The email from her Blackberry said it all.

“At a funeral. Back in the office soon.”

It is a telling reflection of the world in which we live when a person feels a compunction to return an email in the middle of a funeral. This is beyond the pale. I am not throwing stones however, as I live in a glass house, which you’ll understand in a minute. The person who felt an overwhelming obligation to respond to one of 9,000 emails she probably gets in a day,  I’m sure, just wanted to let me know she was on it. She’d get back to me as soon as she could. I’m sure she was thinking, “…I’ll just grieve here, with the rest of the mourners for a hot second, while I tend to my Crackberry on the sly, as I’m letting folks know, ‘I’m at a funeral, back in the office soon,’ and then I will indeed get back to the office very soon…” at which time she would be in a much better position to attend to the remaining 8,999 emails waiting for her reply, chock full of responses such as, “sounds good” or  simply “k.” Of course, she could make maximum use of her time, if she’d answer a few of those on the drive back.

That’s what I was doing last week when I nearly got t-boned by a stern looking woman in a grey Honda Civic, who, out of generosity, merely wagged her finger instead of shooting me the bird when I shot out into the middle of a four-way stop because I was answering a critical text message, “hey, where’s the broom?”  I’m ashamed to admit it, but this was not even a mission critical message, merely a domestic detail. I’m sure “k” was my reply somewhere, like, ” look for it yourself, k ?” In my own defense it was really more of a rolling stop. It just happened to occur smack dab in the middle of the intersection, where I threw on the brakes because I realized there was a woman in a car heading my way who could legitimately claim not only the right-of-way but my home, my dogs and 50% of my offspring who go along with the house, at least for now,   should we have collided.

This is the moment I knew my life was out of control. I had become practiced at the ritual of placing not only one, but two PDAs on the console of my car every time I started the engine;  my Blackberry for work and the iphone for my life. They were like dueling pistols with the barrel pointed right at my over-saturated head. Between two  different handheld devices, both with phones, email and text,  there were six different ways to reach me. Or should I say distract me? We know this is ridiculous, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts, if people are being honest, millions of people would confess that they text or email in the car–at the stoplights, of course. It just sucks then the light changes and you haven’t finished tapping, “k.”

This unending exchange of incessant data, this urge to be “live” all the time,  which siphons off our ability to fully focus for more than a nano-second, rendering us only superficially present to what we are actually engaged in, has a full-blown diagnostic destination referred to as Continuous Partial  Attention.

On the very day I nearly ate my lunch due to texting and driving, I had heard a fascinating report on NPR. I was eating breakfast in my car, actually focused on the story about the ever-increasing threat to our health and sanity known as “continuous partial attention,” the bi-product of the abundance of information and/or stimuli which is available for human consumption (I’d prefer to call it malabsorption) twenty-four hours a day through the use of these devils we hold in our hands which keep the pulse of the world at our fingertips. A woman, Linda Stone  is credited for coining the phrase when she brought this to people’s attention, if they weren’t texting or emailing at the time, back in 1998. Yep, 1998 – fifteen years ago, dude. She goes around the country giving lectures now on how to block the barrage.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a consumer. I have a wide array of barrage devices in my household, indeed, in my car and I am as addicted as they come. I’m probably not as bad as the folks in the NPR story though.  The appropriately demure public radio reporter told about a surgeon in Boston who is known as the “iDoctor.” Has nothing to do with ophthamology, it has everything to do with his proclivity to make rounds with his ipad slung under his arm. Ol’ iDoc defends using the ipad versus the old-fashioned medical chart because it keeps him in touch with “stuff” from the office, avails him constant access to the Internet, (just in case he needs to Google, “how to remove a tumor”) and he even uses the video camera in the O.R. so he can do an instant replay with his surgical patients as soon as they wake up in the recovery room. Cool. It’s kinda like the mechanic who shows you the rusted part he takes out of your car. Gee, how I wish there’d been someone in the operating room with an ipad when they took out my gall bladder, I’d like to know for certain it was truly worn out.

So, if the iDoctor is a good example of the benefits of having your world communications center in your pocket while administering health care, the rest of the report about the surgical nurse who forgot to order the blood clotting medicine for a post-op patient because she was texting instead of attending, certainly must be the bad example. The patient nearly bled to death due to the nurse’s distraction because she was texting about her plans for the evening, which no doubt included “sounds good,” or “k.” The hospital, of course is being sued, I bet that email got somebody’s undivided attention and the nurse has probably lost her job, one would assume this certainly got hers. How many million other examples are out there of this insidious encroachment, if not eclipsing, of our ability to focus on the matters at hand?

It reminds me of that familiar reproach, “if you don’t stop that you’ll go blind,” which of course, refers to a preoccupation with a handheld device of a whole different sort. The degree of obsession, I suspect is largely (or smallishly) the same. But I might suggest a new turn on this phrase: “if you don’t stop that, you’ll be blind.”  If we don’t take our eyes off our hand-held device and look up, we’ll miss stuff. Like the world. Like the people around us. Like the woman in the silver Honda Accord who’s about to slam into the passenger door of my car.

Last summer, when I was road-trippin’ with my dog in said car, I could have missed a lot if I’d been glued to the virtual world in my hand instead of the real world on the horizon. Now, it would be a bald-faced lie if I told you that I drove 8,600 miles over the course of eight weeks through 21 states (some of them altered) 43 major cities and 924 small towns without texting from the highway on occasion. I did. I freely admit it. Especially, as a writer, who was blogging along the way, and feeling a compunction (do you sense a trend here ?) to get back to the commenters on my blog site. That’s the tyranny and  gratification of instant publishing. You push something out to the web and much like a dinner party in which you’ve slaved over a hot stove for your friends,  once the forks clack on the plate, you’re eager to find out, “so, how do you like it?”  When I was on the road with Libby last summer, sometimes I’d click “publish” and by the time I got the backpack and the dog out of the motel room, loaded into the car, I would hear the validating ping of a comment on my iphone. It was Pavlovian. If I heard nothing but crickets, meaning the world-wide web was mysteriously quiet, I would hit “get mail” several times as I’d drive on to the next town. This research psychologist, Dr. Larry Rosen, who’s a prof at CA State calls this the iDisorder and truthfully, I had it. I had it bad, dude. Talk about not being off the leash! What a fool!

But long about Louisiana, I shook it off. I discovered that I could truly go off the grid for awhile and the world would keep on spinning without me. What’s more, I was free. I was free to see, free to feel, free to simply be. Thank God.

