After a week of unpacking, sorting, putting away — today we’re less apt to say, “It’s in a box somewhere” and instead marvel at our progress.  The important things have been located.  We’ve unpacked our spoons and bowls now which means Ben & Jerry’s after dinner.  The teevee machine now lights up our evening lives (after a frantic rustling through boxes looking for the remote).  We found the toilet paper and the shower gel.  The toothpaste wasn’t far behind.  We’re set with the essentials; we’ve only the flotsam and jetsam left to arrange.

Midway through this past week, I was struck by how the evidence of one’s life can so easily be wrapped in newspaper and placed in a box, only to be discovered anew several days later.  If you ever want to see your soul, put all your stuff in boxes and forget about it all for a couple of weeks.  Then slowly unpack.  You’ll find it’s not what you have that’s your true treasure.

In a few days when we’re done with all the unboxing, we plan to have a big garage sale.  We figure it’ll be a good way to meet our new neighbors.  I suppose they’ll be able to determine the kind of people we are by the things we discard.  There’s nothing like judging a person’s character from their garage sale items.  I suppose I’ll have to mix in some nice things so they don’t think we’re trying to pawn off all our ragged and tacky stuff.  It’s that old “What will the neighbors think?” mantra that was so carefully placed in my childhood head.  Nevertheless, first impressions are lasting and it’s important to be a good neighbor … especially in the desert where snakes aren’t far away and scorpions hide in your shoes.

Yes, we’re nearly done.  Dan and I are the sort of people who will keep at it until it’s all tidy.  Dan says he’s never moving again.  I agree!  Never again do I want my ice cream spoons to “be in a box somewhere.”

P.S.  For anyone who might be following, my dear friend is okay with nothing more than a nasty scare and a couple of biopsy stitches to show for it.  Maybe lighting a candle works after all.  Stay well, all my friends.  Don’t make me light my candle — the poor thing is nearly down to a nub now.

We met when she was going through a divorce and I’d been single a number of years.  A mutual friend brought her to a jam session.  Back in that day, if you could bang pots and pans together, you could call yourself a musician.  We used the equipment of a local church (I think the pastor thought he was saving our poor souls).  On the third Saturday of every month, we’d set up microphones and speakers and then just have at it for a couple of hours.  Sometimes I’d thump away on a keyboard, but mostly I sang.  We did the old classics … James Taylor, a little Stevie Nicks, a lot of the Eagles.  We were worse than any teenager’s garage band — too old to be wanna-be’s, too horrid to be has-been’s, too enthusiastic to do anything but have fun.  The “band members” were a revolving sort; we never knew who would show up.  Sometimes we had nothing but electric guitars, sometimes three drummers taking turns on one kit, usually a keyboardist or two would arrive, and there was always at least one beginning acoustic guitarist.  The rest of us were all singers of some sort and range.  Some could even carry a tune.

That particular Saturday, after our mutual friend introduced us and the woman shyly shook my hand, I suggested we sit in the pews rather than storm the stage.  That was the ticket!  At the start of the first song (most likely one of our twelve versions of Hotel California) the quiet woman with thick dark hair and that freshly-wounded look of the newly-single began to sing.  It was like I was hearing my own voice!  We were … beat for beat, measure for measure … indistinguishable from the other.  Soon, we were laughing about men and high-fiving our way through song after song.

At the end of the jam, we exchanged work emails and, not long after, began a friendship like no other.  We discovered we both wrote poetry and soon collaborated on the worst collection of “hurt-dumping” poetry ever contrived.  We listened to each other through our “getting-back-on-the-horse” days as we tried out our meager dating skills.  We moved states away, only to return, then move again.  Regardless the distance, we’ve always stayed in touch via email or phone.  She was my maid of honor when Dan and I got married.  When she at last found the love of her life, she made certain I approved before she moved forward.

We’re now crazy happy with our respective husbands and families.  She became a successful executive.  I went on to write things.  We still sing …..

… Except for today.  Today my friend undergoes a very scary biopsy for breast cancer.

We’ll sing again tomorrow, but today — just for today — I’m lighting a candle and holding my breath.

I stopped this evening to grab a salad at my favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place.  It’s my favorite.  It’s one of those little joints where you walk down the line and supervise what goes onto your plate.  I always order the Ensalada Bajia.   I walk along asking for a little of this … a lot of that … more cilantro, please.

I paid for my meal to go and walked out of the restaurant only to stop dead in my tracks.  At a small table just outside the restaurant was a woman.  Obviously homeless.  Certainly hungry.  I asked her if she liked salad.  “Yes,” she said quietly.  “Well, here.  I got this for you,” I smiled.

I went back in the restaurant, ordered another salad to go and stopped briefly by the table where I had earlier left the first salad.  “I hope you have a great night,” I said.  “My name’s Gail,” she said.  She asked my name, then said she would pray for me, “it being Easter and all.”

That was nice.  That was really nice.

As I turned out of the drive and onto the main street, I noticed another woman … again obviously homeless … hurrying toward the restaurant.  I envisioned her a friend of Gail’s, two women sharing a lovely salad on a beautiful spring evening.

Yeah.  That was nice.

She shakes her dust rag sky at you, this place does.
She keeps your hands busy with your own dust rag.
Dueling dust rags.
First a shake of hers, then a wipe of yours.
It rained once here.
No one dusted that day; we, instead,
Stood in our doorways, chattering on about a different
Color on the sky.

–Auburn McCanta

The picture above is of the town of Maricopa, thirty miles south of Phoenix.  If the wind blows up from the South, the dust only gathers into a larger cloud by the time it reaches us.  We usually only have these dust storms during the August monsoon season.

Other days of the year … like today … the dust stays pretty much ear level and we can easily gather it onto our cloths every morning.

