Lessons of A Desert Road Trip
We’re back from the Land of Soft Water where wealthy republican retirees gyrated drunkenly to the twang of a Jimmy Buffett cover band as their patriotic commemoration of our fallen soldiers. Sigh. My mother always says you can tell how people make love by the way they dance and using this measure, it’s safe to say that the sex in Kayenta won’t be causing any rock slides this summer. Except for the sex my grandparents (who are really good on the dance floor) are having and I’d rather not think about that any more. It was this pool party in a desert paradise that led Sam and me to reaffirm our longstanding commitment that we will never, EVER ask each other to go on a cruise. There was no shuffleboard but there was a mammary gland of a woman dressed in a chartreuse spandex yoga outfit whose all over tan and long straight hair were the same color as the wall of red rock behind us and whose name was written on the name tag stuck to her bare shoulder. I guess “Rhonda” hoped to distract attention away from her over-exposed and cavernous cleavage by placing the label on her arm.
The party was amusing actually and Ruby was a hit. If not a spectacle. We experienced as we often do, the painfully familiar Triangular Stare (the gawker looks at me, looks at Ruby, looks at Sam, back to Ruby, back to me) from those who simply couldn’t make the math add up. I could almost hear the hamster running on the wheel: a white guy…plus…a white girl…equals a black ba…? wait….no…that can’t be right…But mostly, Ruby’s Abuelita carried her like Cleopatra from person to person introducing her proudly, effusively as her one and only great-granddaughter. Her preciosa. It was pretty damn cool and Liz earned super bonus points from me over the weekend.
I learned a lot while we were there. I learned from my EncycloHusband that Orion is a winter constellation and that the new porcelain used to fill cavities bonds with the surface of the tooth. I learned that my mother wins the prize for having engaged, during this century, in Extreme Public Sex on the grounds of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City during the funeral of one of it’s presidents. I learned that my grandfather likes to have a scotch and soda at 5 o’clock each evening and that he, the doctor, didn’t know what a cloaca was until Factoid Man clued him in. I learned that his wife has a progressively naughty sense of humor and really is sincere in her attempt to be accepted by our dysfunctional clan. I learned, again, that I shouldn’t judge people at first glimpse even though it’s so much fun and makes for excellent dramatic blog entry (oh, Rhonda) and even though I can hardly draw any positive conclusion about the amishy looking man in his Japanese-made Toyota Camry, who flew by us doing 90 on the freeway yesterday with TWO american flags whipping violently in the wind and flesh-toned rubber testicles hanging idly from his bumper.
Mostly though, I learned that having a baby in the family softens the craggy edges of fragile relationships and is better than any physical or emotional distance when it comes to setting petty–and even not so petty—differences aside.
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