The Turth About Being Darwin

When my youngest daughter was eight, she caught a wild mouse out in the yard. She placed it inside a wooden box with thin wire netting for the sides intended to hold butterflies. Then put it on the same shelf that held Darwin, her store-bought mouse, in his brightly colored plastic cage. 

The wild mouse came without guarantees. We never assumed the wild mouse would still be in its cage. On the other hand, store-bought Darwin did. He was a Fancy Mouse. It meant stupid and boring: reliably tame.

After a few days, my daughter felt bad for the wild mouse wilting in the captivity of her room, and she let him go. It never occurred to her to feel bad for Darwin. She never considered that he might want out too. Instead, she held him in her tiny hands and created mazes for him to run and small salads to eat. He lived on her scraps of both food and attention.

In fact, no one seemed to think much about Darwin except for me. I, too, was a Fancy Mouse in a cage. I came with all sorts of guarantees. I was married at 18. I had two kids by the time I was 21, four by the time I was 30, and a grandma at 41.

I've been reliably tame forever. I thought that was just how it was until I met Sarah. For her and me to be the same thing redefines motherhood's boundaries. Sarah is a recovered alcoholic. She runs thick through the AA circles, gives motivational speeches, and holds workshops. She writes and recites poetry and paints in bright colors on giant canvases.  

Sarah avoided all the traps. She put herself first and second. Meanwhile, I cooked a hot breakfast for the kids, hers and mine, and let my coffee get cold. I did laundry barefoot on a cement floor between reading aloud and fixing hair. I cut the toast into triangles and the sandwiches into rectangles and ignored the uneaten crust. I watched hours of PBS and played board games. I drove our little souls around while they sang and gossiped in the backseat.

I answered every call.

I met every need.

I didn't do anything that Sarah couldn't have done herself. It wasn't beneath her to sacrifice her time for her children— she just didn't want to. And I didn't know how not to. I was constantly throwing out my plans to cover for her. She'd forget to pick up her kids from school. She'd run late, make promises and then blow it all up, and I'd have to step in and follow through. She'd forget to feed them. Forget to watch them. Forget they had emotional needs too.

It was incredibly stressful running around putting outing the fires she started while she bounced around chasing what felt good to her and only her.

I regularly managed to slip out of the house for a run, but I never really got to leave it all behind, not the way Sarah could. It is not in my nature. Don't go too far, get tired, and forget all you need to carry. Don't forget to buy more milk, pick them up from school, and drive them to gymnastics.

What I wanted for myself and what I needed showed up in my dreams. Added to coffee and the laughter of happy kids, it was enough.

Eventually, of course, I had to let Sarah go. From the moment my friendship with Sarah was conceived, it was ending. I didn't know that then. I wanted to believe there was something good inside everything I did for her and her children. What we had in common was we were both awake in a sleeping world. We saw each other.

The other thing was she reminded me of Wendi, my dead sister. Perhaps reminded is too weak of a word. She was Wendi.

And like Wendi, Sarah gave me just enough to hold on and keep me tied to her charms between the subsequent fault and the following favor. I now know that in the case of Sarah, it was simply a good illusion—a beautiful piece of chalk art under a thunderous storm.  

Sometimes I'd close my eyes and lay Sarah's image under my sister's shadow and wonder how thin the line really is. They were virtually the same person, so why did Wendi die and Sarah survive? How did Sarah stop drinking and Wendi drown? It's a mystery even to Sarah.

What isn't a mystery is what happened to Darwin. He died alone in his cage and was buried in a box in the yard.

the words we aren't speaking (July 2015)

We pass my keys around the office because I hold a master key to the building. I hand them off at least a dozen times a shift. And although the keys are different, what I know about them doesn't change.

Two years ago, I did something terrifying relating to those keys.

...I parked in the gym parking lot, walked Beach in, dropped my car keys inside her team folder in the filing cabinet, and let people know where the keys were and where I was going. Then I left on foot to run to the park.

On the way to the park, I crossed the freeway bridge and thought, "my car is in the lot, the keys are easy to find, and the kid is in good hands. If I'm going to do this, this would be the time and the place. I should jump–shouldn't I?"

The question "should I?" hung high over speeding traffic. So I stopped in the middle of the bridge and waited for the answer to come...

Back when my son was in pre-school, a mom dropped her child off at school, went home, put the baby down for a nap, and killed herself with the knowledge that when she didn't return for pick-up, it would trigger, in the shortest period of time, the safe recovery of both of her children. Of course, 'safe' minus a dead mom.