Just think what I would have missed if I’d been texting in Weatherford and happened not to notice Nancy Parker, the corporate sales gal who bagged the nine-to-five job in Florida to come home to Texas to set up a resale shop in an old gas station by the side of the road. How much less fulfilling would this journey have been, if, when the freeway traffic backed up on Interstate 10, as far as the mile could see, I’d kept my gaze on my iphone, catching up on emails or Googling, “traffic snarls on Interstate 10?”  If I hadn’t stopped that, I would have been blind. I wouldn’t have noticed, what seemed like a mirage, back-lit by the afternoon sun, a dude in dreads, with an acoustic guitar, then, what’s that?

The You and Me Thing, I-10, CA, August 15, 2011

A guy in flax colored linen pants, sets down a stand-up base in the gravely median of the highway. They’re playing music. The You and Me Thing had seized the opportunity of a ten-mile traffic jam to jam by the side of the highway. Was it providence that the lyrics I recorded on my hand-held device put to a higher purpose included, “hold on, sail on, your dreams will become a reality?”

Nate Walks America and Meets Libby
Highway 50, Utah, August 26, 2011

My trip, my life view would have been different, if I had been returning an email, or checking my GPS and failed to notice Nate Damm, the guy who walked across America last summer, while I was driving it, who, wonder of all wonders, just happened to be on the very same stretch of U.S. 50 which cuts through the desolate Utah dessert on an August day in 100-degree plus heat at the some moment I was. Would I have missed him if I’d been Tweeting at the moment I spotted him pushing his baby jogger alongside the high way? What if I’d been on the phone, when I took Libby for a walk on a rural road in Lake Tahoe? I might not have noticed a single playing card, face up, the three of spades, floating in the narrow stream running alongside the black top. The three of spades, which, once fetched from the water, I was compelled to Google, (once I got back home) only to learn that the three of spades was instructing me to attend to a sadness in my heart, which I was forced to admit was unattended grief for my brother Don. My mourning had been shortchanged because I was too busy, too preoccupied, overloaded with work. “At a funeral. Back in the office soon.” I told myself, when I had time, I’d breakdown. I’d get to it later, get to a place where I could allow myself to recognize the pain in my heart every time I realized that I would never hear his voice again. Too busy, I was too busy, with too many voice mails, emails, LinkedIn  requests and Facebook birthdays, Tweets and texts from well-intentioned family and friends asking, “where r u?”

Continuous full attention on this unending sky. California desert.
August 15, 2011

I was off the grid, man. I was disconnected. It took my continuous full attention to become the everlasting beneficiary of the people, the sights and the glorious solitude I experienced on my journey last summer. Off the grid, out of touch, all in. Partial doesn’t cut it. Partial doesn’t get the job done.

So that’s why I quit yet another job this week.

It was a worthy job, but one which had relegated my writing time to the corners of my life. Call me a flake, but it was deja vu all over again. Only this time it was worse. While I was recounting the experiences from last summer, a result of having had the balls (or the foolishness) to leap from my safety net, I was in fact, all balled up in it again. I was writing out of both sides of my mouth;  professing the wisdom of listening to your gut while stuffing a sock down the throat of my own inner voice. I had staked myself out; tethered to one of those curly cue metal spikes you screw into the ground to tie up your dog. I was running around inside a dizzying, delusional circle of juggling the day-job, free-lance gigs and finishing the book, and I was meeting myself coming back every single fucking day. The near-miss car wreck was indicative of my continuous partial attention to everything. I was at a familiar, albeit ridiculously familiar intersection called now or never, once again.

The moment is now to pull my ankles out of this bear trap of fear about how I’ll make it. I’ll either make it or I won’t, but I have to finish what I started before I forget, before it loses its luster or nobody gives a damn anymore. That’s my job. That’s my duty to myself, the people I met along the way, my backers, my kids and my dog.

As if I needed any more incentive, I was reminded this morning of something which tipped the scales for me last April, when I was pacing the floors, agonizing over whether or not I should embark on this crazy road trip. I had written something in my journal, the deep down stuff that comes from a place so tender, so raw, and so fragile, to touch it is like stroking the fluttering breast of a baby bird who has fallen from the nest. It was my own heart racing truth. And then, I highlighted it to keep me strong.  That it was one year ago, today.

If I tell my stories, the people I have lost will live on. April 29, 2011

They deserve more than just my continuous partial attention.

They deserve my all.

The last shabby motel room. Salinas, Kansas

I’m a hypocrite. From shabby motel rooms, made less lonely by my dog on the bed, from Toledo to San Luis Obisbo, last summer I waxed poetic about the wonder, the glory and the healing tide of love.  But I never waded into the topic of the kind of love which opens your every pore by the mere thought of the object du jour of your desire.

It’s because I’m a hypocrite and a chicken. I drove nearly 9,000 miles, just me and a big yeller’ dog, who neither drives nor changes tires, faced triple-digit Texas heat on sparsely traveled two-lane roads with only one gallon of water in the car, (some would say that’s just plain stupid) talked my way out of getting jumped by an irate mountain mama on the Blue Ridge Parkway, sorted through a pile of loss; the boyfriend who got killed in a car wreck, two brothers, my mother, my innocence, my marriage, and the very real prospect of losing my house after I lost my mind and quit my job to hit the road. I did not succumb to fear in any of those situations, but I was loathe to write about the thing that scares me the most:  this thing called love.

But long about Ely, Nevada, where I stayed in the world famous, Jailhouse Motel, after 52 days and 42 blog posts in which I’d pontificated about heavenly love, maternal love, sibling love, brotherly love, puppy, platonic and paternalistic, I turned my thoughts, reluctantly, to the passionate kind. They don’t call U.S. 50 across Nevada the “Loneliest Road in America” for nothing. There’s something about it which paves the way for introspection and smack down truths.

The memories surface here, like oil on the pavement. Highway 50, near Ely, NV

Truth is, it had been a long time since I felt the fever for the flavor of a Pringle. In my last blog, A Woman With a Past, I must confess, I left you hanging. The story ended with me seriously investigating how I felt about a very nice man who was a) emotionally available, b) financially stable, c) intelligent, d) a Democrat, and e) falling in love with me. Unfortunately, I leaned the other way, but typically, I’m the faller, who ends up on my head.

Nick, the out-of-towner was the hardest to get back up from. He was the musician (should have been my first clue it wouldn’t work) whom I instantly fell in love with at my brother Garrett’s funeral back in 2002. My shrink would chide me for this later.

