Reclaiming Arizona

Did you know that I used to live in Arizona?

Some of the people I today consider my closest friends may not even know that. Or they perhaps have only a vague recollection of that fact: an interesting anecdote about their Toronto-based friend. Wife. Mother.

I first stepped on Arizona soil 16 years ago. I was in the middle of a two- month road trip across the United States with a (platonic) male friend. The minute I crossed the state line I felt something special. I felt moved by the red rocks and wild horses and endless sky.

“Life’s too short not to live in Arizona,” I announced to my boyfriend when I got home. He believed me. And for the next year and a half we saved and planned and researched and I dreamed of ancient canyons and blooming sage.

In June of 1994 we sold all of our possessions, jumped into a jeep convertible and started to drive. We had no jobs, no green cards and very little money. When we hit Phoenix five days later I remember being hot, tried and disoriented. But I had never felt more alive.

Carving out a life was hard. The very first night we huddled beneath the sheets in our cheap hotel room when the junkies came banging at the door, cursing and demanding we let them in. The next night a man lighting a crack pipe veered my way and fell into me as I talked to my mother on a pay phone, assuring her that everything was fine.

Eventually it was. We left the first neighborhood within days and found one that was livable. Our apartment cost $390 a month. It was one room with a Murphy Bed and sometimes we would find cockroaches, more than two inches long, that had inexplicably died on our kitchen floor. Once we found a dead scorpion almost twice as large.

We secured illegal jobs right away. I started work as a nanny and tourist guide for two preteen girls that were visiting their divorced father from out-of-state for the summer. My boyfriend hung around in front of a convenience store with Mexicans every day, waiting to be picked up by landscapers who worked him like a dog in the summer sun and paid $7 an hour cash before dropping him off at the end of the day. He always got picked first. He was white.

In the evenings we cooked our food on the barbecue grills found throughout the apartment grounds, swam in the pool and talked about how we’d make our fortune and build a huge hacienda in the desert.

In the fall we moved to a better apartment complex with a bigger pool and more barbecue grills. We joked that we lived at Melrose Place though we had never been so poor. We sold aluminum cans to recycling centers to get by. I got another job as a nanny for a wealthy family with two boys, one biological, one adopted. The adopted one had been abused as a baby and his rage and confusion was destroying the family that was trying to nurture him.

I joined a writer’s group. My boyfriend started playing trumpet for a ska band that quickly became a local sensation.

We had countless visitors from Canada and I beamed with pride as I showed them my Arizona. We visited Flagstaff and Tucson and Tombstone. On weekends we would go camping in the desert.

My best friend Julie who was living in Los Angeles at the time became suddenly, gravely ill. With one day’s notice I drove all night to a hospital in North Hollywood to hold her hand. I thanked God that I was living in Arizona and able to make it just hours before she died.

I lost my job as a nanny when the younger boy I was minding was made a ward of the state after his family determined they couldn’t control his increasingly violent and disturbing behavior. He was ten. I got a new job, baby-sitting for a family who lived in an apartment complex down the street. I admired their neat-as-a-pin surroundings until I learned the mother was a meta-amphetamine addict who cleaned it frantically when high.

I published some articles in the local newspapers. I interviewed two of Canada’s most popular bands Blue Rodeo and The Tragically Hip when they passed through. I organized a Terry Fox Run for cancer research, Arizona’s first. I met a lot of Canadians and reflected on what fine people they were.

I thought about moving back - a lot.

My boyfriend became a minor celebrity when his ska band started to hit it big but their success was nerve-wracking because local white supremacists targeted his racially-integrated band and started to cause trouble at shows. I was tired all the time. I tried to make all his gigs, but I rose at 6 a.m. to begin work. On the nights I couldn’t go, he stayed out later and later. One night he didn’t come home at all.

He knew he loved me but he wasn’t sure he was in love with me anymore. I moped for a few days before announcing I would return home immediately to spend time with my family which appeared to be faltering under its own stresses. I couldn’t hold it together if I stayed and I’d be damned if he’d see me weak and needy. After I left we’d see who loved who. Who needed who.

He drove with me to Vancouver and then snuck back across the border while I continued on to Ontario. I planned to make lots of money all summer and return in the fall, flush and confident. We’d start over.

