Mother of the Earth

In a concrete world, what a big city offers? Is an abundance concrete. I’m around the corner of my house in hot southwestern Texas, the scorching El Paso desert where nothing grows but cactus and cockroaches I lived on a corner lot that had a sidewalk in front and on the side of my house. Behind my house was a church on a huge property and it had a baseball field, but not a nice looking field, it was all dirt. As I was squatting down as close as I could, in a three year old little body, looking real close and personal noticing the most curious creature on the porous grey sidewalk which stood out because of its pinkness in color. Later and mostly all grown up I learned that this creature was called "Child of the Earth." It was round like a coin and doughy looking like a biscuit but the most curious thing is that it had an image of a baby face on it. The whole thing, the whole roundness was a baby's face. I must have been not more than 4 inches away with my face and if I were to ever know what this creature was thinking it would be "that's a bigger face than mine." These creatures are poisonous or so I thought for many years. Enough years to feel vexed in lifestyle. I hate bugs. The child of the earth is a bug and the real name is Jerusalem cricket. But I will swear that the bug on the internet called the Jerusalem cricket is not the same bug that I saw that fearful day in El Paso.

Three years later I had a friend that lived a few blocks away from me and I went to her house to play, time got away from me and I ran home before my mother got too angry to switch me for coming in after dark. As I ran home and rounded my last corner, which was the same corner with the Jerusalem cricket and heavily breathing I shuttered to think I may run into that creature at a very inopportune time. Instead my eyes were drawn upward to a noise right above me, it only lasted a minute but it sounded like whoosh whoosh whew, whoosh whoosh whew it was a bird! Not a bird, an owl. It was after dark and the owl was white, as white as white could be. I thought to myself oh brother I'm going to get scratched by the owl trying to fight it off of me and then I'm going to get switched by my mother for coming in after dark. I'm officially in trouble. At my age I was always in trouble. Curious a cat I was and I lived my life that way.

In my 13th year we moved to Utah. A strange and magnificent place. It was green! Everything was green and I loved it. Every single house had a beautiful green lawn and bushes and flowers and garden hoses! And concrete. I had to be bused to school 15 miles away. I lived in a new subdivision and it was on the west side of the highway. Across the street from me was a golf course and behind the golf course was the school I should have gone to but the highway posed a threat to my safety so I had to ride the bus to a school in another school district. As I got older I learned to navigate through the golf course and hook up with the city bus system and I rode the bus to downtown on the weekends. Always remembering the switching I got for coming home after dark I never came home late from downtown. When I started high school I didn't know a single soul and integrating back to my proper school district was feeling like an impossible task, I didn't even know my neighbors. Freshman year I decided to join the swim team, that was my way in. I made lots of friends and teammates and I always came in 3rd in every competion. That was the mediocre high school life for me. Sophmore year was best, I took driver's ed. I didn't get a car that year nor the next year in my junior year but my brother did. He had a 1973 Special Edition Dodge Charger with the gills on the side that made it look like a shark. He painted it electric royal blue and it lightened and darkened as you moved around the car. That was the "in" thing in 1976. I asked him to let me drive it one night and with a laundry list of paybacks I took it for a drive. I went up to the "in" spot which was called memory grove. It was an unusual place, just a stretch of road with no middle line and an incline or decline depending on which way you came at it. Also it's known for the optical illusion it creates when you stop in the middle and start rolling backwards it looks like you are going up the hill.That night I just felt the need for peace and that place had a peaceful atmosphere that only memory grove provided in a concrete big city and I needed grounding. I came into it at the decline and reved up the engine to start the climb when all of a sudden in the street just sitting there was a white owl. It looked like it was glowing from the headlights on my car. I came to screeching halt and just stared at it. I had this weird familiar feeling but that's all and it flew away.

