It's the day before my trip and I've thus far only packed my toiletries thanks to an oh so practical and fabulous gift from Shoshana...an LL Bean shower kit organizer. Everything else is on the floor in a big pile and I'm feeling overwhelmed so I've decided to procrastinate for a bit.
This last month has disappeared so quickly. I've watched my mother's knee mend. I've watched her transition from a walker to a cane. Now she can even walk around the house without the cane, so I don't feel so guilty about leaving. But it is a strange role reversal, me taking care of her. At one point she just looked at me and laughed: "When did you become the parent?" I don't know about all that. If anything I feel like more of a little kid than I have in years. I am nervous. It's like the day before school starts and no matter how many lists I make and how ready I think I am, there is really never any way to prepare for life. You just have to go and make the best of it.
In the many while, I want to say thanks to M2, Cory, Mikey and Babe and all the people who have made this trip better for me. After the first two weeks of going back and forth to the hospital and waking up at an ungodly hour to help my mom put her leg into the cpm machine, my Seattle buddies Mikey and Babe showed up in Scottsdale to celebrate Mikey's b-day. It was just what I needed: an excuse to go out and have fun. We went clubbing, hung out by the pool, and in general just had a fabulous time together. By the time they left, my mom was mobile enough to get out of the house more. So this year, to celebrate our b-days we decided to go on an adventure. We found a gentleman named Walker who takes people on sunrise and sunset tours of the desert.
Neither of us knew what to expect. We met him in the parking lot of a Deli in North Scottsdale. He was easy to spot dressed like something out of a western movie with a 45 on each hip, a belt full of bullets, a boot knife, and the obligatory cowboy hat. I looked at Mom and she looked at me...both of us thinking the same thing...should we really be doing this? I had a flashback to those ABC After School Specials about Stranger Danger. Then again, it is Arizona. Mom and I are probably the only ones not packing heat. Walker lead us to his elongated jeep, the only vehicle in AZ that I've been in that didn't have actual windows or air-conditioning. We climbed in and set off on an adventure. As the city receded, Mom and I sucked down bottled water to stave off the hot wind whipping through the jeep while Walker alternated between cracking stupid jokes and Trivia Questions. Did you know that Phoenix is the 5th most largely populated city in the US? And those huge Sentinel-like Cacti with the big arms that show up on every postcard weigh tons (literally) and have an internal skeleton that looks like a bunch of sticks. They also produce over 400,000,000 seeds in their lifetime only to have maybe one or two actually survive to produce another cactus.
About an hour and a half later, we arrived at our destination: nowhere. We turned off the main road onto a dirt path and I was really beginning to wonder if I was going to spend my first day of 31 trying not to get buried by some psycho cowboy, but Walker turned out to be friendly, a little goofy and extremely knowledgeable. Throughout our time, Walker introduced us to various different plants, careful to explain their uses. There are some cacti that if prepared correctly have more vitamin C than oranges and others that were used to hide water. Walker recounted the history of the Native Americans who used to live in this area from the Pima to the Apache. It was all really fascinating. As we watched the sun set over the desert, I felt very lucky to have such a special experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment