Red's Wrap

I don’t know where my Groucho Marx glasses are either.

It’s okay because I’ve been pretending to be a parent and you don’t need a costume for that, just a pair of jeans and a good hoodie.

Well, that’s actually not true. I don’t pretend to be a parent. I pretend to be a grandparent who thinks she’ll live to be a hundred.

Today at Doctor’s Park, I walked fast down the endless stairs to the beach. Kiddo, Cupcake, Cookie, Sweetie, Honey, Paulina still beat me to the bottom. As did the dog. We did a quick walk up and down the beach and, in that time, I and the dog saw a dead muskrat laying on its back with a huge stick across its chest and a dead sea gull as big as a small turkey. Seriously, it looked like you could roast it and feed five people.

Paulina, five and fascinated by the beach in all ways, collected armfuls of rocks. So many they spilled over, dribbling behind her as she charged from one fascinating rock to the next. That’s when I stepped in with my grandmotherly self to remind her that the real purpose of hoodies was pockets. She studied me for a long minute, my hands in my own hoodie pockets, and then she untied her hoodie from around her waist and put it on, stowing her dozens of rocks in the pockets for the trudge back up the stairs.

At home Paulina shook out her hoodie pocket full of rocks on the living room floor, sand and all. Then she found two purple ribbons, laid them on the floor, and lined up each rock according to size and look. And because it’s so pretty, I’m loathe to ask her to pick them all up. Maybe tomorrow.

I love a kid who loves rocks. It’s a grandmother thing.

The Milwaukee Brewers won the World Series last night. It is a stunning and wonderful thing especially for people old enough to remember their losing the World Series in Game #7 in 1982. The ’82 Brewers are Milwaukee legends – Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Cecil Cooper, Ted Simmons, Rollie Fingers – that every Milwaukeean of a certain age can rattle off like they saw them play last week. We’re all surprised to see them now. They got old, too, along with us. The new players are young and beautiful, and we love them like they’re our grandsons.

I asked my husband how many Brewers games we watched this year. There were the twenty in our season ticket package although we gave a couple of those away. And then there were baseball games on TV throughout the nights of summer, the windows open, the gentle din of kids playing in the street, our dog barking at the neighbor, the big fan running, maybe a little rain, a child asleep on my lap. My husband said we watched a hundred games. I don’t know if that’s right. It seems right. There were so many.

I could say that baseball saved us after the death of our daughter in June. That would be hyperbole. We were weak through much of the summer, but we didn’t need saving. As it turns out, though, we did need the rhythm of baseball, the balls and strikes, the pitch count, the stealing, the hit batters, the high fly balls and the wild catches where outfielders crashed into walls to grab a ball. We needed Sal Frelick, William Contreras, Christian Yelich, Jackson Churio, Brice Turang, all of them. They were our boys and they did good.

The Brewers won the World Series last night. In a weird kind of way, so did we.

It was getting late. We’d already gone to one campground, after traveling maybe five miles down a dirt road, that displayed a Campground Full sign. It was very hot – 102 degrees but, as they say, out West, it’s a dry heat. Absent the humidity of the Midwest, the heat doesn’t inspire a full-bodied sweat. But it is hot, hot, hot to the touch. The dogs are in the backseat panting.

We pull over and google hotels. There is a baseball tournament attracting families from all over southeast Wyoming. The only available room requires that dogs weigh 25 lbs or less. Ours are 65 and 70. We launch a brief argument with one hotel to no avail. They are adamant.

Down the road – 30 or 40 miles – is a state park so we head in that direction. At the gate, the nice lady ranger marks in pink the areas where we could find a site to put our tent. “Find a site and come back to tell me which one and pay.”

The park, Guernsey State Park, is massive. Long winding roads carved out of the hillsides by the Civilian Conservation Corps surround an enormous reservoir. Seven campgrounds, all of them hardscrabble, situated on dry hillsides, thick with rocks, but shielded by tall pines. It is a rough place.

We pass a meadow with a dozen empty sites but decide to keep going to find the ‘best one.’ I am the impetus for this, believing always that something better is just around the corner and I want to find it so I don’t regret not finding it later.

Then I saw the perfect campsite. It was at the end of a narrow strip of land, really a slice of a very high hill, with a view of the beautifully blue reservoir below. No more than thirty feet wide, this promontory promised the most extraordinary camping experience although it occurred to me, looking over the side as we drove to the point, that we’d have to keep close watch of the dogs. But, oh, what an incredible campsite!

We agreed at the very same moment. We couldn’t possibly camp there. It was too narrow. Too high. We could roll over and go cascading into the lake. It occurred to me it wasn’t the first time I’d gone hunting for something better, for the best, and then regretted it. It wasn’t the first time we’d had to work together to address the excessive ambition of one of us, our tendency to overreach. Well, mine. Maybe.

But backing up wasn’t an option. Too much risk of error.

So we worked together to get the truck turned around. At least a dozen back-ups, going forward, back-ups, going forward, with him driving and me directing on the ground, until we could drive off the point onto the road and go find a campsite with no precarious edges.

That’s the beauty of teamwork.

I tell this story for no particular reason except I don’t want to forget it. We got ourselves into a tough spot and because we are practiced at joining forces even when we want different things, we found a safe and beautiful place.

We slept on this rocky hill with six or seven campsites around us. Because it was so hot, we had all the tent flaps up. This means that in the middle of the night I could look up and see the Big Dipper. It stayed there shining all night so every time I opened my eyes, it was there. The finest thing.

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Originally published in 2022 during an epic camping trip across the west with our two beloved, now departed dogs, Swirl and Punchy. Those were the days, my friend.

Baseball.

That is all.

All my great words are hanging their heads in the Brewers’ dugout.

Tomorrow is another day.

“Why are we always where other people aren’t?”

It is a favorite quote from one of my kids. I like it so much I’d like to stitch it on a shirt or wear it on small button on my jacket. It is what I like best. Being where other people aren’t.

It’s not because I don’t like people. I do. I just don’t like many of them in the same place.

The park worker watering the giant banana tree in the Tropical Dome of the Mitchell Park Conservatory and the mom with her five-year old were plenty this afternoon. I didn’t have to worry about them being in the picture.

I sat on a bench after taking this picture. I wanted to send it to a friend. And then I wanted to sit there as if I didn’t have anything else in the world more important than breathing in the steamy orchid air. I’ve earned this, I thought. So many years of working all the time, never just going somewhere in the middle of the day, being tied to my computer screen, stuck in meetings with people who had all the time in the world.

I can just be here, I decided. I can be here with the other old people, the couple who just came through the door who are murmuring to each other. He is guiding his walker carefully over the wood chips and she is holding his arm. They look happy being here. Like me.

And then my email tells me that I shouldn’t be sitting here. I should be back in my office, scanning a copy of a document to send someone who needs it in order to pay me. So I leave. I interrupt my reverie and I get up and leave. And I think it’s a bitch and I’m fed up with it, leaving places with no people when I’m not really ready. Fuck it, I think.

I like it here.

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Published almost exactly ten years ago. Wow. That’s where I was then and this is where I am now. Time.