I married and had three children in Utah and I still say I'm from Utah, I lived there 16 years. Now in New Mexico for the past 35 years my culture is different from Utah but my ways are still Utah-like. I first started in a big city, Albuquerque then I moved to a small town and again I moved to a village then I knew I was home. High in the mountains of the Sangre de Cristos I live in the trees. My village is population 1500 full time residents and 5000 at any given holiday. My village is a ski resort. While I was busy raising children I worked various jobs but the one job I really loved is my Dialysis Tech job. I would bring patients in to the clinic, sit them down in their chair and attach them to the dialysis machine with needles that could suck the blood out of a rhino. I felt sorry for them so I treated them with extra kindness. They were some really good people and it was a wonderful job. I traveled to the next town to work which took me off the mountain about 25 miles and in some weather it wasn't so fun. There were times I had to stick my head out the window to keep sure I was still on the road. On a mountain road one side is straight up and on the other side is straight down, a canyon road is what its called. I hit an Elk one day on my way to work at 3:30 in the morning. I had to be at work at 4:00 am. The machines needed to be cleaned then lines had to be strung through and the saline solution had to be running. Once you turned those machines on they had to be circulating constantly. By 6:00 am our first row of patients came in and it was fast and furious from then on. Each Tech had four patients for the morning shift then four more in the afternoon. During the winter was brutal to travel back and forth. Again, on my way to work one morning as I was coming down the mountain there is a horseshoe turn about 4 miles into the canyon from my house and there as I was making that sharp turn I was admiring the pine trees they seem to have a new growth at the tips of the branches and in the light of my headlights they glowed brighter than the regular green pine needles. It's even more spectacular when it has snow nestled on top of those branches. I slowed down to admire a bit longer when out of nowhere a white owl just landed on the road. I saw it decending and it took me a delayed second to stop. It took my breath away at the beauty of this creature and the crazy thing was that not far off behind this white owl was a barn owl. I watched them and the road behind me because I was still in the road I didn't want anyone to hit me. I am always yelling at the damn Texans that come to visit us on the mountain because they act like they can't get enough oxygen to their brains that tells them they aren't suppose to park in the middle of the damn road. Slowly I started to move forward and the barn owl went in the direction of the small community of houses to the south side of the canyon road and the white owl just went up to the trees above me.

Since I was at the beginning of my travels going to work I pondered about the two owls and why I had an encounter with them. Were they mates? Was the barn owl going after the white owl and the white owl was fleeing? I wondered if it was deeper than that? In a mystical magical way I want to believe they were there for me. I felt something in El Paso, I felt something in Utah and now in New Mexico I had two visitors. I look back in my memories to analyis my life in connection with these owls and what it may possibly mean if anything. Bad luck has followed me quite often if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all. I lived in El Paso for 13 years and during those years I almost fell out of the car while crocheting, a new hobby I learned at church, back then no seatbelts were required and I guess I didn't shut the door securely so wham! I was dangling out of the door with my head down by the pavement and I felt a tight grip on my forearm that jerked me back into the car. It was my dad in the driver's seat. I don't know how he did that but he did. In Utah I got bit by a german shepherd in the face and it nearly tore my eye out it was so close. I had a long scar forever that went from where my eye meets my nose across and under my eye to my outer cheek bone. Another time I wrecked into a cop car while trying to find a make-out place with my date, that was real bad. I didn't get hurt and neither did my date but when I got home...bad. Lots of bad things happen to me here in New Mexico, in the big city I was raped, raped again after moving from the town to the village by one of my ex husbands best friends. Wrecked two vehicles on this mountain hitting elk, high centered a truck on a fallen tree while out collecting firewood. It hasn't been all bad though, I can ground myself here with the earth. The smells, touch and feelings I get when I am at home, there's no way of explaining it. It's just home.

More than not I think about the owls. My grandmother used to say that owls could be for protection or they could be for death. Its one of those witchy superstitious things, she's Mexcian, and they believe in. That stuck with me all my life but I'm still here so it has to be here for my protection. Even though lots of bad things happened I have overcame them. I could have died getting bit by that "baby face" bug or the german shepherd, I could have died crossing the golf course or teenage driving or the elk. I could have died getting raped and what about the psychological damage I could have endured? Maybe the barn owl came for reinforcements? I'd like to thinks so.