Secrets, denial, and silence are the weapons that kill people.

My reason for bringing this up isn't about me. It's to remind us that we don't really know what is going on in the lives of most of the people moving around us. Life is bittersweet, beautiful, and at times hard to hold on to.

I'm reminded of this whenever I place my keys in someone else's hand. And today, when I handed them off, I decided to share this. This past year has been the worst year of my life, and that says a lot. But I'm okay because the people around me are amazing, and for the most part, they don't even know how much sweetness they have brought into my life.

This brings us back to the point: sometimes, the most essential keys to pass between us are the words we aren't speaking.

nowhere and the Great Beyond (2015)

 Yesterday right before I left hiking, the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law reminding me the second half of our property tax was due. I thanked her for the reminder, got off the phone, and walked away. I think I felt the edges of my soul wilt. 

If you were wondering, my computer is still MIA. And there is no way to get everything done before we leave for Beach's next gymnastics meet, 10 hrs away in Colorado. Obviously, I'm not even trying. I have accepted that I can't win and I can't keep up. My only option is to keep going and hope it is enough.

But yesterday's mountain only worked yesterday.  

In those stolen moments, walking paths carpeted with mud and caked with snow, above you is the sky filled with clouds waiting to clear the cradling peaks of the Wasatch in winter. They line up like overburdened ships entering a rough harbor.  

Deep in the back, up a deer trail where the scrub oaks arch and touch overhead, one step was sheer ice, the next ankle-deep mud, and the next snow so slippery you could fall just standing on it. It took every last ounce of concentration to stay on my feet... 

When I woke up this morning, I realized life in the valley is no different. Nowhere feels safe to step. I think I see stable ground, and then I find it's not.

On top, the mountain opens views of more mountains and of hidden other valleys with frozen ponds. Sights I had forgotten the feeling of. I thought I saw movement through the trees, but I couldn't be sure what it was or if it was at all.  

It is the same with the words written late at night. I think I see something slowly creeping in, but I can't be sure what I see. And when I wake up in the morning, I laugh at myself, forever wondering at all that there could possibly be someone else out on the ledge with me...

 This trail is the closest far-ness I can manage these days. It is not genuinely wild or dangerous. The city breaks into the background quite a bit. But it is steep and muddy and has a decent view into the Great Beyond...

walking away

I walk through the door crying. Not little tears, the giant body-shaking kind. The kind that once they begin are hard to stop.  

My sobbing draws my partner from under the sink, where he is fixing a clogged drain.

 

"Oh shit," he gasps, getting to his feet and wiping his hands on his pants. "Sweetness, what's wrong?"

I stand in the middle of the house, shaking, trying to find enough air to speak. "The title company emailed...We're closing Wednesday at 9." 

He frowns, trying to understand why the news I have waited six weeks for would be the thing that would finally break me. 

But we both knew it was coming. I'd started sleeping in my clothes again. Flinching at the slighted sounds. I wake in full-blow panic attacks, screaming for help and not knowing where I am. 

The danger of hiding one trauma below another is you risk creating a two-headed monster with the power to trigger each other to attack. And right now, they are both violently awake. 

I reach for something I can say. Through gasps and sobs, I answer, "I thought before we left Salt Lake... I should see my sister's grave... but I don't even know where it is." 

"I can't do this anymore." A laugh bubbles through the crying, and it makes me cry harder. 

"You don't have to. It's all done. You did it. Misty, it's time to let it go and walk away."

He puts his arms around me, and I let go. The same way I did 20 years ago in the dark on the sidewalk between our two houses. My partner, then my neighbor, intercepted me, pacing the block hysterical... and bleeding. 

He stepped in my way when I attempted to walk by him, refusing to tell him what was wrong. Then he said something that changed my life forever. "Misty, I'm not perfect, but I'm a really nice guy. Your husband is an asshole. I can help you leave."

Famine Bird, mlb [excerpt]

*Wren*

The weight of water.

The pressure on her chest.

The cold eating through her bones.

After the cold comes the lip of the light that cracks like an egg running and yellow oozing through the trees. It brings the lines of the day without warmth, but it is full of sounds. The creek gurgles disturbingly through the boulders like an infant choking in her crib.

