what happens when you take a three year old to fulfill your deepest travel fantasies in the desert

I’ve wanted to come to the desert since moving to Florida. All the lushness and green-ness and lots-of-ness made me crave the emptiness of the desert, the wide open vast expanses that could hold dreams and reflections and what-if’s as wide as my heart dared to move.

And so finally, I came. Leif is at a men’s retreat this week with our teacher, Jeannie, in Colorado. And so Ami and I flew out and then rented a car and have been traveling through Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and now back.

I am exhausted. Like, utterly. Like, it was a grand dream, getting to return to the desert and commune with the rocks and the spirits of the land and the vastness and the great silence – and attempting this with my three year old daughter has been absurdly humbling, to say the least.

A near-constant frustration at wanting to stop, sit still, meditate (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha), and pray, while Ami demands a mama fruit bar or to watch Frozen (for the 19 millionth time) or screams to get my attention if I put it anywhere else.

And so it has been, like this, for 7 days straight, the struggle between wanting to commune with magic and majesty and wanting to scream and pull my hair out. And of course the more I feel frustrated with her, the more I want to meditate, and the more distant the possibility of that sacred pause grows, the more frustrated I become.

Fuck, as they say. Ah, fuck.

But the mountains, the rocks, my God – your God, all the gods – they are so beautiful. As soon as we arrived in the 4 corners region of Utah, the words flew out of my mouth, “I want to get married!" Not to a human, but to this earth, to the nothingness, to the gods and the spirits of these giant rock-mountains I have yet to know.

And I wanted nothing more than to stop and lie flat on the earth in adoration, but 1) it was a 100 plus degrees outside due to the apocalypse, and 2) my beloved three-year old began to scream for me to pick up her deer, once again, that she had oh-so-carefully dropped right in the place I can’t reach from the driver’s seat.

I wanted to take dozens of pictures of all the beautiful places, and fulfill the fantasy of the lovely mother-and-daughter trip in which I introduce her to the great outdoors, and she falls in love and commits to saving endangered spotted lizards for the rest of her life, but no, she was much more interested in playing legos on the hotel room floor than any big rock I could talk excitedly about.

After much negotiating, she agreed to this one – at Monument Valley – but adamantly refused to let her image be consumed by a camera anywhere else.

And I understand, it’s her body and image after all. And not her duty to fulfill my mom fantasy.

And so it goes.

Humblingly like this.

In love with this earth, like this.

Longing for so much more quiet and stillness and my-very-own-ness, like this.

And with my favorite human in the world, annoying the crap out of me in one moment, making me cry in love with her in the next, like this.

PS Written while she blessedly chased monsters in the bath tub.