Tag: Fiction

The Bucket List

The Bucket List

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For the longest time she added things to her bucket list: skydive, participate in the Polar Plunge, visit Italy. The list got longer and longer. It was a good list. She felt good about it and would periodically review it to ensure the things on it hadn’t yet been completed, (they never had and the only thing crossed off was a joke), and that the things on it were still things she wanted to see and do. She was confident that an ever growing bucket list meant she was not only a fascinating person with passionate aspirations but also that she couldn’t possibly die because she simply had too much to accomplish.

The Bucket List began as a sort of joke after her grandmother died, still very young, of lung cancer after having never smoked a cigarette or worked in a coal mine in her life. Her mother, flippant as always, expressed sadness at her own mother’s passing but more so at the fact that her life had been so uneventful. “Life isn’t meant to be wasted, darling,” she’d said to her daughter, “one ought to have a list of dreams.” And so the birth of The Bucket List.

She’d continued to add to the list as she heard of clever adventures or unusual events. And as she got a little older the list grew older too, but never shorter. And then one day her own mother died, an unexpected heart attack as the woman was in fine fiddle and not in any risk groups unless you count her own mother’s genetic predisposition to lung cancer. Her own mother. What was she to do with that. There was no one at the funeral to tell her what a shame it was. And it was. She realized she’d never heard her mother’s list of dreams and had no idea whether or not she’d achieved them.

“Life isn’t meant to be wasted, Mother,” she said quietly over the open pit, the coffin already lowered down, “I’m going to fulfill my list of dreams.” She threw in a handful of frozen dirt, turned on her heel, and walked purposefully to her car. She sat in the drivers seat for a moment, letting the car warm up, her list in her hand. The easiest item to accomplish was the first one and with that she drove to the closest gas station.

It took her a moment to get the match lit, not being accustomed to cheap matchbooks and her hands shaking from the cold, but when the match fwished into fire she smiled and brought it up to the cigarette clamped between her teeth. Nothing much happened until she decided to take a puff and then suddenly the cigarette was lit, there was a cloud of ash in her mouth, and she began to cough. Tears streaming from her eyes she finally managed to get the coughing under control and looked at the cigarette. It was still lit, a little grey line of ashes developing at its tip. She took one more puff, just to be sure she’d done the first one properly, and immediately began hacking and coughing again. Stamping out the cigarette she threw the remainder in the trash along with the rest of it’s unsmoked brethren.

Once again in the car she put a check next to the first item on her list and looked down for the next easiest thing. Nothing else would be quite that fast but she realized that watching a black and white film would be the next easiest thing to accomplish. She drove home, turned on the TV, and searched for “black and white.” A very brief cascade of films appeared and she chose the first: Casablanca.

She was so inspired and moved by Casablanca that she spent several more hours over several more days watching black and white films. She felt she’d been living under a rock. How had she never seen these beautiful works? Especially when it was so incredibly easy to do. After the seventh or eighth film she remembered there was a whole wide world outside of her living room and a long list awaiting her attention. She was hungry, and chose to eat at a fancy restaurant rather than make herself the staple grilled cheese she would normally have.

Arriving at the fanciest restaurant she knew an hour later, freshly showered and wearing her only fancy dress and her fanciest shoes (they were sneakers but at least they were a dark color, perhaps no one would notice), she walked in. Luckily as a table for one she was easily accommodated and while she’d never before had a meal with so many courses and so many dishes that she couldn’t pronounce, nor even knew what they were, she realized as she sipped her coffee at the end, poking at the unbelievably delicious chocolate confection they’d brought that while she’d be unlikely to dine like this ever again it had truly been the treat she’d needed and the experience she’d wanted.

Having already accomplished three of the things on her list in one week she felt a bit tipsy with accomplishment, and then realized it wasn’t accomplishment but alcohol. She really was tipsy, unused as she was to drinking a new alcoholic beverage to compliment each course. She pulled out her list and tried to review it but found it was a bit swimmy. She certainly couldn’t drive home like this, she’d have to go for a walk until the alcohol wore off.

As she walked she thought back on all the books she’d read and loved. If only she had a way to track how many there were. She decided that she would start working on that piece of the list as soon as she could think properly. She continued walking, her head getting a bit clearer with the cold air and the positive ions coming off the ocean ahead of her. She wished for a moment she had cute strappy sandals she could remove and carry as she walked but settled for her clunky sneakers, which she was quite sure everyone in the restaurant had in fact noticed. She made a mental note to add “buy cute strappy sandals” to her list before sitting down in the sand and watching the moon bounce off the waves as they crashed into shore.

After awhile a rather large group of people, mostly teenagers, all laughing and being raucous walked past her heading towards the water. Amidst the laughing and shrieks she heard taunts of “no way!” and “yes I will!” and “you better go in too!” She watched, eyes ever wider as the teenagers began running into the water. It had to be freezing in that water! Those kids were…doing a Polar Plunge! Sure it wasn’t January first, but it was near enough to it. And she’d never be quite so inoculated against the cold as she was right now, her belly full of warm liquor.

Before she quite knew what she was doing she’d left her sneakers and purse on the beach and was running towards the water and the group of teens. She plunged into a wave just as broke into foam all around her and she realized she was screaming although her head was still underwater. She came up gasping for air, no longer screaming thankfully, and as soon a she opened her eyes she realized the sky had never held as many stars as it did right then.

In that moment she knew people could question her sanity all they liked but no one would stand by her graveside and say her life was a shame or that her life had been wasted.

The Bucket List

  • Smoke a cigarette
  • Work in a coal mine
  • Learn to ride a bike
  • Read 1,000 books
  • Fall in love
  • See a black and white film
  • Attend Shakespeare Festival
  • Eat at a fancy restaurant
  • Buy a house
  • Get married
  • Have a baby
  • Skydive
  • Participate in the Polar Plunge
  • Visit Italy
  • Buy cute strappy sandals

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Self-Care

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“It should not be this hard to find a chocolate lava cake,” she said aloud to no one in particular, although a few people turned in her direction. She tossed her head to get her bangs out of her face and carried on. She’d been walking around the downtown area for at least an hour, popping in to different restaurants and eateries, finding pies and brownies and sundaes and all sorts of cheesecakes and more ice cream than anyone could eat in a week, but no chocolate lava cake. “Damn.”

She stopped on a corner for a moment to catch her breath and figure out her next step. She could always go back to the place with brownies, brownies were chocolate and kinda cake-y and hell if you heat up some chocolate sauce and pour it on top that’s kinda chocolate lava cake-ish, right? Her brain congratulated her on an excellent idea but her stomach, oh who was she kidding, her uterus laughed and said “oh no, only chocolate lava cake is chocolate lava cake, and if you’re not going to grow a child and you want to survive the next week without intense pains, you will get me what I want: chocolate lava cake.

She sighed and wracked her brain. Surely there was somewhere within a sixty mile radius that would have chocolate lava cake. She pulled out her phone and opened Yelp! She searched for chocolate lava cake and found only poor substitutes and imitations unless she wanted to drive through three hours of traffic, which she did not. She closed Yelp! and opened Google and performed the same search. No dice, same info. She stomped her foot, suddenly a toddler being told she couldn’t have her way, furious with the world and all who would undermine her.

Close to tears she finally searched the internet for recipes and found one. The most decadent sounding chocolate lava cake she’d ever seen pictured or read about. The reviews were spectacular, she could pronounce the ingredients and even knew she had some of them at home. She shoved her phone back in her purse and went in search of her car and a trip to the grocery store.

