Leave the pomp and circumstance behind, and take a walk on the wild side with Christie

I just returned from my first visit to the UK in five years. Nothing much has changed as far as I could tell. The nation was a bit tired from celebrating Kate and Wills wedding bash, but most seemed to agree it was a superb demonstration of British pomp with a liberal dash of the moderne. The unexpected day off courtesy of more PR conscious royals and a wobbly coalition government cheered the nation; and everyone was appreciative of Beatrice and Eugenie’s efforts to incorporate vaudeville into the day.

Clever Cat, who is about to visit the Sceptered Isles herself, asked if I saw any theatre during my trip. Hah! I visited my family. Now honestly, isn’t a visit with your family the best theatre ticket in town? Comedy, drama, mystery, it’s all there. Not that my family is any different from anyone else’s; a group of people thrown together through biology and desire, well-practiced in their eccentricities.

I spent a glorious few days with my sister in her new Cornish home. I really envy her retired life with all the conveniences and benefits of a social welfare system that is ailing but not yet dead. Baby boomers across the Pond are quietly enjoying their “golden” years trying not to feel too badly that they are probably the last generation to experience these joys.

My sister and I indulged in our favourite pastime, walking and talking. We set off on Monday morning to stroll a cliff-top footpath along the gorgeous Cornish coast. As we arrived in the parking lot, a threatening black cloud appeared. The attendant noted the impending storm and asked if we had waterproof trousers. My sister keeps hers in the boot (trunk) of her car as naturally as I keep an extra quart of oil in mine. The attendant immediately lent me his. Instead of seeking shelter, we set off. Still within sight of the car the storm hit. Rain pelted us in the face, wind ripped at our clothing, but we braced and struggled forward like abandoned women in a silent movie. My sister never wears hats and her hair was plastered into unflattering clumps and swirls. I turned into a menacing creature with two hoods tightly squeezing my ruddy face into gruesome contortion, the too-large waterproof trousers pulled up high were flapping and snapping like the sails on a shipwrecked yacht.

The tempest finally blew through and we continued our journey. From the looks we received from other walkers we must have resembled aging prisoners on work release who had given their guard the slip, English people pretend never to care about what other people think but engage in behaviour that is guaranteed to cause comment. We met the enquiring stares of the less foolhardy with insouciance, calling cheery “Hellos” as they hurried past us muttering.

I am as much a visitor in England as any other American; I have been gone too long to think of myself as “native.” But, I find it remarkable how easily I slip back into my Britness. My language becomes more pithy, my humour more acute. I am a big admirer of the English broadcaster and writer, Clive James. He has coined some of the most devastating comments on things and personages I have ever read. For example, he once wrote that Arnold Schwarzenegger looked like “a condom filled with walnuts.”

I may have more to write about my visit as this by no means captures all my adventures and experiences. I hope you will indulge me.

Prudence Baird paints a picture of mother and daughter—in roles rarely revealed

Two figures move as one under a hot January sun across the steaming asphalt of a medical building parking lot. This is the kind of day that brings hordes of winter refugees west following the televised New Year’s Day Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.

One of the figures is a frail old woman collapsed in a transporter wheelchair—a conveyance with four small wheels, made for transferring from place-to-place those whose self-propelling days are history. The other is a middle-aged stick figure; her veiny hands grasp the heavy rubber handles of the transporter, pushing her load gently in the unseasonably warm mid-morning air.

When the conjoined pair reaches an unwashed silver Volvo, the ambulatory woman expertly backs the transporter into the space alongside the passenger side of the car and stops. The middle aged woman—who, if you haven’t guessed by now, is me—rummages for her keys in a worn black backpack hanging by the handles of the conveyance.

A click of the medallion, and a few moments later, my mother, for that is the skeletal old woman in the transporter, is expertly pivoted and strapped into the front seat. Because of the heat, I leave the door open wide while, in an oft-rehearsed routine, I roll the transporter to the rear of the car, open the trunk gate, kneel to swivel and unhook the removable foot pads, unlock the frame, and collapse the chair into a manageable 12-pound package of chrome steel, rubber and vinyl, ready to be loaded into the trunk.

