Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1)

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  Anyways. I told them this story, so I thought I'd write it down:

  One time, in the City, the community red van got stolen. (The same one that just took its last drive on the way to the festival where we didn't sell any art.) We don't really name our vehicles. It's red van, blue van, blue car. RV. The red van had a little problem with the ignition, which means that pretty much any key could start it. I can write this on the internet now because our van is in a junkyard. Apparently this lack of key discrimination happens to a lot of old Toyota vans, and thieves in downtown San Francisco happen to know this. Because one day, it was just… gone. Bummer. We filed a police report.

  A few weeks later our great friend Jesse turned to Chinua and smacked himself on the forehead.

  "Chinua!" he said. "I totally forgot to tell you something!"

  "What?" Chinua asked.

  "You're going to be really mad," Jesse said. And he told him this story: "I was skating downtown, near the Civic Center, and all of a sudden I saw our van. I mean, I wasn't sure, but then I saw the In'N'Out sticker on it and I was sure it was ours. So I skated after it and I got the guy to stop. He looked pretty nervous, but I just said, 'that's our van,' and he said, 'oh—my friend had it.' I told him it was stolen and he said, 'I can give it back, but I just need to drive to Daly City because I'm picking up a friend and he's waiting for me.' I said, 'sure, bro,' so he gave me his phone number and I let him go."

  We were pretty blown away by this, but then Jesse told us that this had happened a week before. He… forgot to tell us. Anyways, to make a long story short, the police eventually recovered the van and we got it back. Crazy, huh? Jesse's pretty nice. Nice enough to make sure that one of the guys who stole our van is able to get to his friend in Daly City and pick him up!

  *

  Right now what I'm really supposed to be doing is writing a reference letter for my friend Curtis who is going to get a job as an EMT. He and his wife Elena are leaving this weekend. Moving away. I can't say how sad this makes me. It's hard for me to even imagine this green place without homeboy and his lovely wife. I'm thinking that maybe if I just write a really bad letter, he won't be able to leave.

  That will probably backfire.

  I'm going to write the best darn letter I can.

  June 18, 2006

  The road, she calls us… We leave in a few minutes for our road trip to Colorado for the annual National Rainbow gathering. I've had all sorts of emotions about this, from resistance to elation to "I'm going home right now." But, I think I've set myself on going, so now I need to zip the lip on complaints and death threats. We are taking our RV, with six adults and three kids. We didn't mean to have so many people in our little RV, but somehow we forgot to do a head count.

  Ahhh, there is always more to write about this way.

  July

  July 6, 2006

  I'm out of the woods. And I have LOTS of stories to tell. But, today I walked three miles in the dust and sun with a baby on my front and a toddler on my back and a preschooler holding my hand, so I'm a wee bit tired. And I need a shower. I smell like campfire.

  July 9, 2006

  Here's a story:

  One night as we were on our way out to Colorado, I was driving the RV and I realized that I could not drive any further. I pulled over at a rest stop to switch with Chinua. We were all joking around, and as Chinua was getting settled, he said to Derek, "Why don't you take care of this trash, Trash Boy?" I don't know why he called him Trash Boy, or why it seemed funny. Please remember that this was on day four of our road trip, after one breakdown and a whole lot of errands.

  So Derek said, "Well, since we're here, I'll jump off and throw it in the trash at this rest stop."

  And I said, "Since you're going to do that, I'll get myself something to drink from the vending machine. I'm parched." And out we went, through the door, having communicated that we were leaving the vehicle.

  Except it seems that we were talking to ourselves.

  A few moments later, I was standing at the soda machine, kicking it because it ate my money, (I never even got a soda out of this) when Derek walked over to me and asked, "How long do you think it will take them to realize they've left us?"

  He said he dumped the trash and then stood watching in utter disbelief as the RV re-entered the freeway. In Utah. At about 11:00 at night. Of course neither of us had our cell phones on us.

  It occurred to me that it could take them a really long time to realize we weren't there. They would assume that I was in the back with the kids, who were drifting off to sleep, and maybe they would think that Derek was in the bathroom or something. The only people in the RV were the kids, Chinua in the driver's seat, Chris in the passenger's seat, and Paul, who was sleeping in the compartment above the driver. Not being in the most observant of moods, Chris and Chinua might never turn around. I came up with a plan to call a friend collect and get that friend to call my cell phone.

  Lavonne was pretty amused about the situation, and she did call and get through, except that when she called and asked if anyone was missing, they had already discovered their big mistake.

  Kai was the hero. Chinua says that he ran straight up to where they were and said, "I want Mama!"

  He said, "Well then, go in the back, where she is!"

  Kai wailed, "She's not back there! You left her!"

  At this point, Chris turned around and said, "Where's Derek?" Then he started to moan, "Oh man, oh man, oh man… where's Paul?" "Paul! Paul!" they cried, until Paul spoke from the bed above the driver's seat and said, "I'm right here."