Home with her items: chocolate, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, and salt, she proceeded to unpack her purchases and wash her hands. She then pulled down from her cabinet six small ramekins which she’d had for years thinking she’d someday make her own creme brulee, which she never did, but she still had the ramekins and now they would be perfect. She proceeded to follow the instructions on the recipe, turning the oven to 450 degrees and mixing, whisking, boiling.

She filled all six ramekins, then covered five in plastic wrap and set them in the fridge. She’d have one each night until she got sick of them. The remaining ramekin she put in the oven and tapped her nails waiting, realizing as she did so that she should really put some fresh paint on them or at least remove the chipped paint. Twelve minutes had never taken so long. When the timer finally went off she yanked the little cake out and set it on the counter for one minute as instructed, then put a plate over the top and flipped it over. She listened as the dessert inside slid down and plopped onto the plate.

Removing the ramekin and setting it in the sink she turned her attention to the beautiful chocolate lump in front of her. It looked like a little chocolate muffin or a cupcake that needed icing. She grabbed a fork from the drawer before thinking better of it and grabbing a spoon. She pushed the spoon into the little cake and scooped up a bite, thrilling as the chocolate began to ooze slowly out of the hole her spoon had created.

The first bite of cake was the most orgasmic moment she’d had in ages. The cake was rich but not too sweet, the chocolate almost too hot but not quite. She considered letting it melt on her tongue rather than chewing but couldn’t stop herself. Before she knew it the entire little cake was gone, a few smears of chocolate on the plate all that remained. She drug her finger through the smears and sucked on her finger for a moment. “there are five more in the fridge…” she thought.

They were so tiny, these little ramekins of bliss. Surely one more wouldn’t be too much. She pulled the ramekin out and found it was a bit chilled but certainly not cold enough to warrant sitting on the counter to bring to room temperature. She removed the plastic wrap and threw the little ramekin into the oven. Setting the timer for twelve minutes was much easier this time, the wait no longer interminable. Nor was it difficult to wait the one minute while it sat on the counter a cooled a bit before she plated it.

This second cake was just as delicious as the first. There was absolutely no loss of joy or flavor. She did a little dance as she ate the second cake, humming as she sucked chocolate off the spoon, and licking the chocolate off the plate when she was done rather than dredging her finger through what was left. She briefly considered having one more but decided she really was sated now, and if she knew anything about her body by now it’s that she’d be wanting another cake or two tomorrow.

She drew a bath, poured a glass of port, and grabbed a book, Glennon Doyle Melton’s Love Warrior. No need for candlelight or music, she wasn’t that high maintenance. She slipped into the hot water, took a sip of port, and proceeded to read her book. The introduction was amazing and she was quickly whisked away; nothing was better than a good memoir…except maybe chocolate lava cake. “Damn.”

She put a bookmark in the book and set it down, finished what was left of her port, and grabbed her towel. Pulling the drain on the tub she went back into the kitchen and turned the oven back on. She pulled a third ramekin out of the fridge and removed the plastic wrap. She went back to her room to get pajamas on as the oven and the dessert warmed up. Grabbing a bottle of nail polish remover, some cotton balls, and a bottle of nail polish she went back out to the kitchen and put the ramekin in the oven.

She painted the nails on her left hand while she waited, then pulled the ramekin out with her right hand and set it down to cool for one minute. Setting the plate on top she realized she’d painted her left hand prematurely. Shrugging, she set her left hand on top of the plate and used her right to grab the ramekin and flipped everything over. She set the ramekin down and then grabbed the plate and a spoon with her right hand. She sighed in relief as she wiggled her left hand in front of her and realized all five nails were unaffected.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Please note, I do not know Glennon Doyle (although I’d love to!) and I am in no way affiliated with her, her book(s), or her site(s). I do not make any money or get anything for free from her if you visit her site. It’s simply the book I just started and literally read the intro and can’t wait to read the rest. This is how real life slips into fiction sometimes 🙂

Off-Grid

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“I was married once, you know,” Mary said. The green wide eyed surprise of her best friend betrayed that she did not in fact know. “I don’t like to talk about it because it reminds me of just how foolish I was, probably still am, I don’t know,” she continued.

“You were foolish for getting married?” Sarah asked, taking a sip of her water to hide any facial expressions she might be inadvertently sending out.

Mary laughed, “no, not for getting married. I was young and in love and full of passion, and that may be foolish, but it’s also beautiful. No, I wasn’t foolish for getting married, but for staying married for as long as I did to a man who was,” here she stopped, looking at the pot of hanging flowers purple and pink and blue, appreciating their splendor and perfection and wondering if they held the word for her husband in their petals for her to read, “well, let’s just say he was passionate, too, but dangerously so.”

“I’d love to hear about it if you’d like to tell me,” Sarah prompted, desperately hoping Mary would continue the story but sitting back casually in her chair and combing her fingers through her long dark hair to indicate there was no rush.

“Well,” Mary began, taking a moment to take a drink of her tea and pick a crumb off the tabletop, “when we first married he had all the usual, or well I guess I should just say nothing unusual in his beliefs. He wasn’t sure about God or aliens but he also didn’t believe the moon landing was faked. What I mean is, there was nothing about him that indicated I should be wary, and so I wasn’t. I fell in love, hard, head over heels, pick your overused expression and it would be applicable. We met and were married within six months. We were deliriously happy.”

Sarah was smiling because Mary was smiling, it was infectious, like Mary had been transported back to the beginning of her romance and taken Sarah with her; like Sarah was The Ghost of Christmas Past and they were both looking through the window of Mary’s life.

“We had children, we had friends, we had family, we had everything. You know, people always say they have everything when they have their family with them, and it’s true. We had everything. We didn’t have much money, but we didn’t notice, really. We pinched our way through groceries and the kids never realized we were struggling because we were so creative with things to do and ‘gifts’ at the holidays. It was definitely one of the happiest times of my life, well, those first three years anyway,” Mary swallowed, the lines around her eyes decreasing and turning down as her smile disappeared.

Sarah patted Mary’s hand on the tabletop, the one that had been picking at the tablecloth earlier but was no still and almost lifeless. She wanted to urge her to continue but was afraid that anything she said might bring the story to an abrupt end instead so she bit her tongue, literally, tasting a bit of blood and backing off.

Mary took a deep breath, “but things change. He began to change. Little things at first, things I ignored because they didn’t amount to much on their own: he spent more and more time online, he didn’t want us to buy anything that wasn’t totally and completely made in the USA, he stopped reading books and newspapers and distrusted people who did.”

Sarah’s eyes had gone wide, Mary had noticed and stopped talking, taking a sip of her now cold tea, debating whether or not to continue.

“I realize that when you hear those things all at once, back to back, they sound like huge red flags, massive warnings,” she interlaced her fingers and spread her palms apart, “but it’s not like everything happened at once. These were major changes, sure, but they happened one at a time and very slowly over five years. So slowly that by the time he announced we should move somewhere that wasn’t so populated, so hectic, so expensive, I readily agreed. I too wanted to go live somewhere that our nearest neighbor was twenty acres or more away and where I’d only drive into a big town for the necessities once a month or less. I was eager to live somewhere the kids could have massive tracts of woods to get lost in during the day and maybe a pond or a river to swim in come summer. So that’s what we looked for, and that’s what we found.”

“Hello ladies, everything okay here?” asked their server, as she grabbed an empty plate from the middle of the table and set her hand against the teapot in front of Mary, “some more hot water, maybe?”

“Yes, please,” Mary said, “and perhaps a different tea now? Do you have something citrus, a lemon tea of some kind?”

“Absolutely, yes. Some fresh lemon too? Maybe some honey to temper it?” the waitress asked.

“That would be lovely, yes.”

“And for you?” the server asked looking at Sarah.

“Same, please,” Sarah said dismissively, eager to have the waitress walk away, terrified Mary wouldn’t continue her story if the woman didn’t leave right then.

