Snake.
A few days ago Violet is strapped to my chest under a fiery western sun. Its high afternoon and we are on the upper rim trail at Dog Canyon following behind Max and Milo. I sing a little to Violet as we roll. COMIN' ROUND THE MOUNTAIN (all six verses with a first verse reprieve) into the first few lines of SCENES FROM AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT.
"A bottle of red (I squeeze her finger)....a bottle of white (i.s.h.f.)...any kinda mood you're innnnnnnnn to-night(I get a finger squeeze back!)"
Other song fragments blow through our hike like windy trash. MONEY TALKS (AC/DC). SHOTGUN WILLIE (Willie Nelson). A little RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER because it is now forever ingrained in my conscious.
So through the woods we go, care-free and whimsical; shall we take the trail by the creek or shall we throw a stone at a tree? What we do is our business, thank you very much. We are settlers of the west awash in summertime liberties. Milo eats some sage brush and gags. The west can be cruel.
We slip down by an old gorgeous aqueduct and I read Violet the historical marker that stands beside it. She makes spittle with her lips to show her massive boredom. Under the canopy of cottonwoods Max chases some yesterday scent. A squirrel or a quail maybe. Nothing comes of it. The dogs run ahead toward a small crick for a drink as the kid and me are singing some GUESS WHO (NO SUGAR TONIGHT); we start down a short hill and snake!
Snake. Big one. Three feet. Four? My heart considers yesteryear's light cocaine abuse, 80,000 cigs, the mozzarella sticks of my long drawn out adolescence. My heart has every right to M80 itself right now. A decent firecracker popping off in a plum. But she doesn't somehow and thank God 'cause I'm not the type who's gonna have a coronary and still be able to eek out one last hero's crawl up a mountainside so someone can rescue my baby. I go down, she goes down. I'm certain of that much.
So, snake. Bastard is long and right now very very still. Parked smack dab in the middle of the trail. I look around for another hiker so I can be all mountain man and tell 'em there's a snake here.
"Woman, there's a snake here. A got-damn'd diamondback as long as this musket. Poison drippin' off it's fangs like a melted stalagtite. Stay the hell back, woman...I'm gonna pick it up."
There's no one around though. And there's no rattle on the snake. Still, I'm jazzed on outdoorsy adventure. I decide I should use this opportunity to practice with my wise dogs. How would we fare if she was a big mean rattler?
Somehow, the dogs have already passed the snake without any of the three beasts seeming too interested or bothered. I let that little nugget pass me by.
I call carefully for Milo. He begins to come my way. Good boy, Milo...over here: i use my arm to veer him away from the snake. Max joins Milo out of curiosity. They are now Ponch and Jon in super danger. Milo's tongue hangs low and wet; his face is happy goofball. I steer him from afar with my voice and my arms. My dogs are crafty, I tell myself.
Milo comes on like a high school linebacker closing in on a half-keg in the woods. He steps directly on the snake's face.
Max does it too.
I am, of course, devastated. But also, I feel ill. And frightened. And I'm pondering deeply why the snake hasn't bothered to bite or hiss or even move at all. Still on the trail, still unmoved. My experiment having failed miserably, I shoo the dogs away, check to see that Violet could care less, and spin us all around.
Maybe the friggin' thing is dead, I think.
We go around and come back a different way five minutes later. The six foot long coral snake of death is gone.
What kind of a serpent lets good-timin' dogs trot all over his face?
My kind, buddy. The good kind.
Sweet Potato Closet Pie.
As I dip the pink plastic-coated baby spoon into the liquidish sweet potatoes, scoop up the last little bit, and help Violet spread them around her face...I am both nostalgic and sad. Gone are the days forever when Violet's little body was nourished solely on formula that we/her parents mixed for her. Healthy stuff we shook up with our own clenched fists.
This afternoon, with my daughter actually sitting in a highchair, I help smear the last of the containers contents up and down her mug; starting at her lips and then icing her tiny chin and her cheeks. A cherry for her sundae nose! A sweet potato earring! This is cutesy television commercial shit, a dad and daughter giggling through a messy little lunch. Except the daughter here is really my own...not a mini-actress racking up first credits toward her Screen Actor's Guild card. And me: I have no idea how to act the part required. I stare at times, fascinated. Then in a moment, I am saying things like:
"Sweeeeeeeeeeeet Potatooooooooooo! Sweeeeeeet Potatooooooo Piiiiiiie!"
Or:
"Here it comes, here's comes Daddy with the spoon, and ....No,honey...don't use your fingers! Ugh. Shit. SHIT!"
A couple seconds of sober clarity get squashed up hard against a long half-minute of sloshed-on-beauty. I see things for what they are: Violet is eating some so-called 'solid' food. I see things for what they aren't necessarily: Violet is slowly sipping this mesmerizing new taste from a dribbled creek on the side of my finger and the experience is being etched into the first pages of The Book Of Her Life with enough Forever Ink to ensure that she will always recall this first real meal with me. And a life of culinary wonders will entail. She could end up a famous chef. Maybe she ends up the next host of BIZARRE FOODS, who knows?
I try hard to keep perspective, but the truth is: for many hours a day it's me and an infant. No one else is chiming in. No one else is even walking past the goddamn house all afternoon. We're way way out there on an island, two specks on the sand to any search planes. So, perspective and all it's practical rewards are rare. Fucking-A rare. I speak to the sun in the sky. I need a dodgeball with a face on it.
And so I guess that's why when I'm making coffee this morning, I notice the cleaned-out sweet potato baby food container laid out atop the dishes I washed last night. Oh my/it's true.
Violet, once when you finished the first solid foods Papa ever fed you, he saved the food packaging. Put it in that giant Tupperware Museum he made for you. The one in the closet with your name block letter'd in purple magic marker. There's a lot of stuff like that in there, sweetie.
Do you wanna see it?
No? You're going to 'the library'? Oh, ok.
That's cool, that's cool.
Someday you might.
Wanna see it, I mean.