Today Is My Birthday

[Please note: I wrote this yesterday, but couldn't post it as I had no internet. So today actually isn't my birthday. Today is my un-birthday.]

Today is my birthday and I am sitting on the porch at the Casa Blanca guest house in Jemez Springs. It’s like a dream here: No phone or television or internet, only trees and a garden and a river and insects for Dave to photograph and mountains and coffee and a porch to sit on and books to read. This morning it was cool and sunny and we went and sat in the hammock by the river and looked up at the trees and listened to the river. A hummingbird sat on a branch near us and behind it we could see its nest high up in the branches of a young cottonwood tree. We watched the nest and after a little while a tiny beak poked up and then a tiny head followed. I’ve seen baby hummingbirds before, but I’d never seen a hummingbird nest before, and today, like a gift, there have been two. (There is another one, used and abandoned, under the eaves of the porch.) We had breakfast very late; toasted onion bagels with cheese on them (Israeli feta for me and aged gouda for Dave) and a lot of coffee.


The porch, where much reading was done.

After breakfast, Dave and I drove out to the reservation to see if anyone was selling fry bread at the stalls on the side of the road. It’s Monday, so one was. Fry bread on my birthday would have made it a perfect birthday, but maybe now instead it will rain. (I am from the desert so rain is a blessing of course, and anyway we had fry bread yesterday on the way up to Jemez.) Instead, we went to the brand new visitors’ center and looked at the pottery in the single room museum and in the gift shop that was twice the size of the museum. Then we went to the convenience store that sits right next to the visitors’ center and, thinking of tomorrow’s breakfast for which we did not plan, we bought a cup of mac ‘n’ cheese and a can of pinto beans. I got a diet Pepsi for the drive back to Jemez Springs.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot about the presents!

There were a bunch of really great presents. I got a whole slew of coloring books, all kinds, and a box of 64 Crayola crayons. I got a salad spinner. I got a new robe. (Actually, I got a new robe partly because David threw up on my old one a couple of months ago when he had food poisoning. I didn’t want to wear the vomit robe anymore so I threw it out but didn’t replace it. When I opened my gift and saw it was a robe, I joked, “You only got me this because you threw up on my old one,” and he said, “The old one was threadbare anyway.” Which it wasn’t, of course. But I never look a gift robe in the mouth.) I got a bunch of new books, too, including a copy of Eloise Goes to Moscow which is really great--it’s one of my favorite gifts this year. It’s dark and funny and it will help me with my Russian studies because it is historically accurate of course and Eloise speaks Russian like a tsarina of course except when she doesn’t understand so she nods and says No Comprende. (Which is only a joke you see because “I don’t understand” in Russian is, of course, “Ya nyeponyemaiyo.”) And I got a new bit of technology, a pen and pad that will allow me to write on paper and then download what I’ve written into the computer. And I got this mini vacation at the Casa Blanca guest house by the river.


The non-vomited-upon robe

There’s a selection of musical instruments here, a guitar, a trombone, a clarinet, and piano. Dave sometimes wanders in and plays the piano, the right hand part of one of the songs or, more rarely, the right and left hand parts of one of the songs. He is about twenty years out of practice, so his playing is measured and careful and it sounds like summer, like a lazy summer, like the times when you are in school and you play an instrument and you have to practice to keep up, but in the summer you don’t have to practice so you only pick up your instrument when you want to and only to play easy things or hard things that you like and want to play. I did that for years with my cello. Listening to Dave play makes me think about that time and makes me remember what it was like to live with my cello, sharing my messy bedroom with it, letting it get dusty and then dusting it off with a t-shirt or sock or something I picked up off the floor before I played. My poor cello. My bow would get all dusty, too, in it’s perch on the edge of my music stand. The synthetic bow hair would get slick and lose its grip and no amount of rosin would make it rough again. My cello and bow and my music even, not just the stuff on paper but the stuff in the air that goes into your ears, is the detritus of my childhood.


The path leading down to the river

After we went to check out the fry bread situation at the pueblo, Dave and I drove back to Jemez and had lunch in the cafe up the road. The waitress was friendly and earnest partly because she was very young and not from here. The colors in her tattoos were still bright and she talked excitedly about the mountains and the hot springs, new things to her. She sat down to take our order and we ordered sandwiches and when they came we shared them. I had half a grilled cheese with spinach and olives and artichoke hearts. I had half a veggie burger with green chile, lettuce, tomato, and onion. We split the fries and Dave ate all the coleslaw. We sat outside and waved away flies as we ate. We drank iced tea and tipped big on the basis of earnestness.


Grilled cheese and veggie burger

Earlier in the day, we walked up the road to the same cafe because I wanted chocolate. (We came home with a brownie and a Hershey bar and I ate the Hershey bar and the brownie is sitting on the counter.) We passed an inn and a friendly white pitbull came out to greet us, smiling and wagging her tail. I let her sniff me and I pet her and she was velvety soft and the woman who I had thought was her owner offered her to me. She explained in perfect English with a thick German accent that someone had just left her there the day before. “She needs a home,” she said. “You can take her if you want.” She was hopeful. The dog looked right in my eyes and smiled. I knew I couldn’t take her. I knew that even before Dave opened his mouth and the words that meant we couldn’t take her came out. Any other day, in any other lifetime, I would have taken her: Smiling, friendly white dogs are more than just symbolic treasures.

When we walked back, we saw the dog on the porch of the inn. At the guest house, I colored and read and practiced writing the Cyrillic alphabet and tried not to think of the dog. Sometimes throughout the day I thought of my grandmother and how she used to love to color with us and how beautifully she colored. We would sit at the kitchen table sharing crayons and sometimes coloring facing pages in the same coloring book. I knew she would color alone, too; she had her own coloring books and crayons. Sometimes I miss her. Sometimes I miss her and sometimes I’m glad she’s gone and sometimes it’s both.


Laying in the hammock by the river, looking up at the sky

Late last night after Dave was asleep, I lay in bed and listened to the crickets and the river and to another Russian lesson. Good day, Mr. Petrov. Good day, Miss Petrova. Are you Russian? I don’t understand Russian very well. I am American. You speak Russian very well. I don’t understand English. Do you understand English? How are you? Very well, thanks. And you?

For my birthday dinner, I made an enormous salad with Romaine lettuce and mixed greens, red pepper, grape tomatoes, and an English cucumber. We had the Israeli feta and kalamata olives and hummus and pita. Dave went down to the garden and picked chard and mustard greens and garlic, seven cloves the size and shape of grapefruit seeds.. He sauted the chard and mustard in olive oil and some of the garlic and I made a dressing for the salad using more olive oil and white wine vinegar and the rest of the garlic. For dessert we had the brownie from the cafe up the road and blueberries and cherries. We had beer. I drank about half a bottle and felt wobbly, a bit, in the knees. I am out of practice.


My birthday dinner

At dusk, the clouds came into the valley and it began to rain. The electricity went out and came back, went out and came back, went out and stayed out. Thunder crossed the sky and shook the house and lightning flickered just behind it then just in front of it. We sat on the porch and watched the rain until the mosquitoes drove us inside.