“Sure, be right back with that,” the waitress said as she disappeared with the now cold and empty teapot and the empty plate.

Mary waited a moment for the server to be out of earshot and then took a deep breath, “I don’t want to bore you with all the little things, let’s just…”

“No! I mean, yes! Ugh, please, continue. I m very curious about all this, this past life I never knew about, please,” Sarah begged.

Mary laughed, “I suppose it is interesting to hear about a persons past life, especially when it deviates from the person you think you know. Like being a child and realizing your parents are more than just ‘mom and dad’ that they actually have a life and names of their own that existed before you came to be.”

Sarah chuckled with Mary and then sat back as she saw the server approach with their teas, making sure there was space on the table for everything so the server could set it all down and move on as quickly as possible. After the obligatory tea pour they shooed the waitress away and Mary continued.

“We ended up in Wyoming, which I don’t recommend,” she laughed lightly, “but it’s where we could afford several acres and where the law didn’t much care what you did with yourself or your land or your kids. We homeschooled, we started a garden, we lived in an old cabin that we slowly retrofitted to meet our needs through all four seasons. It was the first time I’d ever experienced all four seasons so distinctly and intensely, and part of that was because I was spending so much time outside which I hadn’t before then. But the ways in which my husband was changing, his passions, were becoming more and more time consuming.”

She stopped to take a sip of her tea, pour in a bit of honey and stir it, Sarah mimicking her not because she thought the tea needed honey but because she was so enthralled by Mary and her story.

“The first year we were there we had a pretty good garden, we were able to grow much more than we could eat and I learned how to preserve things. Starting with canning and moving on to pickling and things it had never occurred to me to do myself. It was exciting and I felt so self-sufficient. We did so well that we decided we should try to live completely on our own. This was a bit of the ‘made in the USA’ passion turned into a ‘completely off grid’ obsession, but still I didn’t see it. Or at least I didn’t see it as a warning sign. I was too proud of what I’d learned to do, too enamored by the idea of self-sufficiency.”

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Hollow

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She’d built the birdhouse out of scrap wood and materials she found here and there. It was an eclectic little house with an off-center roof and a decorative chimney. It looked like an old mill and she wished she had the talent to create a decorative water wheel to put beside it. She’d made an old doorknob into the perch and she’d bent an old license plate to cover the roof and make it waterproof. She slapped on some paint and a few pieces of scrap tin here and there to make it shiny, then hung it up in the oak tree out front.

She watched the bird house every day, hopeful for a feathered occupant, but none arrived. She watched the birds in her yard with an intensity that bordered on madness, and people who saw her about town began taking notice as her mannerisms became odd…or rather, odder since she’d always been a bit different. Now though she was, well, “wild,” as the postmistress said, “the girl is wild. She was just gettin’ into her truck t’other day n’instead a jes gettin’ in like anyone’d do she stopped and hovered there, like a dern hummin’ bird. An’ you know she don’t say ‘hi’ no more, she jes stares at ya, holdin’ so still like maybe ya won’t see her if she don’t move. Wild.”

She’d gone from a woman who could polish off a plate of steak and potatoes with a side salad to a waif of a girl who could barely eat a single scoop of ice cream in one sitting. The waitress at the towns only restaurant went from calling her “the one who can belch like a trucker,” to asking her if she felt alright cause she “ate like a bird now.” Everyone began to notice the wild girl, making outings difficult for her. The staring, the whispers, the concerned pats and questions.

She got so she stopped going to town much at all, there wasn’t anything she needed there really. She’d stopped eating meat a few weeks before, couldn’t stomach it anymore, and was thereby able to get just about everything she needed from her own garden. She missed conveniences like bread, and boxed and canned food, but only in the beginning. After a month she realized she hadn’t thought of that stuff in a week at least. She never opened her refrigerator anymore and decided to unplug it.

As Spring turned to Summer she realized she didn’t hardly spend any time in the house at all. She was always out in the yard minding the garden that had turned a bit wild and restocking the bird feeders and sitting and watching. It was warm enough to sleep outside and she did so, watching the stars overhead and drifting off to the sounds of the frogs near the pond and the crickets everywhere. She was eating less and less, not needing the same number of calories as before and finding fewer and fewer foods delightful. Before she knew it she was eating the seed from the bird feeders with the other birds.

The hair on her arms, legs, and head became itchy, she couldn’t stop scratching at herself day and night. She worried it was a mite from being around the birds all day or perhaps something simpler like the need for lotion, her skin getting drier and drier. After the third day of this scratching she was gashed and bloody from her fingernails but the itching had finally subsided. As the gashes scabbed over they became a multitude of bumps instead of lines and as these healed wisps began to grow out. Her first thought was she had ingrown hairs that were starting to burst through but as the days went on it became clear the wisps were feathers, grey and brown and black.

Soon she was covered in feathers from head to toe. And her hands were no longer hands at all but wings which she played with in the early Autumn breezes, raising them up and down and thrilling at the feel, at the tickle of the wind playing through them. Her legs and feet, too, had changed becoming scaly and claw-like, the toe nails small and sharp. And it wasn’t only the feathers and scales, she felt lighter, not just in her stomach but as if her very bones were hollow, as though someone had sucked the marrow out, the way she used to gnaw on a steak or pork chop bone beck before the very idea made her nauseous.

As the leaves fell from the trees and the mild nights turned chilly, she found herself in a bit of a state. She wouldn’t be able to stay outside much longer, feathers or not. It was simply getting too cold. And what would become of her when the rain and the sleet and the snow came? She’d need a shelter. She thought about going back into the house but as quickly as the thought came to her she realized she was flying and the windows and doors were all closed to her. She flitted around the chairs on the deck, hoping from one to the other, looking in the house from outside and wondering how this had all happened.

She turned from the window and looked out over the yard. The garden now nothing more than an overgrown patch of wild shoots, the lettuce gone to seed, the tomatoes rotting off the vines, the asparagus a beautiful and fragile fern-like bed, blowing in the chilled breeze. She looked to the oak tree and saw the bird house she’d made what felt like years before, could it be years? It hardly seemed like more than a week but had to have been at least a few months. She loved the doorknob perch and wished she’d had the talent to add the little water wheel.

Before she knew it she was there, at the house, sitting on the little doorknob perch. She poked her head inside the house, turning her head this way and that. The little house was empty. She pushed her way inside and realized she fit perfectly. From inside the chilly wind was nothing more than a gentle finger rocking her to sleep. She knew she’d need something to keep her warmer over the next several months but for now the empty little house, full of her, was warm enough. It was perfect.

When she woke in the morning she hopped up and out of the house, perching on the doorknob as she surveyed the area. The ferned out tips of the asparagus would make a soft and light bed. She darted down to the garden and snipped at the ferny bits with her beak. A yank here and a yank there and before she knew it she had several bits of asparagus tips with which to feather her nest. She grabbed a few of the pieces and flew them back up to her house, placing them inside the hole, before flying back for the others. With all the bits in the house she jumped inside and fluffed about creating a little nest among the plants.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Sly

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The snow was unexpected, but welcome, and covered the trees, early blooming bulbs, and her tracks. She’d covered at least twenty-five miles the day before, possibly thirty, which was no small feat, especially with the weight of her pack. She’d gone as far as she could and then chosen a stand of oaks, possibly Engelmann though it was difficult to be sure in the dark, as her refuge for the night. She’d quickly erected her tent, thrown in her sleeping bag and pack, and disappeared inside, zipping everything up against the oncoming cold, the curious nocturnal animals, and anyone who might be following her.

