8
HOUSEWIFE TO HIPPY
My saving grace was the ability to escape into some creative endeavor and it was about time to do just that. A friend had offered us her apartment in Taos, New Mexico, for two weeks in December, where Steve and I would finish a script we had been working on before heading to Hollywood for a sale. He had the idea of The Revenge of the Mad Moose for a year, a satirical comedy based on man's blind race to destroy the planet through bio-genetic engineering and pesticide poisoning. Wanting to leave the east, we would use this trip as a chance to see if there was somewhere else we could consider as our next home.
After getting the kids comfortable with the babysitter and packing my 1966 Volkswagon van, we left as the northeast fell into a deep freeze. It was 22 below zero at five in the morning, dark and cold. With no fourth gear, and lots of food, we cruised through the Adirondacks, along the back roads of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana at 40 mph until we hit the freeway in Missouri. With a few thou- sand miles to go we spent most of our time talking about the "Moose" while I took notes and the script came to life. The welcome truck stops along the way provided a safe overnight respite where we could warm up, get weather reports and wash. The VW bus fulfilled my dream of the Jack Kerouac On the Road, save-the-planet sixties, beads-and-feathers type of life - traveling in a van, living with a guy, wearing torn jeans and tight T-shirts. I even let my hair grow long, stopped dying it and quit shaving my legs - no cares in the world, going with the flow and being free. I don't know how free I felt leaving three children at home but I was as free as I was ever going to be.
Oklahoma wasn't like it was in the movies - where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain and the grass smells sweet. It didn't. It whistled through oil derricks against a grey, dull, polluted sky. Across the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico, forever flat and clear, we headed north for the high plains on a bumpy secondary road to Taos, where a hot shower and a soft bed awaited us. We called our friend and left a message with the bartender at the cantina where she sang. Taos, grungy on the outskirts with typical industrial eyesores, improved as we worked our way to the center of town where terracotta adobe shops and wooden planked walks lined the streets surrounding the plaza. At a dimly lit bar a familiar face turned toward us from the far end of the room. She had been waiting for a day and a half thinking we might have changed our minds. After a quick lunch of spicy Mexican food, we followed her to the apartment.
The streets on the edge of town narrowed into lanes and the houses, smooth, pastel pink to beige adobe, thick-walled earthy buildings with recessed windows and arched entrances, stacked and sloped, looked like they held one another up and would melt and disintegrate if it rained. She turned sharply into a graveled court- yard and parked in front of a single-story apartment building. Its shabby interior was comfortable and I liked it.
A Jewish girl from Montreal living with a weird artist from New York in a mud flat in New Mexico writing a screenplay about a mad moose was what my parents had to process when I called collect from the Taos Hotel pay phone. It didn't seem strange to me because, of course, I was doing what I always wanted. How could they understand? Perhaps my real mother would.
We finally received a letter from Valerie who wrote that things weren't going well. A clash of personalities between Susan and the babysitter necessitated a talk with my rebellious middle child. Nobody understood her like her mother. I was left worried and guilt-ridden, too far away to do anything effective. I pacified my guilt by telling myself I needed this time away to experience some freedom, but I learned quickly that for a mother, freedom is an illusion.
I had walked out on them at a crucial time in their lives hoping that their father would see them on weekends and cover during my absence. He was always complaining about not seeing them enough. Now he had his chance. I could only do what I was capable of doing and smoking dope allowed me to smooth over the raw edges, the unremitting requirements of my kids and my own inadequacies. I lived with their pain, confusion and apprehension every day. The distance gnawed at my insides and our telephone calls left me sad and anxious. I was responsible for them, they depended on me, and nobody else could shoulder that burden. I also knew that we couldn't stay in the east and that I needed to find a home for us.
There was an intense mixture of cultures here - Hispanics, Native Americans, hippies, artists, rednecks, tourists, rich Texans - and although I would have loved to live in Taos, my blonde, light-skinned beautiful daughters would not have fared well. What made us feel at home in this small town was the creativity, the many art galleries, native shops filled with turquoise and silver, silk-screened kachina fabrics, painted pottery, beguiling baskets, bright bold woven blankets and rugs, sand paintings and stone sculptures. We purchased three pifiatas for the kids.
Christmas Eve at the Taos Pueblo was exciting but unsettling and when a drunk Native American walked up waving a bottle of whiskey and smiled, slurring "God Bless Yankee Doodle Dandy," I wanted to disappear. My presence meant one thing to him - hatred of the whites, and even if we weren't all the same, we were to him - intruders, unwelcome and arrogant - and it reminded me of all the trouble in the world today where nobody trusted anybody and ordinary people didn't count. The public had no say in determining the outcome of anything and feelings of impotence made the masses angry and insecure. Native Americans have been trampled into the earth by the whites, forced out and fenced off. As they exited the tiny, white adobe church, marching shoulder to shoulder, firing their guns into the air in unison while making their way slowly around the square in front of their pueblo, I felt threatened and ill-at-ease on their turf, trespassing on their tradition, violating their privacy, invading their ritual.
It was Christmas all over the world and my kids were home alone. They were supposed to spend time with their father but he was always out and about, leaving them by themselves. They had a lot to cope with between his neglect and my absence.
We left Taos in a heavy snowstorm, having decided on a shorter route through the Apache Reservation, keeping us in the mountains. The road faded out of view as the wipers labored to clear the windshield. Arriving at Monument Valley that evening, the little we could see was enough to excite us for the morning. Cold and tired, we stopped at the only light in the Valley, at the tiny hospital, emptied our bladders in the brush, heated some soup, crawled into our camper bed and watched the sun disappear behind the steep mountainside.
It was dawn when we awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep. After breakfast in the van we traveled the eighteen-mile road through the monuments and gazed at the passage of millions of years etched into mighty columns by the waters of time. It took a dozen rolls of film and most of the morning until the entrance gates materialized on the horizon.
With fine weather and dry roads, we headed west to the Grand Canyon. The day came to an end in the closed Prescott KOA where we found