We drove out of Phoenix in the early evening almost a year to the day after we drove in. As the lights of the city receded behind me I burst into uncontrollable tears. Arizona had been my idea, my dream. Why was I leaving? Why did he get to stay? I hated him. I hated Arizona. My heart was breaking - I think I knew I wasn’t coming back.

We broke up over the phone three and a half weeks after I returned home. I barely noticed. My family was indeed faltering and it was worse than I imagined.

I moved to Toronto. My life over the next year was all about survival and parts of it are still a blur. By 1997 I started to feel like my old self. I got a good job and my family started to heal. I cut off all contact with my ex and put away Arizona out of my mind.

It’s been 13 years since I returned to Canada and I rarely talk about Arizona anymore. Sometimes I talk to Rob in vague terms about returning, about wanting to show him where I lived and laughed and made plans to build my hacienda. But I’ve stopped dreaming about red rocks and wild horses and the mysteries of the desert. I’ve stopped waking with the smell of sage in my nostrils and an unbearable yearning in my chest.

But do you know what the damn difficult thing is about leaving your wildness behind and getting older?

It’s the reduction of youthful experiences and passions to mere anecdotes. It’s the quiet knowledge that however full your life is, there will always be, must always be, roads not traveled, dreams not fulfilled.

It’s being forced to accept that life is long and as a result some parts of you will always be unknowable to the people who love you and call you friend. Wife. Mother.

Satisfying beauty

There’s a hole in my stockings, I just realized. And I have no plans to run out for a new pair.

I’ve been rubbing a dab of lipstick on my cheeks for weeks. Because I have run out of blusher.

I can’t remember the last time I wore nail polish. It seems like so much effort.

And despite the upward creep of the numbers on my scale, I chose a pot of tea and the newspaper over exercise this morning.

I used to be fierce.

I used to take pride in the curve of my hips and the nip of my waist. In the sharp line of my haircut and the smart click of my heels. I used to revel in the power yielded by beauty and youth.

My beauty and youth.

But now it is not my beauty and youth that makes my heart swell.

Now it is his chubby tummy and the delicious way the cuffs of his jeans kiss his stylish sneakers that make me catch my breath. Now my yearning for the divine is satiated by lilt of his eyelashes and the exquisite hazel hue of his eyes.

And it is enough.

There’s a hole in my stocking, I have lipstick on my cheeks, my nails are bare and my tea is beckoning.

And that’s more than good enough, right now.

Right now.

Growing pains

When I was at work earlier today I was struck how much I miss Graham.

Not because I was at work and he was being cared for by someone else: I’m perfectly content to be a working mom.

My heart ached with yearning today because my gaze lingered too long on this photo I keep at my desk.

And I was suddenly struck by the fact that I will never, ever see that darling baby again.

As parents we are accustomed to lamenting the passage of time and the rate at which our children grow. From the moment pregnancy is confirmed we are admonished to savor every moment because it will all pass in the blink of an eye.

But no matter how much people warn you, it is impossible to prepare yourself for the intensity of parenting.

It is impossible to imagine how inexplicably moved you will feel by the mere passage of time. It is impossible to imagine the heartbreak of watching the babies and children you love disappear day after day and night after night.

Not that their replacements aren’t some consolation: I love my tall and gangly 28-and-a-half-month-old every bit as much as I loved that squat and chubby 11-month-old.

But I miss that baby.

And I miss this one.

And this one.

And this one

And I never cease to be amazed at the exquisite mix of love and heartbreak and yearning that comes along with parenting.

And at the way, an old photo, stuck in a goofy frame at work, can make me feel so unbearably happy and proud and sad at the same time.

I think he knows

I told him over and over again that it was just a haircut.

I told him that it wouldn't hurt a bit. That he would look so handsome afterwards. That I would give him a lollipop when it was all over.

And still he protested mightily, whimpering and clinging to me the whole time. It wasn't a furious scene like last time, thank goodness. There was no screaming or flailing or streaming tears.

But there was tension and muted murmurs of protest, as if he knew something that we adults don't like to think about.

As if he knew exactly what these photographs prove: that with each lock of hair shorn a piece of his sweet babyhood falls away and flutters irretrievably into the past.

The revolution will be slow

The older I get, the more responsibilities I have.

The more responsibilities I have, the more pressed for time I become.

