I wanna go outside nm

One time, Flannery and I took a road trip from Minneapolis to New Mexico and back again. Ruby was with us. She was fourteen months old and not quite yet someone we thought of as a person who talked, at least not with words. That road trip was one of the best weeks in my life.  Ruby was at a peak of perfection. She was just beginning to talk but she already understood everything we said. She was a funny toddler, making jokes almost before she could talk in sentences.

We drove two long, hard days to get from St. Paul to Roswell. Ruby was a sport but, geez, being cooped up in that car seat took a toll on her. She looked a little bit like that 'Scream' guy in the Munch painting. She was so frazzled, like she was thinking 'what are you people doing to me, life with you guys has been pretty good, you've been so good and kind to me and now, what's going on, why this torture?' We knew she had had it when, just as we crossed the border from Texas into Northern New Mexico and stopped at the first gas station we had seen in hours, after filling our tank with gas, Flannery went in to pay, leaving me alone in the car with our frazzled buntot. I was in the front seat, behind the wheel. Ruby was sitting behind me so I couldn't see her; this way, her mom could sit in the front passenger seat and see the dolly girl. So there I am in the front seat. It's May and hot as hell in the New Mexican desert. I am mostly along to provide childcare when my sister attends a conference but, also, I loaned my car to the proceedings. Like Ruby, I feel that my sister has set a very aggressive driving pace.

We were driving like bats outa hell because we were going to go somewhere else, somewhere further, somewhere that would have required a third day of hauling as son the road, then a fourth day to get back to SE New Mexico for the first teacher job fair. I don't remember the name of where we were headed but my sister said it was supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the country. It was her trip and her money so I had agreed but I didn't care if we saw this place or not. I love New Mexico. I go there a lot. Hey, I'll see it all eventually.  It would have been two days of hard driving witih little time to enjoy one of the most beautiful places in the country. My sister had underestimated drive times and the toll the long drives took on all of us, but especially her baby.

So, we pump the gas, Flannery goes in to pay and me and the kid sweat it out in the car. All of a sudden, Ruby starts thrashing and screaming wildly. She's screeching something about let me out but, not quite using words. I thought she was demanding that I let her out of the carseat. My sister had an ironclad rule about staying in the car seat and this is the kind of maternal rule that I would never break with another woman's kid. With any child not my own, I have always done my best to follow the mother's rules; the kid needs the consistency. Plus on a road trip, well, heck, there's all kinds of things two grown sisters can do to piss each other off. I was not going to blow my wad of good cheer with my sister over the car seat. So when Ruby started freaking out and demanding that I let her out, I coo'd towards the back of the car in sympathy, trying to speak to her soothingly, telling her that we wouldn't be in the car all day, honey bee. this will be over, soon. I even assured her that I was hot and miserable, too. We're all hot and miserable, darling.  I forgot to mention that one of the things that happened on this road trip is that my linguistically impressionable sister and I had started talking in a goofy twang. Born and bred in the upper midwest, come to find ourselves speaking in a broad drawl. That drawl was fun, actually. So I drawled to the little one, hey, we're all hot, honey chile and we'll be getting down the road soon, I expect. And I bet your mama brings us some cold drinks!

Right about then, I swear, baby Bibbsey blew some kinda gasket. She broke out of that car seat. It was impossible. But she did it. She broke out. Right at that moment, my sister returns to the car and the first thing she sees is Ruby thrashing all over the back seat, broke free. She says "Did you let her out of the carseat?" "No, ma'm, I didn't," I drawled tensely, "I haven't moved from this here wheel. She just kinda blew."

What Ruby had done was impressive. It was impossible for her to break out of that carseat and she had done it.

"I know you have you heart set, Flannery," I said, "On getting to that great resort but I'm thinking that if we make this child sit in the car for a day's drive there and then another day's drive back for your conference, she's going to die. Seriously, I think we have to get this child out of the car."

My sister almost collapsef with relief. She had been thinking the same thing, that we needed to skip the resort detour and go to the town where the first job fair was and just hang out for those two days. It was so amazing that through the strength of her will Ruby had freed herself after begging her mother and her aunty to release her from that car seat.We both respected the baby's power.

After checking maps, we realized we were at the intersection for the road south to the town where that first job fair would be.  We decided we'd head south and stop at the very next motel with a pool, no matter what. And we did.

It was on that southerly drive that I saw my first New Mexican daytime moon. It was to the east, so to our right. I pointed it out to Isbe, hoping to distract her from her misery in the car seat.  It had been hard to force her back into it but we could not drive with a baby tossing around in the car.  My sister did get in the back seat and held her baby for a long while, out of the car seat, to soothe her.

The next day, we took a risk and put Ruby in the car for the two hour ride down to Roswell. We had spent the night in Portales, where my sister's conference was gonna be. In Roswell, we stopped at the tourist information spot and asked about where we could have a picnic so Ruby could play outdoors. Come to find there is a sweet little zoo in Roswell. We went to that zoo and had ourselves a picnic. We cooked cheese quesadillas by putting them in the back window of the car, in direct sun. It just took a couple of minutes for the cheese to melt. We have photos of Ruby smacking her lips at our car-cooked picnic. It was so fucking hot.