While hoisting the chair, a shiny new maroon Cadillac Seville with tinted windows pulls alongside. The passenger side window silently descends and a tawny faced woman of about 60 leans across the gleaming leather front seat. Her hair, a shade of orange unknown to nature, sticks up in unraveling, dehydrated curlish clumps and her red nails rap nervously on the steering wheel.

“Is that your mother?” she demands.

I nod, wiping a trickle of sweat from under the nose bridge of my sunglasses.

“How long have you been doing this?” she jerks her head in the direction of the chair now on its side in my trunk. We both know what she means.

I pause, counting not the years, but instead seeing multiple images unfold, all etched in needle-sharp pricks against the backdrop of my forties. And with each piercing, I feel again the juice of vitality bleed from my veins, leaving me a pale shadow of the apple-cheeked woman I had been at 40.

Although I know that each moment of maternal care and gentle handling scoops from my life a nourishing drink I would rather bestow on my children, my husband and myself, I cannot stop myself from giving. Each smiling moment and lingering touch, whether a softly delivered sponge-bath or an outing to the pet store to hold small animals, crafts black moments when I am neither wife nor mother, but caregiver to a departed woman who lovingly, distractedly and, at times, somewhat misguidedly, raised me and whose ghostly, guilty presence is more of a draw and more of a drain than anyone who has not been here can understand.

“Five years,” I reply in a mechanical voice, suppressing whatever feeling might come with the confession that I have let pass five crucial years of my children’s lives while the unforgiving and ungrateful chasm of my mother’s need has grown wider and wider still.

The rear window of the Cadillac now descends revealing an equally orangish, shriveled crone, her mouth agape, strapped into the back seat. Her sunken cheeks are crisscrossed with lines and her eyes have a frantic wildness I see in my mother’s.

As we near death, I wonder, do we try to see it coming with these widened eyes? Or are those bulging eyeballs simply more evidence of the gruesome, drip-by-drip drain that empties our corporeal vessel, rendering improbable—to those who meet us in these last stages of our lives—the very idea that we were once full-bodied, beguiling maidens whose organs, hard parts and soft orbs were suspended in a fertile sea?

The driver jerks her head towards the withered woman in the back seat. “Ten years!” She gasps, looking at me in horror. “Ten years!”

I stare into the car’s interior, not sure if a shadow of pain doesn’t flit across the parchmentlike forehead and yellowed sclera of the elder figure in the back seat. Silently as they descended, the windows rise together and the two orange women are gone with a screech of wheels on the hot pavement.

I close the trunk, open the driver’s side door, lean inside, start the engine and air conditioner. My mother looks at me, silent as usual but her eyes hold a question I dare not answer. I squeeze her bony elbow, “Somebody just asking a question, Mom.”

I trot around the front of the vehicle so that, if she wishes to, my mother can see me and not fear that I’ve again abandoned her. I lean inside, making some inconsequential last adjustments of her seat belt. I smile into the face of the person I first loved and whose life was devoted to me, my two sisters and her husband.

“Hi Momma,” I coo, trying to make up to her for a world of wrongs and hurts that have long been relegated to her own forgotten history. A pair of bloodshot light blue eyes follow me and a faint smile plays across lips thinned by age.

Just as they couldn’t send us, when we were incorrigible teenagers, to Moscow with a note pinned on our sweaters, we cannot now abandon those who gave us life but who, in their decrepitude, puncture our very beings with unquenchable need.

I cannot but give, even though the very act robs me and my family of breath. All is forgiven, Mama, I whisper to myself, as I fasten my own seatbelt. And I wonder as we head home, when the hourglass turns, will those who render my care forgive me as well?

For Prudence Baird, dusty eggs, puppy love, and baby crack make a wicked brew with the potential for world peace

When our Irish twins*, born a mere 22 months apart, reached toddlerhood, my husband reports that I got that misty-eyed look that says, “I’ll trade you a month of blow jobs for another baby.” Able to see the writing on the wall (much of it in red ink), my intrepid partner did what most sensible men would do—he rushed out and got himself a vasectomy.

Even so, I hoped and wished for another child. With my breastfeeding years fast receding to the realm of “remember when” and sentimental boo-hoo sessions alone in my room, having a third child became my holy grail, my Turkish delight, my must-see TV.