And so it logically follows that because I’m in such a hurry, I am slower and more meticulous than I’ve ever been before.

It’s not that advanced aged has slowed me down, it’s just that if there’s one thing I don’t have time for as an adult, it’s an avoidable hassle.

Avoidable hassles include things like inconsequential fender benders that eat up precious hours, banking mistakes and unpaid parking tickets that must be amended in person, hastily purchased items that must be returned and even keys that take ages to find after they are casually tossed aside.

When I was young there was something almost romantic about lurching from one glorious hassle to the next. Stumbling blindly through life and dealing with whatever consequences I couldn’t avoid at the last possible moment made me feel like a free spirit, operating above the silly conventions that bound all the pitiable grown-up wage slaves out there.

Parking tickets were tossed out with a flourish and disappeared into the ether and bills were paid in my own good time. Regular automobile maintenance struck me as bourgeois and filing my taxes on time? Wasn’t that just admitting that I was working for The Man?

Unfortunately it took many years before I realized that being a Bohemian in the moment means sacrificing huge amounts of time, energy and money in the future. With the onset of maturity came the sobering revelation that each and every one of us has to deal with The Man. Unless you plan to live in a hut somewhere and forage nuts and berries, you will be forced to play along with most of society’s rules and ignoring them does not make them go away.

I have learned, in fact, that quite the opposite is true. You have to learn the rules before you can break or bend them and that’s why each passing day I find myself becoming more careful and more meticulous. I’m not acquiescing to the The Man, I’m figuring him out: he’s a necessary evil and dealing with him in the proper fashion the first time will limit future exposure.

My own small rebellions these days look very different from those I staged in the past. I used to throw away parking tickets: today I avoid them by not only paying for parking, but using my credit card to do so, even if it’s only $1. Why should I scramble for change when I could be earning points?

I used to drive like a maniac and never worry about whether my car would break down until it inevitably did at the worst possible time: now I creep serenely past cars that have ended up in the ditch during snow storms, secure in my reliable and well-maintained vehicle.

I used to wait ages to file my taxes and not have a clue what I was doing. Now I make sure they are filed promptly and in a manner that ensures no government bureaucracy will ever benefit from my procrastination or ignorance.

In the past I waited way too long to pay my bills and ignored the resulting calls I got from financial institutions. Now I pay promptly and accept the bank’s ridiculously low introductory interest rate offer. What can I say? I get an illicit thrill from enjoying their money at 1%, reading all the fine print and then paying it back at the last possible second to avoid fees: it’s called beating The Man at his own game.

I have learned that The Man gets ever-more rich and powerful on the backs of silly young Bohemians who think they’re being rebellious by rushing through life and racking up charges on unpaid bills and parking tickets they’ve ignored.

I have learned that bureaucratic insurance companies prosper thanks to fast and careless drivers and fat-cat retailers will continue to flourish until we all slow down and think about which products really provide value for our money.

So those young Turks out there charging about can roll their eyes all they want as they race by me on the freeway of life.

Because my time is way too precious for me to be in a hurry.

Passages

We could barely afford this house but we bought it anyway, not least because we imagined all the wonderful parties we could host here.

It was at a party, after all, where we met and the music blared and all the promise and mystery of life seemed hidden in the songs, brash and uncompromising, to which we sang along.

Brash and uncompromising; that was us. Drawn together by a love of fun, a reverence for music and just a touch of wildness.

This room would be perfect, we decided. Room for guitars and drums and keyboards to play. And microphones and even a recording system, Rob joked, to capture jams for posterity: what if Collective Soul dropped by one day?

Or White Stripes, I concurred. And we laughed because we both knew it would be our family and friends who would gather here to laugh and make music and that would be enough.



And it was enough. And magic happened here: when a keyboardist for a country music group and an amateur rapper – friends of friends –– collaborated and when Rob’s long defunct punk band reunited to rehearse the songs they would perform at our wedding.

And then Graham was born and our life expanded. And we sang to him and danced with him and perched him on our knee at the keyboards and behind the drums.


But it happened that his toys got bigger and bigger and our toys sat unused for days and weeks and months even. And it hardly seemed fair that our past should be allowed to crowd out his present.