Then Wren is at the bottom of a bathtub of sharp granite boulders filled with silky green water. Elliot's deep, booming laughter threatening the jade sky. As hard as Wren tries, when she feels Ollie sit down beside her, she can't wake up from the dream. No matter how hard she tries, she can't get away from Elliot.

fountian running

 

He lies on his back like a beached harbor seal across the marble edge of one of the many grotesquely romantic Roman-inspired fountains in the courtyard of Caesar's Palace. 

One hand swimming in the water, the other holding a half-drunk $75 bottle of wine and a linen napkin. 

The white sleeves of his oxford unevenly rolled up, his tie crumpled and drifting, his dress pants dotted with wine. 

His suit jacket draped across my shoulders, nearly hiding all of my little dress. Neither of us knew where our shoes were: Vegas.

"The thing is, Utah," he was saying in his heavy midwestern drawl, "it isn't the person you are with; it is the way you are when you are with them. If you were with Him, you would be running through this fountain, and he'd be all standing here pissed at you. But if you were with a fountain runner, you would be the one standing there being all pissed off. Why are you always the other way round? When are you going to do what you really want to do?"

I laugh and sit down beside him. My elbow thumps into his side in my sloppy descent, and he reacts so dramatically that he nearly rolls himself over the edge and into the water. 

"Doctor, have you lost your mind?" I say, "Might I remind you we just ran through that fountain?"

He sits up, shaking his head, "No, no! You did that for me! Because I am a co-depended fountain runner. You are always whatever WE need you to be. When do you get to be you?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a security guard making his way toward us. I pull on his arm, and we head for the nearest bank of elevators. 

The wine, the wetness, the marble floors, and even the chill of the desert night turning make the walk feel like we are ice skating across a pond. He begins to sing a song from the Verve Pipe, slurring the lyrics but not their meaning.  

And it begins to feel just dangerous enough that I stop paying attention to the blaze of us and our wild night to concentrate solely on getting him to the room without incident.

Inside the elevator, we are not alone, but it doesn't stop him. "I mean," he slurs, "I want to see who you really are. I want you to find a man you won't hide behind..."

"Yes, Dear," I answered, smiling at the strangers and slipping the bottle of wine from his hand.    

His weight shifts, and he resets his entire mass against my bad shoulder. It pins me behind him to the glass wall. I feel a stitch rip loose from the strap on my dress. 

He whispers into my hair, "but I want that man to be me, okay?"  

smoke and mirrors

 

I don't think it is a secret. And if it is, I don't hide it well. Most people who interact with me regularly can see it. Something grey, a rail-thin line of smoke from a dead fire. Flames that long ago extinguished themselves, ashes to ashes.

Yes, it is true; once upon a time, my life burned to the ground, and if you sniff around me, you can still smell it.

It was my sister. Our middle sister. Her life, her death. It's a long story; I don't know if I can tell any more. The memory of that time and space is a closed attic room. Perfectly preserved yet nearly forgotten.

The air up there is musty and full of dust. If I think quietly about it, I see the things that burned the hottest: the fan in her apartment window, her comforter in the tub, and the smell of her blood baked onto the floor. The radio. The mug. The lingering scent of her body. The color of her skin. The contents of her stomach. The photo of her children.

When my sister died, I lost who I was. She had been my sister, my best friend, my worst nightmare, my whole childhood, and, in many ways, my own child. I loved her, and I hated her. Untreated mental health issues turned into an addiction. The addiction turned her into something not entirely human and complex to love but hard to give up on.

It makes sense in hindsight that the TA for the cadaver lab who ID her sister's 4-day rotting in the July heat body, flesh falling off her face where she had fallen, the one who cleaned the apartment stepping over the blood-smeared floor and chunks of her sister's hair, had a complete mental break down. Not metaphorically, but literally.

The lapses were minor at first, typical trauma and nightmares. Then, everyday objects began taking on new meanings, like wood chips, flies, and the phone ringing, and it got even worse. I started seeing things. I started seeing her. I somehow believed her finger was in our vacuum and refused to use it. I was terrified she was mad at me for taking all her stuff, most of which I donated to a women's shelter. I was sleepless, yet I was never fully awake... for years.

The person I was before and the person I am now are different.

The Me of before was going to be a doctor. I spent 18 hours a day surrounded by the chaos that is the carousal of life in the medical theater and never wanted it to end.

The Me, of now, barely tolerates the 5-hour shifts at the gym. However, the Me of now is a far better person than the Me of before. Kinder, softer, more aware.

My sister's death pulled me down so far that the world outside my head stopped spinning. Any life that comes to a crashing halt leaves casualties in its wake.

