Missed a Dispatch? They’re All Here!

I traded my riding gear for capris, a tunic, and espadrilles, and followed the scent of woodsmoke to the fire-pit patio for dinner at La Posada.

The post-sunset chill had thinned the crowd to two other couples and a handbag-sized King Charles Spaniel they called The Enforcer. Apparently, he’d earned the name for his nightly patrol—barking at the feet of anyone still out of bed after 10:30.

I have thoughts about dogs in restaurants, but at least this one had manners—and a purpose in life. By the time I finished my pozole, they’d paid the waitress and posed for a photo, The Enforcer front and center.

I wasn’t with my own friends or family, but I was basking in that energy all the same. I could savor it without having to summon my own depleted reserves to participate.

I felt settled. Satisfied.

The next day brought a different kind of satisfaction. After a long and productive editing session with memoir client Stephanie, I felt that rare clarity that comes when good work aligns with good company. I admired her discipline—she’s the only client who actually followed my advice and read every word of her book aloud, yielding not just sharper sentences but deeper insight for her readers. It would be easy for someone of her stature to phone it in, knowing she’d hit the bestseller list, but her effort to give readers the best she had within her is the embodiment of integrity.

When we signed off the Zoom call late in the afternoon, the air outside had turned cool and gusty—too blustery for a soak or a swim—so I decided to wander into town and see about dinner. Exiting the casita, I caught the faint, metallic sweetness of rain on dust—the name for it is petrichor—so I walked over to my bike to fetch rain gear and an umbrella.

Barstool Science and Road Magic

My oversized Bass Pro Shop rain jacket—roomy enough to go over my armored riding gear—made me look a bit like a walking tent, but kept me dry. I’d tried to get into Café Pasqual’s, winner of the James Beard Foundation’s America’s Classics Award in 1999. But word of its renown had gotten out long before I showed up. They didn’t even have a seat at the community table. The hostess said dinners were booked for the next two days, but if I came for breakfast or brunch, I’d have better luck.

The Shed had also been on my list, so I moved it to the top and was rewarded with a corner seat at the bar after being told the wait could be 30 minutes or more.

Road magic!

Perched at the angle of the bar, I found myself in conversation with a nuclear engineer from Virginia and, improbably, a couple from North Carolina who had once lived just down the street from me. We’d never met, but it reminded me how small the world can feel when we’re open to it. We began peppering the engineer with questions about Three Mile Island and whether the old SNL skit “The Pepsi Syndrome” had a kernel of truth. He took it all in stride, holding forth with clarity and good humor.

Somewhere between steam generators and spent fuel rods, I turned to him and asked, “Are you always the most interesting man at the bar?”

We all cracked up. He blushed a little but kept right on explaining isotopes with the delight of someone who rarely gets to talk shop outside the lab. As I nursed the last sips of my iced tea, I mused: Everyone deserves a night like this—a night to be listened to, delighted in. A night to feel like the crowd had come out just for them. I deserved a night like this too—a night to listen, to nudge, to take delight in someone else’s joy.

Midway through our shared laughter, Matt FaceTimed. I answered without hesitation, tilting the screen so he could take in the scene—the bar, the plates, the easy smiles of strangers who felt like friends and waved at him. He could see it on my face: I wasn’t just okay, I was glowing. He smiled back—that soft, relieved look he gets when he knows the road is giving more than it’s taking.

We didn’t talk long, but it was enough to share the joy. After we hung up, I turned back to the bar, where the conversation was still in full swing.

Cabrito and the Facts of Life

At some point, I asked the bartender if there was anywhere in town to get cabrito. I’d only had it once—in Dallas—and it had been tender and earthy, unforgettable. The tatted and mustachioed bartender explained that cabrito is a springtime dish, served once the male goats are old enough to leave their mothers.

It took a second for that to register. When it did, I winced, and let my jaw hang open. I’d assumed roasted goat was just goat. You know, like goat-goat. But now the business logic was laid bare: dairy operations don’t need many males. The rest—well, they’re “wasted,” as they say in the horseracing world.

Unsettling moments like that one carry truth, and I’m not going to deliver a TED Talk here, but it’s absolutely true that eating a baby goat carries gravitas that eating an adult does not. Will I eat cabrito if I ever see it on a menu? Time will tell.

I woke the next morning with that rare feeling of having been both entertained and restored. My boots were still dusty, but my spirit had settled. Santa Fe was doing what I’d hoped it would—offering space.

The Balanced Stroll of a Fearless Gunslinger

I walked to Café Pasqual’s just as the sun began slicing through the wind, passing through the main square where a couple of schools were evidently taking field trips. The students carried little clipboards for making notes as they scampered from one statue or fountain to the next.

A woman standing outside one of the adjacent shops called out, “Hey, lady, I love your outfit! You look like a tennis player!”

She wasn’t wrong: I was wearing my “skort” and a lightweight tunic that had seen me through more than one travel day. I grinned and waved, taking it as a compliment—even though part of me wondered if she was just trying to lure me into the store. I’ve spent enough time being pitched to, flattered, and handled to question motives.

But her timing and tone were so pitch-perfect, I didn’t care if I was her mark. She reminded me of Englishman Troy Hawke, whom I follow on Instagram. He floats around in a purple smoking jacket, tossing out theatrical compliments delivered with deadpan authority: “You have the vibe of a former president.” And my personal favorite: “You have the balanced stroll of a fearless gunslinger.”

