Don't Let Me Catch You in Kendale with a Bucket of Wealthy Man's Paint

I relayed this story and was told I need to write it. I'm told I can tell a story. And what better a story than a real life one.

I went "home" for Christmas. Something in me felt unsettled as a I drove over the ridge into my hometown. I hate that part of the drive. I always feel as if that will be the end of me. Maybe today, maybe not. But I felt this urgency. I was headed for the barn and could not get there fast enough, my only in the seat beside me, quiet and comforting. My mind across a rhyme "going by the bottle shop where I'm certain that my father stopped." I'll maybe work that into something.

We got there and as usual, it was so dark you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. Moonless in the clouds and an inky kind of dark gray in the sky, just light enough that you could see the outlines of the tree tops and the house if you looked up. But looking ahead, nothing but black. I stepped carefully out to the edge of the driveway toward the steep drop off to the bottom where we used to grow our own food every summer. I'll never forget and always love the mineral smell of freshly-turned dirt, picking out the largest rocks and turning in compost and pure, burning white beads of nitrogen. That smell and those memories were the start of spring. The warmth returning to our little world. The barefoot wanderings of a little blonde girl with wild hair and wilder dreams. A deep inhale. One more. The only sounds distant, crickets? Frogs? Some warm-weather live thing, barely hanging on in a warm December. Christmas Eve.

I went back to the car and began extracting supplies. My little backpack, my pillow, the cooler, the cupcakes, my coffee setup, the gifts to take in, my purse. I saw my wallet in the back and threw it in my purse, to frankly prevent that one cousin from stealing it.

We went inside and were greeted as usual. My grandmother, never missing much at 97 next month, reached up to touch my hair, usually wildly curly and that day tamed into waves down to my waist. She asked if I wasn't wearing it curly anymore and I told her just this once and she looked up and told me I was beautiful. Twice. I looked over her shoulder to my mother. She's told me that three times in three months after a lifetime of never saying it. I believe it when she says it. Maybe age looks good on me. Maybe a year of pain and awful heartache in a lifetime of joy and worse pain just make me glowy. We writers are an odd  bunch.

I sat there in the stifling living room, itching. Just restless and unable to sit. It was only about 7:30. I knew there was a nice bottle of sparkling rose the trunk. I knew it would never get cold fast enough. I finally decided that I'd hunt down an alternative in town, half an hour away. I cannot tell you what it is about all the ugly and beauty and more ugly of my childhood that makes me want to drink in that place. Like a weight on my chest that I'm certain I can drown.

Out to the car, checking my purse for my wallet. It wasn't there. I must have left it in the back of the car. Out I go. A pile of business cards and store loyalty cards and various and sundry just behind the car set me on edge. I opened the hatch, and no wallet. Cold panic knowing that the dog must have smelled it, like cow, my HOBO Lauren clutch wallet, perfect for my needs after months of searching, unpolished raw cowhide in a shade they called olive, but was really just the perfect shade of slate gray, marked with dark specks and light creases. I'd found it where I found so much of myself, Muscle Shoals, Alabama in a shop behind a local restaurant on the main street. I'd been with the dearest loves of my whole life. Funny how the perfect company helps find the perfect things. Maybe it's the calm and the security of people who love and support you. I'd have regretted leaving it there. That thing contains everything I need to survive as an independent person. My car key, my house key, my work key card, my license, my debit and credit cards, my insurance card, my best friend's old business card, my new ones, the paper boat my ex-husband folded for me on our first date. I can probably stand to let that one go.

And it was gone. And I knew immediately that the outdoor dog had it. It smelled like cow. You cannot blame any animal for its nature, good or bad. So I called my child and we began the search. I have no idea how far she roams across acres and acres of wooded and hilly terrain. But the first path is toward her equivalent of the barn. Sure enough, searching up toward the doghouse, my favorite lip balm containing lanolin, of course appealing to a part herd dog, covered in bite marks, red tube lying amongst the dry oak leaves.

I retrieved the lukewarm bottle from the trunk and sat on the front stoop and popped that cork. Burns awful when it's warm and tastes much less like decent. I offered the bottle to the adult son. He sipped politely. We sit a few minutes and resumed the search. Fruitlessly.

Following the same hog hog track back into the trees, my car key. Oh, thank fuck. At least I can escape the hell I spent 25 years stuck in. Messaged a man. He told me he'd have saved me if I couldn't have found my keys. My perpetual self-rescuing damsel bucked, but the part of me that craves softness and to not have to solve every problem myself breathed for the first time in a long fucking time. I believe he would have done his damnedest too. And I believe I'd have let him. Or just asked my son's girlfriend to grab the spare on her way up the next day. No one thinks about that sort of thing when trapped.

