Heidi Beth

After living in the RV for three months in Illinois about ten miles from our secured-to-the-ground-house which is now rented out to another family, we headed south west. Our first brief settling place was the KOA in Springfield MO, an ideal place to be in autumn as the park is full of trees. Here’s a bit about our time in the Ozarks.

Four Campfires – 3 at our site, 1 at the cabin of fellow campers we met the previous evening in the common room.

One Family field trip – To Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield Missouri, where, by fantastic, unplanned timing, we were on the same tour as our campground neighbors. I have never been to a museum or historical marker, aside from religious, that I had as much familiarity with as Laura’s home. I lingered in her writing room, fortunately alone, eyes closed, tears visiting, and I could feel the hours her spirit spent creating the Little House series. I felt like I was in a temple. Indeed, I was. I had the same experience in her living room, only it was prompted by a meditation on her life, played out day by day, hour by hour in the house where I stood, between the walls where I was pulling in breath even as my own spirit danced round and round to a faint but very real melody; echoes of a love lived long ago, continuing even now beyond the veil?

Four Predawn drives – To take my husband to his temporary work site, followed by three visible sunrises (one day it stormed all morning), and three naps into late morning/early afternoon (on the fourth day the boys determined to stay awake. I dozed here and there). This was the first time my kids witnessed a new day’s light.

I wrote about one of those perfect naps.

Meeting three new families who are now friends –

-The first family was a couple we met by calling the National Baha’i Center for contact information for local Baha’is. We went to their house our second evening in Springfield MO, then walked to the best Health Food store I’ve ever been to. If you’re ever in the Ozarks, go to Mama Jeans. Their quality is outstanding. Tons of deli salads (many soy and onion free!), incredible soups, and rich bakery treats, including an amazing selection of gluten free sweets, like flourless almond brownies, mmmmmmm…….!

-The second family came to the main building to do laundry and noticed the common room was open. We had asked for it to remain open so my husband and boys could play a long, involved game of Ships which takes up lots of table space. When the other family’s dad turned on the Cardinal’s game, my older son asked politely if he could, “…please turn it off,” which prompted the dad to ask me, “Is he for real?” From then on we had a conversation going. I spent a while talking to their two daughters, enjoying an impromptu spelling bee, and later the mom and I talked as I folded clothes. Laughter came easily together. By night’s end we had plans for a campfire next evening. The campfire was magical. Four children running around wildly waving flashlights, giggling, the parents easily moving between humor and deep subjects, their twelve year old son quietly listening.

-The third family is a mother and daughter, Baha’i’s we met when attending the weekly Children’s class. Mom had not received word we were on the way. When four people pulled up to her house in a big black pickup truck on a quiet Sunday morning, she was rightly perplexed, but it all worked out beautifully. We spent the entire class sharing songs and teaching each other new melodies to familiar prayers. A few nights later they came to our home. We roasted hotdogs and talked as people will beneath moonlight in the glow a campfire.

(An addition I just remembered!) -We also met several other Baha’i’s at a Holy Day Celebration: The Birth of The Bab, First Manifestation for the Baha’i Faith. We met children our boys still talk about, and enjoyed a few brief conversations after the program. As we expect to spend more time in Springfield MO over the years, I expect we’ll get to know most of these people better. I hope I never take for granted the fact that we can go to anytown USA and be among friends.

Thanks to facebook, we’re now connected to all three families.

Then we spent a single morning packing up, unhitching, unhooking, and continued southwest to Texas.

We’ve been in our current spot a little over a week. I have more to report than a generous serving of warmth and sunshine, but that will come in a later post, once we’ve been here a while.

We are truly enjoying life on the road

I wrote a poem about this first sunrise

My older son gathering dry leaves for the first campfire

My husband getting fire wood. The boys learned to use a saw on the same logs. I was too nervous to remember the camera when either child wielded a saw

Fruits of their labor. Every fire was enjoyed until well after 10pm. Holding flashlight beams on the smoke rising after we poured water on the flames created a mesmerizing effect, much like a lava lamp in midair

Speaking the language of the djembe, learning how to play guitar, and becoming fluent in ASL are all good goals, but they are future-stuff (hopefully near), and I’m not yet very good at any of them.

Whereas it finally hit me that today, and each day, I can dress for the shirt-continuing-to-cover-my-chest-properly execution of a cartwheel, front walkover, round-off, or even flip-flop (well, this last one after I get back in shape).

I can walk upside down, stand on my head, and tumble between camper and laundry room any old day. I do believe I will resurrect the gymnastics-as-transportation habit this very afternoon.

My dad used tumbling as transport all through college. I was also a regular gymnastic traveler until about age fourteen. What happened?