  Chinua described it as horrific. We had disappeared. We simply weren't there. They hadn't even heard us leave the RV, so they had to assume that we were back at that rest stop. All the exits in this country section of Utah were amazingly far apart, so they had to drive a long way to turn around, drive past the rest stop exit, drive another long way to another exit to turn around again, and then come and get us.

  Leaving your wife at a rest stop at night is ill-advised. I don't recommend it, but I do recommend profuse apologies and exclamations of horror over your mistake. Which is what Chinua did, and another example of why he's a Superstar Husband.

  July 11, 2006

  1. I really, really should be in bed right now. Oh why am I not in bed?

  2. I am sorry for everyone who doesn't have the Leaf baby. He is amazing. I could hang out with him all day long. He drools and smiles and creaks out some song and I just don't want this time to pass.

  3. We spent a lot of time at the Rainbow Gathering trekking up and down new trails. We hauled gear, I hauled babies, sometimes with a little one on my front and a big ol' long girl named Kenya on my back. Miles of walking, miles of lifting. We are now so ripped that we could pose as bodybuilders. Thankfully all the walking was through amazing vistas of hills and mountains with tall aspens and pines, a stunning valley with a creek, and wildflowers everywhere. I loved getting out of my tent first thing in the morning and being outdoors immediately.

  4. I did nine loads of laundry at the laundromat today. All the guys hauled stuff out of the gathering for two days—in the mud that was created by the rain that Colorado was praying for and unexpectedly received. Mud everywhere. Wetness in clothes and blankets and sleeping bags. Laundry. I've always loved coin laundry. I even wrote a poem about it once. I think that laundry is my favorite chore, although that is seriously getting tested with the amount that I'm doing these days.

  5. My kids love dust more than they love Dora and Diego, more than chocolate rice milk, more than putting small round objects in their mouths. They may even love dust more than they love whining. They love to sit in it, to pile it on their clothes, to rub it into each other's hair. They would take baths in dust if they could. This was their primary occupation for the two weeks that they were at the gathering. Playing in clinging, dirty, nasty dust.

  6. I dropped a pot of boiling water on my foot while getting ready to cook oatmeal over the fire. I was adding more wood to
the fire, standing in the beautiful celtic trinity knot-shaped fire pit, when I accidentally knocked the whole boiling thing on my poor self. Thankfully I was able to run over to Chris very quickly and scream at him to pour cold water on me. But I was definitely burnt. While walking barefoot to try to let it heal I split my toe open on a root. These things both happened to me as punishment for mocking Chinua about his tendency to trip as he walks without watching the ground.

  July 23, 2006

  Yesterday my brain melted. It was 111 degrees here and I couldn't help it. It just melted.

  I shouldn't be complaining, though. Megan holds the record for the all-time best attitude shown by an almost 8-month pregnant woman in 111 ˚ heat. Our favorite time of day is around 4:30 in the afternoon, when the sun isn't as dangerous and we walk down to the river and then we just sit in it. We have a great piece of river here, and some parts are shallow, while some parts are deep enough to dive into off of the large rocks that line it. And we sit, Megan and I, and talk about how good we feel in the water. Marc and Chinua swim or dive or play with the kids, but Megan and I just let the water treat us like old friends.

  Last night at about 3:00 AM I woke up feeling like I was going to suffocate in the still, hot air, and I had to get up and pour myself an ice cold bath. I splashed it all over myself until I became really cold and felt like I was having a heart attack. Only then did I get back out and go to sleep.

  One more thing, and then I'll stop complaining. The hottest weather that I've ever been subjected to was in Varanasi, India for five days in the hot season. It was 46° C, about 126° F. Chinua and I and our friends got stuck there when the police declared a curfew on the whole city because of Hindu-Muslim violence. The power went off periodically all day long, and we spent our whole time there moving between our guest house and the one restaurant we were allowed to visit, five doors down, which for some odd reason is called the Mona Lisa. We ate Sapagiti (Spaghetti) and Rice Pudding, Boll Ramin (Menu English for a bowl of Ramen) and Banana Porridge. We lay staring at the ceiling fans with longing during the frequent power outs. We soaked our sheets in cold water at night, to try to make our beds cool. We mainly stayed out of the heat in the middle of the day, except for me when I ignored a warning and went out for a walk at noon, only to develop heatstroke and a fever. We didn't have to take care of children. We didn't have whimpering, sweaty little babies. We didn't do dishes. I didn't have office work. We hung out and tried to stay cool, talked to our fellow prisoners—a man from Hong Kong who grew up in Britain named Koon Ming, and a Japanese boy named Hiro—and waited to catch the first train out of there.

  Yesterday it wasn't far from being as hot as it was there. We don't have a/c here either, although so far, thankfully, the power has not shut off.

  I love being in the river with my kids. I love how Kenya hugs me and how she looks in her little orange life jacket, how their wet kisses feel, how excited they are to be there. This is the first summer that Kai has liked swimming, and yesterday we even brought the Leaf baby in, since the water was so warm. There's nothing to improve your spirits on a wickedly hot day like holding a little naked baby in a beautiful green river, with the tall trees rising up around you.

