Another free offering from the vault! I wrote this Horse Fly column in January, 2004, after a Christmas visit from my wife, who had moved from Taos to Dubuque, Iowa six months before.
Were we “separated”? Well, yes, but not for any simple reason of relationship breakdown. It was a complex mix of each of us needing some time off from pushing each other’s buttons and the very real need for financial survival. She had a job (of sorts) waiting in Dubuque and an elderly mother in assisted living who was fading fast. This was absolutely the worst time of my life, and it lasted nearly three long years, during which I experienced every kind of emotion imaginable, especially the evil ones. I think this column gives a good idea of what it felt like then, and reading it over just now made me feel like hell! Have a look and see what you think, and if you’re in a similar fix, remember that we did get back together, thank you Jesus. (I think you can kinda get the feeling from the column that we would…)
Island
Love and hope in the midst of madness …
Six months since I’d held the woman I love and no decent place to meet her in the Albuquerque airport, its charm extinguished by mazes of security barriers and no access to the gates. I wasn’t scared, but somebody sure was. (Not the governor up in Santa Fe, thank you Jesus, who’d responded to Washington’s call for troops in airports by sending all of six National Guardsmen, more than enough to deal with any poor bastard who forgot to dump his nail clippers before getting on a plane.) All I wanted was a little privacy to greet my wife, but had to settle for standing in an empty spot as close to the restricted arrival entryway as possible. I didn’t want the whole world to see me lose it, if that’s what went down. It did, of course.
Six months is a long time, and I was simply overwhelmed: “You look so beautiful … ” I knew, but I was still astonished. We hugged so hard I thought I’d break her bones, and then an earthquake hit my chest: “I didn’t know if I would ever see you again,” I spoke from deep inside a throat that barely worked and held her till the shaking stopped.
I can’t recall much of the first leg of our journey north to Taos, but she wanted to stop off at the Santuario in Chimayo, and I do remember that. It’s always been a kind of pilgrimage for us, to sit quietly a while inside and feel the peace. This time there were free candles for people to take, and I watched a biker with a braided ponytail kneel and pray for what seemed to be forever. We stepped slowly past the altar to dig our fingers into holy dirt, then walked outside. It wasn’t cold, and there was water in the acequia.
Afterwards we ate tamales at Leona’s. The forecast snow was nowhere to be seen, so we decided to take the High Road back instead of fighting traffic in the canyon. Blue skies and sunshine framed the stunning vistas as we headed up to Truchas and beyond. Everything was beautiful, especially the horses. (What is it that makes New Mexico horses look so good, standing in a winter pasture?) “I know a lot more about these little mountain villages than I did before we left Maryland,” she sighed as we drove past eclectic adobe homesteads, old dead cars in muddy yards, and trailers with tires on the roofs. Eventually the road curved down from the jaw-dropping view of the final pass and sent us into Talpa. A short detour past the triple-murder Mustang gas to buy some milk, another mile to my own neighborhood, and there we were: reunion with the kittycat, birdies at sunset, a fire in the kiva, exploring my funky old adobe, and getting re-acquainted. We didn’t go out for dinner, either.
In the days before her arrival, I’d moved beyond nervous to inhabit a realm devoid of thought or expectation. Even though we did and didn’t do a lot of things over the next two weeks, the condition persisted. I’m used to staying up quite late, but almost every night when she pulled the covers around her neck to settle down to sleep, I found little else to do that made much sense. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t think. I must have wanted time to freeze, and freeze it did.
Two weeks later we drove back down to Albuquerque. This time the girl who bravely eulogized her father without a single sob shed tears because she found it hard to leave, and we waved at least three times before she disappeared on her way to being stranded in Chicago by the snow.
It’s January now, and I wake up late in Llano with the cat across my legs.
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