But for a time, it was purely wonderful, especially our first Valentine’s Day, when he flew into town for one of the most romantic weekends of my life. I baked heart shaped sugar cookies and frosted them in pink. I arranged sleep overs for three kids and bought something pink. I booked a suite for the opening night of a lavishly restored, downtown hotel and made reservations at an intimate Italian restaurant and took a long bubble bath. I missed his call while I was in the tub.

“I can not wait to hold you,” he said, before he boarded the plane.

I saved that message for months.

The anticipation was thrilling. I had bought a pretty red shirt to wear to the airport, my make-up was perfect, my hair was perfect, my breath was pepperminty and I’d dabbed on just the right amount of perfume. We were like two pups wagging our tails when we spotted each other on Concourse A.  Embraces like these are the kind you dream about. His shoulders were as wide as a big-screen TV and he swallowed me in his arms, lifting me off my feet.

“I thought it would take forever to get off that damn plane,” he whispered.

It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever known.

And it was one of the sweetest memories I’ll ever have. The dinner was exquisite ( I had the pumpkin tortellini, he had the veal ) and so was everything else; the red wine, the dark chocolate dessert, the red wicker basket he brought me, full of scented soaps and oils, the crystal chandeliers in the lobby with giant bouquets of roses on every table, the decadent king size bed in the gilded, turn-of-the-century suite, with its heavy, brocade bedspread which we promptly kicked to the floor.  We were completely unaware of the blizzard whirling outside, until I got up to blow out the candles. I refused to fret about my kids sleeping at their friends’ houses, my ex-husband sleeping in the county jail, cancelled flights, mounting bills, car repairs and college loans or what would come of this romance. I was totally in the moment for one blissful night. I drifted off to sleep in his arms, sated and serene.

We broke up on a clear November morning nine months later. After a dozen or so back and forth trips, with him increasingly withdrawing, and me increasingly holding on for dear life, I found my strength, or rescued my pride. I got up one morning, after he’d said, “I just can’t do the long distance thing any longer,” and then added, ”but I don’t want to lose you,” and promptly turned his back to me in bed. As soon as it was light, I got up and out. Up and out, packed and gone, in six minutes flat.

“I’m leaving before it gets ugly,” I said and kissed him on the cheek.

“I don’t want you to go,” said he.

But I had to. I knew we couldn’t bridge the distance or different lifestyles. A writer and musician, with no children of his own, it wasn’t in his DNA to take on a woman with four kids and he admitted as much. He echoed what I already knew, but my head hadn’t informed my heart. The onslaught of tears commenced as I walked out of his building. A tree full of brilliant, yellow gingko leaves had dumped on my car overnight, resembling hundreds of carping Pac Men, “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so,” they seemed to mock me,  as I brushed their annoying brightness off the windshield and my dark heart.  I cried all the way from Lake Michigan to the miserable Mississippi. I parked a block from home, where I had to suck it up, pull it together, slap on some concealer and get ready to explain to my disappointed kids why Mom was home early and why Nick would not be coming back. It took me a full year to get over him.

But last August, with the truth serum of a lonely highway and endless desert coursing through my veins, I could no longer deflect reflection.  “Am I destined to forever be unlucky at love?”  It was a question as big the mountains in the distance.  Hells bells, I had bled stories about everything else under the blazing sun! I’d become an oil leak across America; illegitimate child, father I’d never known, brother I’d never seen, stepfather never accused and a former husband who was. By Reno, I had slain those demons with my pen saying, “bring it, fuckers. What else you got?”

Wasn’t so easy to whack the lost loves though. It was just too hard, too close to the surface. The broken line of the highway tossed my history in my face;  yellow, black, yellow, black, on, off, on, off. We’d merged, like the come on from the truckers, slowing down to allow me in their lane. We’d merged, for a few weeks, a few years, long enough for one kid, long enough for three more, a few more hours, a few more days, just one more week, “let’s get through Christmas.”  Strung all together, suddenly and sobering,  you realize you’re in your mid-50s and the lush landscape of options is looking a lot more like the powder white sand of the Nevada desert.

Barren is in the eye of the beholder. Along Highway 50, Nevada

I suspect I’m not alone in being fooled, this far down the road. We live in a time of cavalier attitudes about love, enabled by an undeserved faith in the Internet to supply a never ending stream of suitors to make our lives better. Woe be it for any single person in America to say they actually need someone to make their lives complete. Nobody needs anybody anymore. We’d just “like” somebody to hang out with, which makes it that much easier to whiz through the prospects that pop up in batches, like so many tin ducks in a shooting gallery on the midway. Load a few keywords, and shoot em’ all down, because ten more will pop up to take their place. I’m not passing judgement, I’ve done it myself, along with an unprecedented number of other single people in this country. And sometimes, many times, folks get lucky. Well, after they got lucky. I know three people who married the person they met on-line.

But it’s kind of sad, isn’t it, the method to the match? And it’s taxing. Sitting in front of the streaming head shots of “next,” available during those vulnerable hours, like Friday night at seven o’clock, when your brain tells you to “Click, click, click. Keep going. Click, click, click.”  And all the while your heart is holding out that something wonderful just might happen which doesn’t spring from your lap top, someone who takes your breath away, someone who isn’t the product of an exhausting numbers game, where the odds just happen to stack in your favor on any given click. You’re holding out for something called magic, because magic should happen. Magic sure as fuck should happen when you fall in love. You deserve it. Life’s too short to do without it and it’s exhilarating when you feel it, because it’s happened before. Maybe that’s the benefit of having been around the block a time or two. You recognize the onset, kind of like a gall bladder attack, except this time, it’s your heart. It’s a reflex. It’s undeniable and it isn’t calculated or contrived, not spit out on a spreadsheet or revealed in a survey, or random.

Love isn’t random.

So when it does come around, how do we compare it against the scorecard in our pocket? The memories conspire to paralyze us on the advent of a new day, a new chance. How do we stop ourselves from analyzing, categorizing and compartmentalizing?

Therein lies our challenge, my funny Valentines.  Loaded down with the disappointments of the past, like so many broken yellow lines in rear view mirrors,  how do we make ourselves available for the unfolding?  How can a person truly open their heart, with one foot in the past and one foot in the option zone? Armed with our hard-won wisdom, blind to the fallacy of unlimited options, how many of us approach love wearing an impenetrable layer of protection where vulnerability and hope used to be? It’s like preparing to go into a contaminated space, where, in the ante-room, we don a full body condom, protecting us from risk, keeping our true selves from really breaking through.

It’s not what we want though. We want it to be real.

We’d trade it all right now, for just one minute of real love.

