset button for me and i felt things shift. I went Out Side and sat looking while the hose dripped in to the Three Leaf Sumac and thought how during The Time Now, i will make things as self reliant as i can. Will work to make swales and places where no matter what comes, things can find shelter as best they can. And i will draw pictures and write and make a book of this place to take with me, so when i tell them stuff, i can show them its pages. pages that will have dates on them, dates of real days. That followed when they were here.