I'm sitting on a dusty couch in an old trailer perched on a hill near our house. It is a lovely old trailer, our sometimes guest house, and the kitchen is very small, so small that two chairs placed face to face make a perfect platform for a small person to stand on while he moves around and 'cooks' to his heart's content, banging pots and pans with gusto.

My son, hereinafter (or until he changes his mind) known as Poopy, says he is making me, hereinafter known as PeePee, a pizza. And while he works, we talk about the black widow spiders that live around our property, about the web that wraps around the tow ball on the outside of this trailer and reaches all the way to the ground.

Last night, in the darkness, Poopy (AKA Sam) and I went out walking with a flashlight and came upon a large black widow tending to that web. We talked about these sleek, dark spiders, and looked at the red hour glass on her underbelly, and Sam studied her carefully without going too close because, as he says 'we have to respect her distance'. Black Widows, you see, are solitary creatures who like to be left alone. If they must share the planet with humans, these spiders appear to ask only that we don't stick our big fat fingers and toes within their reach. In the daytime, while we clatter around in the world living our human lives, they stay politely out of sight in their little dens, waiting for nightfall, for the time when they can spin and weave and eat and drink in peace.

What we know about these spiders is this--that they will bite if we come too close, and that their bite contains a venom that can cause us incredible pain and agony if it doesn't kill us. Knowing this sometimes makes us fearful, makes us want to stamp out this threat, this possibility of death, illness, misery.

But, of course, you can't stamp out a possibility. You can, if you wish, run around knocking down the fierce webs these spiders weave (so strong that a small person can get seriously tangled in them, as Sam can atest), and spraying poison all around the place and smushing unsuspecting spiders with a long handled broom. But still, in the morning, you will find more webs wavering in the wind, catching the desert debris.

The thing is that the possbilitity of misery is something that only exists in the mind, in the thoughts, in the dialogue of the chattering monkeys. Killing any amount of spiders can never make that possibility go away because there are always more spiders.

Last night Sam became so enamored of these black widows that we walked around all the buildings on our property and found four more out and working on their webs. We could have killed all these spiders, and torn down the other webs we found, and sprayed and did all the other exterminatorish things we could think of, but eventually there comes the moment when we step beyond the boundary of our property. In that moment when we leave the piece of land inhabited by humans and journey into the desert that lives its own life, it will serve us better to know how to walk among the spiders than how to eradicate them.

I get that sometimes, despite our best efforts at living at peace within the material world, we are going to clash and bang up against other creatures, human, spider, whatever. I get that sometimes this hurts, sometimes it hurts really badly. But now, the other thing I get, is that I don't want to live my life worrying over the possibility of these moments.

I just want to live my life right here, right now, spiders and all.

Dirt Chin the Urchin

Sometimes I worry. I worry that Sam seems pale, I worry about those dark shadows that show up under his sparkly eyes sometimes. I worry about his restlessness and my sometimes inability to help him direct his energy. I worry that he is bored, unhappy, not getting what he needs.

We had company over the weekend, good friends we haven't seen in a long time. Sam was so pleased with their visit, he seemed at ease in a way he hasn't been for a while now and I finally realized that we're transitioning into a new phase. It seems that we might be moving out of Velcro land and into Social world. So today, when he started pulling things off the shelves and throwing things around, we got in the car and went for an adventure. We ended up under the cottonwood trees in the crawdad creek at China Ranch and it was lovely and perfect. And we looked at EVERYTHING in the gift shop while he ate his ice cream and chatted with Darryn. Since he used to cry every time she so much as looked at him, this was confirmation that Something New is happening in our lives.

Of course, this means a whole new set of worries. How will I keep up? Where will we find friends? Will people ever stop commenting on his hair? But, as always, I am free to let those worries go and just see what the future holds with no dire visions of the outcome. In the afternoon, Sam and I crossed the road the passes in front of our house and went adventuring into the other side of the desert. And we found the most amazing wash that meandered through a brushy patch of land and we decided it looked like The Land Before Time and we pretended to be dinosaurs and we had a lovely time in this strange and foreign place, from which, if we climbed up on a little knoll, we could still see our house in the distance. And on our way home we stopped in the hideout and sat in the big chair together and rocked and swung until Sam wriggled out and landed on his chin in the dirt. Which is how he became officially known as Dirt Chin the Urchin ( and I am Dirt Mom).

So the thing is, the universe says to me, you just don't know what's out there, what mysteries and miracles might lie across the road, and you can't find out unless you venture to the other side. So you might as well get your shoes on and get going. And if you still feel hesitant, well, don't worry, Sam will get your shoes for you.

I See A Pattern Here

Today I made a box of patterns appear out of thin air.

Well, actually, out of the trash heap at the back of the animal shelter thrift store, but it kind of felt like thin air. I woke up with that itchy feeling that there was something out there for me, and it felt like another box of patterns and I kept thinking about the shelter store, where we haven't been since one of the workers was snippy with Sam. So I bagged up a bunch of giveaway stuff and we set out for town.

I visited my tried and true shops first. At Trevor's I just missed a pile of vintage craft books, very nice ones, too. When we arrived, my arch nemesis was sitting on a little stool golluming over them. And in the space of about three minutes I managed to go from a place of irritation to a place of joy, from a place of thinking 'why didn't I get to those first', to a place of 'wow, he made such a score'. I called up that feeling of how fun and triumphant it is to find something like that and I reveled in it, just the feeling of it, feeling it for him, pinched up little man that he is, and for me, pinched up not quite as little woman that I am. And now I feel unexpectedly friendly toward him, though I don't suppose we will ever actually be friends.

And with that feeling lifting me up, Sam and I moved on to visit Dearest and see what her shop had in store for us--the most beautiful big piece of green wool felt, just exactly the color I've been wanting!!

And after lunch at the duck pond, where we fed the ducks for the first time with a bucket full of dried bread we've been saving up, and Sam had a blast doing it, we went on to the animal shelter. I checked the pattern drawer, one craft pattern, nothing exciting, and I was confused because I just KNEW there were more patterns around somewhere and that was our last stop. So I asked the lady who does all the stocking if she ever gets any old patterns.

And she said, 'Oh, I just threw away a big box of them. They were really old and I didn't think anyone would want them.'

I made a horrified screech before I could stop myself. 'Threw them away, really?" I asked, unwilling to believe this ending to the story.

'Well,' she said, 'maybe they're still out there. I don't think anyone's gone to the dump yet, I'll check.'

She was gone what seemed like forever and I started to get discouraged but then I thought to myself--why wouldn't she find those patterns--why not? And she did! It was huge box of mostly vintage Vogue designer patterns and a few fabulous mail order doll patterns and a great 60's bikini and a fabulous uncut McCall's early 60's summer dress. There were probably about 30 patterns I can use, and about thirty or forty more I can sell as a lot or give away.

And when I asked how much she wanted for them she said, 'Nothing, saves us having to haul them to the dump.'

Ha ha, te he, ha ha, te he!!!!! And now I am golluming over my own treasures.

'I'm glad you love your patterns, Prince Eric,' said Ariel the Mermaid as we were sitting in the car and I was looking through the box and he was finishing his BK mac and cheese.

'I'm glad you love your macaroni and cheese, Ariel,' I answered. And home we went, happy as clams.