Wanted to pass along an update I put on my Kickstarter page tonight, which went to all the financial backers from last summer. The moral support that I’ve gotten from those included here is no less significant. Thanks to all y’all who remain the best friends a person could ever hope to have, even in two lifetimes. And to show, that collectively, y’all are some of the funniest people on the planet, I’m lifting some of the supportive comments I’ve rec’d to date, David Letterman wishes he had writers this good. Here’s the:

 Top Ten List of Funniest and Most Appreciated Comments I’ve Received following the drubbing I got on Salon:

10. “Those people just drink up their hater-ade and hit the Internet.”
9.”Yes, this crap is standard.  Blaming the victim is a primary defense to a morally bankrupt society who doesn’t wish to troubled by the truth- and this represents a best-case scenario…All this to say- that it may be more than the CIA and Israelis who invent armies of ‘virtual people’ for propaganda warfare on the internet. I’m truly sorry you had to find in such a visceral way how ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. I hope this galvanizes your anger into strength to use against the fuckers who would drag her down.
8. “Haters gotta hate.”
7. “It’s a great article, and the haters are a total of two, and both of them weirdos. Fuck ‘em, and congratulations….”
6. “Forgive me, but most of the comments seem to  authored by intellectual wannabes who at best are self indulgent assholes leading rather empty, pathetic lives. Fuck’em I say. But, maybe I’m just not smart enough to get the sub text.”
5. “This is great writing, Jean. Be confident.”
4. “I’m assuming that you are aware that you cannot write about your adventures and misadventures in life and be thin-skinned at the same time. Screw them.  Next time, write something even more controversial.  You know what?  They’re reading, aren’t they?  If you want proof that the public is dumber than a box of hammers, check out the Senate and the House of Representatives.”
3. “What the fuck, who ARE these people? This is worse than talk radio!”
2. “Wow, I didn’t realize those pedophiles in prison had that much access to computers.”

AND THE NUMBER ONE MESSAGE I RECEIVED AFTER PUBLISHING THE SALON STORY APPEARS IN THE “KICKSTARTER” UPDATE TO MY BACKERS BELOW:
Project Update #24: A Fly on an Elephant’s Ass

“I just read your article “My ex went to prison for sex crimes” article. I have never read your work before but I have lived this life you describe. My ex-husband, then husband, confessed to me that he had been molesting my daughter for 4 years. that was 7 1/2 years ago. He is serving a 30 year sentence which I am so grateful for. I could totally feel your pain in so many places in that article. I have a story to tell and have really wanted to write a book but have no experience in writing at all. I would be thrilled if you contacted me just so I could talk to someone who has clawed up out of that muddy walled pit as I have been with kids and no child-support of any kind. Our kids are in high school and I pray that they make it past the pain we have been living with.  I pray to hear from you for many reasons.”

I’m gonna reach out to her. Worry not.

* This is  a re-post from September. Apologies to long -time readers. I am re-posting for some new visitors to the site.

September 2, 2011

I hear the low rumble of trucks on the freeway from my porch, back home from my 8,600 mile odyssey. What just last night felt like a predator, the rattle and whirr of tractor trailer rigs, crowding me closer, closer and closer with each mile nearer home, now seems a seductress calling from a distance.

It’s like a pack of cigarettes in the dresser drawer, a bottle of booze in the cupboard, it is simply, there. Get in the car and just drive away, drive to the next town, the next motel, the next deserted stretch of highway, where your faithful dog waits patiently, no matter how long the photo takes.

How many places did we stop? How many vistas shared, we two?

She enjoyed the view as much as I did.

I understand why people become gypsies. Life on the road is simple: move, eat, sleep, move, eat, sleep. Back to reality, with all its tangential threads, is proving to be its own challenge after eight weeks on the road. I knew this when I was out there, I knew what I’d be coming back to. I was awakened by a bill collector this morning. Welcome home.
I need to take deep breaths, one after another. Remember the sunsets.

Blue Mesa Lake, Near Gunison, CO

Like monitoring the trip meter on a dark highway, driving beyond sunset, beyond fatigue, too many stops to take photos, I’d watch the miles click by, bringing me closer to the next stop, the next damn hamburger, the next bed.

I now measure my progress, one weed at a time, one creditor at a time, cleaning one kitchen appliance at a time.

To say that I am grateful to be home though, is like saying the Grand Canyon is big. Of course I am. Hugging Seannie and Lauren and that giant ball of mischievous fur, called Louie, I was never so grateful to see two humans and a dog in my life.

I was back, I’d made it! Eight weeks and 8,600 miles after I backed out the driveway full of fear and doubt, I had driven from the Midwest, to the east coast all the way to San Francisco and back again, by myself, with just my dog. Just my sweet, darling Libby, who wasn’t nearly as emotional as I was at the sight of our little house on Grant Road. But then, she wasn’t as emotional as I’d been about any number of events on this trip. She reacted to familiar turf with moderate enthusiasm, sniffing all the old familiar places. She wagged her tail at Sean, but she didn’t jump on him, Sean, her savior! The boy who chose her, over all the other puppies at the shelter. She was somewhat dismissive of Louie, as if to say, “are you still here?”  and then trotted in the house like she owns the joint. You see what I mean.

And while I am still seeing thousands of images in my mind, and thunder last night made me think of the motel maid’s cart, it’s as if Libby’s wiped her doggie memory clean. In just one day, she no longer springs to her feet when I jiggle the car keys. She no longer stands by the door, fearful I’ll take off without her.

I captured this photo in Lake Tahoe and it nearly broke my heart. From New York to California, she did this every time I started loading the car. She’d stand by the door, worried, heart racing, riveted gaze on my every move, afraid I would leave her.

Leave her?

As if I ever could. She was my rock, my bed buddy, my muse, my witness, my confessor and accomplice, my golden guardian and my friend. So how to prove my love? How could I ever convince her that I could not abandon her.

I come in the door and get down on the floor and whisper in her ear.

“I will never leave you.”
“I will never leave you.”
“I will never leave you.”

Oh that we humans should be so fortunate to have such ironclad assurance, patting us on the head, scouting up ahead, around the bend, tucking us in at night, raising us up into a bosom of protection.

Ah, but we do. And it is God. This is the God which, if we are open to the bending, will forge us into our better selves. This is the God who speaks to us through the tired lips of the dying and the wind through mountain pines, the God who appears to us in sun drenched boys on desert highways and freckled-faced girls who hand us coffee through the window, the God who stirs our soul at the wonder of creation and sends us one of his best to ride along with us  – to witness, to heal and humor us, asking little in return.