Fumbling in the dark of the tent for her pack she found her headlamp in the side pocket where she always stored it when camping and put it on, clicking it until it turned blue and therefore less likely to be seen outside the tent. Thus newly able to see she found what she needed in order to sleep soundly: a protein bar, her bottle of water, and a 9mm Smith & Wesson. She double checked the clip, full, let out a sigh that was equal parts exhaustion and relief, then made sure the safety was on and scrambled into her sleeping bag.

She was asleep almost immediately and only woke a few times in the night, due to some critter, likely a possum, scratching around outside for grubs. When she woke the third time she checked her watch and saw that it was nearly five in the morning. Now was as good a time as any to get moving again. It wasn’t until she got out of the bag that she realized just how cold it was. With her breath steaming before her she hurriedly grabbed another protein bar from her pack, rolled up the sleeping bag and shoved it back in along with the headlamp, clipping the water bottle to the outside of the pack. The pistol she tucked in the back of her jeans after ensuring the safety was still on, and the protein bar she shoved in her front pocket, it would get smushed and crumbly there but she didn’t want to lose it and she needed it out of the way while she took down the tent.

When she opened the flap to go out she saw the snow. She’d only expected rain and the snow was a surprise, albeit a beautiful one. The snow would slow her pursuers but it would also slow her down, and while it may cover the tracks she’d left the day before it would highlight her route today. There was nothing for it though. She had to press on. There was always the possibility no one had noticed her disappearance yet. Slim. But possible. She clung to the possibility.

The tent was all weather and super easy to set up and take down, especially since she hadn’t bothered with the guy lines the night before. As she rolled it all back up she noticed the tracks around her: possum. She’d thought so. Raccoons would have tried to get in the tent and a skunk would have had a smell even without spraying. Tying the tent to her pack she re-shouldered it, aching at the straps, out of practice with this sort of hiking and camping, and wishing she was enjoying it more, wishing it wasn’t necessary and merely a vacation.

Unfortunately the pack dug the gun uncomfortably into her back and as much as she liked that it hid the pistol, it wasn’t going to work for a long day of hiking. She removed the pistol and checked again that the safety was in place before stuffing it into the front waistband of her jeans. Much better. Sadly it was obvious in it’s new location but it would also be easier to draw and it was no longer digging in painfully. It would have to do.

Taking her bearings she continued north, the most obvious path of escape but also the hardest to follow. She pulled the protein bar from her pocket, yup, smushed. She opened the top of the wrapper and tried to squeeze bits of it out into her open mouth without choking on the small bits. She tried to eat slowly but she was starving, the bars were great for a snack but didn’t work as a meal, especially not with all the exercise she was getting. Her stomach complained as the meager meal hit it, and she stopped for a moment to wash everything down with her water.

Water would be the next obstacle. She’d only brought what the bottle could carry, unable to support the weight required to bring more. She’d easily be able to filter any water she found but that would require getting to a water source or starting a fire and melting the snow. She’d rather find a creek than wait til she could start a fire, but her thirst would determine how far she could go that day and judging by her stomach she’d need to stop sooner than she’d expected anyway to give herself some calories.

Keeping her head on the trail she was blazing and her feet moving she stopped occasionally to ensure she was still heading north, adjusting her course by minute lefts or rights as necessary over the next several hours. Just when she thought she was going to have to melt some snow she heard the unmistakable sound of water falling over rocks. She followed the sound to a small but clear and rapid river. If there weren’t snow on the ground she’d risk soaking her aching feet in that flowing water, but with the snow it was too dangerous. She couldn’t risk getting stuck here, she needed to cover much more ground before nightfall.

She set her pack down and rummaged around for the water filter. She let the water flow through the system, filling a few pouches and her water bottle. Then she pulled out one of her instant meals, it was going to taste pretty terrible without boiling water, but then they tasted pretty terrible anyway. She added the water, stirred it all up, and forced herself to eat it, drinking more water whenever she gagged. Her stomach complained some more but this time it was from what it was being fed rather than what it was missing. She said a brief apology before finishing the “meal,” and packing everything back up.

Taking her bearings once again she realized she needed to get over this river to continue north which meant this river was the Thorn and she’d come a good forty-five miles and only had another sixty or so to go, assuming she could get across. She looked up and down the parts of the river she could see from her position and didn’t see any way across that wouldn’t have her soaking wet up to her waist. Not a problem in the summer, but definitely not practical right now. She’d have to pick a direction and walk hoping to find a better way across.

There was no easy way to decide which way to go and she was about to head left when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye to the right. She turned slowly and stared at what was left of the ferns growing along the trunks of the trees, paying close attention to the one brown frond bobbing and swaying a bit still from the passage of whatever it had been. She held still and watched. Soon enough a little black nose emerged, followed by two bright eyes, and two perfectly pointed ears. The silver coat rippled as the fox emerged, black forelegs skinny and petite, ending in perfect little paws the size of a quarter. She watched the fox as closely as it watched her, careful not to move a muscle.

The fox made it’s way down to the river slowly, then stood a moment, not quite sure it was safe to drink with her watching and finally lowering it’s head and lapping quickly, a glinting of teeth visible around the red darting tongue. Finished with it’s drink it looked once again at her before sitting down and lifting a paw to it’s face. A quick grooming session, all the while watching her, and then the fox blinked at her and she swore it smiled before turning and dashing off.

She realized she was smiling and for the first time her fear was replaced with the thought that perhaps she would make it. Perhaps she’d gotten started early enough. Perhaps the snow had protected her passage enough. Perhaps the distance she was putting between herself and that place would be enough.

She decided to walk to the right, the way the fox had gone, following the river that way for a chance at a crossing.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Projects

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Where once there was a garden there was now an empty plot of land. The garden beds had been removed one by one, the screws backed out, the wood stacked in a dump trailer, the bottom wood ripped and torn and disintegrated by years of water and carpenter ants from the gopher wire below, the water lines cut and thrown away. The huge mounds of dirt and compost and old roots pushed and pulled and flattened by an enormous tractor until the space looked like nothing more than a large plot of dirt awaiting a horse perhaps.

From the kitchen window she no longer looked out upon boxes of dashed hopes and frustrated dreams but upon a what could be a sea of wildflowers come spring or a dirt track for her kids mountain bikes or a field of sunflowers, bright faces turning towards her as the day progressed. It was a relief, a major project tackled and completed and emotionally freeing one at that. She couldn’t imagine the house painting to be nearly as rewarding, nor the expansion of the chicken coop and the remodeling of the kitchen was nothing more than an expensive nightmare looming over her shoulder.

She was oddly excited about painting though. She was surprised as she wasn’t particularly good at it, not the taping off of a room, not the brush strokes nor the roller strokes, not even the choosing of the paint color which came far before any of that. Still, the idea of painting filled her with joy. Something about bringing a space new life, maybe…or making the space more hers, even as she prepared it for someone else. She shrugged, whatever it was she was most excited to tackle that next, but it was too cold now. The paint would take days upon days to dry rather than a few hours and with children about that simply wouldn’t do.

She considered paying someone else to come in and do the painting, taking the kids camping for a week and coming home to a new interior. Not a bad idea, really, except that as much as she wanted to paint next, the kitchen really needed to be seen to. The appliances were thirty years old or more and no longer worked properly or at all and the old porcelain sink always looked yellow-white even after a good scrubbing, and the tile countertops really dated the place. But there was no such thing as a cheap kitchen remodel, and the amount of money she knew would need to go into it was depressing. The idea of spending money on a place that wasn’t going to be hers anymore…ugh.

