reentry

This green in the woods felt unreal as we stepped in... so bright and lovely, it almost felt... fake? 

My post-pandemic--or at least post-vaccination--reentry experience has felt similar. Each decision and action--though intentional and deliberated--feels fraught and uncanny. My calendar is slowly filling up with long-awaited events, but I consider and reconsider and second-guess everything for ages.  

But that's probably for the best. Today I (zoom) attended the feminist book club after a hiatus. I remembered that the last time I was here, I bolted because I had a mystery panic attack. 

As EM said earlier today, it's "weird to be around other people." Even for me--living with a lovely houseful and having taught in person all year long--agoraphobia seems to manifest every time I consider an event/interaction/outing. Yesterday I hiked with Big A and didn't wear a mask. I had been persuaded by pronouncements that outdoor transmission is highly unlikely (+ did not want to stand out like a freak). But it took some stern talking to myself. And even admitting I enjoyed being maskless outdoors feels odd somehow. But I did, so there. 

At's graduation redux!

At is in graduation robes again, the sibs are wearing ties, we got grandparents and family on FaceTime/WhatsApp...

It was a bit chaotic and didn't go completely as planned, but this international photoshoot is the closest we're getting to a graduation party this year.

out in the world

The right to be angry, be anechoic...
Cool: a quiet, erotic, irate interval
Do you know what that was about?

Am I willful? Were you not warned
of fracture and ephemera and erasure
What if I expunged my loud laughter--

Would you still call me an emergency?
Would you call me into queer songs
fold me into arms, siblings-in-arms?

If not, why do we come here then?

Can we only come through like pain

--or can we walk into welcome again?

[Pic: Patch of blooms--from yesterday. Today is cold and rainy and I got into my pajamas right after I showered because I'm not planning on leaving the house.]

baby story

I was just admiring the wild phlox growing everywhere (and the path I raked) out back...
 

when along came Falkor Scout!

at tension

petition that pinch of admiration
tighten this twinge of distraction

pick dimensions of your denial:
arms are a bow, fingers quarrel

I think you may hit or miss now 
I think you may miss... this love

far is not unlovely, come beloved
fling open my arms and this exit

whisper confidence(s) like a seashell
maybe send postcards, wish us well?

* The bittersweet task of getting the eldest ready to leave the nest.

[Pic: lilacs and wild phlox from LB and TB]

not/normal

 

It's close to 2 am, and I'll (have to) be up again at 6 to get Nu ready (chat, cuddle, breakfast) for (online) school. 

I know I fell asleep with the puppies (and Big A who was writing up charts) just after Nu said goodnight. And then I woke up not twenty minutes later, heart pounding and panicky--for no reason I can think of. This happens A LOT. At least when this happened during the teaching year, there were deadlines and notices and tasks and grading. Nothing now--I've been consciously trying to vacation. I can't do much about the pandemic. What's up, monkey brain?

Anyway, at least I got to finish Olive Again. I'm feeling the lines Olive typed up: "I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing." The second half of the book made me yearn to talk to my MIL and some of the older friends from UU, whom I haven't seen in a while, right away.

[Pic: Under the fronds of a huge tree--a European Weeping Beech--on the riverwalk yesterday.]

quiet

The kind of quiet time I usually don't expect on a Monday... I used it for a midday hike with L and reading what she's reading (Olive Again).

easy like Sunday afternoon

For decades, the best summer afternoons have always been about lemonade, chatter, cards, snacks, sunshine, novels... Now I have puppies underfoot to make it even better. (And it's not even officially summer yet!)

(I needed this interlude today--I made an impulsive grocery trip to get some ingredients for Big A's Boss Day dinner and OMG all the unmasked people.)

Over on Scroll, a shortlist of seven philosophers who can help us build back a better post-pandemic world.

passing/passage

The blue blob is me with Scout's face wedged into my hip and what seems to be his preternaturally elongated body is actually part Huck. 

At went to Alma to visit friends (he's post vaccination and also an adult ¯\_(ツ)_/¯); Big A went to work; Nu had been irritable and took themselves off to bed early.

So this was me for the rest of the evening as I started and finished a novel--Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half--in one long gulp. I read the parts about passing breathlessly--racial passing + gender/trans passing. And it began to feel like being an immigrant is also somewhat like passing--in the sense that you leave an old self behind, propelled as much by necessity and accident as by some form of selfishness/self-centeredness. 

conflict

Sometimes it's called a "conflict," but it may look like people asking for their right to live.