The next day, my sister went to the conference. Ruby and I went to get haircuts, explored the parks in Portales and went to a grocery store to buy picnic food to meet my sister, Ruby's mom, over her luncn break. The grocery store had a constantly rotating tortilla making machine. It reminded me of going to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Instead of squatting latina women patting masa dough into flat rounds and slapping them on a hot griddle, this machine was a series of hot griddles that flipped the tortilla down over and over so it hit about a half dozen hot griddles and the tortilla landed at the bottom completely cooked. Discovering the tortilla machine had felt like magic.

When we were done at the beauty party, the gal at the beauty parlor was surprised to learn I was from Minneapolis. She said 'y'all talk just like you is from around here'. Flannery had suggested that I stop talking in my made up twang because I might offend the local people. It was so great that the local hairdresser thought my accent sounded about right. Ruby had really long hair and she begged me to get it cut short cause it was so hot but my sister wasn't ready for a short haircut. Mostly, we just went for the haircuts for the air conditioning. Even though it was fucking hot, like a hundred and ten degrees in the shade, no pools were open yet. They didn't open until after Memorial Day and this was early May.

Now I remember what made me think of that trip.


read from HERE  

Once we settled into the Bed and Breakfast in  Portales, New Mexico, we had a little apartment. Two bedrooms, living room, even a kitchen. It was just for three nights but it was a sweet, temorary home. The landlady served us breakfast out on the patio. It was not superhot at breakfast time. We had two bedrooms, a living room and a dining area. The building was built in an old Mexican style. Our apartment was on the second story, which offered us views of the surrounding flatness with mountains in the distance. It was a very different world than the one Ruby had known in Minnesota. It looked exotic to me. It must have looked very different to her. It was a great place to stay for several days, with the comforts of home. The patio outside our front door also had a table where the hostess had offered to serve us breakfast. She had said "Phone me in the morning when you are ready for breakfast and I'll serve it inside or outside. Tell me what you'd like." Me and the kid hung out there while my sister went to her conference on the first day.

The first morning of our three mornings in Portales, Ruby woke up real early and asked her mother something. Ruby had just barely begun to talk when we started out on this road trip. A lot of grown ups don't notice exactly when kids start talking. My theory is that just like a kid tries to stand up and walk, what, thousands of times before he actually gets up and walks, a kid tries out a heckuva lot of sounds before they are understood. But inside the kid, long before the adults around them catch on, well, the kid is making sense. They tend to roll the words together so they don't sound right to adult ears but kids are usually talking before most people around them understand them.  I figured this out, actually, when my baby sister was two. Flannery was a very late talk, true. I had  realized, before anyone else did, that she was actually making a lot of sense long before most folks could understand her. I don't know exactly why but one day I realized that she was speaking in long, great sentences but she was rolling the sounds of the words together. Ca tin ah at. If you reposition those letters I wrote in that last sentence, it says cat in a hat. Well, this is how my sister talked when she first started talking. After this happened with her, I started watching for this moment with all children I have known and loved. They all do it: they all roll the sounds of words together in just slightly the wrong way. . . until they get it right. Just like a kid tries to stand on her own over and over and over until she gets it right. I have a theory that the earlier the grown ups understand the kid, the better their lifelong verbal skills are. The sooner the kid is understood, the sooner they can really begin to build their verbal skills. I have known kids that I could understand completely but their parents still didn't have a clue that the kids had developed language beyond mama and dada and no. No gives a toddler power, eh?! I have coached a few parents on how to listen to babies. My own kid was a super early talker, one of the earliest I've ever known. The kid, of course, gets most of the credit but I give myself a good dollip, too. Come on, I talked to her just like this every moment of our shared lives. It only made sense that she started talking in long, interesting sentences right from the gitgo. Lots of folks thought my kid was a genius when she was only one because of her verbal skills, even her pediatrician. Maybe she was. All I know -- and all I knew then -- was that I had a lot to say to the kid and I wanted to hear everything she had to say and come on, let's get started.

So by the time my niece Ruby came along, I was good at listening to early language skills.

In that B and B in Portales, Ruby woke up the first morning and asked her mother for something. Her mother, my sister, did not understand her request and denied Ruby's request. I was ostensibly asleep in the next room. Ruby blew another gasket. She kept repeating herself, demanding something from my sister. My sister could not understand what she was saying. They began shouting angrily at one another. Oh, get this, one of the things they kept shouting was "We have to be quiet, Tree is still asleep." As if. I had not  been awake from the first shout. When a mother hears a baby cry, she nears that cry even if she had been asleep.   I was trying to hang back, to give them some alone time as a family unit, just the two of them. These little accomodations really help on a road trip when you are in each other's faces day and night, right?

