We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

                                                   Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead

In some stories, the opening starts just before a moment of change.  In some it starts just after some sort of change.  Often in mysteries, the prologue is in the villain’s point of view and Chapter One opens in the protagonist’s point of view.  The villain prologue often establishes that a crime took place and Chapter One introduces the protagonist and how he/she will be affected by the crime.

But always, always, there is a bridge to cross.  In every story, there’s a bridge.

I drift.  One thing leads to another.

I heard from a friend today.  We talk sporadically; it’s like we just spoke two hours ago to one another.  “Hey,” she says.  I’m right with her.  All I need is one word and I’m there, without any passage of time, without our many miles of distance.

My friend tells me her parents’ bodies are breaking.  Her mother-in-law is breaking too.  We’ve reached that age where our original gods are falling to their knees.  In response to the breaking apart of her parents, she got a tattoo.

A Celtic thing.  With meaningful colors and whirly whirls inked into her frightened body.

I couldn’t be more awed by my friend.  In response to the pain of her parents, she laid a symbol on her back.  Leave Me Alone, it says.  I’m Not Afraid, it shouts.  I Am At Peace, it belies.

I’m fighting the urge to get my own tattoo now.  If I were to do such a thing, I’d probably pick out the cartoon character, Goofy, for my ankle, a butterfly on my back, a circlet of Army-speak around what used to be my bicep because I once tried to join the Reserves. Maybe something esoteric and dragony.  Oh, yeah … I’d be the queen of Ink.

I’d be all over it.  But … I have a husband, and two dogs … and other family who would look askance at me and think me ridiculous for embellishing what they already love.

Still ……..

Barring unforeseen circumstances I’ll undergo surgery next week on my right wrist.  My dominant hand will be unusable for six weeks.  Six miserable weeks!  Every movement, each purposeful act, will be done with a left hand that is recalcitrant, untrained and uncooperative, at best.  I’ll be quite helpless for these coming weeks; I’ll be unable to dress, cut my food, wash my hair … I could go on, but you get the picture.

With this next surgery, I’ll have nearly as many scars as did Evil Kneivel, without the thrill of jumping over cars and canyons on a tricked-out motorcycle.

I told Dan this is my last surgery.  No more!  Not again!  At least until it’s needed, that is.  And so I write:

I am opened.
I am mindful.
My bones exposed, they hear words spoken over them.
Music sings to my blood.
I am stitched.
I lay closed.

Dan tells me it will be fine.  Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to manage the bathroom with only his left hand.

Wilson came home yesterday after four weeks in Big Boy doggie boot camp.  Oh, what a pittiful sight!  His hair had turned grey.  It was long and matted from ( he said) all those turrible, turrible hours digging out a foxhole with nothing but his helmet for a shovel, not to mention meal after meal of Spam on a Shingle.  He had one large hairless spot along his flank.  “Don’t worry,” he insisted.  “It’s just a little nick from an enemy bullet.  Nothing to mention to anyone — Really!!!”

But still, the poor fella was hobbling on crutches.  And dirty.  Oh, so sadly dirty.

We mentioned that the nice girls down at the USO had arranged for a welcome-home greeting complete with a bubble bath, electric shears, a pedicure and all the cookies a soldier fresh from boot camp could want.  Boy, oh boy!  Wilson threw down his crutches and hopped in the car as fast as you could say K-Rations.

Four an a half hours later, we picked up our Wilson.  Sparkling white once again, although we had to admit that those scalp-scraping G.I. haircuts leave a bit to be desired.

Later, after a gourmet dinner of steak and lobster, and as we were tucking our hero into bed with more cookies, hugs and kisses, the phone rang.  It was his trainer.  Seems that the story about the close call with that enemy bullet was all a ruse to gain our sympathy.  The true story is that he was caught mooning his camp buddies during a midnight food raid in the Blue Team’s tent, and someone accidentally bit him on the butt in the ensuing scuffle.

Oh, poor Wilson … come home from the war, indeed!

Look!  Have you ever seen anything like it?  Here it is, becoming razor clean, curdling and hurling its leaves across the living room rug.  And after I saved its doomed life ahead of that wicked wind storm last week, this is the thanks I get.

Now, here it is — newly potted, watered, clucked over and given a special name and an honored place in the living room.  Still, it throws leaves at me in tantrum, imolating itself with little fires of crispy curled-up leaves.