I remember the silence. I remember looking out at the world from far away. I remember the nightmares, the hallucinations, the weight of not knowing what the dead knew. The sadness that she died alone and for days no one knew. The guilt. The irrational fear. The questions.

The life I rebuilt was not my design- it was Beach's. She was 3 years old when my sister Wendi died. As the months passed, I slowly pulled her and myself from the outside world. I pulled her from the pre-k at the U.  I withdrew from all my classes and gave up my research position. By winter, I had us in total isolation. I remember little to nothing about that time except her little voice telling me she wanted "us" to return to school.

By the following Fall, she had guilted me into enrolling her in a cooperative nursery school. With my grants and stipends, we could afford it. So I wrote a letter, and she was awarded the first full-ride scholarship they have ever given. By the Winter term, I was their first-ever paid Director.

She was the one who returned us to society. This is one of the many reasons my life is built around hers. I never intended to return. She gave me no choice.

In many ways, I am lucky. I already surrendered. Everything on this side of it is extra. I see life as extremely bittersweet. The beauty in sadness is there is always contrast.

A loss means you had something to lose in the first place.

I won't pretend that I am completely recovered. When the phone rings, a small part of me still thinks it might be her. I don't feel like she could have died; that seems impossible. That can't have happened to her. Maybe she was never real.

There are nights when I have to switch my partner's side of the bed because I am afraid she is waiting for me. I have triggers: flies, fans, smells, red nail polish, white mountain bikes, a specific beer...

It wasn't until this year that I looked at a Beach and saw something I had never seen before. She actually reminds me of my sister. My sister is the person I most fear my children (and hers) becoming. But Beach reflects the best of her, or at least what she could have been.

She, too, had been a gymnast. It is mainly the little things: the eyeliner, the lean build, the scrunchies on her wrist, the way she stands, the way she dresses, and the big hair.

I last spoke to my sister on a Monday, the last week of July. I don't remember much of what was said, but she told me she didn't want to die. That she was going to stop drinking, and I laughed at her. I laughed.

Someone in her building saw her on Tuesday, and then nothing until the landlord, responding to complaints about the smell, found her dead in her bathroom on Friday. He called the police, and the police called my parents. Who in turn called me.

The moment I was told is a fault line that divides my life: before and after. Some of it was awful, but some were sweeter than I thought life could ever be.

Death is part of living. And to be honest, not everyone is as lucky as me. Death gave me a chance to start over in a natural disaster sort of way.

Slowly.  So slowly.

For better or worse, I will never be who I was before. I'm not sure how much I trust myself. I prefer to be alone for long stretches. Being surrounded overwhelms me. I still hold things in my head I can't say out loud. I live with a level of anxiety that would surprise you all.

But the person I am, the one I returned to the world as, was driving the canyon road on Tuesday afternoon. The road that my sister used to drive.

Beach was my passenger, her window slightly down. Summer was pressing in, and the world was a swirl of gold, yellows, and slow-moving semi trucks.

"Mom, if I died today, I would be okay with that. I have had a good life. I think it is because I am happy- does that sound stupid? It's not that there aren't things I want to do. It's just that I have done a lot in my life already. Even if I died tragically, my life would not have been tragic. My life is good."

The Me from before never could have raised a child like this one. The Me from before would have been too busy to be there.

The Me before death came into my life. I didn't know how important the little moments are.

The person I am today tightened her grip on the steering wheel and double-checked her mirrors because that Me knows how fragile life can be.

drying the soul

A few nights ago, I met her in my dreams. I looked at her, my sister, across the room. 

Oh, she's here, I sighed. 

Yes, her, she goes here... I think. 

But it is hard to know.  

I didn't ask her, aren't you dead? Because I remember thinking those days were behind us.  

And mostly, they are. 

It doesn't often happen- not anymore. I look back at how fragile I was, how broken. Tip-toeing over the crust of sadness. Drifting between night and day as if they were the same.  

I remember the nightmares. 

The clicking I thought I heard of her long nails crawling across the wooden floor of my bedroom. 

I remember the smells. 

The dark stories. 

The crossing shadows.  

The silence.  

The weight of madness on my back.    

I gave her in her death a few years of my life. Shaved them right off the middle and threw them away into the dark after her. It took years to peel the layers of dimness from my mind. Complicated and entangled- like stripping off wet clothing. 

But I think my soul is finally dry.  

She was my childhood. 

My best friend. 

