An Easter Roadtrip: Helicopters, Hefty Bags, and Dinner With Persephone

The tops of my feet ascend to the ceiling. Along with a chisel’s width strip down one shoulder blade, both feet from arch top to toes radiate back the day’s sun, day four of vacation in Coronado, testament to the rushed sunscreen slather (such zeal to get back to reading Dinner with Persephone, all three children busy with their drip castles and maze of wave-flooded highways). The tingling gives a mingled sense of levitation and vertigo, spiritual glee even, goaded by the cadence of the family snoring. Their night ends, mine begins, and I range like a loosed marmot over the day’s beauty: the four foot froth of breaking waves, the expanse of lacey white skimming towards the kids’ ankles, tiny flecks of gold skittering beneath the thin shelf of retreating water, pelicans collapsing beyond the break like umbrellas for the plunge.

With a life-guard tower behind me and two yellow trucks roaming the beach stocked with sturdy, tan, twenty-some-things, I can afford to dip back into my book chronicling a poet’s year abroad in Greece, fantasize someday it’ll be me eating olives and learning a language. Instead I feast on Patricia Storace’s imagery (Dinner with Perspehone) from a stolen statue from the Porch of Maidens, to the “dense pool of wavering emerald shadows, where the darkness was not nocturnal but fertile” to the history of the dreamers of Greece and the years of interpretation and omen.

When Storace writes, “A modern dreamer making a statue, according to several of my dream books, wishes to perfect some aspect of himself, and is preparing for an opportunity to do that,” I immediately think of the parallel to writing poetry. I recognize that striving to capture something in order to bring it forth for love of others, though I hadn’t exactly thought of it as something to perfect in one’s self, heart, or psyche. Daily, as I go about the daunting task of motherhood, there’s always 1% of my brain floating its way towards the next poem, or preparing for the opportunity, which opens up most often at night, like now, feet on fire, thinking of Storace’s world of incense, the vulgar gestures of taxi drivers, oleanders, and the Virgin Mary. Inevitably I will be propelled towards my unlined tiny spiral notebook, waiting for me on the cold porcelain rim of the tub. On such a sun-sated day, it’s hard to rise, but a friend recently reminded me how crucial it is to write when you’re happy.

And today’s happiness, frankly, hardwon. By the end of our ten-hour drive, the car floor a tangle of plastic Easter Grass, knitting projects for two of the children with more than one ball of yarn attached, power bar wrappers, popcorn, crayons, coloring books, a bag of sand and shells from the overnight stop at Shell Beach oozing its damp contents over socks and bottles of bubbles, should it surprise me Day One would explode with non-stop brawls. 8:30 a.m: two of my children staked out in front of the slider in hopes of seeing again who they claim was The Easter Bunny (one hysterical jack-rabbit we glimpsed skirting the parking lot at dusk the night before) until one of them decided the spot between the beds was prime “fort” real estate, announced it, and the grass couldn’t have been greener or more worth dying for.

After the fray escalates with a frenzy of punches, we make our fury-tag way out of the hotel lobby and out into the sand, where the drone of the motorized raker and the Navy Base helicopter give us better cover. I phone my mom friend Emily, mother of three children mirroring my children’s ages and gender, to talk me down out of the Hefty Bag Fantasy—you know the one—in which you duct-tape together a parachute and head off the Vista Point behind the rest stop while the family uses the bathroom. A serene, quiet float to the valley floor for a cup of coffee alone…

My friend’s gentle laugh, insistence on meeting for coffee when we get back, her offer to put her daughter on the phone to snap the kids out of their fight helps immensely. I’d have put my daughter on the phone, but from the velocity with which the tennis shoes and flip flops erupt over the palm brush, I predict my girl’s more interested in hitting her target than chatting. I say a hasty goodbye, take a deep breath, and hear myself shout, “If you don’t stop and drop to the sand to work this out instantly, I will get a newspaper and hire a sitter for you since you are not listening to me.” Arms reloaded with shoes, they all three stop—eye me curiously, and sit down. Wow. The weirdest things work when we all get pushed to the edge.

