Big Sky

The light stream from the sun, filled with red and pink hues from the Ojai sunset, casts a warm glow over my body. Blinding me and my phone slightly, I respond to one of my client’s emails from the consultant firm who is panicking over my analysis of their set-aside money for potential loss. 

My mom is feverishly stirring and mixing her homemade marinara sauce with the corkscrew pasta filled up to the brim, and splattering the sauce everywhere as she is taste-testing. She throws in some rectangular pieces of black forest deli ham, sloppily cut, into the pot. She licks her index finger as she keeps stirring.

“Em, for god’s sake, check the oven to make sure the kale and broccolis aren’t burning.”

“Mom, it’s fine. You just put it in 10 minutes ago.”

“Yes, but I’ve set it to 400 degrees! Check!”

Rolling my eyes, I slowly make my way to the oven.

“It’s fine, mom.”

She swiftly turns around and smacks me on the head.

“No, I bet you didn’t even check, for fuck’s sakes.” She checks the oven, which is just next to her, opening the door, pulling out the tray, and quickly retracting as she forgets to put her gloves on.

“Ouch, fuck!”

“Mom, calm down, jeez.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I am making a meal for us. I ask you for one little thing and you’re complaining.”

I sigh and walk back to the kitchen counter, plopping myself on the counter stool and return to answer my client’s email.

“You know, we hardly see each other. You could put in more effort. As usual, I do everything around here.”

I didn’t have the energy to tell her that this meal is hardly a grand effort, and that she never proposes getting together until she needs something from me or wants to talk about something about her life. 

A text from Noah pops up, “Mils, I can’t do this anymore. I called you five times yesterday, and you wouldn’t even pick up. Is there any more point to meet up? If you have any semblance of humanity, you would end it right. But of course you won’t. I should have known. Let’s just call it for what it is.”

She turns around, looks at me, and sighs. “Em, the plates, please?”

I look up, slightly defiant but nod slowly to placate the situation.

She throws the pot down in the middle of the dining table and starts helping herself.

We eat without talking much. She seems to have lost her touch with her marinara sauce. 

She clears her throat from the build-up of sauces and phlegm and says, “Thank you for gracing me with your presence…”

“Mom, can we not?” I say calmly with my head down, but am angling my body toward the door as I am getting ready to leave.

“Em, this is about your father.”

I stop breathing for a second. My chest suddenly feels tight, and I can feel a headache coming on, pounding behind my eye sockets.

“What about him?” 

“He’s dying.”

“Very dramatic.” 

She grasps my hand tightly and stares at me intently, something she’s never done before. 

“Em, your father is dying. He’s got some kind of lymphoma.” She lets go of my hands and continues stabbing the corkscrews. “ I am not sure of the details. I heard from Rick, you know Rick, his former co-worker from the park. I bumped into him a few weeks ago. Then you know, I made a….,” she clears her throat and does a side-eye roll, “quick phone call to him…and we talked, you know. For a bit anyway. Tight-lipped as usual. But yeah, Em, he doesn’t have much time left.”  

The sound of her metal fork stabbing the plate grates on my ears, feeling as though a knife is being dragged across my stomach.

I still refuse to believe my mom, as she has the penchant for being hysterical and overly dramatic with details.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She smacks me on the head again. “Em! Get your head out of your ass for once! I could give less shits about your father more than you.” She pauses for awhile and then leans back in her chair, “But… I knew you two were close when you were little. You guys always hiked in god knows where, bringing home all kinds of garbage, random rocks, only you two knew about. It’s like your little secret…ugh.” 

If she is reciting memories from the past, which she rarely talks about, I take it she’s serious. My plate of pasta drenched in the sauce is still hot, emitting vapors. Setting my face closer to the steam, I feel a wave of sympathy and warmth flooding my insides, but immobile.

My dad left my mom and me when I was 13. He was always this bigger-than-life, ephemeral figure in my mind. Our time spent together was short but intense. We always understood each other without saying too many words. As a park ranger, he always took me to secret hiking trails, treasure troves that few tourists or even seasoned hikers knew about. We’d fish, climb, collect rocks, plants, flowers, insect specimens, dead shells, and document them in a notebook. My mom got sick of hiking. She even hated any kind of prolonged strolls and hearing about our outings.

As much as he doted on me through these trips and in brief moments here and there, the valve could easily be shut off. Worse was at home when we were eating dinner, when he and my mom engaged in vitriol exchanges, quick quips at each other, and sometimes in an all-out shouting match without regard.

Sometimes, these moments felt like we were bonding as a family. Why not work out our problems all together. 

Then at night, knowing how upsetting it was, he’d sometimes come to my room, poke his head through the slit and simply blurted out with a sly smile the next place we’d visit, which instantly made me feel better. Sometimes, our planned outings never took place. 

