We are off to New Mexico

My brother lives there. So does God, I think.

My brother was leaving a family gathering and I ran alongside him and snapped this photo, circa early ‘90s

A million years ago, in a conversation with my brother, the subject of God and the desert came up. I told him I always thought of God as living in the desert, as if the Presence is more noticeable out there in the scrub.

We were both at low points in our respective lives, so we hatched a plan to meet in New Mexico, to get away but also to see God.

For your information, he goes by “Tit,” which is short for “Lil’ Tommy Tit Mouse,” a nickname our beloved grandmother gave him. It is cruel of me to shorten and continue the tradition, especially considering Tit has been my biggest supporter no matter what stupid thing I’ve done. But this is how we show love in my family. We cuff one another about the ears and we are relentless in our teasing. He is Uncle Tit to my son and my son’s children, and he just kind of rolls with that.

That year, we met in Albuquerque — he from Houston, me from Connecticut — and he was driving a POS Yugo (remember those?) that could barely make it up the hills, but it got us around OK.

Tit did not love New Mexico. He kept talking about how ugly was the landscape. And I kept trying to tell him that this was a different kind of beautiful. I told him I intended to retire there, open up a gas station, and acquire the ability to heal people, like Ellen Burstyn in “Resurrection.”

Joke’s on me because years later, Tit moved to Albuquerque and loves it, and I’m still in Connecticut, sans the ability to heal people by laying on hands.

I never laugh or cry as hard as I do when I’m with Tit. We don’t have to describe our wounds to one another because we already know. We were there in the battle together, watched one another fall, get up, and get knocked down again.

Because skiing is great in New Mexico, we decided we’d go skiing. That I’d skied maybe six times and Tit had never gone didn’t stop us, and so, ignorant as babes, we ended up at a black diamond mogul field, a bowl kind of thing we had no business looking at, much less trying to ski. I knew from my scant experience with my then-boyfriend-now-husband that you use your legs like pistons to move rapidly between the moguls, so I went first but the pistons didn’t work, and about two-thirds of the way down, I landed on my face so hard I had what skiers once called a yard sale. Clothing went flying. After I took a photo of the blood I left in the snow, I whirled around, camera up, to record Tit injuring himself.

Because of the acoustics, I could clearly hear him psyching himself up at the lip of the bowl, and what I heard him say was (forgive me, this is crude), “If I turn between here and the bottom, I’m a pussy.” Then he headed straight down, and his yard sale was bigger than mine.

Since we’re so competitive, that meant something.

You can come from the most dysfunctional family ever, but if you have just one person willing to walk through fire with you — even if it’s a snaggletooth little boy only slightly older than you — well, I’m starting to think that’s the presence of God.

I’ll still be posting here, though less often. Go out and find yourself some peace. Or God. Or your equivalent of a (ahem) Tit.