[Pic from At's protest outside Rep. Elissa Slotkin's office this week.]

scene

these flowers are alight
opening in hemispheres
my mind skips out of context
out of focus, a confused state

I am eaten by the earth
I am circled by the eddy
my breath swells with longing
my heartbeat meets in collapse

[Pic: MSU Walled Garden, 5/17/2021]

context

breath is a hymn 
accomplishing joy
surfacing tree brown
I come back to my body
through the sacred,
absurd landscape
of patience

[Pic: Scout and Huck hanging out with me in puppy pose.]

perspective

I'm reeling today from finding out that someone I knew as a kind and overly chivalrous person is in prison for sex crimes. Multiple 16- and 17-year-olds had accused him and I absolutely believe them--I'm just shaken (and shaking my head) about how different (and misleading) my experience of this person was. 

He was famous/semi-famous, and I expect the case was media fodder in the UK for a while. I feel awful that I've sometimes used his early English music ensembles in classes... I will not do this again.

(Pic is of our only east-facing window; I wish we had more. The tradescantia and pothos cuttings I pinched off and stuck into candleholders have rooted and are taking off. Funny how that works.)

focus

Lots of stuff going on--including working in my office, office visits at various doctors etc., but a walk with JG and a porch hang with KB and... hours of jabber and banter are the points I want to remember from today. 

(Spot the bunny in the picture!) 

Sunday is

 

the kind and simple joy

of parenting these four

shit shit shit

The first signal is my head turned 

sideways, listening for him

my dad too, listens to me,

he warns me of shit.

This was literal: he identified each 

congealed hazard on the trail.

"Look out for the dog shit,"

he said. "OK--horse shit."

Or sometimes even: "I don't know, 

kanna--some kind of shit here."

Huge oceans connect us now;

my finger tenses on redial.

------------

Red Cedar River, this morning with L.

plot twist

The day started beautifully with a tour of the MSU Horticultural Gardens (whence these decadent peonies) with L. 

It got better when Nu got their first shot of the Pfizer vaccine at a drive-through clinic excellently organized by MI state and operated by some lovely people from the National Guard. 

It got even better when the U of M adolescent gender services clinic called to set up an appointment for us next Friday.

And then like an absolute champion, I got all the student letters of recommendation I was working on--off to students/universities/programs.

It was when I was sending out those letters that I realized I had somehow missed the faculty meeting that was noted in my calendar and my online scheduler.

Whoops. 

long day's journey...

L and I were absolutely transfixed by how different Baker Woods looks in just a week. The last time we were there, we saw a mess of ramps and lots of wildflowers, but the trees hadn't greened yet. I was excited for L to see it because I'd hiked at Baker with BS this weekend and was storing this up as a surprise to savor all over again with L. 

Headed up to Alma afterwards for meetings and things with At. He DJ-ed a podcast he wanted me to listen to about the Cuban revolution and and hearing about Meyer Lansky aligned nicely with segments of The Godfather Part II, which I'm watching bit by bit with Big A. 

Back home, we made dinner (last week's leftover rice, +beans, +a bag of 'power blend' veggies in a stirfry, a big green salad, and a mango-blueberry-orange fruit salad), set the table, ate, talked over music, and cleared up in just under 90 minutes--At called it "efficient." Nu headed to bed early after a few rounds of cards and the puppies and I napped together for a bit until it was time to send Big A off to work.

lift your lantern up

Vacuuming in At's room, I chuckled because he'd helpfully put his bungee-chairs and side-tables on top of his bed so I could clean easily without having to move stuff around. As I told him, my mom used to do the same with her cleaners so they'd clean more thoroughly. 

Anyway--his camping lantern had fallen to the floor, so I asked if he could "lift your [his] lantern up" and a look of total befuddlement came over his face. Turns out, he thought it was an axiom he hadn't heard before in the vein of that hymn "This Little Light of Mine"--I'm going to let it shine, etc. 😂😂

And then this little love of mine took care of some yard work unprompted. 🥰🥰

mmmmm morels

Big A mowed too aggressively by the morel patch last year so I was worried they wouldn't come back, but here are a few morels I found (in a spot he'd missed blitzing behind the elm). 

At and I ate a couple, and the rest have gone to good homes, where the whole family appreciates morels (Nu and Big A won't eat 'em over here). 

Nothing quite like the first year we were here, or even the rainy spring of 2019... Still so much better than last year's poor showing, when I appear to have found just two. 

Everything was worse last year.