Libby trusts me. She trusts me implicitly, without question or reservation, motive or malice. I am her God. I am her guardian.

Just as I am my own. Eight weeks, eighty-six hundred miles and I am still with me. I am the faithful guardian on this one life. My life. There is no one alive better qualified to watch over me than me. Lucky is the little girl who is now in the loving hands of the woman I’ve become.

I am still with me.

Through abandonment, betrayal, loss and pain, I am still with me, the same little girl who rode out far from the farm house, still I ride unworried, alone. We come in alone, we go out alone. We have these blessed companions, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, friends and dogs, of course dogs, but through it all, we journey alone.

Conference calls forgotten here.

Yet, we are bound together. Whether through blood, by choice or chance, for a lifetime or a minute, we’re like traffic on the highway, pulsing blue spheres on the GPS of time. We merge, with a “come on” nod from the driver who lets us in their lane for awhile;  their path, their journey, their family, their life, until such time our paths diverge and we’re traveling solo, seeking our own true north.

How fortunate are those who find and follow.

Led my love, self-love, brotherly love, maternal, passionate and puppy. Love is all that matters.  Love knows no boundaries. It transcends all race, gender, geography, station in life and species. Love is what we’re sent here for, or more importantly, the courage to love, the willingness to face your fear, to turn the key and start your engine.

If I could reach out to the victims of Jerry Sandusky with a single message, it would be this: someday it just won’t matter anymore.

Before somebody throws a molotov cocktail through my front window, please hear me out. I’m not saying that what happened to them wasn’t criminal. I’m not saying that the perpetrator and the people who served as his de facto accomplices with their silence and accommodation, shouldn’t be punished. Heads should roll. It’s just that in the cacophony of competing sound bytes. accusations, denials, demands for retribution and pleas for justice, there is a vital message which doesn’t appear to be breaking through.

Healing is possible.

It takes time. It takes a willingness to let a professional (don’t try this at home) pry open your brain and your memory and your mouth to speak your truth. It sometimes requires writing down your rage in hate letters to the offenders, dead or alive. And it takes a certain level of receptiveness to the grace that comes with the healing. It’s like syrup is to pancakes, it just comes with it. And it can happen, this healing, at least it did for me and I’m a double dipper.

My experience wasn’t with a big shot coach who lavished fancy gifts and favors on his victims. All I got was peppermint ice cream from my perp. I remained silent for decades, until I simply couldn’t hold down the bile of violation and secrecy any longer. I was in my 40s when I finally told my mother, by then my step-father was dead. I even delivered the eulogy at his funeral, skipping over his ignoble deeds. Little did I know, that the man I was married to, who sat in the first pew wiping tears from his eyes, would end up in prison years later for committing a few of his own.

The irony was not lost on me. Imagine my bitter disappointment and rage, when it turned out, some sixteen years later, that the man I had been married to, a hometown celebrity, handsome, successful, influential, loving and benevolent to his own children,  had been harboring dark ambitions toward someone else’s. I had no clue when I married him that the very thing I was running away from, I was actually running to. This happens sometimes to people who were sexually abused as kids; we tend to behave like refugees. We don’t assert our rights, because we’re not sure we have any. We lack confidence in scrutinizing others, because we feel like damaged goods ourselves.

But I eventually found my voice of righteous accusation; challenging the endless hours he spent on the Internet, his increasing disengagement from the family. When confronted, he passed it off as being gay. I told him to pack his bags. But they don’t lock people up for being gay anymore. No longer under the wary eye of a wife or the threat on being found out, inside our house of cards, it was after he was left to his own devices that the world learned the truth on the ten o’clock news.  After a fourteen month IV drip of news coverage surrounding his arrest and court case, he was sentenced to seven years for having sex with a teenage boy. I spent those seven years trying to convince my children that the sins of their father were not carried upon their shoulders, trying to help them deflect the shame by association that I had endured first-hand.

Last summer, it all came home to roost.  Ten months earlier, my oldest brother had died of cancer. I had already lost another brother a few years earlier. I was like an unwilling contestant in an appalling reality show, “The Last Sibling Standing.” I was working 60-hours a week doing work I no longer believed in, going through the motions of pretending I gave a flip, while I had no time to even think, much less grieve. And I’d been on the adrenalin fix of single motherhood for so long, it felt as if I’d been sleeping with one eye open for seven years. But it’s hard to process nuclear fallout while you’re holding up a car, so I set it down. I set it down, got behind the wheel and drove –all across America. I quit my job, loaded up my dog and more baggage than I cared to admit and traveled through twenty-one states, from the midwest to the east coast to the west coast and back again. I needed a defibrillator as big as the nation. I went to reconnect with every place and person I’d ever loved. I went to find a brother I’d never known. I went seeking solace.

What I got was healing. Eight weeks and more than 8, 000 miles later, at a roadside stop at sunset, it all got settled. Gazing out over an endless expanse of Utah desert, I sat on a huge flat rock with my dog, watching the sun go down. It was dry where we were, but there was a thunderstorm on the horizon, some fifty miles away. Rain in the desert comes down in grey vertical shafts from giant pink and purple clouds that pile up like cotton candy skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. Looking out at what felt like infinity, I was inspired to let it all go. I simply let it go. I realized that the egregious offenses which had been hurled my way as an abused child, a betrayed wife, over time, had ceased to matter. They were like a downpour on the desert; transient dark stabs into a porous surface, which would be absorbed, infused and used. Used for the betterment of my life, because I’d been blessed with the grace to understand that there was far more surface than there was rain.

I have a blessed life.  Mile by mile, house by house, hug by hug, I was able to reclaim all the good memories which had been tainted by the bad. At the end of this road trip to revival, in which I’d been embraced by friends, family, strangers on the highway, and yes, my found brother, I realized how fortunate I truly am; the grimy corners of shame, betrayal, anger, bitterness and heartache in my life, have been scrubbed clean by the healing power of love. Victim, no more. Like a fast moving storm, how quickly all traces of that pain can vanish, insignificant over time, if we are open to the healing.

Healing is possible. It takes time. God speed yours to you.

It gets settled out here.

My mother used to have a saying, “Don’t count it a day lost when you learn something new”  and she especially liked, “learn a new word.”  She was big on vocabulary.

I’ve modified this treasured maternal maxim to include any number of lesser, albeit, practical goals to further edify my life. For example, “don’t count it a day lost when you can talk a cop out of a speeding ticket” or “don’t count it a day lost when you can dodge every call from a bill collector.” And the most recent twist on this beloved phrase:  “don’t count it a day lost when your kids cough up the cash for your tequila.”

