Sun-soaked strawberries in Seattle

"Jamberry" is a favorite book about a boy and a bear
and their adventures in a land of berries.

In the middle of all the unpacking and rearranging, but after we had discovered that the couch couldn't fit through the door, the TV cabinet couldn't stand upright in the basement and the mattress box springs couldn't fit upstairs, we stopped.

Let's go pick berries, we thought.

So away we drove, leaving the couch in the basement, the box springs in the yard and the TV cabinet in pieces. We returned with 40 pounds of strawberries, 4 pounds of raspberries and 25 pounds of sugar, and, ignoring all the that begged to be unpacked and rearranged, we made jam.

Because, really, what is the more important creature comfort -- a couch or a jar of homemade jam, saved until winter when sunshine is but a memory?

Words from the road

Courtesy of Jasmic.

We honked, neighbors waved goodbye, and the caravan of mini-van, tent-trailer and U-Haul swung around the corner and our home was out of sight. A block down the street, the walkie-talkie crackled and the voice of one son filled the cab.

"Hi, Mom. I wanted to make sure your radio was working."

Crackle. Hiss. "It's working. How's it going? Over."

"Good."

"Where's your dad going? Over."

Crackle. Hiss. "I don't know."

"I thought we were going to Seattle."

"So did I."

Silence, followed by crackle and hiss.

"Yeah, Dad says we're going to Seattle, too."

After four weeks of solo parenting, I was looking forward to the kid-less time in the U-Haul. I'd gladly take one yowling cat and one mother (hitching a ride to visit my sister and her new baby), in exchange for my husband taking the kids, their complaints and the newborn bunnies. I'd thought the bunnies, nestled in fur next to their mother's cage, would be the biggest hassle on this trip, but 10 miles into the 700-mile trip I learned otherwise.

The air of the U-Haul filled with a stench that forced me to roll down the window, hold my nose and swerve off the road. The cat had crapped.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband.

A half-hour spent at the gas station and we were back on the road, the cat wet, the air a tad fragrant but breathable again.

At first, I tried to decipher the cat's meows by rating its frequency and pitch. Once they reached what I believed was an urgent level, I'd swing off the road, pull the cat out of the carrier, snap on a leash and wait. The cat would cower at my feet, then gingerly cross the foreign landscape and hide under a bush, where the whites of its eyes glowed in the shadows. Apparently, it was too scared to move let alone relieve its bowels, because twenty minutes down the road ... sniff, sniff. Ugh.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband, again.

Urine splashed over the snacks and drinks, shit smeared across a shirt and the next half-hour was spent swearing, swabbing and spraying bleach. I gave up second-guessing the cat and just responded to the scent in the cab.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband, yet again.

After the third clean-up, I happily exchanged my seat in the U-Haul for one behind the wheel of our minivan, infused with kid sweat and bunny fur, but, sniff, sniff, mercifully free of cat.

My heart, plucked

Courtesy of adwriter.

Three men arrived at my house Monday and packed 17,000 pounds of stuff. The zip of packing tape and the sounds of Duran Duran filled the air, while I ate brownies and drank lemonade in the shade.

Oh, the sweet life of a company man and his family.

Eight hours later, the men left, my desk was wrapped in plastic, the piano crated and 122 boxes all numbered and labeled. It's funny, seeing my things reduced and defined to boxes. Written on one box are the words "Wicker Basket Water Marker," and on another reads "Pillows, Light Reducer." Light reducer? Light reducer? That stumped my family for a little while, and then we figured it meant a lamp shade.

As I countdown the days until we leave for Seattle, I'm realizing that the last time I did something -- walk by the river, hike in the mountains, see a friend -- was the final time and I didn't know it or mark it as significant. To counter this, we went to the park one final time with friends. Toddlers hung out on the slides, bigger kids headed down to the pond to catch polliwogs while the adults visited around the barbecue. As the sun went down we all met in the sandlot for a game of kickball and then went back to the table for cake, thermoses of coffee and goodbye.

I hugged the husband of a best friend and the tears fell.

"Wait!" I complained. "I'm not supposed to be crying over you!"

I hold my friends for a little longer and really hug them, smell them, feel their soft bodies, aged from children yet strong enough to rebound for the backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that we planned for the summer and now won't take. There's no time to formally say goodbye to my mountains with their carpet of dry pine needles and the vanilla smell of Jeffrey pines.

As we drive home I try to burn onto my mind's eye the sherbet sunset, melting pinks and oranges into the corners of my brain. Do they have sunsets in Seattle or does the sky just turn from downy gray to black?

The curve and color of the hills that bored me suddenly are so dear. After years, I've memorized their peaks and valleys, stared dully at them through the dry, brown winters and brightened when spring crayons them a pale sage green. I know where the scorpion waits, the hare hides, and can sing the song of the coyote, that trickster who came one night and nipped a bit of my soul and carried it away to its den.

Since I was 10, I've driven these streets, so familiar I forget who I am, how old I am, what I am. I am a child in the backseat, tired of a day of errands with my mother who has hauled me from grocery store, to fabric store, to laundromat. I am a mother, tired of a day of errands with my children whom I've dragged to grocery store, to library, to yarn shop.

Home is empty but for the echoes. My youngest son runs in big circles, bounces off bare walls and giggles. The air smells of secrets, of lovemaking and a baby born, of children growing, growing, growing. There are more secrets buried in the garden, nourishing the roots of the lilac and the crab apple. Love decays, providing food for the blossoms that tempt my children who bury their noses in the petals and whose fingers find the strawberries, barely red but still, they insist, so sweet.