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A Coca-Cola truck merged onto my lane as I drove my kids to school this morning. I told them them story of the soft-drink driver who pushed a bus full of kids off the road at an a 4-way in Alton, TX, back in the early 90s. To this day, I said, if you stop too long at that intersection, you’ll see handprints on your windows, kids just wanting to be remembered.. not just the story of their deaths, nor the caliche pit they fell into.
Caliche. Pronounced Kal-ee-ché, with -ché as in Ché Guevara the communist.
The spanish word native to my hometown area slipped off my tongue as easily as when I was 15 living in my Deep South Texas borderlands. It may be close to 20 years since I’ve said caliche, at least not since we moved to Austin years and years ago. There’s no use for the word up here, because caliche’s not here. Only in the the Deep South do workmen dig deep pits, scouring the earth of Valley rock and dust to pour over soft, muddy, pothole-laden country roads. Up north, they call it road base, sub-base, stone aggregate.. simply, crushed rock for pavements, driveways, and roads. Technically, it’s the same, but caliche defines worlds apart.
It takes me to another world, anyway, one I can walk through from any direction. I can walk through the historical context threshold of the Coca-Cola accident. I can sit on stone bench and think of the children who were my age when they died, of the life we shared, of how mine continued. I can bend down and grab a handful of the sedimentary Valley rock I never knew I lived above all my life, just like the limestone that exists beneath my feet all over Central Texas. Or I can just sit here and ponder my own mind, placing markers of who I am, where I am.
I’ve been away from writing for about a month now. It took me about a year to build up my daily habit to draw meaning from thought, delicious poison from a snakebite.. to play with Voice, as though I’d never really known her.. to be free and play, like hummingbirds over morning glory. I know, going forward, what happened will affect me. I mean, that is the point of being a writer. Experiences inform. What lies within is the essence of the writer. I’m not worried.. I’m simply aware of the change that will inevitably occur. I’m outside my comfort zone now, and I’ve no choice but to get back to work, to continue tinkering, to play.
Caliche reminds me of the beautiful, complex Spanish life that still lives within. It’s my knowing, a part of my lifetime. It’s nothing I’ve forsaken, just something blanketed on the top shelf as muddled through my little existence. Hearing caliche pronounced from deep within my heart’s lexicon reminds me of the value of the randomness that still lays unexplored. I’ve old memories that ask to be mixed with the new, parts of my mind that want to marry what I’m itching to whisper now.. and it’s okay if things change, if things fall apart, if things no longer work, if there are new roads I need build.
It’s okay to remember, and to let go, because it’s all me, anyway. It’s all on its way to someone else, as I remember them and keep them close, little muse you are..❤️