Later, I take a second weird joy in standing in the direct flight-path of the stream of helicopters taking off and landing on the airstrip behind our hotel. I never thought I’d ever experience such peace in the thunderous drone, the way all your cells vibrate, especially one’s throat and heart, so that for an instant you forget everything but the grey underbelly of the copter, childhood’s fascination for the perfect arc of spinning rotors, and the thrill of something so heavy defying gravity.

Car tantrums, Non-Parental Observers, and the Cops

I was at a bridal shower when it happened. Mainly thrilled after eight years of either being pregnant or nursing to be headed for “something just for me” in sandals that matched my blouse and underneath that blouse a bra without those lumps at the top of the cups (from those hook snaps for a nurser's easy access). Even had a fresh layer of nailpolish over the months old toe-job to hide the chips.

My cell phone rang twice, the girls making fun of me for even thinking of answering it during the two hours away from my husband. “He can handle it,” they laughed and prodded me to set my phone down on a thumping speaker and then handed me a fresh mimosa. I ate the decorative m & ms on the table nervously as I listened to the other women, speaking of their jobs, their children launched, all the while I’m trying not to appear desperate for conversation, wondering if I too should be taking up triathlon when my youngest starts kindergarten except for that terror I have of swimming in open water while others mow over me, and the fact that my ovaries sting so much I puke when I run more than a quarter mile. So ok, I could maybe do a relay and ride the bike. If I can remember how to get my bike shoes out of those snazzy snap-on lollipop pedals without falling over and breaking a hip.

When I finally left the bridal shower tanked up on couscous with pomegranate seeds and tiny wedges of fig and called my husband, he sounded as panicked as I do every day at 5:02 when I call him to ask him why he’s not home yet, the kids in the background shrieking.

“You won’t believe it, T,” he said. “Some lady called the cops on me.”

“Didn’t you guys ride bikes?” I asked.

Yes, and no. Getting back into the truck after the bike ride, the middle son decided he wanted to sit next to his Dad in the front seat. My husband stood firm, no, and after five minutes of trying to explain why, and my son screaming irrationally, my husband did a fairly sane thing: he left the screamer in the truck and took the 3-year old and 8-year old and sat in the field next to the truck, about 20 feet away to wait it out. He could see my son and my son could see his father. Drawn by the sound of our crying child, a woman sallied over to the truck with her cell phone in hand and said, “Is that child crying?!” My husband said, “Yes, he’s having a tantrum.” She then walked over to the license plate and started punching in numbers. “You’re not calling the cops, are you?” my exasperated husband asked. She ignored him. “Do you have children?” he said, to her retreating back. She continued walking away.

So my husband waited—and sure enough, the cop car drove up ten minutes later. (Why drive off and get pulled over somewhere downtown? he told me). The lady cop asked to speak to our son who by then was no longer crying and asked him if he was ok, and then said, “Hey, do you know why your Dad wants you in the back seat? It’s the safest place for you to ride.” She gave all three kids junior cop stickers and went on her way.

What the cell-phone wielding non-parental observer didn’t realize or couldn’t possibly know was the kids were hot and thirsty. That if you put a three-year old, an eight-year old and a forty-two-year old father in a king cab with a screaming six-year old, things get real hairy real fast.

Two days later, I got my turn with passing judgment. I pulled up in a parking lot on my way to the bookstore, high noon, probably 92 degrees out. The windows of the car next to me were cracked a couple of inches and a large black dog crawled up to the passenger seat, with, I exaggerate not, at least a six incher of drool hanging off his tongue and some froth around his nose. I actually flashed on the woman who called the police on my husband and thought, I can’t jump to conclusions here. But as I locked up my car and started to walk away, I thought, shoot, I have a cup of water in the car, maybe I should just give it to the dog. I did a U-turn, but before I could open the door to my car, a woman walked over to me.

“Yes,” she said defensively before I could say anything, “that’s my dog and he’s only been alone in that car for three minutes. He’s fine.”

“Ok,” I said, “sure, I know things aren’t always what they seem...” and I tried to relay the story of my husband and our son, but I trailed off when I realized she was still standing there defensively. Sure, I thought, maybe that dog always drools like that. Who knows? You just can’t possibly know what transpired even two minutes before you come on any scene or know for sure the source of froth on a dog’s nose.