It used to be hard for me to believe compliments like that (although I’ve never been called a gunslinger)—especially the ones about how I looked. But on this day, in this breeze, I felt good in my body. Not flawless—never flawless. Just... comfortable.

My spirits soared with the breeze.

Café Pasqual’s with Marsha and James

The restaurant was cozy and eclectic, with bright tilework, colorful papel picado banners strung across the ceiling, and framed posters celebrating past Día de los Muertos festivals.

I struck up a conversation with a New Hampshire couple to my left—Marsha and James—who seemed oddly delighted by me. When Marsha leaned in and said, “Are you famous?” I nearly spit out my breakfast beans.

“Hardly,” I laughed, then explained that apparently the breakfast hostess had mentioned I’d been turned away the night before, and word had gotten around. Everyone checked in on me like I was someone.

It was that rare kindness that travels along the grapevine when someone sees your disappointment and quietly does what it takes to turn it around. My heart.

I wasn’t used to being noticed like this—for nothing in particular. Not for my work, not for holding a family together, not for being the cool-headed one. Just for showing up, apparently glowing a little. It startled something tender in me.

Stephanie sometimes tells me what it’s like to be recognized—even decades after her television career ended. People stop her in grocery stores to share details about their lives as if they’ve known her forever. “We were pregnant at the same time as and our daughters have the same name!” She’s always gracious about it, but just hearing the stories exhausts me. The pressure to match someone’s projected meaning of you—to smile, connect, reciprocate—it sounds like a constant performance, especially in a social-media world where one slip on your part could land you in the doghouse.

What happened there at Café Pasqual’s was something else. When Marsha asked if I was famous, it was playful—a vacation question, not a real one. Who doesn’t want to sit next to “someone” at breakfast? But once I said I wasn’t, the conversation didn’t fade—it deepened. Being two “nobodies” was a kind of relief. There was no role to live up to, no image to maintain. Just warmth exchanged across a table, nothing riding on it.

Sometimes that’s the rarest kind of recognition—the kind that doesn’t ask for anything back.

O’Keeffe’s Later Years and My Own

I felt at home in Santa Fe, despite the many cultural differences from the East Coast. On the other side of me, a table of women in their sixties and seventies were talking animatedly about the news, asking smart questions, poking fun at the absurd. I didn’t join their conversation, but I didn’t need to. Their presence alone—their confident opinions, their curiosity—was balm enough. I felt included by proximity.

I took the long way to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, browsing the little shops and galleries along the plaza and taking dozens of pictures—street art, murals, sculptures, fountains. Santa Fe isn’t just a city with art; it’s a city of art. The nation’s oldest capital, it’s also one of its most creatively alive, with more galleries per capita than almost anywhere else in the U.S.

As I stood in line for a ticket at the museum, there were James and Marsha again, waving like we were old friends. We fell into step together in easy familiarity.

I’d never considered myself a devotee of O’Keeffe—of any artist, really—but the museum invited me into her world in a way that surprised me. I lingered over her color studies, her bone-and-blossom compositions, but it wasn’t the paintings that stayed with me. It was the photos of her later years—her angular profile, the lined skin she made no attempt to disguise. She looked proud. Powerful. Unapologetically herself.

I’ve always said I wouldn’t “get work done,” and here was a woman decades ahead of me who modeled what that could actually look like. She wore what she wanted, even took her Siamese cat camping—a detail that captured both her eccentricity and her self-possession. O’Keeffe saw what she saw, and made others see it too.

Each woman must define for herself what self-possession means, and there are definitely generational influences. For O’Keeffe it meant solitude; for my mother and her contemporaries, it meant poise under scrutiny. Each version requires courage and resilience. The girls and women coming up now face a different challenge altogether—the pressure to stay unflaggingly on.

The point, for me, is to choose a lane. Change lanes when you need to pass or be passed, but try not to mistake difference for superiority.

Thinking about all this brought me back to my client Stephanie, who maintains her original hair color and keeps her teeth camera-ready, knowing the spotlight could return at any moment. When we worked on her manuscript while I was in Phoenix, I told her my mother admired her—“She’s always a lady,” Mom had said, which was her highest form of praise.

Stephanie slipped into her public self without missing a beat. “Please tell your mom I admire the daughter she raised.” The compliment had been like a note passed between two dignitaries while I held the envelope.

Stephanie, like my mother, knows how to hold her own—and has carved out her lane. She likes it, she’s good at it, and that’s enough for me. I just worry about the people who dream of being influencers; many will find, in the end, that the price of visibility is too high.

O’Keeffe didn’t perform or put on a charm offensive. She didn’t need to. Her power came from deciding how she’d be remembered—before anyone else got the chance.

I learned this about myself back in my dance-recital days—rouge on my cheeks, hair lacquered into place—but it took a lot of growing up to own it. I liked the movement, the music, the excitement; what I didn’t like was trying to adopt a stage persona. It took years to understand that I could love expression without loving the stage.

That’s likely why the morning at Café Pasqual’s had felt so restorative. Once Marsha and I cleared up my lack of fame, I didn’t have to be somebody. I just had to show up. That’s when road magic materializes.

When I stepped outside the museum, the wind had finally died down. The air was still fresh but no longer insistent. I walked back slowly, savoring the quiet. That evening, I slipped into the hot tub and finally took a swim—my body warm, my limbs buoyant, my breath steady.

The road would call again in the morning. But for now, I let the water hold me. Cleansed. Restored. Ready.

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