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In Pursuit of Leisure Latin name: Opuntia molesta I needed a hobby. I chose photography despite having poor eyesight, a cheap digital camera, and allergies to most outdoor species. Since I live in a desert valley rimmed with inspiring landscapes, I had an idea that the splendid photographs I captured would be translated into glossy poster-sized reprints to decorate the foyers of everyone I knew, instilling in all observers feelings of tranquil well being while offering a window into a greater life purpose. I was annoyed. “It’s not so easy, you know. A skilled brain surgeon could spend many painful hours trying to get everything looped and spooled. What chance do I have?” I kissed my daughter’s forehead as she plunged a potato chip and half her left hand haplessly into a bowl of onion dip. “Try to get her to eat some real food, okay? Find something with antioxidants.” I threw the digital camera in my purse. Zooming along on the Superstition Freeway on that rare occasion without a challenging backseat passenger gave me the irksome sense that I had left the kitchen faucet running or forgotten my shoes. I groped through the glove compartment and found some old CDs which had been forsaken in favor of infinite repetitions of “Shoo Fly” and “Sippin’ Cider through a Straw.” I turned up the volume and howled “You Give Love a Bad Name.” Before we were parents, even before we were married, my husband and I would sometimes hike along the less rigorous trails in Lost Dutchman State Park. The Superstition Mountains have a particular allure. Very beautiful in a tough, dry way, the mountains own some quite violent history and a few hazy supernatural associations. There are those who insist gold miner ghosts wander in and out of the peak of Weaver’s Needle and alien spaceships regularly hold intergalactic conferences among the range’s forbidding hoodoos. In order to be admitted the park, one has to fork over five dollars to whoever is sitting in the little closet at the entrance. After taking inventory of all the various dimes and Chuck E Cheese tokens at my disposal, I counted $1.37. “Do you take debit cards?” There is actually a tiny free lot at the base of the park entrance available for short term parking. A thin trail winds into the brush and it seemed, though not ideal, at least acceptable. Perhaps I’d be lucky enough to sneak a shot of a rattler peaceably sunning itself on a boulder. I stepped along the trail, skirting nests of prickly pear, ocotillo, struggling wildflowers, and the ominous scratching of a large, alive object under the cactus to my left. A hummingbird descended near a saguaro blossom, and I fumbled with the digital camera, erratically pressing buttons which vibrated and made wild mechanical noises. The bird flew away. Frowning, I peered down at the camera, which was rasping and displaying hieroglyphics on its tiny screen. “Well,” I said and something jumped out from the brush, landing on my head. I shrieked and violently shook my hair. I yelped and jigged crazily. The thing remained. Holding my breath, I felt around the area to the right of my crown and pricked my finger. More probing revealed there was actually a sea of sharp items emanating from the top of my skull. Back in the parking lot, a white-haired man was taking a picture of a white-haired woman in front of a Winnebago with Minnesota license plates. They wore matching teal sweatsuits. Coolly, I moved a piece of hair behind my ear and walked to my car, pretending there was no creature with a thousand goring limbs sticking out of my scalp. “Say ‘Timber Wolves!’”, yelled the man to his wife. I was able to examine my attacker more closely in the rearview mirror. There were several dozen spiny needles snarled in hair casing a lump the size of a plum. I whispered into the cell phone. “Hi.” “Hey Ansel Adams, you done already?” “I have something stuck to my head.” A swallow. “What?” Bare feet ran rapidly on laminate flooring in the background. “I want to talk! I want to talk! I want to talk to Mommy!” “I have something stuck to my head.” “Wait, Natalie wants to talk…here Natalie, talk to Mommy.” “Hi Mommy.” “Hi Natalie.” “What are you doing Mommy?” “Mommy has something stuck to her head, and she doesn’t know what it is and can’t get it off, and she didn’t even get any pictures because the camera’s battery ran out and this is really really starting to hurt.” “Um,” said my husband, “did you say you have something stuck to your head?” After several minutes of snotty weeping and hiccupping adjectives, it was deduced that this was not a hospital worthy event as in all likelihood it was a piece of cactus and not something venomous which had opted to lunch on my dandruff. I wiped my nose on the leather camera case and drove home with a many needled guest growing out of my head. At one point I stopped at a traffic light next to two shadowy men on large handled motorcycles. They stared at me. I smiled serenely. My husband was waiting at the door with scissors and eyebrow tweezers in each of his gloved hands. Natalie stood forlornly at his knees. “Mommy, look…I put Snow White in the fridgerator and now she’s all cold.” The next forty five minutes were spent in front of the bathroom mirror as my husband gingerly picked and cut spiny cactus pieces out of my head. Natalie stood agog in the doorway. “What are you doing?” “Why?” “Because they’re not supposed to be there. This happened to Mommy when she went walking around the desert trying to take pictures.” “Why?” “So that she could achieve some artistic fulfillment.” “Oh. Why?” Currently my leisure opportunities are more happily served with obsessive pictorial documentation of my three year old daughter’s daily life. It amuses Natalie when I use her pastel butterfly barrettes to cover the bald spot resulting from my brief career in desert photography.
Carolyn Prescott lives with her husband and three year old daughter in the massive suburbs relentlessly crawling out of Phoenix, Arizona. Writing has become more of a serious pursuit after a major corporate layoff turned her into a SAHM (it sounds more occupational if you use the acronym). Now she works on her novel – a supernatural comedy - while avoiding preparations for the Certified Public Accountant exam. (Do you know when a material loss should be presented separately as a component of income from continuing operations??? Alas, neither does Carolyn...) That caterwauling heard in the background is the result of denying her child a fourth Chips Ahoy! cookie.
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