My most public mistakes. 

She was my sister... and I try not to feel too guilty when I wonder if she ever really existed. 

In my dream, we said nothing that I can recall. It was all so typical I almost missed it. But in that golden space, before one wakes, where the dream is absolute, and reality is the dream, she broke from under the mask of Dream Sister. It was only an instant, but it was enough to see her as she had been.

Then I was awake, and she was once again forever sleeping.  

Forever, how incredibly impossible that seems.

lee of seasons

Rain. 

Shrouding the valley like a blue silk bed sheet pulled tight.

Silent rain; slipped the battlefield of lightning and thunder coming unannounced.
 

Entering the lee of the seasons, we stand like children with our noses pressed to the glass waiting for permission.

A giant footrace with the sun, racing the green burning the ground into gold toward the finish line of cool Autumn nights as Winter's white bed is turned invitingly down.

I want to walk empty under a tall canopy of trees. 

I want to close my eyes and smell the rain turning to snow among the pines. 

I want to think in long uninterrupted lines that reach all the way down the foothills.

I want all summer in a day.

the gravity of a dog

I sleep in and move slowly through the house. At 6:20 am, I pull into the parking lot for the Desolation Trailhead. I step into the trees and think, I shouldn't be here. These woods and I have too much history.

I keep going. 

At the first turn in the trail, the dog waivers in which direction we should be heading. He's built on instinct and knows there is a shorter way than to stupidly pace the mountain.

I've never had a dog not trust me, but this one is smarter than the others.

He came into my life when I was still mourning the loss of my beloved Juneau, who was struck by a car while I was at work. It severed his spine, leaving him alive long enough for me to get to the vet to sign his death warrant and say goodbye.

At the first twist in the trail, I start counting. The trick with this particular route is that it's always a switchback longer than you think it should be. 

The path slips into the forest like Goldie Locks. The rising sun begins to follow but quickly changes its mind. The smell of pine and the memory of snow snakes through the undergrowth. The trail rises, emerging in a grove of stone. I scramble over the rocks, thinking about how on this path, I created a woman named Paola and dropped her in the middle of my greatest fears. Then feeling guilty, I armed her with a dog.

I used to run this mountain.

The sun breaks the horizon. There is no one here but me and this white dog. 

I used to whisper in his ear, you are not Juneau.

The trail stretches across the mountain, open and exposed as it winds. At the next switchback, I count three. The pattern repeated. Woods, exposure, woods, exposure. I miscount them all.

I realize I've packed food for the dog but none for me. This creates a minor panic. I'm hypoglycemic. Well, the dog has food. 

I keep going. 

Mars was never supposed to be my dog. I was afraid of him.

At the next expanse of dry exposure, I stop. The dog looks confused. I've promised that I'd stop and remove my sweatshirt when I got hot. I've repeated it like a mantra because it's not something I tend to do. I have a terrible habit of compartmentalizing my own discomfort. I remove the sweatshirt, and we go on.

The lengths of the trail between the turns grow shorter. I count five and six and then return to five, just in case. 

At the next twist, I tell myself there are four more. It's a random number I've made up. I don't actually know how many switchbacks there are. 

The dog bolts up the stones and through the tree roots, pulling me off balance. He stops as I nearly fall, staring through me. 

You are not Juneau; you are Mars.

The sound of deer moving through the trees pops and crackles. The dog emits a low growl, but he keeps slack in the line between us. Juneau would have blotted.

We cross the grave of a snowfield. I think of the snowslide and how lucky I was. I'm always lucky.

At the next turn, the trail doesn't because we are at the top. 

I feed the dog and stare down at the pastel light of the city of salt baking in the morning. It doesn't stare back.

We begin our descent. I leave the dog dish at the top because the trail has no water. 

The day feels like a napping child. It's Tuesday, I remind myself for no reason. 

At the first turn in the trail, I count one. Going down the rocks is more challenging now that I'm nursing a broken patella and a torn meniscus. I can't trust my knee to hold me. This confuses the dog. He scrambles without gravity. 

He's missing a toe on one of his back feet. We have no idea why. We found him as a stray running on the J trail. I worked my magic and found his owner, only to have him turn up as a stray again. This time on the other side of the valley. Animal Control took him, and they called me. We adopted him two days before Christmas. A few months after, I buried my Juneau.

You are not a stray; you are Mars.

We slip out of the sunlight back into the trees, and the crows call, overtaking the lesser birds flicking through the wild roses. Like Juneau, Mars is not to be trusted off-leash, but for entirely different reasons. 