One night on the way down, in Oklahoma, Ruby woke up in the middle of the night, in pain about something, teething maybe. She screamed, really and truly screamed, for at least an hour. I lay in my bed and pretended I was asleep the whole time, reasoning that there was nothing I could do about the baby's pain and if my sister needed my attention, well, she would ask for it. Of course I heard Ruby screaming for that hour. I mean, come on, it was a Motel 6 room, not a suite at a Hilton. I just pretended to sleep to eliminate one level of complexity in the situation. The next morning my sister asked me if I had heard Ruby's crying. Of course I heard her, I said. "Thanks for keeping quiet," my sister said, "I was so glad you didn't wake up and try to help. There was nothing you could do and I didn't want to have to deal with you."

So, a couple days later, when Ruby started our morning with another round of screaming, I decided to once again pretend I didn't hear the caterwauling. This scene was completely different. How was it different? Here's how. Ruby got up and said "I wanna go outside". Our B and B apartment was on the second floor of a two-story building. Outside our front door, was a table and chairs. It was hot out there. It was New Mexico in May. But it was entirely understandable that our curious, smart little kid wanted to go outside and see this place.

My sister heard her make sounds like this: "I ous si".

Ruby would say 'I ous si' and my sister would say, "I can't understand you."

Then Ruby would scream.

I might be making it sound like Ruby was a screaming kid but she wasn't, actually. I think the only times I ever heard her pitch a fit was the time she blew a gasket and popped out of her carseat and then in the B and B the morning she wanted to go outside.

I kept quiet when Ruby and Flannery first got to arguing that morning in the B and B, remembering how Flannery had been glad I stayed out of things the night Ruby was in pain all night. That night when she cried in pain in the motel was also the only time in her life she ever did that.We learned later that Ruby had a prolapsed rectum, which meant her rectum was squeezing out of her and it hurt like hell. Poor baby.

So here's the scene. Ruby is making a very reasonable request to step outside and explore the new land we just dragged her to. My sister can't understand her and she is trying to keep the place quiet so I can sleep in. I am trying to keep quiet to give my sister and her daughter some mother-daughter family time without the auntie in the middle.

I lay there and listened to them fight as long as I could stand it.

One thing about my niece: I have never personally known a more stubborn child. Her stubbornness is, in my humble opinion, awesome. I always experienced her as a totally reasonable kid and the only times she ever 'acted up' was when she made an eminently reasonable request and she was misunderstood. I always thought that she 'acted up' not because she was a brat or anything but because her intellect was offended. I always thought it upset her that people didn't realize she wouldn't ask for something unreasonable.

It was pretty reasonable to want to go outside and explore the New Mexican sun. I thought so, anyway.

The poor kid got so worked up. My sister got so worked up. After a few minutes of all that screaming, I figured I might as well get up, that there could be no illusion amongst any of us that I was sleeping in. Come on, we were all very awake, thank you very much.

How to play it? My sister was standing outside her bedroom door, holding the door closed to keep Ruby locked in the bedroom. In addition to the poor kid's wailing, the door was slamming and bamming as the two of them fought, one to open it, one to keep the kid in the bedroom until she calmed down.  "You are going to stay in there until you stop screaming," my sister kept saying, "This time, I am not going to give in to your crying." My niece kept saying "I wanna go ou si".

I opened my door and gestured for my sister to come close so I could speak without Ruby hearing me. I explained that I believed Ruby was saying, that she was asking to go outside.

"Oh, well," my sister said, "She can go outside. Ruby, you can come out now. Let's go outside. Let's ask the landlady if she can serve our breakfast out there." Sis had turned on a dime, then  Ruby did too.

We did have our breakfast outside. Ruby sobbed a long time. You now how sometimes a kid cries real hard and then they sob uncontrollably for a long time afterwards. That's what she did. Her eyes were so red. She shuttered with those uncontrollable sobs.

One of the great things about kids, maybe the very best thing about them, is that they are always willing to put unhappiness behind them. She may have sobbed through breakfast but her unhappiness was forgotten.

Why am I telling this long, long story tonight? Because I identify with those long ago sobs that emanated in my dear little Ruby when she kept begging to go outside and her mother misunderstood her. On that long ago morning, my sister 'got' that Ruby was asking for something. She knew her daughter was saying 'I want' but she couldn't understand the next part. My sister kept saying "what do you want?" and Ruby kept saying "I wanna go ou sie"

I feel like I am clamnoring for something but nobody can hear me. Well, that nobody is listening.

When my sister kept saying what do you want and Ruby would repeat her fruitless line, then Ruby would say "I'll be good, mommy, I'll be good", with poor little Ruby sobbing as she spoke, the sobs arising beyond her control.  My sister wanted to give Ruby what she wanted and once she knew what she wanted, she let her out, of course. Our dear Ruby sobbed so mournfully as she said "I'll be good, I'll be good."

I feel like that little girl, sobbing 'I'll be good', over and over.

I'll be good, I promise.And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.