Maybe I should turn it to the left just a bit.  Will that fix it?  Will that arrange and assuage the thing so it will stop its keen drip, drip of leaves?  I hear it in the night.  Drip.  Drip.

It’s squatting in the corner like a little naked man, rattling its bones and hissing at me.

Here, I’ll spritz it with cooling water.  I’ll croon and sing to it.  I’ll drape love over it.  Give it another dose of fertilizer. 

And if all fails?  Well, then … poor, poor Figgie. 

Besides, I have my eye on a nice plastic dracaena that gives me a wink and a come-hither look every time I go to Costco.

With only a few days to go before the dreaded wrist surgery that will surely leave me helpless and insane, here are some random items I thought you should know.  I hope you’ll make your own List ‘o Randomness and send it to me.  I’ll feature it … you … while I’m recovering.

1. When I was three I learned to skip.
2. When I was four I got sick and was bedridden for the next five years.
3. When I was seven I thought I was Nancy Drew and if someone would only let me out of bed, I’d prove it.
4. When I was nine I wanted to be a nurse — in Africa.
5. We didn’t have a television until I was twelve.
6. We also didn’t have a car and either walked or took the bus.  You could do that in Portland.
7. I sucked at Latin and probably should have taken Spanish.
8. My husband and children are the greatest people I know.
9. Until they figured me out, I got to sit with my camera on the floor of a Phoenix Suns game, a press badge clipped to my shirt, a ridiculous grin on my face.
10. Everything I’ve published has been by accident, by coincidence or very much unintended.
11. Among other things, I survived a brain tumor.
12. I’ve been bald twice and am now working on the third and final balding of my dear little head.
13. Of the poets and novelists I’ve met, every single one is kind, gracious … and if you look closely (just around the eyes) you can see they’re each still stunned at their good fortune to be published writers.
14. Being an intentional writer is very different from an accidental word-flinger.  Just look at the sorry state of my query letters for proof of this statement.
15. I once caught a large stream trout with two feet of string, a hook and a salmon egg, thoroughly enraging my ex-hubby and all his fancy fishing gear.  Now you know why he’s my ex – one, for leaving me at the edge of a stream with nothing but a piece of string, and two, for being mad at me for catching a fish with that silly piece of string.
16. I’m suspicious of anyone who has black-and-white, my-way-or-the-highway answers to complex questions.
17. I love Seattle except when it rains … and rains … and rains.
18. Bunnies cavort in my yard.
19. I’d rather eat my own eyeballs than have to choke down a bowl of good-for-me oatmeal.
20. I limp.
21. I’m blessed with life, love, good friends, excellent doggies and all the boxed wine I can consume now and then.
22. If you add a drop of chocolate to your Starbucks nonfat, no foam latte, it removes the bitter taste.
23. The older I get, the more I’m amazed at how the body manages all its little symbiotic cellular relationships.
24. I share my birthday with Edgar Allen Poe … and Dolly Parton.
25. I thoroughly believe any new president needs more than a week and a half in office before people start picking on him.

This is what you shall do:  Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants … have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

–Walt Whitman

Please excuse Auburn’s absence the past few days.  She’s been enthralled with winter.  It’s taken her away from her computer and into that phenomenon known as Spring Cleaning.  The 70-degree temperatures in Phoenix have fooled her, as well as, the leafing trees into thinking that it is time for the semi-annual closet cleaning and leaf unfurling.

She’s not herself.  She may not be well.

She may never be the same.

If you need to talk to me for verification of this excuse, I’m so sorry to tell you that I’ll be unavailable, as the golfing in Palm Springs is to die for.

Sincerely,

Auburn’s devoted husband, Dan

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

– Lewis Carroll

And thus, we thrust ourselves into another day.  The January air is cool and thin, but our creations are large and lusty.  We write because our bodies need to; our breath is conditioned upon one word following another.  We design and draw and write until we are spent and our minds are emptied.

A swelling of more ideas then occurs and we must write (or design or draw) again.  And then again.  And yet again.

Which road to take?  Truly, it doesn’t matter as long as we point our bodies in a direction and walk forward … until we change our minds.

Rock on, Alice.  Paint the music.  Draw the words.  Design the poems.  If you don’t like the color of the roses, then splash on a different color.  Take a different trail; pose a hat upon your head and have another cup of tea.

Yes, truly — Have another cup of tea.