|
Greetings!
It is the 4th of July. Before the second night of Monsoon rains start, I decided to write to you. I will soon need to shut off and disconnect all the electronics in my office. Last night I watched an incredible lightning show from Jerry's hospital room before I drove home in pelting rain drops the size of plums. The desert sucked up the water within an hour of its ending around 3 this morning!
Jerry fell unloading hay and broke his hip. His surgery yesterday went spendidly and he was in good spirits today. Before I went to see him today, I had lunch at the Moongate Cafe'.
The Moongate is a place where I have sat a thousand times, for decades past and will all my future, to eat red enchiladas, feel safe and familiar and comforted. I was there after my Eventer, Snookie, passed over; was there after many horse shows - competing as well as judging - there after frightening storms when I lived in the shack on Brahman; there with Jerry when we first fell in love!
Enchiladas soothe me. It is all because of a horrific storm my Mom and I drove through back in 1978. We left Albuquerque with it snowing, going east on I-40 in the afternoon. After we passed Clines Corners, the highway was closed and we hit an ice storm that left our windshield wipers frozen to the bottom of the glass; the road was no longer visible in the heaped snow and the old (very old!) International pick up truck couldn't throw enough heat through the defroster to make more than a palm sized opening in the ice on each side of the windshield.
My Mom was driving at first and I opened my side window just enough to look out to guide her whenever I saw a tree or some guard rail... the snow sparkling in the headlight beams was surreal. The world was a freaky white blanket of indistinguishable ground with a highway somewhere under its treachery. We were the only vehicle out there...
We couldn't stop - we would die if we did. So we changed places in the truck, crawling over each other when Rose became too exhausted to pilot the beast and I followed her directions, right, left a little, onward...
After literally hours of rolling along in slow motion, we saw the glow of Santa Rosa and felt hope. We arrived in the wee hours of that morning, sliding almost sideways down a long curving off ramp. There was one motel room vacant. The size of a large closet, it had a wall heater that glowed with gas flame from floor to ceiling and warmed our shaking bodies and un-bendable fingers.
Hard to believe, we saw a restaurant open at the top of a hill and walked in the silent snow to sit in safety there and eat RED ENCHILADAS. They have comforted me ever since!
|