What it really came down to, and what she’d been trying to avoid, were the emotions. She loved the house even as she hated it. She had made many memories here, her dog had died here and was buried on the property next to a goat that had also died there. She’d birthed both babies in the back bedroom, despite the midwife’s fears and her own that they’d be delivered in the bathroom because she absolutely refused to move from the toilet for so long, it provided the perfect position for transition. She’d fallen in love with her husband under the oak by the barn. She’d married her husband at the foot of the rock stairs in front of the house. She’d come face to face with a mountain lion in front of the massive oak at the turn of the driveway, and she’d seen many a bobcat sunning themselves out the backdoor.

She was ready to leave, ready to move on to the next adventure, but she also wanted to take these things with her and feared a different location would be the beginning of the memories’ fade. And so subconsciously she delayed the big projects until she realized what she was doing, until she realized she was holding up her future for her past. Once the realization hit her there was no holding her back. Five minutes before she had to leave? Plenty of time to take a few screws out of the garden. Twenty minutes before she had to start dinner? Plenty of time to haul a few pieces of wood out of the garden. The garden became the thing she worked on any time she had time to work. And then it was done. And it was amazing.

To keep the momentum going she felt she had to tackle the next project right away. Get moving on whatever it would be as quickly as possible. Only she didn’t know what the next project should be, there were too many to choose from, and many of them would require planning, planning she couldn’t necessarily do because she didn’t have the knowledge. She’d found that out the hard way in destroying the garden space. There were things she knew how to do: use a drill, remove screws, stack old lumber in a dump trailer, cut off plastic piping, fold up old chicken wire and gopher wire. But then she got to a point where she had to figure out more intricate things like: closing off the electrical and water, and flattening the dirt from the beds.

It’s one thing to start an outdoor project when you’re not sure how to finish it, it doesn’t affect your day-to-day life, but to start an indoor project when you’re not sure how to start it or finish it, that could be disastrous. And so she simply froze. She looked down at the space that was once a garden and felt buoyed, felt strong and happy and satisfied. And she decided to just enjoy that feeling for awhile. No need to take on more than she could chew with another project when the glow of achievement hadn’t even worn off the last project yet.

She chose to be lazy. She embraced it. Knowing the time would come soon enough when she would be enmired in the next big project, she simply appreciated the now.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

The Puppy

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Living in a small town there were always puppies for sale cheap or even free. It was almost a joke how often there’d be a large cardboard box in front of Town Hall with adorable little whippy tailed puppies in it, tumbling all over one another, biting ears and whining for attention. How many times had she come out during her lunch break to play with the puppies and give the owner a break to run to the bathroom. How many times had she left only to find the bitten cardboard box empty and soiled sitting by the stairs.

She spent her days answering the same three questions over and over again as new tourists arrived in town and needed to know where the bathrooms were, which place was best to eat at, and if there was anything for kids to do. Same questions. Every day. With a lunch break to put a hold on the monotony, and the near weekly set of puppies to bring her joy.

She never went home with a puppy. In all her time working there and seeing dozens of litters, more like a hundred different litters, she never once chose a puppy for herself. It didn’t seem fair to her to have a dog, after all she spent five days a week at work for eight and a half hours plus drive time. What would a puppy do during all that time home alone. Likely destroy her home, and with good reason.

She was surprised then when one evening after turning out the lights, locking the doors, and double checking that the outside lights were still on, she walked down the stairs to find a cardboard box that wasn’t empty. A lump of blanket or towel, perhaps, she thought to herself as she knelt down to dispose of the box. Upon closer inspection the lump of cloth was actually a lump of fur. A lump of very cold fur.

She picked up the tiny puppy, and felt the faintest of heartbeats in her thumb. Could be her own heartbeat, she thought, and then she heard a little whimper and knew the pup was still alive. She shoved the little body down the front of her shirt, using her bra to support its little hind legs and rump, her breasts to warm it quickly. She thought back to who had been there that day and couldn’t picture anyone. She’d come out at lunch as she usually did and there’d been no puppies. There’d been no box.

It was still early for a city but late for her little town. The vet would be closed. She could drive the pup to the next town over, they surely had a vet that would be open for a couple more hours if not an emergency vet. She walked to her car and got inside. Turning the motor on and cranking the thermostat over she waited for the car to get warm while thinking through her options.

The little fuzzball was moving now, it’s sharp nails scratching her skin. She gently gathered the puppy up in her hands and pulled it out to take a look. Being a creature of habit she looked to see if she was dealing with a boy or a girl puppy, and discovered this was a boy. He wasn’t opening his eyes but she suspected it was because he was so exhausted, not because he was too young. He was small, sure, likely the runt of whatever litter he’d come from, but he was old enough to eat solid food and he was probably very hungry and dehydrated.

She decided to take him home and bring him to the local vet the next day. He probably needed immediate assistance more than trained assistance, and she’d been a vet tech for a couple years before moving to the middle of nowhere. She could get the puppy by for one night. She settled him in the passenger seat and moved the air vents so they’d blow on him. Then she headed home doing a mental inventory of her kitchen. She for sure had chicken and rice and she probably had some pumpkin. All of that would make for a fine meal for this little fluff.

Once home she returned the pup to his nest inside her shirt and went about the business of fixing him a meal. She cooked the both a bit of chicken and rice and found a can of pumpkin in the cupboard left over from Thanksgiving pie making but not yet expired. When the chicken and rice were done cooking she made herself a plate and then found a sturdy bowl for the puppy. She put some chicken, rice, and pumpkin in a power blender and let it whir for a minute, then poured everything out into the sturdy bowl. She found a second sturdy bowl and put some fresh water in it.

Sitting on the living room floor with everything spread around her she took a bite of her dinner and while chewing dipped her finger in the water and brought it up to the pups nose. Anyone who tells you water has no smell doesn’t know their you-know-what from a hole in the ground. That puppy started licking and she went back and forth from the water to his nose several times before she decided to take another bite of her own dinner and try giving him a bit of his.

When she brought a finger full of mush to his face the puppy nearly bit her finger clean off. The poor thing was ravenous. She was able to get roughly a half a cups worth in his gut before he passed out. She set the alarm on her phone to go off in two hours. He might sleep for four, but she’d try to get him to drink some more in two. Dehydration was a more likely killer for the puppy at this point than anything else.

She settled the pup in her lap and finished her dinner, scratching away at the pups silky ears and engorged belly. When she was done she grabbed an old towel and made a little bed for the puppy, did the dishes, and picked up a book. No sense going to bed yet when it would be time to give the pup water in an hour. She read until her alarm went off, occasionally stopping to look at the puppy as he snored or farted. He was ridiculously cute and unlike any of the dogs that were usually found in the box at Town Hall.

Black and white with a scruffy beard, he looked like some kind of terrier mix. She tried picturing all the town dogs and couldn’t think of any that looked quite like him. It was possible one of the tourists had brought him up from the city and dropped him off, not wanting to pay a relinquishing fee to the Humane Society. Everyone who knew about her little town also knew about the puppies forever available at Town Hall, so it was possible. It made her heart hurt to think that anyone would abandon this puppy like that though. None of the local people would have left a puppy alone like that. They would have stayed til the last tourist left and then brought the puppy back home to return the next day and try again.

When the alarm went off she offered the puppy water again. She hated to wake the sleepy little guy, but dehydration was serious, and the puppy would certainly be able to fall back asleep. Sure enough he lapped up several more fingers of water and even opened his eyes. He had the sweetest deep brown eyes. When she decided he’d had enough water she took him out to her yard and set him down on the ground. He sniffed around a bit and she was worried he was going to lay down again and sleep, but instead he squatted down and peed. He walked in a little circle around it afterward and then looked at her.

“Good dog,” she said and marveled when he wagged his tail. “Let’s go back inside,” she said, patting her thigh and walking towards the house. He stared at her, unmoving. She made a couple kissing noises and he leaped towards her, his whole body wiggling with joy. It was then she knew he would be just fine and also that he was her dog.