I started dressing for boys, protecting fragile hairdos, holding my body in that particular way that now saddens me when I see the too-young girls doing it. I guess I expected attention from boys would be more fun than hanging out upside down half the day.

Then I forgot about hallway/sidewalk/anywhere tumbling completely.

I Kept hanging about hoping to attract boys (not a well thought out plan really, when I look back and think about all the cool things I could have been doing instead, like jamming on a djembe, learning to play guitar, or gaining a valuable skill like a working knowledge of ASL), and generally becoming duller by the effort.

Eventually, I was no longer all of me, instead hiding the important, fragile bits, creating a veritable stage show I pretended was real. Some of it was, but not enough.

I grew up, as some of us are lucky enough to do, discovered looks were a false gauge to determine future or even present happiness, that I needed to grow in maturity as well as bodily, and set about to get my mind and spirit in line with my new and liberating understanding.

I spent a lot of time alone.

I hadn’t forgotten fences, a steady companion in childhood, so ran my fingers numb along metal borders all over Chicago, watching my knuckles bounce to a rhythmless beat as I walked to and from work, to the cafe, the train, Lake Michigan. But I was still thoughtlessly right-side up most of the time, save the rare occasion I was at the park with other people’s children, showing off, and teaching the little ones a few tricks.

Some time later, I married. Soon after I was “mom” and my hands were blissfully full.

I was going to be the great exercising mother, my gym the outdoors, where baby and I would walk for miles every day. My first toddler disliked strollers, and thought each walk should include a thorough investigation of every tree, rock, bush, and flower. Sadly, I never got into the groove of the nature walk so this became daddy’s domain. By the time our second child was born, I was, other than when doing housework, mostly sitting down.

Habits form easily.

The boys are now eight and eleven, and I still haven’t figured out how to spend more of the free time in my day off my derriere than on it with my feet up, clicking away on my laptop. I’m making a beginning.

Our family has been bold enough to give away almost everything we own, move into an RV, and begin traveling around the country (slowly, at a family pace). In this unusual arena for daily life, peculiar and welcome changes are happening within and without each of us.

Once my kids see me tumbling more than just in a group of impressed children, maybe they’ll cartwheel with me on our walk to the park.

I wimped out. Though I’m perfectly able to spend half the journey to the playground upside down, I started thinking too much about who might be looking out their windows. But the boys and I did play catch for an hour, and my older son and I kept the ball going back and forth 44 times. Not much for some kids, but it took him a while to get good at catching a ball. The park ought to still be there tomorrow, along with the path to it, and my courage may hold out. If I just remember that seeing people have fun is generally good thing, I should be able to at least get one random cartwheel in before sunset.

It’s hard to write when I’m lonely,
when I don’t know what I’m waiting for
and Christmas music reminds me we are enveloped in the Spirit world,
a complex structure of particles too small to eyewitness individually,
but I’m sure each one dances.

Cake is in the plans for tonight,
from scratch, along with cookies.
The act of combining ingredients that form a whole
not resembling most of its parts amazes,
humbles, delights with each bite.

Behind poinsettia leaves in the middle of the table,
I check on young boys at play,
strategically arranging two-inch ships to battle.
The greatest effort, the most fun is in setup.
A brief game, it is hoped, will be played kindly,
but boys forget the point and argue,
just like grownups.

Baking will pull me in all the way.
With each cupful added, each turn of the wrist
I will reach deeper, pull up another bit of clarity,
unearth a bit of sadness, a spark of joy I skimmed through
when a memory took place in real time.
And when the smell of warm chocolate chip cookies
begins to fill the house, loneliness will fade.

Why, I do not know.

Too much, she said, just now I could split down the middle,
a clean line, like I used to imagine, each part falling onto the sand,
no blood, no pain, my body as cardboard in a vast nothing,
simply watching possibility that cannot be,
as children do in their open minds.
Uncertainty induced anxiety builds in the afternoon,
expands, will shrink and fade by late evening.
Now I wait, a thread of faith lifting my chest with each breath,
until I am content with the not knowing once again.

Recording the moments of sadness for all I can not control. There is a large space for gratitude, and I go there often, but not just now. I’m hoping the difficult emotions of the last few hours will begin to fade when I click publish. They usually do. Even as I write, my kids are enjoying a game across the room, pumpkin pie is baking, and I know that these few hours of sadness are a universal experience, and make (the more common) hours of happiness that much sweeter.

Dusk creeps through, a haze over day,
casting shadows into the living room.
I haven’t moved much since waking,
my body letting go of unused materials
it creates every month just in case
another baby grows there.

Word Girl and animated father-son dialogue through Hero Quest, a saving background, keeping me above enveloping sadness, itself a mysterious product of a miraculous cycle. Does any woman ever get used to this process, or simply endure? And where does the sadness come from?