I refused to pass along cherished baby clothes. I squirreled away cutsie bibs and blankies. Intuitively, I knew that as long as my ovaries were pumping out eggs, there was a chance—even if it meant reattaching my husband’s pipes myself using an emery board and tweezers.

Now, thanks to new research, I realize I wasn’t insane any more than Tiger Woods, David Duchovny or Eliot Spitzer are. No, I wasn’t nuts—I was an addict. I was hooked on oxytocin.

Also known as baby crack, oxytocin is the hormone released in pregnancy, orgasm and most titillating, when nipples are stimulated—a key component of breastfeeding.

Oxytocin plays a big role in all things tender and maternal: from fertility and bonding, to trust and love. Of course, baby crack is not the only one reason we mothers love our babies, but oxytocin certainly plays a central role in our willingness to undergo childbirth more than once. Like a good dose of morphine, baby crack makes all of life’s boo-boos go bye-bye.

But eventually, my jones for mo’ baby crack waned along with my fertility. I resigned myself to going through the boys’ teenage years with only memories of adoring glances, small arms reaching for a hug, and wee hands wriggling themselves into mine.

Following the advice of Nora Ephron, who encourages parents of teenagers to get a puppy so that at least one creature in the house will love them, we acquired Eddy, a nine-week-old Welsh terrier, all sweet-smelling puppy fur and alimentary canal functions. As he squirmed in my arms, his big brown eyes adored me. His wet nose nuzzled me. At night, he slept pressed against my body.

And then, hullo! I felt the stirrings of my old friend, oxytocin. How else could I explain the sudden, shall we say, slip-n-slide qualities of my naughty bits?

“Nope!” laughed my doctor, “Your eggs are dust!” She scheduled an ultra-sound anyway, offhandedly remarking that sometimes these symptoms could be explained by cancer.

The next day in radiology, I noticed that the technician seemed to avoid my eyes as she carefully cleaned the wand of KY jelly and handed me a towel.

I gulped. “Did you see, uh, anything?”

She answered with a question, “When did you say your last period was?”

“August, 2007.”

“Interesting,” she said.

“Just tell me,” I pleaded, skipping ahead to the worse case scenario—having to rush home and finish my 2009 taxes before I succumbed.

“I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but you have several mature egg follicles. Three on each ovary. You should definitely use birth control.”

I left the hospital in a daze. In the dead of winter, literal and figurative, my ovaries flowered for one last time in a grande finale session brought on, no doubt, by the oxytocin generated by puppy love.

New studies point to oxytocin’s ability to help individuals form intimate relationships, feel at peace and care for one another, which is why some doctors are prescribing it to their patients with autism. Why spend hundreds of hours teaching rudimentary, robotic greetings to children who fail to thrive socially when you can get them to care about—to empathize with—their fellow human beings?

And why not take it one step further? Why are we dropping bombs from drones when we might achieve more by spraying our so-called enemies with oxytocin? If dusty eggs can suddenly spring back to life in the presence of puppy love, why can’t we make love and not war America’s chief export?

Is anyone with me on this? Baby crack for everyone! (Let’s start with Dick and Liz Cheney.)

*Children born on each other’s heels are called “Irish twins” and are not only an Irish phenomenon, but a result of marrying at an advanced age on the cusp of menopause.

Ana June is a family and child photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The photo of a very happy little Quinn Densmore, has been used to promote breastfeeding in several countries.

Photo by M.A. Howden

In the waning days of summer, Melissa Howden ponders the markers of time.

I heard on the radio today that here in Northern New Mexico we always know school will be starting when the sunflowers bloom. Sure enough the sunflowers are at their peak, and the school buses just started rolling.

As a child my seasons were pretty much “school” and “summer”. I happened to be a child who liked school, but I also loved summer. Now as an adult who does not have children, thus the markers of the beginning and the end of the school year—my seasons tend to mush together which in some ways I think creates the sensation of time speeding up.

I do find myself longing for more specific touchstones in the year. Recently I visited my niece and nephew. The days of my visit coincided the last days Emily’s summer. As a result I was gifted with some summer nostalgia as we lolled about in the swimming pool eating popsicles, and picked out new tennis shoes for school (in this case we designed high tops online). Emily went back and forth to the neighbors Slip n’ Slide and sleepovers, squeezing one in for each remaining day of the summer. But even as we slept in, and went for mani-pedis, the lazy days of summer were being squeezed out with the start of soccer practice and the posting of her class lists and teacher assignments coming hand-in-hand with the promise of early mornings, car pooling and homework.

