December Roses

It's amazing what a change of scenery can do.

Here is the view from our truck's windshield as we drove to Colorado Springs on Christmas Eve. It looked like this for five of the ten hours.

It was so tense that we neither spoke nor moved. Once we hit Price I thought smooth sailing was ahead, so I popped in Rosemary Clooney's "Snow." It would have been magical to pass through gently falling "snowglobe snow" while she crooned, but as we inched our way along neverending snow-packed whiteout I began to consider what would happen if we died. I knew that Cristall would steal my kitchen table and I hoped that all of my journals would end up in the right hands. After thinking about dying for a few minutes I turned the music off and decided we should concentrate more. Greg's knuckles were white and he wiped his palms on his jeans every minute. The best part of the drive was five hours in when Greg frustratingly broke the silence with, "If I wanted to be an ice road trucker, I would have been an ice road trucker."

Here is the view of the same stretch of road coming home from Colorado Springs. It was a much nicer drive.

RE called shotgun until Grand Junction, so I stretched out in the back and used Lucy's deluxe memory foam dog bed for my pillow. Thanks to noise-reducing headphones and the 4500+ songs on my iPad I didn't have to listen to one Jewel song over the truck speakers. Music is a wonderful thing. I started out with "Afterglow" by the Michael Hutchence-free INXS. (I may or may not have had a small shrine to Michael Hutchence in my late teens. I still have a magazine ripping of him standing with girlfriend Kylie Minogue tucked into my X album.) There is a woman that sings in Hindi at the end of the song, and it reminded me of the same kind of sound heard in Sting's "Desert Rose." That made me think of El Guapo's line, "You see, Jefe, a rose can bloom in the desert." (Durko kids quoted a lot of movies growing up. My own brain is 6% worthless movie dialogue.) Which then made me think of J.M. Barrie's quote, "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in Decemer." And since this December has been especially cold and barren, and since I was in need of some mental roses from warmer, happier times, I spent the remainder of my backseat shift recalling some of my life's rosier moments.

MY DECEMBER ROSES:

~a random assortment dedicated to Michael Hutchence and Sting and Peter Pan and Greg

• MY 2006 NEW YORK HAIRCUT. I was gifted a Haircut at Nick Arrojo's salon in SoHo, and since it was the be-all and end-all of cuts it deserves a capital H. Walking the streets of Manhattan with my asymmetrical, point-cut coif I actually felt like a model and wondered why the paparazzi weren't attacking me.
• THE FIRST TIME RE SAW THE OCEAN. I'll never forget her pink onesie and shrieks of delight over, oddly enough, finding a stick in the sand. She carried the stick all day.
• SKEEBALL, how do I love thee? Let me chuck heavy balls down thy narrow path with my arm's perfect pendulum until I have earned the 3,500 tickets necessary to buy a toy that can be bought at the dollar store.
• WILD RICE. I would choose it over potatoes, noodles and couscous any day of the week.
• CARL BLOCH'S "Healing at the Pool of Bethesda" AT THE BYU MUSEUM OF ART. It's my perfect day trip. Drive to BYU, park with ease at the museum, sit in front of the original painting for a few minutes, eat either a slice of focaccia upstairs or a slice of SLAB pizza south of campus, drive home. It fills my well every time.
• WEREWOLF. Once I was driving with my friend Michelle. There was a full moon, so I howled like a werewolf in the middle of our conversation. After the initial scare we laughed our heads off.
• RIDING ANY ROLLER COASTER OR GETTING ANY MASSAGE. Possibly the two best things to spend money on.
• MARIAH CAREY IN THE GREEN CIVIC. We had a little green Civic when we were first married. One December night Greg burst into our apartment, grabbed me, put me in our car, and proceeded to drive around the block while he blasted and sang along to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You." He was so excited about his new cd and our first Christmas together, and I was pretty pumped about being married to him the 18 times we circumnavigated our block until the song was over.
• SIBLING BANTER AT RAT'S WEDDING. So much laughing. Wish I could reverse time and live under the same roof with them again.
• THE JOSHUA TREE DATE. I only went on a handful of non-Greg dates at BYU, but this one topped them all. A nice boy invited me to the symphony at Abravanel Hall. I wore my fancy burgundy dress and hot-rolled my hair. He picked me up and as we exited the parking lot of Crown Apartments he inserted The Joshua Tree into the cd player. He didn't skip any songs and the volume was perfect. The last song tapered off at the exact moment we finished parking downtown. So if you've ever wondered how far it is from downtown Provo to downtown Salt Lake City, the answer is One Unadulterated Joshua Tree.
• MOONLIGHT SNOWMOBILING AT DANIEL'S SUMMIT. Hauntingly beautiful, even if my feet were numb.
• THE POPPING SOUND OF CANNING JARS SEALING.
• BABY RE'S NAP HAIR. It always proved that she slept soundly during naptime.
• -$88 JEANS. I bought a pair of $12 jeans at Plato's Closet, washed them, wore them, and then found a $100 bill in the pocket. I called Plato's to find the original owner but Plato's said to keep it. Talk about a bargain.
• GRAND CENTRAL STATION. I never knew it existed, so you can imagine the breath-stealing thrill of stumbling upon the twinkling aqua masterpiece for the first time. I assume there are no benches in Grand Central because people like me would occupy them forever while admiring the ceiling, the chandeliers, the opal clock and the colossal windows. Also loved was the sound of Grand Central Station. It was like being underwater and hearing the echo of land conversation. Unexpected beauty is always memorable.

Cache of happy memories, thank you. You changed my mental scenery from whiteout to clear skies. We really are what we think, and I think I'm feeling better now.