  July 25, 2006

  I feel like I always come back to this place. The sad place. The anxious place. The "I'll never be different" place.

  It's a stupid place. A muddy hole, just big enough for me to stand in by myself, unable to get a good enough grip on the edges to climb out. You probably have a hole of some sort too. Maybe your hole is deeper, or more shallow, or muddier. But we all probably agree that the holes suck.

  There are some things that I know now about the hole, which is good. I know a little bit about how I got there. I know that I won't stay there. And I know that it is not my home.

  How did I get there? Well, it was a little over two years ago that someone asked me why I walked around with my shoulders so high. And at the same time I'd been having stomach pain everyday, like I had swallowed a roll of quarters. Through the advice of my sister and some friends, I saw that I was having problems with anxiety. And as I started to look into it, started to try to pinpoint the things that made me anxious, I began to see that almost everything in my life gave me anxiety. And that the problem was not with my life, it was with me. (Well, my life was a little crazy at the time too, but still.) I also realized that the hormones that are delivered to my body when I am pregnant or nursing, like a shot glass full of insanity, intensify this. I have been pregnant or nursing without a break for four and a half years. But I can look back and also see that anxiety has never been a stranger. I just didn't know that it wasn't a normal way to be.

  What is normal? Well. I realize that a lot of people may feel anxiety, or even struggle with it a lot like I do, but I don't think this is the way we were made to be. And there are words in the Bible that say, "Be anxious for nothing." So, you know. As in, not anxious about everything.

  I've been working on it. It's been working on me. This blog has been part of it. Writing is cathartic to me, it gives meaning to things, it makes me laugh. I can tell when I've gone too long without writing. It feels a little like bladder pain on a long car ride.

  So, lately, as I've broken all of my rules*, I've been sensing the man with the bag creeping up on me. At some point along the line he caught up with me, threw the bag over my head, and stuck me in the hole. I'm almost out, I think, which is why I can even write about it. At my worst, I can't hold a normal conversation with my Superstar Husband. If you pressed mute, you might think it was normal, but if you could hear, you would hear things like this.

  S.H.: "I'm going to clean off the top of the refrigerator. It's gotten a little out of hand."

  Me: "I was JUST going to get to that! What are you saying? I'm a SLOB? Don't you realize how much I have to do around here? (I give The List.) And I'm not even sleeping at nights!!! Why don't YOU try nursing the baby? Huh? Or how about that time you left me at a rest stop? I know that has nothing to do with this... but it proves that you're not perfect EITHER. What? I don't know what I'm talking about. I just want to die."

  That's at my worst. When anxiety keeps me from focusing on anything and I have a vague sense of dread following me around. The depression that comes with it makes me want to crawl into bed forever. So the combo is a little neurotic. They're like bad teachers or the kind of bus drivers that yell at you, or like having street cleaners every other day. Do I park the car? Or not park the car?

  At my worst, I'm really confused and trying to come up with a reason to not be anxious. At my best, I'm doing okay, and it's below the surface, I'm stepping on it's ugly little head but I can feel it back there waiting. Today I'm a little farther out of the hole, but waking up feeling overwhelmed made me need to write about it and gain a little more ground. One of my favorite Psalms has a part that goes like this:

  If I should say, "My foot has slipped," Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up.

  When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolation delights my soul. **

  So here I am, mind racing with scaly thoughts, and God has a way to console me. And to hold me up. A consolation even for me, even for anxiety. Even for a crazy mama who has a hard time breathing sometimes. There is goodness here, there are wide open spaces.

  * These are the rules.

  1. Get enough sleep

  2. Take your vitamins

  3. Wash your face and brush your teeth

  4. Eat regularly

  5. Don't be too hard on yourself.

  ** Psalm 94: 18+19

  Born: A Poem

  Born

  I was born to walk long roads alone

  and I have done it. one in particular I remember

  and dream about: the gray pavement with a long

  white line stretching until it disappeared in a small point

  like the line I was born to trace around

  a canvas, measuring the slight barrier between

  who I am and
who they are.

  the slight barrier, the permeable border.

  I was born to cry into my paintbox

  take handfuls of paint out and crush

  them onto dry surfaces, breathe paint fumes deeply.

  there are so many things in this world to weep about.

  the children alone. so few to see and weep.

  so few willing to make colors into dreams, pray murmured

  words over faint photographs.

  a painting becomes a name, the right to have a name.

  I was born to string words onto a thin thread,

  like beads. one after the other, making long trains that

  tie up my life, keep it steady. muttering always, frowning

  away. words bring life, the spoken word creating,

  the written one a record of the creation.

  life becomes visible.

  the perfect word will set me free.

  I was born to give birth, to labour long and intensely.

  to have utter joy at the first breath. the slippery body,

  warm skin. the perfect comfort of the breast, new eyes

  squinting into bright light. that first meeting,

  we look at each other and love without knowing.

  soft speech, but mostly we just look.