Building Bridges and Other Things (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I'm writing to you from the table in my motor home - looking out over a vast expanse of undeveloped desert in southern Arizona, just north of the Mexican border. We're on our honeymoon - a trip to deliver my mother home because family matters most - and now we have five glorious days just Tim and I in our own little world. We found this RV campsite on the internet. It sounded great because it was up front about being in the middle of nowhere. There's not even a store to buy water which could be quite a concern as it's about 110 degrees outside. The only thing the internet failed to say was that during the summer months, this wonderful little campground with swimming pool and other amenities is completely deserted. Rows and rows of empty slots appear before me - and then the desert beyond. No one else sees the beauty of being in a motor home in the middle of the desert in the middle of the summer, I guess. It's kind of eerie. And quite exquisite, too. Being out here breaks you out of preconceived expectations and societal boundaries and lets you see and be exactly who you are. I'm liking what I see. Both inside me and inside the man I'm spending the rest of my life with.

Today we're going to Mexico. I'm prepared for the poverty I'll find there. Prepared to keep myself safe. Prepared to find a beautiful handmade lace runner for the mantle on the fireplace in my 'new' old Victorian cottage. And I know that before this day is done I'm going to be struck with the injustices and struggles that this world brings to so many of us. It hits me every time I go to Mexico. Children so young, and yet, in some senses, older than I'll ever be in this lifetime. And I wonder what I can do to bridge the differences between us. Hand out $20 bills? I'm happy to do so. Need to do so. But will it help?

Do I steal a child across the border - as if I could - and...then what? Tell him not to cry for the family he left behind? Promise him a better life? What's better - money, opportunity - or living your life with those you love?

Today is my birthday. There are calls I won't receive. And calls I have already received. I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking about the calls I won't receive. And before I was out of bed this morning, the phone was ringing with a birthday song wake up call from someone I love very much. A person who has been in my life for all of her life and a good part of mine. A relationship I've built - and she's built - since we were children. She's never called me on my birthday before. But she knew what today would bring. And what it wouldn't. She knew there would be holes to fill and before I was even out of bed, she'd filled them. How can I feel as though I've failed in matters of the heart when a heart reaches out to me just because...well, because.

It's barely ten o'clock here and already it's been a great day. I've been spoiled and pampered and made to relax. I've been gifted and fed and smiled at in such a way that I can't help but know how very very lucky I am. My days are lit by magic and my nights filled with songs that somehow manage to drown out the nightmares.

And my life is building itself around me in spite of myself. I have Christmas plans. Yeah! Life feels complete with Christmas plans. And I'm finding all kinds of gifts within myself that I didn't know were there. I can build things.

Literally.

Last week I put a roof on a barn. I mean, I climbed up there, stood on the angled surface looking down at the ground below and imagined myself sliding down there. I ended up dead most times, but it those times that I ended up crippled that really stifled my breathing. And while I was busy in my head, my hands were laying tar paper. Pounding in nails. Pounding my thumb a time or two and I still have the blood blister to prove it. Next came the shingles. I didn't carry them up, but I did unbox them, piece by piece. I laid them, measured, adjusted, and hammered, starting at the edge of the roof and working my way up to the point then down to the edge of the other side, up to the crest where I had to put a cap on all the way across. Now I have to admit, I didn't do this all by myself. I had a master up on that roof with me, patiently showing me the way, waiting while I made my way. He made me take as many rows as he did, and when he got ahead of me, found things to do to keep himself occupied until I caught up. At the crest he cut shingles while hammered almost all of them. I built a roof.

And if I can do that - I can do just about anything. I have many challenges before me. And today, hammer in hand, I am facing them. Today, I am celebrating.

And tomorrow (well next month when we close on the new house) I will learn framing. The house needs a bathroom on the second floor and I want the washer and dryer upstairs so I can do laundry while I'm working. It'll take a weekend, I'm told. I think it might be a little longer than that with me doing some of the work, but you never know. I might surprise myself again. And really, I want to finish that project quickly because the next one is another roof - this time on the private patio that looks out over the woods in the back of the house. As soon as that roof is on, I get a jacuzzi out there. And the cold weather is coming...

Or so I'm told.