Some day, we’ll look back on this and laugh. Truth is, we already have. That’s what happens when you drink tequila, you either laugh, get belligerent, or throw up.  And even while I had to laugh to keep from crying over the Christmas Eve episode involving the tequila, in the back of my mind, I was a bit troubled, seeing a sobering pattern unfolding here, seeking permanent resident status in my life. Here’s what I mean; last Christmas, despite being continuously, gainfully employed for approximately thirty-eight years leading up to December of 2010, I still wound up being broke during the holidays.  I had managed to maneuver through the first three weeks of the most wonderful time of the year by selling a particular pistol which had come into my possession under questionable circumstances a few years back.  In a self-congratulatory and festive mood, with mo’ money on the very near automatic deposit horizon, I went grocery shopping on December 23rd, thinking I’d be home free writing a check at 9:00 PM, knowing that the IV drip of dough would be injected into my financial veins before midnight. Foiled again. That damn Vericheck made it impossible for me to float a check for even a mere two hours. They impounded my groceries, but at least they kept them all together, rolling my Christmas feast in a grocery cart into the dairy cooler. I sent my son Patrick to bust dinner out of jail the next morning — my bank account flush with funds.

Not so, this Christmas Eve. I ran out of money before I ran out of holiday.  Such are the dire ramifications of dropping off the grid for two months this past summer to traipse all over the country with my dog to save my soul. It’s not like I’m not working again, but it’s somewhat perilous being a part-timer and a free lancer. The part-time gig doesn’t stretch quite far enough and the freelance funds seem to arrive just after the nick of time.  And so it went this year. The freelance check I’d been expecting did not arrive. When I looked in the mailbox at noon on Christmas Eve, there was a lovely card from my insurance agent, but nary a check in sight. However, I did not despair. I was still in pretty good shape. All my modest gifts had been purchased, were wrapped and under the tree. Christmas Eve dinner was already prepared. I had just enough cash left over for our Christmas Day dinner, plus dog food, toilet paper and tequila.  Lest you think we’re a bunch of out-of-season Parrot Heads, let me explain. Being ex-pats from New Mexico, our family tradition is Mexican food on Christmas Eve. Egg nog and enchiladas simply does not go together. So we make a pitcher of margaritas and then go to church at midnight and fall asleep.  Anyway, that was the plan. Until I was $16.42 short.

It was stressful. I’m at the check out, it’s Christmas Eve, it’s 5:20 and the store closes at 5:30. Not 5:00 or 6:00, which would make more sense, but 5:30.  I’ve added it up in the basket. I think I’m okay, (I should have taken that other math class) but the friendly cashier gets to the $86.42 total and I’ve got $70 bucks. I’m forced to make a split second decision;  forfeit the Christmas dinner meat or the tequila. I tell the cashier to take back the tequila. I’m sure she’s thinking I’m some kind of pathetic drunk. She finishes ringing me out, with some harrumphing over some lame computer issue, but I’m being considerate, since it’s Christmas Eve with five minutes to closing and all, and I hand over the cash. Done.

Except, I have a problem. I’ve got company coming for Christmas Eve dinner, a special gentleman friend. Besides, my grown kids have been looking forward to enchiladas and margaritas all day. I text my daughter and ask her, quick like a bunny, to transfer some money into my account. No reply. She’s out doing last minute Christmas shopping. I start texting sons, two of them are at home, but neither of them do business at the clip joint where I bank, so a transfer from them is impossible. The doors to the grocery store are now closed. There are two remaining customers being rung up. I tell the cashier that somebody is on the way with another debit card or some cash. She tells me she will have to go meet them in the parking lot, since the store is now officially closed and she’s not happy about it.

“If they’re not here in two more minutes, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

This is Christmas Eve, y’all. I receive a text from my son Patrick. “Sean on his way with my debit card.” Then 30 seconds later, he texts his PIN number. I tell the cashier, “he’s about 30 seconds away”  knowing it was at least a full three minutes up the road. But no sooner were the words out of my mouth, than I received another text, this time from my daughter Lauren, “the $ is in there.” She’d gotten home in time to transfer money to my account. I look at the frustrated checker and proudly proclaim, “ring her up, baby.”  She did. I gratefully acknowledged her patience, wished her the merriest of Christmasses and dashed home to change and get ready for dinner.

We had a great night. The margaritas were good. The food was good, we ate, we laughed, we were happy. I kissed my special gentleman friend goodnight in the driveway.

And then I went to church. By myself. Now, I understand that Christmas Eve mass is tantamount to a family reunion, that’s when all the wandering Catholics, (not to be confused with the wandering Jews) flock to mass, much in the same way they show up on Easter Sunday. I did not particularly relish the thought of being there solo on family night, but I’d rather go alone than not at all. And dragging someone along who doesn’t want to go, which would be any of my four children at this particular religion-free zone in their lives, (which I pray won’t last forever) would be like twisting someone’s arm to make them see a movie they don’t want to see. You end up not enjoying the movie because they’re shifting and sighing in the seat next to you, as you apologize in the dark.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to go to sit still for an hour. I wanted to go to quiet my mind. I wanted to go to think, to reflect, to remember and to pray. I’ve got a lot to pray about. Don’t we all? I wanted to go to say thank you – to God, to the little baby Jesus in the manger, (with all due respect to Will Farrell in Taladega Nights.) I needed to go, get down on my knees and humbly say thank you to my sweet Lord, who carried me and the dog through twenty-one states and 8,600 miles last summer and then delivered us safely back home. So much could have gone wrong out there.

Could have gotten snake bit. West Texas, near the New Mexico state line.

It’s not like I need a church to pray, my car and my bathroom work just fine, but flying buttresses and stained glass windows do have a way of directing one’s mind to a higher plane. It helps me focus. It helps me remember to say thank you for the love which surrounds me every moment I breathe, for dogs on the floor, food on my table and tequila in the pantry. I needed focus, to pray for my family and the family of man, for strength, and courage and compassion, wisdom, humor, health and grace; the grace which opens your heart to joy. I drove downtown on Christmas Eve alone, because I wanted to step back into the rhythm of the abundant benevolence I’d become such a fan of last summer, a solitary voyager, completely at home with strangers, merging into a collective experience, simply being part of something much, much bigger than myself. I went seeking joy, I needed to make a deposit in my individual joy account, to mark an entry on the plus side of the balance sheet.

I had no idea when I took this in Jean, Texas it would become so apropos. Providence.

