Westward Ho!

When you get yourself west, you almost think you dreamed the dreary east, with the journey from Atlantic to Mexican border so long you feel as if you made it by covered wagon - covered wagon or else the long tunnel-passage of dying.

I wake up in Tucson today, where my whole family has come to visit David’s big brother Toby and all the places our girls Carrie and Chris came to love when Carrie did grad school here six years ago.

They love this land of cactus, snake and bobcat. A year ago when we came out here Carrie said “We’re totally retiring here! “

“Way out here? But can I come visit at least? “ I plaintively squeaked.

She gave me that mildly pitying look all kids give their parents. “Mum: you’ll be dead.”

But we’re not dead yet. old Dave and I. We woke today feeling like survivors,  yesterday’s hardships all but forgotten: the ten kiddie movies left behind on Plane One, the ear infection meds left on Plane Two, the agitation of the one-year-old, made frantic by fatigue who lurched ceaselessly up and down the aisles, his little head like a toy balloon drifting at armrest level from fore to aft and back again.

We got here at 10pm and it’s three whole hours earlier, Arizona being the one state in the nation that says a big No Thanks to Daylight Savings. We grownups didn’t get to bed till 1:00 since the AC seemed to be busted here in this rental and dead moths keep dropping from the busted panel of the kitchen light fixture and the last renter’s uncollected garbage is stinking to high heaven in the garage.

“Will you be OK ?” I asked poor Carrie as she stumbled toward their bed, as exhausted as Chris is from having held a frantic baby for at least five of our nine hours flying and who, in the best of times has insomnia.

“I’ll be fine," she sighed. “Maybe I’ll die in the night,”

But I guess she didn’t die either. I heard them all rattling around in the dark a few hours ago, the little ones up at 5:00 with the jetlag and by 6:00 they were all four of them off in the rental car, I assume in search of breakfast items.

As soon as I unpack here and find my camera I'll take a picture of these mountains with their thick tan folds like wrinkles on a bloodhound adn whoops! here comes that rental car full of our dear ones now! time to rise and shine and make some pancakes!