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Chapter One
There are moments that forever change our lives. I just didn’t realize this would be one of them.
It began with an unexpected bit of bright spring rain and was followed by a simple event that derailed me from completing my endless list of errands. Instead of tracking down the missing dry-cleaning or checking to see if the hardware for the downstairs bathroom remodel had arrived, I found myself standing inside the edge of Lithia Park, sketching a pond full of playful waterfowl. They frolicked in the drops, stretching, hopping, flapping wings through a bird ballet—a bunch of ducks, with brains the size of cherry tomatoes, all of them never happier. Sidetracked by the comical sight and unable to resist, I had given way to creative temptation and was now thrown completely off schedule. My pencil stopped mid-line as I realized the consequence of such self-indulgence: pulling up late to the school to find my four sopping wet, tired, and hungry children. The oldest would be indignant he’d been made to wait, while his younger brother wouldn’t even register the maternal misdeed. Their first little sister might already be in the grips of worry mania, unfortunately a place she knew too well for someone so young. The youngest would greet her mother with a huge smile and tumble awkwardly into the backseat of the minivan, her daily report about life in the first grade bubbling forth with nary a pause for a breath.
The image of my bedraggled offspring, and the hell I would pay, propelled me into action. Stuffing pencil and paper into the oversized bag hanging off my shoulder, I leaned into the cool, fresh drops and headed for the deserted sidewalk. But after just one block, my concentration was broken again, this time by a flash of color in the corner of my eye. Turning quickly, as a bull to the cape, a solitary crimson chair was revealed standing elegantly, proudly in the window. Draped with an imported silk curtain panel, it was simply lit by an antique floor lamp. The shadows cast by the overstuffed wingback intrigued me, and there was mystery in the subtle shades of burgundy and scarlet.
Every detail of the chair landed deep within my brain. As the gentle spring drizzle fell on my back, I knew it would be mine. It made no logical sense, of course. Where would it fit in our old farmhouse? And what about our budget, already stretched to the limit? None of that mattered. Something about the rain and the red chair added up to an epiphany, and I knew better than to question the significance, preferring to trust my history of meaningful moments that had the nearly mystic capacity of altering my life.
My first real epiphany occurred nearly fifteen years before the red chair sighting, when I dropped an entire kettle of beans on the kitchen floor. Pregnant and feeling much like a beached whale, I had completely misjudged how much room would be required to navigate both my belly and the brimming kettle from the sink to the stove, the kitchen in our first apartment not much larger than an airplane bathroom. The Bean Pot Epiphany (I always named my epiphanies) spoke to the stupidity of making Cuban black beans, from scratch no less, for the twenty-five people coming to our apartment that night to organize a fight against the new zoning regulations being considered by the City Council. But standing there with cold, slimy beans all over my swollen bare feet, it became clear that the true meaning of the Bean Pot Epiphany was really about my failure to take care of myself. I had to wonder why, at eight months pregnant, I was still working four days a week at the grocery store as well as tutoring the kid downstairs in hopes he’d pass his GED. Even worse, here I was, hosting a mass of loud, angry, idealistic students who didn’t even pay taxes yet but had opinions as big as the state itself over something that was pretty much a done deal.The very pregnant, overworked young wife of Ashland’s up-and- coming Southern Oregon University engineering professor clearly wasn’t taking care of herself.
When that lightbulb went on, I left the beans on the floor, called the dogs into the apartment, jumped into our rusty 1952 Chevy truck, and drove into town to buy fifteen cans of black beans, five tubs of salsa, and four large cans of tomatoes. I wisely skipped the fresh cilantro. Not enough time, and really, would the impassioned activists even know?
When I returned, the floor only needed mopping—not shoveling— and the dogs were smiling. The canned concoction was simmering within minutes, and no one was ever the wiser.
The red chair sighting was a similar kind of “take care of yourself ” realization. As I stood and stared through the wet glass that April day, thoughts about the chaos that my life had become ricocheted through my brain—four kids, one husband, three dogs, two cats, a potbellied pig, one nearly blind and certainly deaf horse, cranky chickens, a smelly hamster with a skin condition, and even a llama. The one common denominator? It seemed as though everything I owned had to somehow be shared with each and every one of those beings. Kids clamored for a bite of my toast. They crept into my bed weeping from nightmares or ready to throw up. The hamster required my time for a trip to the vet. Piles of two-legged humanity and four-legged critters spilled over every seat in the minivan. Sure, the kids stayed out of my underwear drawer (except that time the boys decided a 34B would make a great double slingshot), but mostly, everything I owned seemed as though it was up for grabs. (The only exception was my precious treasure, the violin I’d owned and played since the fourth grade. Children and spouse alike knew it was completely off-limits. The kids weren’t even allowed to touch the faded black case, so convinced was I that this could somehow damage its contents.)
So on that wet afternoon, while visually tracing the seductive curves of the lush chair, I decided then and there that I would not share it with one living soul. It would be the one possession in the entire house that I would lay claim to, and it didn’t matter what my family thought. This was not a matter of selfishness. It was simply a matter of having one tiny yet luxurious space all to myself.