It’s like a diamond in a safe deposit box, this joy, like a back-up generator for those days when the lights go dim in my soul, because they do.

Because joy is fleeting. It whispers to us in birdsong born on a gifted breeze through an open car window on an unseasonably warm December day. It can be gone just as quickly as it blows in the window, but it can also be captured, with no resentment for being confined in the heart of the captor. How infrequently, I think, we reach out to grab what lies in our reach. I had such a moment this December, on the day we were decorating our Christmas tree. It was sunny, a blessing in itself in the miserable midwest. I was at a stop sign, on my way to buy more  lights for the ginormous tree I had just talked one of the Knights of Columbus into selling me for $40.

Helluva tree for $40.

Don’t count it a day lost when you can haggle with the Holy Redeemers.  I had the window down, my arm draped outside, all traces of my left arm uber-tan from last summer gone now,  yet I wasn’t melancholy, I felt blissful. And then, a love pat from the universe in the form of a warm, gentle gust, which blew my bangs into my eyes, took me back instantly to a wind whipped car in the Nevada dessert where I had experienced a joy unimagined.

Libby and I had just started the long trek back to St. Louis from California,     Day 51 in what would end up a 57-day road trip across the country. My travelin’ dog and I journeyed from the mid-west to New York, down the eastern seaboard, to the deep south, across the desert southwest all the way to northern California. I had reconnected with friends all over the country and made many new ones.  I located and finally came face-to-face with the brother I’d never known, his eyes the same as mine. I paid homage to the two brothers I’d loved and lost. I learned about my father. I had time to grieve for my mother. Mostly I just drove and thought, drove and sang, drove and cried, at times, and tried to keep myself open to what lay before me on the open road.

I love this. U.S. 50, Nevada

But it was alongside the open road where I saw the wild horses.  It looked like something out of a movie, five to seven wild mustangs, cavorting on a not too distant plateau. I was traveling on U.S. 50, about 80 miles east of Reno, where the highway hugs tight to the Truckee River. It’s a lovely, cascading stream, which originates in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains cutting a verdant banner of green through an otherwise arid Nevada landscape. The horses, brown, black, and grey, were several hundred yards away, on the other side of the river, high atop a flat ridge, backlit by the sun. They were running and rearing up on their hind legs, either playing, fighting or mating, I’m not sure which, not being a student of equine behavior, but they were absolutely breathtaking. I pulled over the minute I spotted them. There was no barbed wire fence in these parts, only the river between me and the horses and the river was right next to the road. It was a hundred foot drop, straight down, and running fast, even in August. Libby was on high alert. She smelled the horses before she spotted them. She didn’t bark, she simply stood at attention in the back seat, her head out the window.   I, of course, immediately whipped out my camera, ever the journalist, thinking, “wait until the folks back home see this!” But the horses were on the move. I switched to video, but they looked like tiny specks on the mountain. So I put it down. I set the camera down, with the God sent realization that this show was meant just for me. I watched in gratitude and wonder as the herd of mustangs suddenly charged down the mesa, galloping at full speed, heading in my direction, kicking up a trail of dust which rose toward the sun. It was scary and thrilling at the same time. They ran incredibly fast, two and two, through narrow passages amid scrub oak and cactus, throttling down a narrow, rocky path. I was certain one of them would falter. And then, they disappeared. On the other side of the river, under the canopy of the cottonwood trees along the bank, they simply vanished.  I was above the tree line which covered them, so I could not see them. But, I could hear them. I could hear a herd of wild horses, pounding their thunderous hooves in the dirt, galloping alongside the river in the ravine below. It was the most stunning sound I have ever experienced in my life. For a fraction of a second, I was slightly scared, I didn’t think they’d charge up the steep incline, and within a moment, I was certain of my safety, as the sound grew more feint the further they traveled. I never saw them again. I got in the car and crept along the shoulder of the road, looking down at the river, hoping I’d see them pop out somewhere down river, maybe running back out into the open desert, but they didn’t. The moment had passed. I was the blessed spectator of a wondrous site which would only be recorded in my heart. I didn’t get the shot. I would not be able to document or replicate, publicize, promote or Tweet. This was a joy I was to experience in solitude.

As it was on Christmas Eve. After traveling across the country by myself, I didn’t mind so much, going to church alone. It was beautiful. The candles flickered, splashes of red from sweaters, scarves and poinsettias dotted the alabaster white chapel with resplendent color.  The chorus sang like angels, accompanied by an orchestra of strings and brass.  And then, they turned off every single light in the church! Hundreds of worshippers thrust into darkness, save for moon glow through stained glass windows, creating colorful prisms of muted, peaceful light, and one, tiny golden beam from a desk lamp, far behind the altar, so the cantor could read a little scripture according to St. Matthew. It sounded like the voice of God almighty in the darkness.

“Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob…”

Once the genealogy of Jesus had been read, the lights came up and they struck up the band! I kept thinking, “Wow, there’s no cover charge for this?” as we all stood and they led the congregants in the rousing processional,  “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.”

Joyful and triumphant, the French horns stirred my heart like wild horses.

Don’t count it a day lost when you experience such unbridled joy.

Libby, Huntington Beach, CA

Here’s the thing about going on a road trip across America alone with your dog.  She can vouch for nothing. When I say, “Hey Lib, remember that herd of big horn sheep in Colorado that were really close to the highway?” she just looks at me with this blank puppy dog stare.

I’ve been engaging in this a lot lately, this one-sided reminiscing. As other duties, like raking up the the 9,000 pounds of autumn confetti littering my yard, now supplanted by the terror of Christmas, and the painful, yet necessary return to being on someone’s payroll, have conspired to impinge on my writing time, and with each day that passes makes me a little more anxious that this book will never get done,  I find myself deliberately steering my memory back to some inspiring landscape when the sun was high and the road was mine.

As if the road were my own. Jean, Texas

This makes me happy.  It brings me a quiet, revered, extremely intimate and deeply held joy. I loved being out there. I just need to stop and tell you right now:  I loved being out there. Sometimes, as I rolled toward the outskirts of town, after I’d slowed down to let Libby stick her head out the window, or stopped to get some lunch or gasoline, I’d really open it up, getting back on on the highway. That’s the joy of a manual transmission; shifting gears, first, second, third, fourth, and then I’d really let it wind out before I shifted into overdrive. There’s something about putting a car through its paces that makes the driver feel closer to the engine. I felt powerful. I felt as fucking powerful as my car.  I was moving forward with a surge of speed, purpose and freedom. The car was like my lover – generous, responsive, cradling me and thrilling me at the same time.

