Susie is 50! My gosh!

Today I want to celebrate Susannah Mississippi Byrd’s 50^th Birthday. My gosh! Our oldest child.

 

The answer is alway, Yes!

Once in her life a woman ought to concentrate her mind upon the remembered earth. She ought to give herself up to a particular landscape in her experience; to look at it from as many angles as she can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it.

—N. Scott Momaday

 

[Begging Scott Momaday’s forgiveness, I have changed the masculine pronouns to feminine, highlighting my editorial changes, to emphasize the great difficult journey that Susie and her contemporaries continue to make as they wander through our crumbling patriarchal culture. Along the way, these women give thanks to their woman ancestors, known and unknown, who gave breath and life for women’s rights. Among those I’m proud to say are my wife Lee Merrill Byrd and my mother Charlotte Stanage Byrd.]    

 

Just last week, I found the Momaday quote in Barry Lopez’ magnificent book Artic Dreams. That’s Susie, I thought! It echoes her life in so many ways, how she has woven herself into her growing-up place, this city of El Paso, its sisterly connection with Juárez across the river, the peculiarities, its culture, and its rasquache ambiente. Now, during the last number of years, her embrace has included the desert and these mountains that the city has wrapped itself around. On most every weekend, with the sun rising, with or without friends, she hikes high into the Franklin Mountains­—her go-to place is the 1000 steps from where she can see the great panorama of El Paso, Juárez and the Chihuahua Desert; or she might hike up Franklin Mountain from McKelligan Canyon, where she needs to scamper through the Eye to get to the other side; other times she’s wandering around in the Palisades way above Kern Place, taking the trail up to Cottonwood Springs north of Trans-Mountain or exploring Kilbourne’s Hole up on the mesa west of the river. Every year she also makes one or two solo journeys into the Gila Wilderness. This is the woman who as a high school student hated camping and backpacking. She astounds me.  

Her journey has been a wonder to watch. I consider her—as I do her brothers Johnny and Andy—to be a hero. First, of course, she required, with the help of her brothers, that her father and mother grow up into something resembling responsible adults, although it took some time. We tended to be nomadic in a 1960s kind of way:

 

Susie was born in Monte Vista, Colorado, where the Rio Grande begins to twist into the San Juan Mountains. We were living in a small house in South Fork, Colorado. It was a cold night, a 40 mile trip to the hospital in Monte Vista, a beautiful moon, but Lee didn’t want any frivolous talk. She just wanted to get to the hospital and get Susie born. It was not to be easy. I can tell a good story, but not here, not today.

 

Before she was 7, Susie lived in five different towns (South Fork, CO, Albuquerque, NM, Las Cruces, and El Paso) and 12 different residences—which included the Radium Springs Hotel—to before we finally bought (with the help of our mothers) this house at 2709 Louisville in 1978 in the midst of a Mexican-American neighborhood. Susie and her brothers attended Crockett Elementary, Bassett Middle School and Austin High. She made close friends and was a leader wherever she went. At Crockett and Bassett, she played the violin and while at Bassett, she started playing club soccer. At Austin High, she had to choose one or the other. She chose soccer. I’m glad she did. She proved herself to be a fierce competitor. It was in public school, in the classroom, on the soccer field, among her peers, she found and learned to express her compassionate politics.

 

She went off to Emory University in Atlanta. She told me once that the police stopped her once for wandering around a Black neighborhood. “What’s a white girl doing in a neighborhood like this?” She told them, “Why shouldn’t I? It reminds me of home.” After graduating from college, her good friend, the singer Nicole Chilemi, talked her into hiking the Appalachian Trail. Lee and I have been grateful to Nicole ever since. The hike put Susie outside her comfort zone. But she did it. Well, most of it. And she met Ed Holland, our wonderful son-in-law waiting. Hannah Hollandbyrd is miraculous gift to us all from that journey.

 

Susie and Eddie decided to come live in El Paso. Boy, were we happy! They both went to work for Cinco Puntos Press. Susie was in charge of publicity and public relations, Eddie was our business manager, but we all did what was necessary. Somehow luck kept following us around. The house next door came up for sale and they bought it. They worked at their house, we worked at our house, and we had lunch together. That was a great time. But in 2000 Susie said she was going to take a day off every week to work on Ray Caballero’s campaign. Then she said she was going take two days off every week. Then finally she said was going to take a leave of absence. She had been hired to be Ray’s Campaign Manager. For a while Lee and I thought Susie would be returning when the campaign was over. When we said this out loud, people just shook their head sadly. We just didn’t “get it.” Susie had found her groove.

 

When she goes traveling on business or whatever, people ask her, “Susie, where are you from?”

She says, “El Paso.”

“So, you’re from Texas?”

“No, I’m from El Paso.”

 

Happy Birthday, Susie. We love you very much.