Some places rain liquid.  We have dust.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

— Maya Angelou

You can go here to read about one of my favorite living poets … one who’s birthday just happens to be TODAY!!!

Born in 1928, Ms. Angelou is most known for her autobiographical books, most notably her brave and honest, I Know Where the Caged Bird Sings.  She’s been nominated for the National Book Award, as well as, the Pulitzer.

Her poetry is stunningly lovely and startlingly honest.  I wish her great health and longevity, because in my mind, she may well be the original Dancing Bird.

I don’t know what we’d do without her.

Several days ago, I received a wonderful email from my friend and reader, Dave McChesney.  He sent me a delightful montage of his beloved dogs; both have sadly passed now.  I’m honored Dave chose to share this with me and all you Dancing Birds.  I present his email, unedited and in its entirety, because it’s a beautiful homage to his dogs.

Enjoy!

Hi Auburn,

Since we’ve been discussing dogs lately, I thought you might enjoy a few photos of our four legged “kids.” Yeah, the two legged one got in on one of them as well.

Tanya is the golden colored one. Tiffany is the black one. Jessica is the human! The two dogs together was taken when they were fairly young. We were still in China Lake, California. I like this particular photo because Tiffany’s sly personality seems to come out. Being so dark it was always hard to capture any expression she might be exhibiting. I think the one of Tanya not in the snow was taken there as well. Tanya in the snow was taken at our first house here in Spokane. So was the one with both Tiffany and Jessica. Carrying her dish around was one of Tiffany’s habits…she was a real chow hound. She’d eat like crazy and then act as if she was saying, “that was good! What was it!” One had to count one’s fingers after hand feeding her. On the other hand, Tanya always carefully investigated anything offered her, and only then would she gently and daintily take it. Jessica looks like she’s about three years old, so these photos were all taken several years ago.

Dave

I can’t think of a better way to begin these days of April than with my favorite frog poem.

What a wonderful bird the frog are!
When he stand he sit almost;
When he hop he fly almost.
He ain’t got no sense hardly;
He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.

-Anonymous

To borrow loosely from Walt Whitman, these days I’m a person in multiplicity.  I am cluttered with dizzying tasks, followed by hours of silent waiting for this installer, that servicer, those workers.  I’m writing this post, in fact, on the fly, in an empty house on one of those pilfered and unsecure “Internet Tubes.”

But These Days, it’s all about moving from here to there.

It’s especially about moving into a needy house.  A money pit, to be more accurate  This newer, shinier house came with a bargain basement price tag, but when we got it home and pulled it out of the sack, we realized it had some flaws … some loose threads.  It needed more than a bit of work before we could actually wear the thing.

First, the previous owners (bless their dear little hearts) stole the entire kitchen!  The bank kindly rebuilt a kitchen, but as in all bank things these days, it came up a bit short.  Among other things, they neglected to install a microwave.  Now, when your husband is the Microwave King, you MUST have a microwave.  Also, the water in Phoenix is harder than a granite pit and just about as tasty.  Thus, a water softener and reverse osmosis water system are necessities here.  Those things were gone too, along with even the little thingys on the water handles that indicate hot and cold — yep, pulled right out of the faucets.  The flooring was a mess; yucky carpets, messed-up travertine tiles, hardwoods crying for some tlc.

Next, the backyard was gone.  How does someone remove an entire backyard?  Seriously!  How does someone DO that?  The front yard was overgrown and mostly all weedy.  A poisonous and, dare I say, illegal Castor Bean lolled in the wind like some Dr. Seuss character.  Of course, the water timer was missing, as well as our good sense by now.

I think you’re getting the point.  Each day we’ve discovered another compelling reason to flip open our checkbook and pay people to do things for us because we’re too lame, too unskilled or too old to do it ourselves.  I’m still a month away from doctor’s release after my recent wrist surgery, so poor Dan gets to do all the packing, lifting, toting of all our barges and bales.

The good news is that we’re only days away from habitability.  Days away from moving our furniture and boxes into our new shiny object.  Only days from the new exhaustion of switching from our sensible and modest single level home to what can only be referred to as “that two-story big a$$ house.”

But it’s our final house.  It’s the Monopoly Park Place property that we hope we bought at the bottom of the market.  (For all our sakes, I hope we’ve reached the bottom of our collective economic mess.)  It’s our last grand house before the kids discover how daft we really are and ship us off to the old folks home where we can retire in peace with mashed potatoes and pie served at every meal.  In the meantime, the stairs and all the work and simply keeping up with the Arizona dust in this big a$$ house will keep us in shape …

… And in a perpetual Walt Whitman state of multiplicity.

Our lovely Miss Scarlett is beginning to slow down.  She’s graying around the muzzle and eyes.  She walks through the house now, unlike Wilson who dances about singing, I’m too sexy for my fur, too sexy for my paws, too sexy for my tail, too sax-seeeee.

Miss Scarlett is a lady; she’s dainty.  She takes a while longer to stand now, to take that first halting step, to eat her meals, to come when her name is called.   She’s still up for a rousing game of bone wars, but these days, she’d rather lounge than lunge.

She’s become someone who Boy Scouts would escort across the street.

We take precautions with her; we have every lump and bump immediately and carefully examined by the vet, we no longer ask her to sit for cookies, her walks are shorter and slower.   We want her with us for a very long time.  We won’t care if she drools from the side of her mouth or needs Depends® to get through the day.

Scarlett is that special — that irreplaceable.

She’s a woman of grace and beauty who simply wears fur to every occasion.

Then there’s Wilson!

This Dancing Bird celebrates all you Dancing Monkeys.  If this doesn’t make you raise a toast of green beer, nothing will!!!