Cibolo Cache by Mariah Daley (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) The early spring afternoon was damp and gray. The two boys scrambled up the trail ahead of me. Aiden was leading the way, while his friend Dylan tried to look over his shoulder. “Hey, why do you get to hold the GPS? You held it last time.” “Dylan’s right. Give it to him until we find the cache, and you can hold it on the way back to the car.” “Okay,” said Aiden. Dylan turned the GPS in his hand, getting a feel for how to read it. The boys took off again, stumbling along the trail, stepping over rocks and slipping on exposed roots. Dylan held the GPS in front of him like it was an eager dog tugging at its leash and pulling him forward with impatient enthusiasm. The path took a turn. Dylan paused and pointed the GPS into a thicket of Possumhaw and dogwood beside the trail. “This way,” he called, striding into the underbrush. “Wait, boys. If you look up there, can you see how the trail turns back just a little ways ahead? I think we’d better stick to the path. Who knows what’s in those bushes.” “Good point,” said Dylan, pulling brambles from his socks. They set off again, cautiously now, looking further up the trail, mentally playing the angles against each other as they went. I paused a moment, letting them lead. I marveled at the strength of a bond forged in the heat of light saber battles and secret backyard spy missions. Dylan was older by a year and a half, but the age difference couldn’t hold up to the intensity of their common interests. When our family first tried geocaching, Aiden was anxious to share the high-tech treasure hunt with Dylan. We walked along Cibolo Creek for some time. Towering cypress trees waded in the shallows, spindly root flares laid bare where the drought had dropped the water level. The GPS indicated that we needed to head off at a sharp angle, but we kept going until the trail branched. We followed the path to the left, and our course corrected itself, leading us past thick clumps of fragrant juniper. The distance marker was counting down, fifty-five feet, thirty feet, twelve feet, as we homed in on the prize. The trail began to curve away, skirting along a tall electric fence, but the GPS was pointing off the trail, into the bushes. “It should be right around here,” I said. We carefully picked our way into the underbrush, pulling back dry silvered branches like loaded slingshots. “I bet it’s right there,” Aiden said. “See that little pile of sticks by that tree?” Aiden had developed an eye for these things. He’d seen that the caches were often covered up with logs, stones, bits of bark. “I’ll get it!” Dylan ducked under low-slung branches and poked at the pile of sticks to make sure there were no snakes. He used his toe to nudge aside some of the sticks in the pile, uncovering a bright green tube the size of a cigar. “Found it!” He brought it out to the trail and opened it up, handing me a rolled up piece of paper, the visitor’s log. I pulled a pen out of my pack to sign and date the log, while the boys sorted through the treasure. There wasn’t much in the tube, and I thought they’d be disappointed. The last cache we had found, a large ammo box, had been full of cheap plastic toys. They didn’t mind, though. They each took a curled-up sticker, replacing it with something of their own – a marble and a plastic bug. Aiden buried the tube under the stick pile again, making sure none of the bright green color showed through. We started back toward the parking lot, joyous chatter ringing in the damp air. The mist was beginning to condense into a fine drizzle. We badly needed the rain, but I hoped that it would hold off for a little while longer. I urged the boys to hurry. Maybe we could get in one more cache before the rain came and forced us to head home.
by Mariah Daley (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) MWF, 39, seeks GM, any age, except not too young. Like, if you Twitter, or even just text, for that matter, you may be too young. Though maybe that would be a good thing, as you could catch me up on all the big tech advances that I’ve been avoiding. Otherwise, I may end up like my grandmother, who still doesn’t know how to work her answering machine. Let’s put it this way: if you believe that you know everything that is worth knowing, or that anything that happened before the new millennium is ancient history, you are probably too young. If you think Miley Cyrus is way cool, you are definitely too young. If you like the Jonas Brothers’ music, you are too young; though if you just want to defile them, that would be understandable. So, MWF, 39, seeks GM, lets say 23-90, for platonic (though it would be kind of nice if you would once, while fairly drunk, make a pass at me, and tell me that I am the only female that you have ever been attracted to, which we will laugh about the next day and blame on the yummy passion fruit margaritas) BFF-type (only sort of, as I already have a BFF, though we are not nearly Paris Hilton enough to ever refer to each other as such) hanging out and gossiping-type fun. Though not technically a BFF position, there is a possibility of future advancement, seeing as the current actual BFF has so far failed at her half-hearted attempts to quit smoking. I am a slightly-overweight, middle-aged, middle-class, suburban, stay-at-home mother. Hobbies include cheating at crossword puzzles, cyber stalking Adam Lambert, and psychoanalyzing anyone with a psyche, most especially mothers of all varieties. I also enjoy writing, though it occurs to me that enjoy is not the correct word exactly, as it doesn’t convey the correct level of dread, struggle, and anxiety. Other likes include reading tarot cards, speed walking like a manic fool while listening to my iPod, and occasionally joining Bible study groups for the rigorous debate. This last thing always ends badly, with me dropping out because all opposing arguments come back to the same because- it-says-so-in-the-Bible contention, which