And so for the past week, mostly as Graham and I slept, Rob has worked down here, not disposing of the past, but prioritizing it, rearranging it, moving it to the sidelines and making way for our son’s future.

It is written that a boy becomes a man when he puts away childish things and yet it seems to me in this modern world, where age is just a number and adulthood a playground and men stay boys for far too long, quite the opposite is true.

It seems to me that a boy truly becomes a man, and a girl a woman, when they finally focus their full attention on childish things and in doing so, give the next generation its own space to play and laugh and explore their passion.

Learning to face the music

A few weeks ago I did something that would have mortified my teen-aged self.

I listed as one of my favorites, a song performed by a *gasp* country music group.

It was in this post in which I responded to a Crazy Eights meme by revealing eight songs I could listen to over and over. One of them: Landslide by the Dixie Chicks.

Now that might not seem like a shocking or mortifying admission to you, but for me it was a big deal indeed. It meant I was finally free of the notion that my social status and my very worth as a human being was inextricably linked to the genre of music to which I listened: yes, aging does have its advantages.

I grew up in a tiny village north of Toronto where many teenagers, including me, spent their formative years dreaming of bright lights and the big city. In our eyes, the more you disdained small town life, the more likely you were destined for something better. And in our small town country music ruled, therefore hatred of it was automatic and unwavering.

No matter where you grew up you'll probably agree that the genre of music you listened to during high school and the years following was a powerful way to establish your identity. Professing a love of a certain type of music and becoming knowledgable about it was like slipping on a pre-fabricated identity that clearly said to others: this is what I value, this is whom I am.

For a lot of high school I adopted a hyper-preppy persona in honour of a girl a few years older than me who I thought was the coolest thing to walk the planet. ( Echo and the Bunnymen or Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, anyone?). In my senior years, I became more comfortable in my own skin, settling into an image of myself as a rebel, rocker chick who naturally favored Led Zeppelin and Ozzy Osbourne.

When I set off for university I hit the road for a city five hours distant with a massive beat-up pickup truck and a finely-honed rocker babe persona. I blasted Guns and Roses and Metallica all the way there and my arrival caused a minor sensation among the girls I was rooming with.

Even into my 20s music continued to define me and the people I surrounded myself with. The coolest of the cool guys were always up on the hottest indie bands and their preferred mode of seduction was an invitation back to their place to hear the obscure Icelandic export they had excavated from some dingy, alternative record shop off Yonge Street.

I'm not exactly sure when the music itself started to become more important than what the music represented. I remember having a revelation about seven years ago when Rob and I crowded into a small downtown club during the North by North East music festival. It had been a while since we'd made an effort to check out the latest thing and I had it on good authority that the band playing that night had the hipster stamp of approval.

We had a few years on most of the brooding, street-wise crowd in the dark, smoke-filled room (yes, you could still smoke in bars back then) but I was flush with excitement and convinced we fit in just fine.

Until the music started.

A few minutes passed before we realized it wasn't a sound check we were hearing. When the singer started shrieking the third song in atonal Japanese we exchanged a long glance.

"Let's get the hell outta here," Rob said. "This is crap."

Ten-dollar cover charge be damned, we headed for the door where the oh-so-young and stylin' guy at the door smirked dismissively. Rob looked him right in the eye.

"Buddy," he said. "I know music. This is just crap."

As good as it felt to walk out that door, I felt a little sad later. I felt sad because I knew I was walking away from a crutch that I had relied on almost all my life. In saying that I was mature enough to discern whether I actually enjoyed the music the cool kids were listening to, I was walking away from that gloriously, youthful part of myself that would happily be swept up in the excitement of the next big thing.

I am now officially too old to be swept unthinkingly away by music or anything else just because I aspire to be the type of person associated with it.

In fact, very little can sweep me away these days - I'm too strong. I have roots and a foundation. Perspective. A unapologetic sense of what I like and what I don't.

I like the Dixie Chicks. I love the White Stripes. I also like Jamiriqui, Jimmy Buffet, Eminem, Stevie Wonder, Blink 182, Green Day, the Dance Hall Crashers and a hundred other great musicians and bands from every genre.

But I do not like atonal Japanese poseurs. That's just crap.

*Cross-posted in Shooting for Hip at Mommyblogstoronto. Have you checked out that site yet? It's got tons of great stuff. Go look. Go on - Git!*