I must admit that I frequently long for the kind of life organization imposed by the seasons of school and summer. I’m kind of a free-form gal, and while that has its benefits it is also sometimes a little too random for comfort.

Living, as I now do, in a place with four distinct seasons, I have more benchmarks to rely on. Having been here almost for one full cycle of seasons, I can depend on a few things:

Winter: crisp and cold, lots of snow and the scent of piñón and cedar fires.
Spring: wildly fluctuating temperatures, lilacs and mud. The mud is guaranteed.
Summer: Heat, bugs (the bugs are guaranteed), afternoon thunderstorms, farmer’s markets, and outdoor concerts.
Fall: Changing light, warm days, cool nights, sweet corn, apples and the scent of roasting green chile in the air.

And at the turn from summer to fall, it seems I have apricots. Lots and lots of apricots!

This past weekend my new friend Ken instructed me in the art of making apricot jam. Ken is a Southerner from Alabama who travels with a fruit picker and a tarp in his car, just in case he comes across a tree or two begging to be picked. Ken makes excellent jam. To wit, Ken arrived on Sunday afternoon with his picker and tarp and we gathered apricots. Later, we toured my other fruit trees and planned what to do with all the apples (the apples have to be picked right after the first freeze, something about the sugars). In the meantime, my GF indulged us with her own seasonal marker, her famous “once a year home-made chile rellenos”.

While I don’t need new tennis shoes or notebooks, it seems I do need jam jars and a fruit picker! Today apricot jam, next weekend raspberry. And after the first freeze there will be apple pies, chutney and butter. Seemingly my free-form days are over, Mother Nature is imposing her own kind of organization. I’m hearing the all to familiar refrain of “be careful what you ask for!” Send recipes!

Connie Stetson muses on friends and relations, relatively speaking.

Not to speak ill of relatives, of course, but Euripedes got that right. I’m grateful that my sister and have become good friends, and I’m glad I only have one sister to work my shit out with, but we never had a choice. It’s the combo-pack with family. For good or ill, with deeper issues to work out, old wounds to mend; we’re all so invested in the story we made up about when we were kids that it’s nearly impossible to show up as changed, or better, or over that, ya know?

Ah, but our friends… To be able to say to someone, “I absolutely support your change and growth, but you never have to change for me to love you.” Knowing that there are a select few out there who hear your truth and your inconsistencies, and you theirs, is a mighty, mighty force indeed. To allow a dear friend, in all loving honesty to say, “your ass looks like a giant bag of potatoes in those pants, take them off now!” To stand with a friend as she walks through loss, illness, change and all of the boundless joyful stuff too—well, this is what helps keeps me anchored.

Susan Sarandon said on Oprah, “ We marry so that we have someone to witness our lives.” I really like that. But, I think that’s a truer statement about our deeply abiding life-long friendships (as marriage ideally should be, of course). At this point, I’ve witnessed my friends’ marriages and divorces, even their kids’ divorces. So as a witness, friendship wins.

I have often fantasized with my long-time girlfriends about when we’re ancient and finally in “the home”, rocking on the porch at twilight with our martinis, cats in our laps, dogs at our feet, laughing and teasing each other over the follies of our youth, maybe looking over some old photo albums, the tears of laughter streaming down our cheeks—I can almost not wait to get there.

I’m not sure I have adequate words to express what I’ve come to feel in my midlife about loyalty, forgiveness, indulgence, support and true unqualified love, for me the very definition of friendship, but here are a few quotes from wiser friends than I:

“A true friend stabs you in the front”—Oscar Wilde
“The best mirror is an old friend”—George Herbert
“A friend is someone who knows all about you and loves you anyway” —Proverb
“A real friend is one who walks in just as the rest of the world walks out” —Walter Winchell

And the one I like the very best:

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words.”

Don’t know who said it, but I’m glad to know that a handful of people have memorized my heart song and are out there singing loud and strong. I love you all, my dear, dear friends.