only holds up if you believe that everything in the Bible is true, and the only supporting evidence I have thus far been able to find for this is “…because it says so in the Bible.” I consider myself to be socially progressive, and I think Bill O’ Reilly is an ass for using the term “social progressive” like some kind of slur, like he’s saying “pinko commie” or “fatty, fatty two by four” or something. I like to think of myself as creative in theory, if not in practice. I have tons of creative ideas running laps in my head, though actual creation requires a bit too much effort. At this point my creativity is mostly limited to creating new life (I have three spectacular kids); hand knitting blankets, scarves, dishcloths, etc. (mainly anything square or rectangular that does not require precise size or shaping); and making the occasional big pot of soup. I am contentedly married to a man that is so straight that discussions of clothing, hairstyles, Oprah’s book club, or anything to do with celebrities are entirely out of the question. You should be definitely gay. I would consider either a Jack or a Will type, though you should be aware that I’m much more of a Grace than a Karen. I am also prone to stereotypical categorization—if that’s an issue for you. In any case, I can go for most types of gay, but I am for sure not seeking the Hairy Biker Dude with piercings on his ouchie parts who’s on an ongoing quest to shove ever larger objects up his ass. If you have a bushy handlebar mustache, lots of tattoos, and enjoy nipple clamps, this ad is not aimed at you. Any ethnic background is acceptable, though something exotic, like let’s say part Ethiopian, part Filipino, part Apache might be interesting. If you are white and waspy there is a good chance that either you already took me to the prom, or at some other time I attempted (and failed) to convert you. You should be good at mixing fruity drinks, and I am not talking that Kool-Aid-and- Everclear shit the frat boys used to serve up in college. You should be (this goes without saying, but…) witty, clever, creative, fashionable, and fun. You must live relatively nearby and have a successful, active career in some sort of creative field, like acting, sculpting, tasteful performance art, etc. This will give us something to talk about other than who you hooked up with at the club, or which of my kids is going to need braces. Also, you must have a totally cool, reliable, loving mother who is so disappointed that you are never going to give her grandbabies that she will happily watch my kids for free while we hang out, or even just if I have a doctor’s appointment or something. Or maybe you are in a committed relationship and have used surrogates to make your own babies, in which case we can have playdates at the park. Or even better, we can sit on your fabulous patio, taking in the sweeping views, sipping white wine spritzers, and talking for hours while the kids play nearby. Negative Space by Mariah Daley (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) He messages her on Facebook. He says how happy he is to have stumbled across her. That he hopes she is well. He says where he lives, how many kids he has. He doesn’t say he felt a little creepy when he looked her up, a little like a stalker. He doesn’t try to friend her. She messages back. She says where she lives, how many kids she has. She says her grandmother lives in the next town over from him, but she almost never gets up there for a visit. She says it is too cold there in the winter. She doesn’t say that she already knew where he lives, because she, too, uses the internet to stalk exes. She doesn’t say that it took a lot of digging to find a picture of him online to confirm that the teacher with his exact name at the high school in the next town over from her grandmother was actually him. That when she saw his picture, she felt like the air had been sucked from her lungs. She doesn’t say that she recognized him instantly, that she was surprised to see that he has gotten older. Like she hasn’t. Like she’s still eighteen. He says he hopes it is not uncomfortable for her to hear from him. That maybe he represents a time in her life that she’d rather forget. He doesn’t say that he can’t forget. She says that she is happy. That there was a time when maybe it would have been too difficult to hear from him, but that she’s okay now. She doesn’t say that she never resented him, even when everyone else said a teacher should know better. That, looking back, she can see that he was just a kid, too. That she thinks they really shouldn’t let twenty-four-year-old boys teach high school, with all those teenage girls just discovering their sexual power, eager to try it out. Like her, at eighteen. He says that his kids are nothing like he would have imagined. That they are not free-spirited, that they must get their temperament from his wife. He doesn’t say that he wonders what sort of kids he would have had with her. He doesn’t say that he’s a good father now. That he wouldn’t have been then. She says that her kids are great. That they are nothing like she could have imagined, but they are better. She doesn’t say that she used to wonder what kind of children she would have had with him. She doesn’t say that she is a good mother now, that she wasn’t ready then. She doesn’t say that she could never have been happy with him. That she knows a part of him will always belong to the previous woman, the possibility of what might have been. That now she is the previous, the possible. She doesn’t say that she feels a little sad for his wife. She doesn’t say that she stopped thinking about what might have been a long time ago. That she would never give up the now, the what is. That she thinks it all happened the way it was supposed to. That maybe she lost their baby so that she could have the ones she has now. She doesn’t say that, still she thinks about him sometimes. She says that she hopes he is well. She doesn’t try to friend him.
|