My mom possesses no capacity nor faculty of reasoning and nurture to explain anything, to console or to guide me through life.

She lives in her own world of high emotions without regulation. She was drawn to my dad’s stoic, yet amorous, intense nature. When he loved you, you’d feel like he was the almighty Greek sun god of Helio shining brightly on you, sprinkling magical ecstasy-inducing dust that would transform you. She craved his attention and affection, only because you never knew when he’d shut down.

I continue to lean into the steam as the condensation begins to form under my chin.

“Emilia, he would like to see you. He said he has one of your necklaces or something. A flower of some sort encased in resin or a lock, and that it was rare. You need to make a trip out there.”

Navigating round the wet, slippery limestone rocks where the high tide used to be, I ambled slowly behind my dad in the valley of knolls and mountain ranges filled with horizontal strata and sharp jags. “Dad, slow down!” I shouted, leaving echoes in the path's wake. He didn’t answer and marched on like a soldier, but somehow knew I was behind him, anyway. As he turned around the bend, I quickened my steps, as he was nowhere to be seen. “Dad!” I slipped and fell forward on my knees. “Daddddd!” I shouted as loud as my scratchy, tiny high-pitched voice would allow. “Mils!” Dad shouted back. 

He ran toward me, side stepping loose and slippery scree like a slick cat. Without a word, he attended to and examined my scratch wounds right away. He tried to contain his seemingly volcanic anger, but somehow his grunts of frustration would betray his demeanor. I wasn’t sure if he was angry at me or with himself. He wiped down the wounds with antiseptic wipes and bandaged them up in stilted motions. “Mils, you…you got to be careful!” “Dad, I was trying to follow you. I was worried I would lose you so I…I…ran…” Tears began to well up in my eyes as I was trying to stifle my breathing and contractions. Dad looked at me, puzzled at what to do. Ice-blue stream of water was flowing into the brook, bubbling over the pebbles of rocks. Dad awkwardly patted me on my back and kissed my forehead.

He helped me get up, and as he was reaching for my shoulders, his eyes lit up toward the slopes. “No way…no…it isn’t…” He was looking at this cluster of white miniature funnel-shaped flowers with fading white and pale lavender hues surrounded by succulent leaves on an oil-shale talus. He ran over to the site, almost tripping over the debris. “Dad?” I slowly got up and followed him. “Mils, these are incredibly rare, on the verge of extinction, in fact.” He said as he gently cupped his hands around the delicate flowers. “Do you know what a rare sighting this is?” He placed his arms around my shoulders as we squatted, examining this rare flower specimen called Parachute Beardtongue. “These can only be found in 5 places of the entire world…and…Colorado included. But never would I have dreamed that I would see this…” I didn’t understand exactly, but I knew it was something extraordinary. I joined my dad’s giddiness with my mouth wide agape. 

My dad looked around like he was checking nobody was watching. He clipped off the stem of the flower and handed it over to me. “Here.” I could not utter a word as I stared at the waxy, delicate lavender-pink petals with a fuzzy texture. I was running my fingers across the petals like a pet. “Gentle, Mils.” I looked at him and smiled. He grabbed the stem from me and placed it above my left ear. He tucked parts of my hair behind my ears. “There. Beautiful.” I smiled, a bit embarrassed. “Tell you what, let’s keep this safe. How about we make a pretty necklace of it when we get home?” “Yeah! More craft time!” “That’s right, baby girl.” This was one of the rare times my dad called me that. I’d do anything to keep his affection. He removed the flower stem from my ear and tucked it in between the sheets of our notebook. “Let’s go.” 

He grabbed my hand gently, guiding me up, mindful of the pain and bruises. We slowly made our way on the path as he held onto my hand. “Let’s make sure your mama rubs some of that ointment when we get home. And let’s ask her to make us her famous red sauce.” “You mean we can pick more tomatoes?” “Yes.” We were walking along the narrow trail within the valley, surrounded by mountain ranges and Douglas fir trees dotting the path, guiding our journey with the majestic blue marbled sky welcoming us. We remained silent for most of the way, but were bathing in the merriment from our discovery and our mutual gaiety. 

“Em, hello? What’s going on? Are you having a stroke?” My mom waves her hand in front of my face.

“Sorry.” 

“As I was saying, he has one of those necklaces. Hell, if it was a diamond encrusted necklace or something, I’d drive over there like a banshee over there now, come hell or high water. But he made it sound like it was important. You know…when he left, he didn’t take one single thing from the house, except a few of his belongings. But he took most of the collections you guys scavenged. He even left his stupid ‘hummingbird’ guitar, which you know, I sold. Hmm, come to think of it, is the necklace that valuable? Can you go get it and see how much we get it for?”

“Probably not a lot.”

“Well, you need to go get it. 

