He sounded so sad; I asked him if he wanted me to come home right away. And he said please, so I turned around* and began to run** home.
(*I didn't really expect him to accept my grand offer. **And I really couldn't run all the way home. Just sprinted here and there. Ha.)
It's not my story to tell; all I can say is I'm so glad there are doctors like Big A out in the world.
And then they both stomp around shouting "Where the food go/Where does the food go?" until it becomes a chant. Not sure if they're asking where the food went or where the food should be placed. But they're laughing too much to tell me. Then it becomes a song and somehow even after many, many hours on my feet, it really seems infectiously funny rather than annoying. Eventually, the table is set; Big A gets some photos; we eat. It's "the best Thanksgiving meal ever/really knocked it out of the park" for the 10th or 11th year in a row. All these dorks are nothing but kind.
There was an aborted game of You are a Liar and another of Coup, and the Criterion edition of The Gold Rush and more of L's pumpkin pie and Big A's whipped cream. Repeat.
So grateful. Really don't know how I would make it without these two and the rest of my crew. (11/26/2020)
HumHymnOm to morning
parse words from sounds
through the day.
Was I just riding skies
instead of seas--
Sadness and gladness are cruel
sirens, crossing countries
with me, waiting
near the cave that is my mind.
Do you hear me? Hear me!
Bear me forward.
I hymn you in the old ways
drowsily exhaling light
breaking like the day.
(These human babies and also the two puppy babies asking for scraps by my side.)
Our governor has mandated no in-person classes from tomorrow as part of our three-week "pause" anyway.
The one thing the pandemic has given me is bonus time with my first-born. And also, somehow--the time and desire to disappear into a long, hot bath.
There is history to my grief
geography too--I wear what
was done to me--uncertainty,
a sadness, the calls to flood.
Someone--carry my disbelief,
it is heavy as a civilization.
I read skies to déjà vu myself
greying--sometimes--silvered.
***
I usually buy sweets at the Indian store for Diwali (or some years it has been a bar of chocolate or an assortment of fruit), but this year I watched a few Pinterest videos and made my own versions of coconut ladoo and besan ladoo. 2020 just seemed to call out for some extra effort.
We're a difficult family to make sweets for--At is sweet averse and allergic to all nutty things; Nu can eat some nuts; Scout and Huck can't eat raisins and sultanas; and Big A won't eat anything too sweet.
I added pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, and dried cranberries to the coconut ladoo and almonds and pistachios to the besan ladoo (and given that besan is chickpea flour, that one must be pretty high in protein!). In this Diwali iteration, At could theoretically eat the coconut ones, Nu will eat both, and I can safely share bites with Scout and Huck without hurting them (as I subbed out the raisins). Big A may still not like/eat them.
We've packed boxes for LB, TB, BS, and EM, and sent proud pictures to every family chat.
In other news, Covid cases have been spiking on campus, so I'm moving everything online especially as students are being encouraged to go home. It's so disheartening after so many have been so vigilant and careful. And my classes were going to share research presentations next week too. Anyway.
Like most people, I feel I've normalized some stuff like going to the store, getting massages, etc. because it felt nicer not having to worry for a ninth month. But we ought to be worried.
This story about a smallish wedding reception (55 guests) leading to "three separate Covid-19 outbreaks that infected 178 people, putting three into the hospital and killing seven more" where "none of those who got seriously ill or died even went to the wedding, and many lived 100 miles away" is a sad and awful unsnooze call for me. I don't know that I could live with being the cause of someone's decline+/-death in this way.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in our Presidential Speaker series (via Zoom) tonight and here's my question and his response.
How do you decide whether or not to engage with someone who may put you in a position where you have to argue for your humanity/human rights?
Well, remember there are people who are close-minded and people who are open-minded.
So someone may believe in voter fraud, and you may bring them some sources and say: there is no significant voter fraud.
And they may say: [I] don't trust your sources.
So you ask them: Ok, what sources do you trust?
And you go and find material from those sources and they say: I don't trust those sources anymore.
Those people may have closed minds. And when a person's mind is closed, I try to not spend my time on them unless they are really close to me.
I'm going to spend my time with the open-minded people.
1 2 3
But was it Camus who said Wasn't it the butcher who said Perhaps it was I who said
Autumn is a second spring he'd operate on my identity my tongue was wronged--
when every leaf is a flower? until I had slowly been bled as while I prayed and read
Yet I know that I am dead into kindness and serenity? and inherited freedom songs,
and dead-er by the hour Not sure anymore--it maybe my mind, raveling like a knot,
in my sad and furious head. only leaves were actually shed. forgot--sick tyranny lies ahead.
Another busy day, but busy like treading water and informed by sadness every now and then.
I keep getting messages about students being on "medical leave," which is code for "tested positive for Covid," so I'm worried about them. In one class, it's all the students to whom I've had to mime pulling up their masks as reminders, so I worry too about what they did when I wasn't around and who else might have been impacted by all of this.
A bit anticlimactic ultimately--I blame CNN's rampant use of the thesaurus for two days of headlines (Biden on the cusp, on the verge, on the threshold). On the other hand, it solidified B's lead well beyond conjecture and allowed saner Trumpers to back away (?). Don't know; don't care RN TBH.
Here, Scout is tired of election news as the rest of us watch Vice-President-elect Harris and President-Elect Biden's speeches and marvel at decency and parseable sentences and earnestness on the podium.
Big A teased me about my (presumably wide-eyed) gawking--but no shame here. Who believes in America's possibility more than an immigrant, after all? Lots and lots of work ahead to be sure, but now there's a chance where before there was only survival.
Is it possible to be full of nervous energy and simultaneously enervated? Yes, yes it is. Time to call it, CNN!
I was kind of glad to have a planner full of class and meetings at hourly intervals all day, so I could go from one to prepping for the next. I may have rambled at a few of them (two nights of low no sleep will do that to me) and then the internet was all cute and hide-and-seeky-y. But I managed. The day is done.
But I've done so little at home today except find time to cuddle with everyone for comfort. We're still eating pizza from yesterday... I mean after all, Big A did order four pies for three humans.
Nu and I had planned to make another batch of the awesome "Pumpkin Spice and Fundamental Rights" cakes we made on election day. We gave/swapped so many away and Nu and Big A want more. As they reminded me, they want more, they want more, when you like something, you want more! But the baking will have to wait until tomorrow.
TBH, I thought the rest of the day would hold more excitement, but it was just a pattern of waiting, a fever of refreshing between class work and meetings, and ultimately not much else.
I was nervy all day--too nervy to make dinner--so we got pizza from Jolly Pumpkin, vegged, and watched an ep of The Queen's Gambit--and lo, all of this was good, but I kept checking Twitter for something better.