In recent days, when the cold drip of December has rained its ugly Midwestern gloom on me, I have felt like I’ve stalled, run out of gas, broken down, all the appropriate and low hanging fruit, hackneyed phrases that one might use when writing a road story. Part of the problem is waiting for a verdict from an agent. Lord knows I’ve been pitchin’ them and I get these glowing comments and then silence on the other end of cyber space.  It’s not like I’m not doing anything, I’m writing every day, but I sure would love to hear, “We love you!!! We want you!! We can’t wait to represent you!”

It’s enough to make a girl go postal. But then, something ( well, three things) snap in my head.

1. Off the Leash has always been about not asking for permission. (Okay, I did ask for some money.)
2. If not for the miserable, cold, drippy spring of last year, which inspired me to get my sorry ass out of town, I might have never gone.
3. And I would not be writing Chapter Six today, which takes me back to the Texas highway including a brief dip into the deep vault, with a story about one Charles Lee Coates.

I have always had a penchant for getting into trouble with rascally, blue-eyed boys.  Charles Lee was a tow-head, skinny, rag tag kid I played with when I was a very little girl in Texas. Ft. Worth was a thirteen-year pit stop on the highway of my life (so far)  and one of the towns on the Off the Leash tour this past summer, which is now inspiring a devilish chapter of epic proportions.  Charles Lee had all the signs of being a death row inmate even at the tender age of six. He was two years older than me. We played “Army.” I was always the damn nurse, my specialty, mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches.

Back when I was an Army nurse. (J.R., Mom, Don, Jean, Garrett) Ft.Worth, 1959

When we got bored digging tunnels to hide from the enemy, and running around talking on walkie-talkies made out of beer cans, we’d hang out in Charles Lee’s garage, digging around through spider-ridden, musty smelling junk. One day, Charles Lee and I set the place on fire.  It wasn’t my fault. It was one of those little detached one-bedroom garage type apartments and the place was absolutely chock full of decades worth of Look magazines and Ft. Worth Star Telegrams stacked in bundles four-foot high. Charles Lee, who possessed some kind of mature-beyond-his-years ability to influence women to do completely illogical things, talked me into playing with matches and everybody knows the cliche’, if you play with fire you’re going to get burned. I did. So I threw down the lit match and the whole damn place ignited. It’s a miracle the house didn’t  blow up, what with gas cans and paint thinner and all manner of combustible materials scattered about. Anyhow, I still remember the sound of the fire trucks rumbling down the alley, lights and sirens blaring and me hightailing it down the alley ahead of them, through the gate of our cyclone-fenced back yard, and straight into my room where I was so scared, I promptly fell asleep. I recall waking up to the sound of adult voices in the living room. It was my parents sounding defensive with his. I bet all four of them were smoking cigarettes at the time, people did things like that back then, especially when hackles were raised. I got up, sleepily shuffling out to the living room, where I threw in with my team. I completely rolled over on that blond little bastard, with the cowlicks all over his buzz-cut head because he had threatened to pull down my pants!  He told me he’d pull down my pants if I didn’t strike a match! Tough spot. Pants down or house on fire? I struck the match, but as I recall, the whole book caught fire, I tossed it down and the “one room garage apartment in the back” burned to the ground.

I don’t recall if his attempt to cut off my thumb occurred before or after the house fire incident. We were playing Army in the vacant lot. Must have been time for me to fetch some more mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches and maybe I wanted to be the gunner for awhile, I can’t be sure. I am sure that the skinny, Satan’s spawn, who never wore a shirt from May until September, did hand me a piece of red glass; a big chunk of jagged red glass from a broken tail light off a car. We had such pristine playgrounds. Maybe I accidentally cut myself on the razor sharp edge, maybe he took a swipe at me. (If you read this Charles Lee,  and you can get a letter out of prison, let me know.) All I do know is that it was bleeding like a son of a gun. Lots o’ blood. I ran screaming next door to find my mama. She just about fainted when she saw the blood. She wrapped a towel around my left hand and we ran like the wind to the car, me climbing up into the seat of our Mercury sedan, the kind with the fold-down seats. My mom told me to keep applying pressure, she couldn’t do it cause the Mercury was a stick.

They whisked us right through the waiting room, into the examining room at Dr. McCarroll’s office. He did everything for our family, from delivering my two little brothers to getting my big brother Garrett into rehab. I remember like it was yesterday the nurse saying to me, in a sweet Texas drawl, smelling like Aqua Net hairspray as she unwrapped the bloody towel to see the deep gash at the thumb joint.

“Now, Jeannie, I’m gonna need you step up here on this stool so we can wash that cut out. There’s a lot of dirt in there and you’re gonna have to let me clean it out.”

The water was running in the sink. There was a little red wooden stool for children to step up on. My mom looked pale.

“I’ll do it myself,” I said and stepped up on the stool and stuck my bloody hand under the  warm water. The nurse was mildly surprised. My mom started crying and turned her head. I recall distinctly, beyond the shadow of any doubt, thinking it was better to take care of business my own self.

This is something I have tried to instill in my own children, with relative degrees of success, if not through an unconventional example. There’s a scene in the movie, The Last Detail, in which sailors Jack Nicholson and Otis Young are escorting a young, dopey, ill-fated Randy Quaid to the brig. He’s being sent to prison for seven years after stealing $40 from the donation box at the polio fundraiser on the Navy base, the pet charity of the Naval Commander’s wife. Nicholson and Young, MPs, (military police) are assigned the task of taking the young lad from New York to the Navy prison in Portsmouth, VA. The kid has never had a fun day in his life and Nicholson sees this as a cause celebre;  an opportunity to show the kid a good time before he gets locked up, prostitutes and smoking dope included. Otis is the reluctant accomplice. The three of them are in a rough bar in New York City, with Nicholson trying to show the kid how to hustle a bunch of guys, when a bar room brawl breaks out.

The bartender shouts,  “if you three don’t get out of here, I’m calling the shore patrol.”

Nicholson slams his fist down on the bar and then grabs the bartender by the collar, yanking him up to his face,  “I am the mother fuckin’ shore patrol.”

I’ll do it myself. This is the power I have over my own book. With self-publishing and social media and friends and supporters like you, I don’t need to ask for permission, for approval, for legitimacy. I don’t need some other gatekeeper to open the gate because I’ll do it myself. This is the authority that we all have, to not abdicate our lives, our futures, our happiness or well being to other things or other people. We are the authorities.

I am the mother fuckin’ shore patrol.
Now, say it to yourself. This is, after all, the season of giving.

Marin Headlands, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area