That was all we found. And we looked. 20 acres or more. Finally giving up, I sat down on the side of the hill in the leaves and had a not cute moment. I apologized and told my son he deserved a better mother. And he does. He always did and especially now. He's a beautiful soul and all I've managed to do is introduce to him men who are nice because they want to bang his mom. It's a wonder I still even date men. Y'all are not sending your best people and the bar is on the floor. I'll never be perfectly together. I'm completely crazy. But at least not the scary kind. I was so afraid of that because my mom was. Brilliant and creative and artistic and mean. My sister got the mean. I got the...I don't know, artist's soul? We both turned out artistic. I think people who hurt the most turn mean. Maybe there's just something in me that always looked for why people are the way they are and loved the good and wanted to soothe the bad. That's not always a good thing.

He just said "No I don't." And there was nothing more perfect. Not "you are a great mom" or any of that. Just that I was the right mother for him. He's got his mother's gift for telling people he loves the right and true thing in his heart.

Both my grandmother and mother offered to replace the wallet. That was what upset me most. I cannot presently afford to replace it. This house will break me in cost this year if I don't watch. Sacrifices must be made. Another year without Red Rocks. My whole soul needs Colorado as much as it needed Montana. But I didn't know I needed Montana. I know I need that wild, red cliff.

I went inside after a while. It was a beautiful, warm December Christmas Eve, but I was only wearing a tee shirt. I sat on the sofa in the stifling heat, with a soft buzz, reliving  it all. The whole of my life here. My Mama in her chair to my right. I recounted to her the story of meeting the man my favorite song was about. And he was perfect. I am totally fucked up. He made me feel both like a daughter and a woman. Weird. I played her the song because she never remembers while I went to the bathroom. I could still hear and sing along to every word. Then one from the new record. This artist is something else. He has helped me forgive my son's father with a song. That is powerful. A couple acoustic guitars in the old style and my heart softened for the first time in over a decade. I sent the man the song, but he never responded. Sometimes when I can't find the right words, I hear the right words in a song. Always listen. I will. Something about that phrase got to me. And I won't forget it. "Tour of Duty" indeed. Oh, they must have been in the same desert together. Wow. Two men and two outcomes and the difference between a good father and then the other. I can't seem to resist a daddy who gives a single fuck. That locket I wear almost constantly at my throat to remind me what I'm waiting for. I wonder who knew when I took it off and laid it on the nightstand what it was.

Then I played her one from the new record. The one that hasn't made me forgive, but has softened my heart. The song that made it easier to have that hard, hard conversation. The song that brought me home to my family. "It's hard to go through life without your daddy by your side." Oh, my only girl, I feel your heart. And I love you. And I never won't love you. Come to me with anything and I will carry it for you as much as I ever can. My only girl. My first child. 

Then I went to bed. In my childhood bedroom. The one I shared with my sister. The bed we shared, her knee tucked between my legs, giggling into the night until we fell asleep. She will always be my best friend and the first love not my daddy I'll ever have. I loved her. I love her. More than my own self. I'd move mountains for her. Planets and stars. I fell asleep fast, amongst the stuffed bears and porcelain dolls of my childhood.

I woke up before dawn, waiting for the light to resume the search. If I failed, I was prepared to offer a cash bounty to any of the myriad family members to  return it. We managed $60 between us for the reward. I made coffee, poured myself a cup and my mother and my son. Sipped  a few times before Mama went out for her first cigarette. She's going to kill herself with Salem Ultra Light 100s. I heard her whoop from the kitchen window. Funny, all this effort to escape that domestic prison and so much of my life still out that window, Lookout Mountain close enough that I can feel her breathe. That goddamned dog had brought the wallet back. It was not there the night before.

It had a hole the size of a softball in the soft, supple leather. I hoped it made that dog sick. But not really. She is only what she is. Aren't we all? But all the contents were there, even the card that was sort of just tucked in with nothing holding it secure. And everything was dry, down to my new square business cards I'm passing out to every person I've ever known, my name set back right. To my Daddy's name. The one I've always been so proud of. Trash or not, it is mine to hold. Mine to better. "Don't let me catch you in Kendale with a bucket of wealthy man's paint."

We found a replacement pretty fast, and for substantially less than the cost of the original. They paid. No arguing against it. I guess all's well that ends well. And all the bullshit makes a good story. "Jesus made the flowers, but it took a dog to make the story good."

Now I have to go find out why I can't stop smelling woodsy tea tree and something else... I always manage to describe anything I set myself to. Tidepools and asphalt and such expanses of comfortable quiet and stories of Frenchman Street and...