Mommies Paradise

Leaving California.  Isn’t that a song?  It should be.

When leaving Southern California, several things will happen.

• The U-Haul trailer one rented will be too small to fit all of one’s meager belongings.  Someone will be forced to decide what is important and what is not.  In the end smaller important items will be shoved into any crack or crevice, such as every stiletto (very important when moving to a farm), a bag of jewelry, and a bed; IKEA mattresses will fold in half if one is very, very determined.

• Those suck-all-the-bedding-and-clothes bags (they rhyme with “pace hags”) will flatten pounds and pounds of sweaters, towels, pillows, sheets, feather beds, and blankets.  Until one puts them in the travel vessel.  At that point each bag will unexpectedly take in air, explode and leave little or no room for anything else. This will make it close to impossible to close one’s trunk AND the door to the too small trailer.  However with perseverance and sweat one can and will shove, slam and sit on things to get them closed.  DAMMIT!

• At least one of three cats will maul one’s face and body in the effort to escape the carrier, and subsequently hide like a master.  Expect to turn around 15 minutes into the trip to retrieve said cat from determined parent/grandparent who does not want the cat.Once the trip is under way one’s child will ask how long this is going to take.  Right about the time you hit traffic.

• If one had any doubt that this move is the right thing to do, know that one will sit in at least three hours of traffic in order to exit the southern portion of California. This may be a reminder of why one is escaping. Consider it a going away present.

• One will discover that the map with the whole trip planned out, is in a box, which was left behind. At this point one will be 20 miles away. In traffic.

• As one does continue to drive through the ugliest parts of the California desert toward the tail of Nevada, also ugly, make note that at the border, California has set up a check-point, going the other direction. These state agents make a point of stopping everyone to make sure they are not bringing in anything/anyone unsavory. Nevada does not. Nor does Arizona or Utah. Later on one understands why.

• One will only make it to Needles, CA on the first day, which was never in the plan. If you have ever been to Needles, you understand why this should never be the plan. Know that this will change the timing of the entire trip.

• Since all three of one’s lunatic cats will spend the entire night howling at one’s face, do not expect to get any sleep on this night.

• After a nice breakfast, tons of coffee and return to the room for departure, do expect to be minus at least one cat. Eventually one will find said cat, hiding underneath the hotel dresser. However, first one will lift up the bed only to make it easy for the fattest of these cats to scuttle under it and also hide. Expect to learn that the maintenance people at hotels are very understanding and helpful. They will move entire beds to remove one’s cat as well as the rest of the furniture to hunt for the final lost feline.

• Approximately 23 minutes after the delayed departure for what will now be a three day trip, the small child sitting next to one will ask if Colorado is next. Not even close sucker.

Next… the Grand Canyon.  Did you know it is the monsoon season Arizona? Me neither.

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My body has become a body I don’t know anymore.  I never dreamed that the flesh and bones I have relied upon to house my mind and keep safe my heart would eventually weaken, soften, lie down. 

I remember this body as a child, when I would swim and swim until the sun went down.  I would push these muscles to cross a lake that always seemed smaller to me than it really was.  But cross it I would.  I would ski the tallest mountain before I was ever ready, because I had no fear that my body would let me down.  I crashed and I laughed and I did it again.  It was strong and able, right with my mind.

As a woman I urged my body to be everything.  Strong, lithe, tight and solid.  Always my safe place.  It carried TVs, couches, and beds up stairs to every walk up I rented. Rooms are always brighter upstairs.  It swayed and shimmied, glided, and sometimes it fled.  It made love and had crazy sex and tingled and shined.  I used it for good and sometimes evil.  It got me jobs and made me money.  It got me past the ropes without invitation.  It stood up to stilettos for hours, then days at a time, sometimes even running to get there on time.  It went out all night and drove for miles at a time.  This body has danced and climbed and stomped.  It rode animals and motorcycles and bikes and skates of all kinds.

I ran for miles, for my life and my mind.  Finding solace in the sound of my feet hitting the ground.  I shopped marathons for things that mean nothing now.  I parked at the back because I felt I should walk it. 

It was everything I needed it to be and only rarely did it try to whisper its losses to me.  It held my baby in my womb, gave birth, and kept that child to my chest, for years on my hip.  It has hugged and wrestled and boxed and kicked.  It has held and wept and laughed until it ached. 

Now it feels broken and cranky and old.  I drive for too long and I can’t walk for a day.  No standing around for me anymore or sitting at a desk or even on the floor. My body won’t shop but for necessities, without sitting to rest aching legs.  With the evil fusion of vertebrae and laminectomy and spinal nerve damage, I was better off before anyone fixed me.  I have always said that I didn’t need to be fixed, but I was always talking about my mind.  My body is no longer mine. Someone took away pieces and moved it around and now I am a statistic with no way to go back.

I am weak, I am fat and I am angry and loose.  My mind is a cannon, an explosion under arrest.  I fight it and fight it, this inability to be me, and then pay for it later in pain.  I refuse to give up or let it define me.  But if I can’t rely on my best weapon then what do I have and who can I be?

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