Dad was a twin, who loved twin digits. Today’s lineup of numerals would have sent him into orbit.
I don’t often think of my father; he’s been gone since 1993. But, whenever I remember the best of him–his numerology fascination, the proud way he stood at attention and saluted the American flag when it passed at parades, his WWII trunk and possessions I keep–it makes me smile.
In spite of what’s happening in the news–growing unrest and tension in eastern Europe, a pandemic that has dominated our lives for two years, and another Midwestern winter storm on Ground Hog Day that’s causing havoc–there is evenness and continuity in today’s numbers, 2-2-22.
Just as there is peace and beauty blooming in two forms in my home in mid-winter; in an air plant inside, stationed on our Arizona windowsill; and in a red geranium outside, soaking in the morning sun on our southern-facing patio.
Nearly six months ago, Tom and I were driving south through the plains of Idaho after a pleasant visit with friends in Bozeman, Montana.
A green road sign told us we were approaching the town of Pocatello. Late on the morning of June 28, we pulled off the road to explore. I wanted to see a place I had never been, though–in an alternative universe–it might have become my world. Let me explain.
In the early 1970s, Mom was a staffing specialist for the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis. One day she came home from work (she was the bread winner in our family after Dad suffered a heart attack) to tell us her job might be transferred to Pocatello, Idaho. If so, we might be moving west.
As it turns out, we didn’t come close to moving to Pocatello. We stayed in St. Louis. But, as a teenager, I believed for a few months that an Idaho existence was a real possibility; that we would leave; that I would need to make new friends in an unfamiliar, remote state. That mindset was my motivation for wanting to examine Pocatello with my husband fifty years later.
For the next few hours, Tom and I roamed the streets of Pocatello. We took photos outside the local high school, paused at the site of the Chief movie theater (it burned in 1993), inquired about the repurposed status of the Hotel Yellowstone, and gazed through the windows of an abandoned Greyhound bus depot.
In front of a thrift store with a rainbow flag in the window, we had the nerve to stop two young men (one was wearing a Schitt’s Creek T-shirt) to ask them what it was like to be gay and grow up in Pocatello. They hesitated for a moment but discovered Tom and I … a couple and a couple of writers … had no ulterior motives. We simply wanted to know what it was like to live there; I was mining future story ideas.
So, they obliged. They told us they had carved out decent lives, gone to a local college, and made friends in their community, though–they confessed–it was tough being openly gay in predominantly Mormon Idaho and Utah. We thanked them for stopping to say hello and sharing their insights. We wished them well and said goodbye.
Before Tom and I walked back to our rented SUV to continue on our journey, we made a final stop in a local art gallery. That’s where I spotted a speckled-blue glazed mug, made by a local potter. It bears the shape of the state of Idaho. I couldn’t leave without buying it. I needed a physical souvenir of the spontaneous moments Tom and I shared in a town that might have been mine, but never was.
Since that unforeseen experience in June, I have consumed dozens of cups of coffee and tea from my Idaho mug–many while writing the next blog post or poem. In a sense, the sight of the mug stirs my creativity, especially when I need a jolt.
As Christmas approaches and 2021 draws to a close, this artful mug reminds me how important it is for all of us–writers or not–to leave the highway of life from time to time. To keep our minds open to diverse people and unfamiliar worlds. To explore the “what ifs” that keep us wondering where the next story will come from. To seize the Pocatello moments when they appear and imagine the possibilities of what they may inspire in 2022 and beyond.
No flurries to be found, few leaves on the ground. It is morning sweatshirt weather as December approaches the desert from beyond mountain peaks.
Without ice to navigate, bighorn sheep shimmy down opposing buttes. Ducks paddle away the hours. A lone kingfisher trolls the canal for a morsel or two.
This is not the forecast for Decembers I remember. It is a warmer one I wish not to relinquish; the beginning of the last round of desert rose buds.
As November lapses and the twelfth month unfolds, nature delivers beauty and hope to our doorstep with the promise of blooms through Christmas.
Inviting but ominous as an empty bench, November casts its lingering light over Phoenix. It fades from somewhere to nowhere, between the gauzy clouds, beyond the distant mountains.
Where can you watch promising, future major league ball players perform outdoors in seventy degree temperatures in November, while spending just seven dollars a piece for two seniors to sit behind home plate?
At Arizona Fall League games at Sloan Park in Mesa. Consider it the perfect spot for baseball purists, major league scouts, western hat wearers, avid autograph seekers, foul ball hawks, and anyone simply wanting to chill in the shade and eat peanuts under the radar on a glorious afternoon in the Valley of the Sun.