“What are we going to name you?” she asked as they walked in to the warmth of the house, closing the door on the night behind them.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Therapy

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She realized she’d been jiggling her foot. She had no idea how long she’d been jiggling it. But there it was. Gyrating in front of her, a pogo stick at the end of her ankle sitting at an odd angle on her other knee. Despite seeing it, despite realizing she should stop, it continued. It took a forceable effort to slow it, then stop it, then shift her leg up and off her other knee, lowering the restless foot to the ground.

“Are you uncomfortable?” the therapist finally asked.

“No,” she answered, realizing it was a bit of a lie, but not entirely. She wasn’t uncomfortable in the office, or with the therapist, so no was a perfectly honest answer. She was, however, uncomfortable in her body, in her being, and so no was not entirely accurate.

“You aren’t usually silent,” the therapist observed, “is there something troubling you tat hasn’t been put into words yet?”

“That’s a good way to say it, I suppose,” she responded, tilting her head a bit to the right as she thought about the words to use. “I’m having a hard time,” she finally said.

There was another silence. She knew the therapist didn’t like to fill these silences, preferred that she speak or use the silence to work through whatever she needed to. She was a bit surprised the therapist had broken the last one, but then again, there weren’t usually silences for long and certainly not for nearly half the session, which is where they were at.

“I’m having a hard time being,” she clarified.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to say more than that the therapist asked for clarification, “being…?”

“Being. Just being. Existing has become difficult,” she said.

“What has changed to make it difficult?”

“Nothing. Nothing that I can think of anyway. I’m pretty sure everything is exactly the same as last week,” she looked down at her hands in her lap, they were fingers holding fingers, her fingers, hanging on to one another. She laid her hands flat and wiped them along her thighs. “It hasn’t just become difficult, it’s always been difficult,” she said, emphasizing ‘been’ by picking up her hands and pushing them together and outwards, like an offering.

“If it’s always been difficult why did you originally say it’s ‘become difficult’?”

She sighed, loudly, somewhat exasperated at the use of her own words being turned around and offered up as proof that she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Okay, fine. It has become more difficult,” she said, emphasizing the ‘more’ by drawing out the o and making it sound like a multi-syllabic word. She lapsed into silence again, this time crossing her arms over her chest, an unintentional protection of her heart.

“I see. Sometimes we choose words with our subconscious. Are you feeling threatened by me?” asked the therapist in the same flat tone.

“Threatened? No. Should I be?” she asked, somewhat surprised by a question that wasn’t a twist of what she’d said.

“Sometimes our body language communicates for our subconscious. I see that you’ve changed positions from one in which you were open and receptive to conversation to a closed-off and protective position. It made me wonder if you are feeling threatened by me,” explained the therapist.

Realizing her error, a second time in one sitting in which her body was giving her away, she quickly put her arms back down, hands in her lap.

“I get the sense that you have something you need to tell me but that you’re unable or unwilling to do so,” said the therapist.

She shrugged her left shoulder, “days like today I come here and I have no idea what I’m going to fill the hour with and I think maybe it’s time to stop coming,” she said, surprised at her own honesty, surprised that she’d been thinking that. Her foot came back up to her rest on her knee without her notice.

“People often get to a point where they don’t feel they need therapy any longer. That’s wonderful. It usually comes after they’ve gained some insight into why they decided to start therapy in the first place. Do you feel you’ve gained insight into why you started coming to see me?” asked the therapist calmly, no twitch in facial expression at the bomb being dropped, no change in tone.

“I honestly don’t remember why I started coming. And I feel like I leave every week not having gotten anywhere and wondering why I keep coming back. But today,” she took a deep breath, “today I just feel like we’re wasting each others time.” She noticed her foot was jiggling again, but didn’t try to stop it.

“Wasting each others time? You think I am wasting your time and you are wasting mine. You are paying me for my time, so there’s no waste to my time. Can you tell me how I am wasting your time?” asked the therapist, still calm, betraying nothing at the thought of losing a client.

“I came here for answers. It’s been, what? Six months? Six months and no answers. Nothing is different today than it was when I came in six months ago,” she realized she’d started crying and was surprised. She hadn’t cried in at least a year, not at a movie or a book, not at any of the horrible atrocities being committed everywhere on a daily basis. She touched a hand to her cheek and looked at the water on her fingers. Crying. Huh.

“Can you review for me the questions?” asked the therapist.

Like my very own fucking Yoda, she thought before saying, “why do I keep meeting the same horrible guys? Why do I keep dating the same horrible guys? Why do I keep falling in love with the same horrible guys? And why do the same horrible guys keep breaking my heart?”

“Yes, when you first came in you mentioned you had a habit of picking the wrong partners. I didn’t realize until right now that you felt that was the most pressing issue or the issue we’ve been working on all this time,” said the therapist. “We’ve discussed many issues, none of which have seemed to trouble you more than others. Can you tell me why this issue of partners is deemed the reason you started coming to therapy?”

“Nobody wants to be alone forever, doc. Nobody. I love having time to myself but that’s different than being completely alone. And it turns out I’m either dating the wrong guy or I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone forever, and I don’t want to keep dating the wrong guy. I can’t keep living like this,” she said, running her right hand through her hair and then slapping it down over her ankle.

“I agree. Why is the issue of your partner more important today than the issue we discussed last week of your self proclaimed ‘go nowhere job’?”

“Because I can always change jobs. If I really want to do something else, I can just apply and get a different job. But with guys, I can’t just apply for a new boyfriend after reading about him online.”

“Isn’t that exactly what online dating is?” asked the therapist.

“I mean, kind of, I guess….”

“So you can meet a new partner online and you can change your job online. Why is the partner issue more important this week than the issue we discussed a few weeks ago, your lack of motivation in the evenings and on weekends?”

“Because if I had a job I didn’t hate I’d have more energy after work and if I had a boyfriend I liked I’d be going out with him on the weekends,” she said.

“I see. So you came to therapy to find a better boyfriend and a better job?”

“Not exactly, I mean, yes, in the long run, yes,” she stammered, “I need to figure out why I keep committing to people and things that make me unhappy. But I’ve been coming in here for six months and I still don’t know why I do that,” she said, sitting forward, putting both feet on the floor, and opening her eyes wide as she realized she’d gotten closer to why she was there, why she was really there.

“I do believe that may be the core question,” said the therapist with a small smile, a very slight facial betrayal of what was an otherwise emotionless facade.

“That’s my ‘pattern,’ right?” she asked, “they always say you have to see your pattern to fix it, and this is mine, right?”

“I suppose you could call it that. I like to think of it more as the things and or the people we hide behind when we’re too afraid to know the truth.”

“So everything we’ve been talking about is connected? My job, the guys, the lethargy? It’s all the same thing? It’s all stuff I’m hiding behind so I don’t face the truth? The truth of what?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“That’s what we need to discover,” said the therapist.

“You mean you don’t know?” she asked incredulously. “I thought that was your job? I thought I tell you all this stuff and you tell me what my problem is and I fix it?”

“My job is to help you discover what your problems are. My job is to help you discover what the fixes are. I can’t tell you these things, you wouldn’t believe me. My job is to help you see them for yourself. Your job is to see them and not run away from them.”

She sat quietly for a minute, thinking about this new revelation. She wasn’t making progress because she wasn’t willing to see the problems. She thought she was talking about the problems but really she was just babbling on and on about symptoms. What she needed to do was see the disease itself. Stop treating the symptoms like individual ailments that required medication. So what did all her symptoms boil down to?

“Why don’t I want to see, even though I am coming to therapy for exactly that reason?” she asked.