“Mom, stop. It was never my necklace. He can keep that precious flower of his. Be buried with it for all I care.”

My mom smacks my head again. “Em!”

I stood up, flew into a blind rage, smashing my plate and water glass across the floor. “Mom, you touch me one more time and I swear you will regret it!” I couldn’t recognize myself as I felt as though I am outside my body. My whole body is convulsing, filled with electrical fiery pulses that could zap any object into oblivion.

“Em…you’re just like your father.” As horrified as she is, she remains largely unaffected. She slowly leans over to the console table and grabs a piece of paper with my dad’s phone number and address and slides it on the dinner table.

“What’s this?” 

“What do you think?”

“Who are all these people besides Rick? Marcy, Charlie, Toby?”

“Your dad’s cronies. You don’t remember Marcy? You are having a stroke. Well, it’ll be a long drive from here to Wyoming. You’ll want to take breaks. They’ll take care of you.”

“I fucking told you I am not going.”

“These folks have known your dad for a long time. Surprised he has friends, really. They have things they want to give to your father.”

“I am not going. I am not even going to play a fucking mailman. They can do it themselves.”

“And you know who I bumped into last week at Al’s? Marcy. She was coming back home to visit her cousin or something. For some reason, she thought you both are still in touch. She was saying how much Dad often talks of you. Not of me, pfff. Of course.”

I am still standing and trying to make sense of the piece of paper with all the letters blurring together. There are a couple of more names on the paper I don’t recognize. But slowly, memories are coming back to me.

“And Charlie, come on, Dad’s oldest buddy. Charlie. He also babysat you.”

Charlie, my dad’s only childhood best friend who stayed in touch, came over often to our house for obligatory holiday celebrations and also to watch every sport imaginable and zoned out on the TV together. 

He was also the fun “Uncle,” because he always instigated going to the zoo, aquarium, Bobo’s Fun-House and best of all, we went on safari-like trips out to the Rocky Mountain National Park to see the moose, elks, and bears. I remember Dad being annoyed by him constantly taking a ton of photos of us on his refurbished Pentax SLR camera on these trips. 

We marched silently and earnestly on this trail of this forested path lined with lush Ponderosa Pine and Lodgepole Pine, Engelmann Spruce trees, shrubs and ferns, enveloping us with a warm embrace. Dad and I navigated mindfully around the treacherous roots, scree, moist leaves like a maze. Stepping on parts of the spongy soil also made me squeal. My dad held my hand as we traversed; he often felt more comfortable showing affection when in the presence of others. Charlie, walking behind us, took a few snaps on his camera, when suddenly, we spotted a husky male elk that was within a few yards making his way toward us.

Dad shushed us with his arms out, preventing us from moving forward. We slid and hid behind some shrubs off to the side. Dad lifted me up onto this log so I could see better, as they positioned themselves in front of me. The elk ambled idly, stopping every few seconds to huff. “It’s a bull elk, a male. This is a special one. He’s got seven tines on its antlers, which means he’s the fiercest of them all.” My dad whispered. “What?” We’re not supposed to see them on this path. Owen, why…” The male elks, in the mating season, were notoriously aggressive when searching for a female elk to mate with. “Shhhhhh.”

“Dad, it’s like a deer, so cute!” I whispered. Dad nodded. The elk started to bugle, that lapsed into a loud scream, followed by a few quick grunts.

The elks took a couple of more steps toward us. “Oh, shit.” Charlie said. He lifted up his camera. “Charlie…what are you…” Charlie wanted to see better through the lens, but when Dad noticed, he tried to take his camera away. As they were wrestling with it, Charlie accidentally pressed the button. The elk immediately turned his head in our direction and let out a bugle with a thunderous, hoarse scream. It galloped at first, but then charged toward us. “Fuck, fuck!” Charlie dashed off into the deep woods, fell off a cliff, and slid into a grove of trees and shrubs. Dad turned away from the elk and covered me with his whole body with all his might. I could feel our heavy breath intertwining and dancing in this sacred cosmic space of ours. The elk stopped in its tracks, only a foot away from us. It was examining and sniffing us, appearing more curious and mesmerized.  

In the distance, Charlie took a few photos of the scene. The elk eventually lost interest and galloped away. 

Still hugging each other, our continued panting left dampness in the air. Dad finally released me. He gave me a look with a soft smile with misty eyes, like he never wanted to let me go.

“Em, my god, are you having a stroke again? Should I take you to the hospital? Jeez.”

I didn’t know how stiff my body felt until my heart rate slowed down to where I felt like it was dropping off a cliff. My body is softening up, limb by limb, as a wave of warmth is overtaking me.

“No, I am ok actually. I just remembered, I got to go.” I squeeze my mom’s hands with a warm embrace and grab the piece of paper.

“Thanks for dinner, mom.”