Unfinished Nest: On Setting a Muddy Example

A Hopi kachina watches my computer screen from over my right shoulder. He wears a sanded leather loincloth over ochre skin, collar and cuffs of soft maple rabbit. He stands two-feet high, but he feels as tall as a man. His protruding eyes burn my back, transmit an ancient message of sure-footed joy.

You will dance and you will like it, he mutters. You will run and you will jump.

I try to pay him no mind.

"Hey, we're the same age, man. You can't tell me what to do."

Mudhead knows I'm right, knows we're both children of the sixties, his back rigid with curved cottonwood, my mind stiff with routine.

A rancher's wife handed him to me, made me take him in lieu of payment when I handed her a bag of frosted cosmetics and an invoice for eighteen bucks, thirty-one cents. I wanted to sell him on eBay, collect my fee by proxy, but Mudhead wouldn't have it. 

You will keep me and you will like it.

He's a difficult Spirit.

The feathers in Mudhead's hands shook as I rustled the pages of my local paper in search of the County Fair schedule. 

"Hey, boys! Who wants to help me bake a cake for the fair? I'm thinking I'll do a triple layer lemon supreme, whattaya say?"

My two sons barely removed nose from book. Louis, 12, raised one eyebrow.

"C'mon mom, you always win. Why not let someone else have a chance this year?"

Martin, 10, chimed in.

"Yeah. Besides, we don't get to eat the cake. Those judges are greedy."

I glanced at the two blue ribbons stuck to my wall with thumbtacks. San Miguel County Fair, First Place, Cake Competition, 2006. San Miguel County, First Place, Cake Competition, 2005. Maybe I have gotten complacent, I thought. I handed the paper to Louis.

"Okay, you guys think you're so smart. Find another category for me to enter."

I swear Mudhead giggled. The boys smooshed close on the couch, legs extended against my Spanish pine coffee table.

"Uh, mom? Will you actually enter the contest we choose?"

I shrugged my shoulders. Sure. Sewing, painting, pies, cookies, tortillas, I remembered the list, the old-fashioned pitting of gargantuan zucchini against watermelon, remembered last year's bevy of upstanding ranch women carrying tater-tot casseroles laced with green chile, carrying small town tradition in the crook of their arms.

"Sure. As long as it's something I can actually enter. We don't have a monster melon in the garden."

The boys whispered, laughed. They sounded gently sinister, the laugh of children giddy on newsprint power. Martin stood and handed me the paper, his index finger indicating my fate.

Mud Volleyball. Noon - 1 p.m. Open teams. Coed.

Damn that kachina.

The morning of the competition my boys brushed their rabbits. Martin checked Snowball's toenails, her tail, and packed her and Midnight into a cat carrier. The bunnies didn't care, didn't know they would be judged for size, weight, in the "Meat Pen" division.

"It's okay," Martin whispered. "The rest of those bunnies might get eaten, but you won't. We just have to tell the judge you're for dinner."

Midnight leaned one shoulder against the tight wire bars of the cage and rubbed.

My stomach flip-flopped as the car skidded into the dirt lot framing the fair. I wore shorts and a tank top, Walgreens sunglasses, my hair pulled back in a long ponytail. I never played volleyball of any type in the past, never cared much for organized sports, for the concept of a team, a group that must move as one. I stepped into the sun, into the tiny midway comprised of a few barns and several mobile units. I made the sign of the cross.

I like to do things by myself. I like to run, to move, to dance. I'm not that crazy about flying balls and muddy people. Hell, I'm forty-one years old. I'm not in the best of shape, either, not since the car accident last summer.

I tried to stop my mantra of pain, of worry, of Girl Who Can't Play Ball. My boys hustled their bunnies to the exhibition barn. I walked past the trailer serving up plates of greasy funnel cakes coated in icing sugar, walked to the wide ditch over which hung a drooping net like a useless apron. Several people stood beneath the net, waiting for any other takers, deliberately covered in mud like Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cones.

I chose a side, kicked off my sandals, and stepped into the mud. It oozed through my toes with a satisfying squish. It smelled bad, dead algae mixed with lord knows what kind of field run-off, with the stale warm water from a rancher's steer-slobbered watering hole. A referee blew a whistle. He held a trophy, a statue as big, as bold as Mudhead, and I held my breath, dropped beneath the surface, let it coat my hair, my face, my arms-who-knew-no-volleyball. Rats. Forgot to take off my sunglasses first!

The game was on! I jumped! I ran! I danced, one foot stuck after another! I felt the spirit of Mudhead move my bones, move my bones, crack my back. I hit the ball once, just once during the whole damn game, and as I did, my boys screamed, "Mommmmmmmmmm!" The muddy man to my left high-fived me, and as we slapped hands together, we both fell backward into the slippery muck. Score one more for the other team! We lost. Big time.

I let my boys hose me down next to the pig barn. A cute rancher in scuffed boots and a goatee grinned, shook his head.

"God, you were horrible. But I have to say, I never saw anyone have so much friggin' fun."

My shot of glory! I am the muddy chick who just slapped that ball over the net at the County Fair!

It's a week later, and I overheard Louis talking to one of his friends on the phone.

"Yeah, she's cool. When I'm old like my mom, I want to do that kind of stuff, too."

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Did you enjoy this story? You may enjoy Birdie's last Unfinished Nest column, Uncaged. 

Birdie lives in rural New Mexico with her two young sons, Louis, age 12, and Martin, age 10. Unfinished Nest is a new part of the Gather: Family Essential, and will be published each Tuesday evening. Unfinished Nest tells the true stories of a small family on the edge of the Great Plains, and the lessons Birdie and her sons teach each other. All of life is unfinished, but our shared stories nurture us, help us grow.

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