To New Mexico Part 1

I found the blazing hot,  90-degree Phoenix morning air rather invigorating.  There are few trees and mostly rocks and the big ball of sun that reflects EVERYTHING and says,  "TIME TO BE AWAKE NOW, SLEEP TIME OVER NOW!"  Ok, got it sunshine, now let me run to my air conditioned car before my core temperature rises and I start seeing desert phantoms on the horizon.  

 

The first few hours on the road were uneventful and I actually was able to soak in the beauty of the desert.  Before this trip I didn't think the words beauty and desert could be placed near each other.  It was just me and baby boy, who was sleeping, and I drank in the stillness.  I loved the yucca trees that dotted the freeway (I-10).  They are like squatty palm trees with razor sharp finger- leaves jutting in the shape of a ball or egg.  About every other tree had a blossom shooting straight out of the top, some of them 8 ft above its mother plant.  The flowers looked like a fishing pole, bent slightly, with a bundle of popcorn on the end.  The contrast and randomness of these flowers were so beautiful and bizarre, like something from a Dr. Seuss book.   It was like the flowers were reaching for heaven or simply saying "GET ME OUTTA HERE, ITS BLEEPING HOT!!"

After about 2.5 hours of stillness and beauty, I got the two year old in my car.  "She's been crying for you for over a half-an-hour," says my husband at fuel-up.  So she hopped down from the cabin of the truck with her essentials: a pink, foam cowgirl hat from the dollar store, and a ratty pillow. As soon as we pull onto the freeway of course she screams "I WANT DADDY!!  I WANT DADDY!!" It took her 1.5 minutes to realize that up high, in a big, loud truck bumping along with dad and big-sis is WAY more fun that being in this low, quiet, cold sedan with baby brother.   Her screams turned into the shrill ones--I like to call them "Brain Rattlers."  They are so intense and piercing that you can almost feel your brain shake with the vibration of the sound.  My words were useless to calm her and we had to keep driving, so I had to find something to ease the fierceness of the sound.  You get very good and improvising on the road.  The only thing available were baby wipes...but those are wet...hmmm.   So I squeeze out the liquid baby-smell from the wipes with the left hand, while driving with the right, and tear off two tiny pieces.  Still a little moist in my ears, but they did the job.  My brain stopped rattling.   

A part of me felt a little cruel just blocking out the noise, but we were stuck in the car, and I was behind the wheel with few options.  So she screamed and I sat there with wipe-scrap in my ears, staring at the desert whizzing by telling myself to keep going...