“If we can discover the answer to that question, you will have answers to all the rest.”

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Castration

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As the youngest son, Joe’d been out riding fence for ten years, four years on his own. He remembered the first time his dad had nodded at him, handing him his reigns, no horse of his own, “you’re old enough,” was all he said. That day had been the proudest of his life. Delegated the job of maintaining the fence all on his own, he was sure he was just a few short months away from even more important jobs.

He spent that first morning taking extra care, looking over every section of fence as though they’d hired someone to put it in, even though he knew dad and brother put in the fence themselves a couple years earlier. Still, he rode the line occasionally jumping down to kick a post or yank on a length of barbed wire. He got home later than usual due to his thoroughness and instead of finding dad at breakfast as he’d imagined, regaling him with the story of sections that might could need a tightening in the weeks to come his imaginary dad beaming at him and patting him on the back, he found him instead out in the barn critiquing the mucking of the stalls.

“You know you gotta get all the way to them corners at least once a week. I can tell from here they ain’t been done in more’n that and you got a foal comin’ soon. Call me when you think you’re done,” he was saying over his shoulder as he walked away clenching and unclenching his gloved hands.

He was mad as Joe’d ever seen him, but Joe was sure he could change that around with his news about the fence. “Pop?” he called. He saw his dad raise his head and catch sight of him.

“You get lost out there? Your chores been waitin’ and breakfast was an hour ago,” his dad said.

Joe hung is head, no longer thinking his story was such a good one, sure now that his best bet was to get moving, “no, Pop. You need me to muck the coup after I feed the pigs, it’s been a week?”

“Pigs’ve been fed, they cain’t wait til lunch for breakfast. Why ain’t your sister mucking the coup?”

“She’s at that Granny Ulrich’s learnin’ the baby business this week,” Joe answered, “I don’t mind doin’ the coup unless you need me somewheres else?”

“Damn that ol’,” his dad grumbled before shifting his weight to his left leg and pulling off his gloves to slap them across his right thigh, “alright, you do the coup and then I need you up chuckin’ hay with your brother.”

Joe nodded, “yessir,” he said as he turned to get to work.

“You ate your breakfast?” his dad asked his back.

“Nah, too late, I got work to do,” Joe said, hanging his head.

“Git in there an’ eat your food fore your mama chaps my ass, the coup’ll wait.”

“Yessir,” Joe repeated, walking quickly towards the house. He got to the porch, knocked his boots against the deck steps, sure to get every bit of muck off of them before going inside. The screen door slammed behind him even as he was reaching out to stop it.

“You clean your boots?” his mama called from another room.

“Yes ma’am,” he called.

“Joe? That you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Joe answered.

“Where you been?” she asked as she came into the kitchen, a load of clean laundry in her arms, “your daddy was worried sick. I was the one convinced him you were old enough to ride fence alone, he about laid into me when you didn’t turn up for sausage.” She set the laundry down on the edge of the large wooden table, immaculately clean that served as both dining room table, family meeting space, and Sunday prayer circle.

Joe picked up his head at this, “sausage? You made sausage, mama?” he couldn’t contain his excitement, nor his hope that anyone had left some for him.

“Awe baby, go on, set down. I made you up a plate early so you’ve got a little of everything. Even without your sister here this mornin’ we got no leftovers.”

“Thank you!” Joe said as she laid a dishcloth covered plate in front of him then removed the cloth to reveal a heap of scrambled eggs, a couple of pieces of thick cut toasted bread, the butter on them making them soggy, and four sausage patties. He grabbed up his fork and started shoveling the eggs onto the bread, then stuffing the bread in his mouth.

“You eat like you didn’t get steak for dinner and I know you did cause I made it my own self. What’s got you in such a state?”

“Gotta get to the coup and the hay,” Joe said, his mouth full, the words sounding nearly like gibberish, but he knew she’d understand. Everyone talked like daddy ran the ranch, but Joe knew it was mama. Nothing happened on that place she didn’t know about.

“Joe Braithe, don’t talk with your mouth full, I know for a fact you weren’t raised in a barn,” she folded the dishcloth that’d kept his food from getting too stale as she continued, “I don’t want you in the coup today. Your brother cain’t recollect how to much a stall he oughta be the one cleaning the coup, a little reminder about how things work around here. You get to the hay after you eat but tell your daddy I need to see him before you get started.”

“Yes ma’am,” Joe said showing the last forkful of food into his mouth, chewing and rising from the table at the same time. He picked up his plate to take to the sink.

“Leave it, baby,” mama said, “tell your daddy to come in here and get to work.”

He swallowed, loudly and with a grimace, that bite had been too big, “yes, mama.” He kissed her cheek and flew out the door, grabbing it before it banged this time, for which he knew his mama would be pleased, and went in search of his dad.

The best way to find his dad was not to walk around the ranch, he’d figured that out long ago. You could walk round that ranch a hundred times and never find his daddy cause he’d always be a few steps ahead of you. Nope, fastest way to find daddy was to stand still, be quiet, open your mouth a bit and close your eyes to improve your hearing, and then just stand there awhile. It took less time and energy than walking the ranch and it worked every time.

Daddy was not a quiet man unless he was working a horse. Then he had all the calm and quiet you could want. Working a horse his daddy could stand immobile for hours at a time if necessary. Working a horse his daddy could knicker with a voice that made you wanna weep with it’s sweet love.

But daddy wouldn’t be working a horse today. Nope, he’d be doing something that required muscle, something that required sweat, and something that more than likely required swearing. In fact, Joe was pretty sure he knew exactly where his daddy was, but the stop, listen, and wait trick was worth a couple minutes to be sure.

“You don’t get that band on them balls in two more seconds and I’mma let you do all these calves on your own.”

Yup. Castration time. Daddy was down with the calves, and based on daddy’s tone and word choice it was Earl down there with him. Earl had been with the ranch for as long as Joe could remember. He wasn’t old although he was older than daddy, and he wasn’t young although he was a lick younger than Granny Ulrich. Earl was hard to figure out. He had all the patience of a broody hen when it came to helping Joe learn the ranch, and all the impatience of an unbroke horse getting a taste for it’s first saddle when it came to damn near anything else. He could castrate those calves all on his own in about the same time as he could do it with help, but for whatever reason he asked daddy to help him every year.

Joe was pretty sure Earl asked for help because he knew it made his daddy queasy. Joe wasn’t sure why, he understood that the basic anatomy of a calf and a human were the same, and he could understand how the thought of having your own scrotum rubber banded could cause you to feel a bit pained, but it wasn’t any different than any other chore on the farm, really. Killing the chickens wasn’t any fun. Debudding the kids was no picnic, especially with the mama goats wailing at them from the other side of the fence. Killing the pigs was just about the worst cause of the smell and the heat and the squealing.

If it were up to Joe, daddy could go move the hay and he’d stay and help Earl with the calves. But he knew Earl would never suggest it, and would probably fight him on it a little bit. He’d give in though, Earl would, he knew Joe was better suited to help, but he’d probably make a show of it, enjoying watching daddy squirm at the idea of having to stay when he was so eager to go.

“Daddy?” Joe asked, approaching the two men and the little calf that had just been banded and was jumping up and walking off with a bit of a buck in his step, unsure about this new addition to his body. His dad looked up at him, hopeful that he was about to get a reprieve. “Mama needs you up at the house.”

“Well hell, Earl,” daddy said, unable to contain the glee in his voice, “I guess I gotta go for a bit. I’ll be back though, if you’re not too fast, I might still be able to help you here.”

“I can help Earl, daddy,” Joe said.

