Home

We moved a lot growing up, but one place always was home in my mind. I carried Los Alamos, home of the atomic bomb, around with me as an ideal. Years of absence polished naive memories, and I carried a whitewashed Los Alamos as an ideal, as the place that explained me. I venerated the patriotism and the intellectualism, the innovation and genius.

We went back to Los Alamos yesterday, and it felt like someone sat on my rose-colored glasses. I took my friends to the museum excited for them to understand me, to see my foundation. Suddenly I saw the pictures with adult eyes and understood what happened globally, not just to the U.S. It was not as noble as I'd remembered. I cringed like a proud parent who'd whipped out new pictures, only to find a grotesque gremlin instead of a beautiful baby in the frame. This place where conflict and shame stained the valor was not the place of my childhood. My Los Alamos was about heroism and teamwork and genius. Somehow my child-eyes missed the other side: Hiroshima, Internment Camps, dead kids--on both sides--whom God loved.

I stood rocked and sickened by the loss of my roots. I felt robbed, homeless. I'd discovered that my home was a legend, an imaginary place that only existed in my fairy tale. I'd destroyed the story with knowledge.

I don't know what to do with this yet--I'm still processing. I still love Los Alamos--the people, the mountains, the smell of pine trees in the rare rain. I just have to love it as it is, good and bad, my tainted utopia.

Hey Cow

While driving from Plainview to Albuquerque, I discovered a dream I never knew I had. The thought came to me unbidden, but grew to an obsession within minutes. I knew I must--must--get my picture taken next to a cow.

I suppose it comes from years of mooing out the window, or playing "Hey Cow", or maybe from the that dairy commercial where the cows say cheese and the parents think their baby spoke her first word. I don't know the genesis of the idea; I only know that I had to stand next to a steak on legs.

Just outside Hereford, Texas, Angela whipped the car around and turned into a dairy farm. "We," she said, "are going to get you near your cow." Hallelujah! Angela convinced the nice young cowboy to abandon his work to guide three strangers around the--what would you call it? Milk Ranch? Lactose Processing Plant? Utter-to-Butter Farm? Whatever. So Jason the Cowboy took us in the back to watch the cows milked by huge machines. He answered our questions, rather than laugh at them like they deserved. We cheered as one group left and another marched neatly into place to be milked. He showed us the pipes that moved the milk into a cooling machine, then into storage tanks to wait for shipment. The whole thing reminded me of those mini-documentaries on Sesame Street. I always loved those things. Afterward, we traipsed outside (in flip flops) to get close to the cows. We saw one giving birth, and a young calf surrounded by adults. We got to pet some heifers, which Jason the Cowboy explained are cows who haven't had their first calf yet. Then, to top it all, we got our pictures taken with beautiful black and white cows (just like the commercial) who then slimed us with gross animal spit. It was fantastic. It exceeded my (very briefly held) dream and was better than even the most rigorous game of "Hey Cow". You just can't beat that.

The First Day

I thought I knew Angela and Donna Renee. We've been friends for years; we've taken classes together; we've worshipped and prayed and cried together. But there's something about a roadtrip. I know things about them that I wouldn't have guessed a day ago.

On our first day, for 6 hours between Dallas and Plainview, we talk. We talk as red dirt stretches flat to the sky and cattle fly past us at 80mph. We talk with the soundtrack of this adventure playing in the background. We have those conversations reserved for late nights on a mountain or early mornings by the lake. Important, painful, ridiculous, meaningful, giddy, quiet, loud conversations. What the heck is going to happen on this trip, if that's just the first day?