I count two as we turn the corner. The forest closes under the rising sun. I count three, four, and five.

Juneau and I were afraid of the same things. He was an extension of my anxiety. 

Mars is granite. 

My granite.

When we come to the next scramble, I let Mars lead us off the main trail and down into Thyanes Canyon, remembering how steep and rocky it is too late. I turn my ankle twice, trying to keep his pace.

Right before Juneau died, we took him on a week-long camping trip. He bit a man wearing an open carry firearm on a hiking trail in Idaho. Had the man approached me the way he came at the dog, I'd probably have bit him too.

Mars isn't afraid of men or guns. He stands solidly among the sawmills and the crack of tools.

You aren't Juneau, and I am not myself. 

Then the main trail reappears because we are at the bottom. The car keys are in the middle pocket.

It's all downhill from here.

     

    

Mickie the Millionaire

Mickie is a millionaire. 

He will tell you that himself. 

He’s a bad copy of a Marlboro Man. 

His Just For Men dark hair rolls back over his scalp in a greasy wave. 

A shoe polish bread. 

Skin like beef jerky. 

He rides around the streets of SLC on his three-wheeled bike. He is always shirtless, in a fishing vest left open and camo cargo pants. He used to wear combat boots, but he switched to slippers at some unmarked point. 

Everyone knows Mickie. 

To me, he looks like someone accidentally left behind. Someone who staggered out onto the streets after a couple of decades. Decades of what I don't know— war, drugs, the bottom of too many glass bottles. 

We’re comfortable with Mickie. Although we have had some close calls. I try my best not to run him over. He's like a stray cat, constantly darting out into the road when you least expect him to.

Then one day, Mickie rolled up to talk to the Talented Mr. Ries in the driveway. There was something wrong with his leg, so I was called outside to consult. What I found was that Mickie’s leg was gangrenous from the midcalf down, hence the slippers.

Enter two LDS missionaries strolling up the block, trying to collect any loose souls among the brick houses of the polygamist and the poor.  

And there we were, Mickie the millionaire on his tricycle, the Talented Mr. Ries, myself the un-doctor, and two young warriors of God’s army. Intervention-style we began giving Mickie his choices, go to the clinic now or lose the leg. 

It wasn't as easy as you would think. Mickie didn't want anything to do with going to the doctor. Had I been enjoying any part of being so close to medicine again, it was ripped away by Mickie, the millionaire's last objection, "I don't have any money."

The system "can't" know how bad it is down on the front lines. The barriers to seeking treatment when someone like Mickie, who is vulnerable and in pain, sees noway up from where he is, are simply too Goddamn high. As he saw it, his choice was to go from wearing boots to slippers while his leg rotted away.

And as men in suits argue about healthcare, they have no idea the damage they are doing. They go to church on Sunday, and on Monday, they turn around and block the bodily salvation for the people ‘beneath’ them. 

Inaction has the same ethical price tag as action. Failure to provide access and blocking it are the same thing.

These days when I run, I run the river trail north. It takes me to the doorstep of the homeless I wrote about in the article that granted me high praise and a label: Social justice advocate. 

Daniel, the man I interviewed, still lives there, hiding inside the banks of tall golden grasses.

Nothing has changed for any of us. 

Sometimes Daniel smiles at me, and I smile back. Most of the time, we pretend not to know one another while I try not to notice the woman he was with when I interviewed him is gone, and another is in her place. I’m just another broken hope, like a ghost skirting the edges of the issue.

The difference between Daniel and Mickie and myself is uncomfortably slim. Daniel lives down the street in a tent by the river, Mickie lives down the road behind Brent's house in a trailer, and I live in a little white house. 

Of the three of us, I have the loosest soul. Daniel carries a bible, and Mickie claims the LDS faith. I believe in absolutely nothing and have faith in even less.

I’ve been in Mickie's slippers; my sister died in them. Plain sight is a horrible place to suffer alone. How can things change when we are all so willfully blind to each other's needs?

In the end, I told Mickie, "You can go with the Talented Mr. Ries, or you can go to God, but only one of them is looking out for you right now." 

And so there we all were, the Talented Mr. Ries, the broke Quaker from New England paying Mickie the Millionaire's medical bills, the two young missionaries walking off empty-handed, and me, the un-doctor left standing on the sidewalk.

~We all want something beautiful, man I wish I was beautiful... ~ Counting Crows