“Well sure you can, son,” daddy said, proud of his boy for stepping in but even more grateful that he could step out. “I’ll be back soon’s I can,” he said, dusting off his jeans and walking off the way Joe’d come.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

The Husband

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“I think,” she took a deep breath, “No, I feel like,” she let out an exasperated growl and took a deep breath letting it out audibly before saying, “My husband hates women.”

“That’s interesting,” the therapist said, tilting her head to the right a bit, “you are a woman. Does your husband hate you?”

“No,” she laughed a short, tense laugh, “No, my husband obviously loves me.” She stopped and put her head in her hands for a moment before raising back to a sitting position, head raised, hands and arms at her sides. “You’ve never met my husband so there’s nothing for you that’s ‘obvious’ about his love for me,” she said, using her hands to form air quotes around the word obvious, “I know my husband loves me. This has nothing to do with our marriage. It’s that,” she sighed, unsure how to continue in this new way where she is supposed to state clearly what she needs, wants, and means, rather than asking questions, deflecting and subverting to another, or couching her desires behind feelings that aren’t in fact feelings. “My husband loves me, and hates women, all women, even me, despite loving me at the same time.”

“How does that work?” asked the therapist.

“So, for example, I love my mother. I love her very much. My mother is also toxic, as we’ve discussed repeatedly, and I’ve had to remove her from my life. I still love her, but I can’t be around her. And it’s kind of like that for my husband, only, he actively hates all women, and he doesn’t seem to understand that it’s true. So even though he loves me wholeheartedly, he also hates me just by virtue of my being a woman, and he doesn’t even know it,” she smiled, not because what she’d said had been pleasant, it was anything but; she smiled because she’d just made perfect sense. She’d just said exactly what she was thinking and feeling without excusing herself or apologizing for herself or hiding behind words that made what she had to say sound soft and sweet instead of the harsh reality that it was.

“How do you feel, being married to a man who loves and hates you?” asked the therapist, in what appeared to be a moment of uncertainty.

“It’s odd,” she said honestly, rubbing her hands up and down the outsides of her thighs a couple times, a gesture that both removed the sweat from her palms and massaged the goosebumps that had appeared all over her. “I can’t decide if I’m going to stay with him or not.”

“That’s certainly something we will need to discuss, but you haven’t said how you feel.”

“Right, no, I just,” she licked her lips and her eyes flicked up to meet the therapists eyes before flicking back down, “I feel I married myself,” she was startled by these words, these words that were not feelings but a statement meant to sound better wrapped in the soft cushion of “I feel.”

“Do you hate women?” asked the therapist.

“No, not at all, I mean, I’ve always been a bit afraid of women,” she realized she was lilting so her statement sounded like a question. She cleared her throat and began again, “I’ve always been a bit afraid of women, it seems like we are harsher on one another than men are. And we’re much less predictable and honest, at times. I realize this is all generalization and clearly not fair to all women, myself included, but what I mean is, in my experience with men and women, I always know where I stand with men because they’re so transparent, whereas with a woman I’m always anxious that I’m only seeing what they want me to see.”

“Do you only show people what you want them to see?” asked the therapist, on solid footing again, knowing exactly the answer to the question she’d just asked but unsure whether or not her client knew.

“Yes, I do. And I didn’t even realize I do it until just recently. All these things we’ve been working on, they’ve allowed me to see that I am exactly the women I’m afraid of. I don’t speak my mind for fear of upsetting someone, instead I say things in an offhand way or ask things even when they’re not questions.”

“Have you always thought your husband hates women or is this a new idea born of the work you’ve been doing on yourself?” the therapist asked.

“I’ve always known he was a little afraid of women but it wasn’t until Hillary ran for president that it became clear he actually hates women.”

“How did Hillary running make it clear that your husband hates women?” the therapist asked.

“He was just so angry,” she said, shaking her head at the recollection, “he had no way to explain what he was so angry about and he hid behind things like ’emails’ and ‘liar’ and said things like ‘I’m all for a woman president, just not that woman,'” she said, emphasizing that with a scowl on her face, presumably the scowl her husband wore when saying the quote. “Ugh,” she grimaced and looked back up to meet her therapists gaze, “but now here we are, Elizabeth Warren is running. She’s a prime example of a woman who is calm, intelligent, has a proven track record of doing what she says, has a plan for literally every freaking thing you could ask for, absolutely destroys the other candidates in the debates,” she takes a deep breath knowing that she’s getting a little heated, a little excited in her explanation, “a perfect candidate not only for president but for our first female president, and what does he say?” she asks rhetorically, squinting her eyes a bit before sitting back against the chair and throwing her arms out, “‘she’s too aggressive.'” She throws her arms back down at her side, “how can you, I mean, what about,” she dissolved into a growl before taking yet another deep breath, “no one says Trump is too aggressive and the guy is a batshit crazy bullying asshole. And did you see that interview she did with what’shisname?” she asks.

“Chris Matthews?” the therapist asks.

“Yes!” she nearly yells, “if anyone had a reason to be ‘aggressive’ it was Warren during that interview and yet she didn’t lose her cool once, not once!”

“Is your husbands depiction of Warren as aggressive the reason you say he hates women?” the therapist asks.

“Yes and no,” she bobs her head, “that’s part of it, I mean obviously using words for a woman as a negative that are the exact same words you’d use for a man as a positive is a problem, but it doesn’t necessarily mean hate. No, but it’s all a part of it. Like a symptom of his disease,” she starts laughing, “dis and ease, that’s exactly it, he is uneasy with women and it’s also a sickness. Has there ever been a more perfect word?” she asks, again rhetorically, as she continues, “It makes me sad. And angry. I’m so sad that he hates women, I’m so sorry for whatever happened to him in his life that he hates women. And it makes me angry because how can I not take it personally? And how can I possibly stay with him, knowing that he hates me, even though he doesn’t understand that he does?”

“Do you know what happened to you that you were afraid of women?” the therapist asks.

She leans back against the chair and stares up at the ceiling for a minute before answering, “I’m not exactly sure. I can’t remember any women ever saying or doing anything to me that made me afraid. If anything it was all the warnings I heard from boys and men around me as I grew up, all the warnings they gave one another about women, said within my earshot or directly over my head or sometimes even to my face, a sort of, ‘don’t you grow up like that,’ sort of thing.”

“Would your husband have grown up hearing those same warnings?” asks the therapist.

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” she says without taking a moment to contemplate, the answer immediately on her tongue before the therapist had even finished asking.

“Does knowing that give you any empathy towards him?”

She nods, tears slowly falling down her cheeks, “yes,” she nearly whispers, her voice getting lost in a need to swallow, “I feel very sorry for him, and I do wish he could come to see it, but I also know he has no interest in therapy. I know he doesn’t believe that his problems can be solved by anyone outside of himself. And so,” she spreads her hands in a gesture of letting go, “I think I need to decide if I can live with someone who hates me because I know how much he loves me, or if I need to remove him from my life, like my mom.”

“This is a lot to think about. I wish we could continue talking about it because I think we could get somewhere better with just a bit more time. Unfortunately, I have another client in a few minutes, so we do have to end on time today. I’m going to ask you to promise not to make any major decisions over the next week. I know it may seem like I’m asking a lot, but this is very important. I’m asking that if you notice yourself moving towards a place of finality towards anything major a purchase, a trip, your husband, that you instead stop and consider it an experiment. Say to yourself, ‘what would happen if I pretend I moved forward with this decision,’ and then imagine the possibilities. Go down all the possible roads you can think of, but only in your mind. Is that something you can commit to this week?”

“I think so,” she said, stretching out the word think into multiple syllables.

“Excellent. Really. Excellent. Next week. Same time. No big decision until then,” the therapist said, hand on her shoulder as she guided her out.

~~~That’s one hour~~~