new ax

here are m and m jamming out to "trot old joe", maya's new favorite song. miles is playing his new electric guitar, purchased to keep him busy while rich is gone back east for 9 days. yes, that's no typo. anyone want to come ober and play music? because miles is ready for his band, and he already knows how to play the guitar really really well. this photo was taken at about 7:01 this morning, sorry neighbors, but sometimes you just gotta' rock.

rich is back east and i am feeling deep down sad and angry that i am here. as i type this a plane flies overhead. will i ever fly again? will my kids inherit this phobia? will i ever really understand it? i took a course and got myself on a plane in august of 2002, but then september 11 erased all that cognitive work and filled my susceptible head with images i doubt any course will ever unteach. i just don't want to die in a plane and i want my kids safe with me here on earth. but then there is my dad in a photo paige emailed me today from the east coast, holding my niece isabella whom i haven't yet met, and my brother is lounging on the beach in kuaii and rich is watching borat with his brother and nieces and nephews in DE and i am here. i want to bring everyone close to me but this just doesn't always happen. delware is very very far. i do that thing (the word escapes me, oh yeah, project) when you imagine other people are feeling the way you do and see a little sadness in my dad's eyes, a wish that all his kids were there. i guess next year if i can't fly we will be taking amtrak, hell though that might be. i really miss my dad. and my stepmother and sister. i feel helpless about the phobia, it is so powerful and seems to be growing.

we drove to point arena this weekend, up in mendocino county. we promised our son swim flippers for this trip but then forgot to buy them, and stop at 3 stores on the way, me running through a mall in corte madera to find a flipper store, no luck, the tension mounting in the cramped quarters of our honda civic. i am so touchy, feeling this tension is my fault, why did i not make the flippers happen? why is our son so fixated on promised things and why do we let him be this way? rich is driving and not into all the traffic and unfamiliar strip malls and miles is growing more and more unhappy, he needs his flippers, and traffic is awful. there is a terrible explosion of marital anger and we are stuck together in this little car surrounded by other cars, and miles is yelling "bad man" at his daddy and poor maya is so confused. but soon there is peace and joy, a big 10 sports store and some cheap flippers with a cheap mask. we forgive each other but it is a hard start to the trip.

i forget each time we leave about the huge rocks jutting from the ocean, bits of fog through the sun, gold and green hills, trees everywhere. high on a windy cliff road miles wants to know when we will be in the deep forest. the trees are leaning towards each other, pushed by an invisible wind. little idyllic towns and houses go by us, some perched on cliffs, others nestled into eucalyptus and redwood trees. old farm houses with sagging roofs and endless little buildings, perky white cottages with flowers all around them, architectural wonders vacation homes with huge windows are cathedral ceilings. are we there yet? when will we be in point arena? we will be getting there at bedtime but there is much talk about swimming in the river with the flippers. in gualala, almost there, we stop at a pirate fair. we listen to the half-decent santa rosa rock band and maya shakes it with a 50 year old woman who appears to be tripping, miles jumps in the jumpy castle thing. lots of little blond rough looking kids and mexican familes. turkey legs and bbq'd oysters and a lady pirate with 2 green-eyed parrots on her shoulders. that night we sleep at our friends' house, a cabin built around an airsteam trailer, on a meadow cut out of their 80 acres of land on the ridge. they are in the city. the tree swing floats under a giant tree, the kids are flying, different from the playground swings. the next day we catch grasshoppers, and frogs in the river. thoughts of a mountain lion intrude on my peace. i have a moment at the river like i smoked something, and find myself staring into a tiny pool i have made, at the wet rocks and pebbles colors and shapes outlined by the water, looking for some kind of little treasure. we go to town that night for the july 4th fair. "aren't they beautiful?" asks miles about the fireworks, beaming, and maya says "wowee, wowwee", hiding from the noise in our friends' minivan down at the cove. our party gang up visiting from the city drinks many mojitos and shots of jamisons, childless. i say i will stay out with them but this is not going to happen, and i really just need to sleep anyway.

and later the other scale, the big one, staring and escaping into the huge night sky and constellations as people walk by us with their comments and judgments and miles howls for full 20 minutes about a toy he wanted us to buy him at the fair. we walk up the dark hill road to the car and miles finally stops when a woman says "oh the baby is crying because he wants a toy" and places a fair bought necklace with a blinking light inside around his neck. miles tells us he doesn't like fairs with lots of things for sale that he wants to buy. sometime soon maybe he will see how his greed makes him unhappy. he rides rich's shoulders the rest of the dark way and maya snuggles in the sling. it is cold. couples walk by holding hands. young teenagers play with some roman candles and i feel they don't see us near them somehow, i hold my children tight and close. at the cabin the next m0rning we pack up and argue a little more, this trip is too short, we need some time to really relax. we don't see the mountain lion. maya falls asleep in the car and we sneak out of town without saying goodbye to our friends, no second trip to the river or the dome. it is a long long drive home, more redwoods and coast and wide green rivers,people could never create any landscape this gorgeous, we see deer, we need more of this place. this ocean, this time to look at little pools, chances to catch frogs and polliwogs and grasshoppers in our hands, maybe even a time for rich and i to drink a beer together outside and look at stars with our country friends while the children sleep in what miles says is "no sound at all, but a totoro wind."
goodnight, sleep tight, sweet dreams, you're the best.