Final score on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 (as if it really mattered): Glendale Desert Dogs 3, Mesa Solar Sox 2.
Long after the most cherished and meaningful moments pass, our memories–good, bad, vivid, and foggy–endure like saguaro cacti dotting the terrain of our vast consciousness.
***
Over the weekend, the lone survivor of my mother’s prized African violet plants died. Tom and I discovered it withered on the window sill of our Scottsdale condo. I supposed it succumbed to the heat of the desert’s afternoon sun.
The plants originated in St. Louis in the 1980s or 1990s. They traveled to the Chicago area with Mom when she moved north to be closer to my sister Diane and me in 2004.
When Mom died in January 2013, Diane divided up the remaining African violets–one a shade of pink, the other a purplish blue–for the two of us to carry forward and display in our respective homes.
For the next four years, my cuttings flourished in our Mount Prospect, Illinois home. In early July 2017, Tom and I wedged them in a laundry basket in the back seat of our Hyundai Sonata. We brought them west from Illinois to our new home in Arizona.
On the road, after I suffered a mild heart attack in St. Louis and couldn’t lift anything for a few weeks, I remember my husband carrying the African violets between our car and hotel rooms in Missouri, Oklahoma and New Mexico to protect them from fluctuating temperatures overnight. It’s a memory I will always treasure.
When we arrived in Scottsdale on July 12, 2017, Tom and I deposited the plants on our southern-facing window sill. The pink African violet lived two more years before petering out in 2019. Now the purple one is gone too. It last bloomed ten months ago in January 2021 … eight years after Helen Johnson’s passing.
Of course, I feel a twinge or two of sadness. This marks the end of a long, circuitous chapter, connecting my present life to the past memories of my nature-loving mother.
But, at this point (four-plus years in my Arizona home), Tom and I feel rooted in the desert. We have chosen and nurtured plants that embellish our life in this warm, dry place: bougainvillea, desert roses, succulents, even a bird of paradise.
To be sure, though their physical evidence is gone, the stories of the traveling African violets and the memories of their captivating blooms will be with me as I hike the rises and falls of the Sonoran Desert with Tom.
Late October days are warm here; nights and early mornings cool and invigorating.
Fall is far more subtle in the Valley of the Sun than most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. October doesn’t flash across the horizon and announce its presence in burnt orange, blood red and sunflower yellow.
You need to be a non-traditionalist to observe and appreciate autumn in the Sonoran Desert. To watch the tangelo, grapefruit and lemon fruits transition slowly from green to yellow. They will be ripe for the picking by late December or early January, and we will have juicy citrus and fresh lemonade once again.
As a crew of two arrived to put the finishing touches on our bathroom remodeling project inside, outside Blanca played troubadour, curling and rolling on the sidewalk.
With her frolicking assistance–and the more obvious aid of my telephoto lens–I captured these golden images on a quiet late Wednesday morning in our Polynesian Paradise community.
To be sure, Arizona’s desert is alive with distinction in late October. Where else might feline shenanigans, the promise of citrus, blooming hibiscus, and Halloween coexist?
The arrival of October 2021 has signaled a significant and welcome change … a downtick in temperatures and an uptick in tourist activity in Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona, to bolster the hungry tourism sector.
Scottsdale, Arizona is alive again. September’s scorching heat has been replaced with cooler October mornings, ideal-and-swimmable-eighty-degree afternoons, shorter days, and dazzling sunsets framed by palm trees gazing west.
Tourists are back too–in relative abundance, in posh pools, in surviving restaurants, in newly-minted hotels, on mountain bikes, on sidewalk scooters, on rolling streams of Segways.
It’s a far cry from the desolation of April 2020 when Old Town Scottsdale was first shuttered by a raging pandemic that persists eighteen months later, though many imagine it has vanished.
A view of an empty, ghost-town-like Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona … looking east down Main Street … near the start of the global pandemic in April 2020.
There’s a new girl in town. She twists and tumbles between the gravel and spiky cacti on the otherwise ordinary sidewalk outside our Sonoran door.
Blanca purrs, arches her back, and flashes penetrating blue eyes. Of course, scraps of sliced turkey, ramakins of milk, and endless strokes of her fur follow.
We might have scooped her up, but discovered Blanca belongs to a neighbor. That misfortune won’t prevent our pampering or shared shenanigans.
