here's an idea...

Pic: Here it is in all its gritty glory: "the reason you should care... is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others." This is from Marsha Gessen's crucial piece in the NYT from earlier this year. I can't understand why countries seem to be constantly at war with their poorest and most marginalized citizens here and everywhere.

My India fam is visiting with friends until Friday morning. Another friend may come to us from Friday to Sunday (when they will leave). Yesterday's lunch choice was IHOP ( a solid choice) but I slipped up and got into a debate about politics (bad choice). 

I wonder if this is why I live so far away? I don't know that I could take people I love so much saying stuff all the time like, "But if you give the poor things for free they'll become lazy and won't work." When I heard that, I went hot and my voice got very quavery. I know how precarious the day-to-day is for so many people and how hard they work at all sorts of things so they can stay alive. 

And then I heard it, the constant chorus from my childhood: "Don't be so idealistic."

But why the heck not?

prayer for a future tide

hollows show with stars

in sequence all these years 

paralyzed only by the possibility

of time... if this world were mine

*

we'd follow the ripples on the path 

to where we widen daily treads

into the light, though the trail 

turns water as salty as tears  

*

the sound of the sea is

so close to the humming om 

of planets... of eternity folding--

dissolving all we can ever know... 

*

reversing presents, lining calendar

days in black, and yet bringing

the urgent surf of every day 

where we learn to love

__________
Pic: Nu's photo of Amma, Chelli, and me. I love that that there are complimentary wheelchairs at most museums. 

going through the (e)motions

Off to Grand Rapids today to visit the #1 Sculpture Park in the USA (are there others?) and then dinner at a friend's place until late at night when we had to break away to do our nightly video call with dad.

Already mom is feeling some anxiety about being away from dad.

Already I feel like I'm going through the motions and not enjoying this moment as much as I could be. I know I'll look back on this trip... I know we couldn't have done more, but I think I could do better compartmentalizing some of my grief about SLE so not making more of this amazing time we have together doesn't become another regret to tote. 

Pic: Sis, Nu, and mom at Meijer Gardens. The majestic greenhouses are in the background.

meta

I can't believe it has been a week (since my fam arrived, since SLE died... how is life so unrelentingly incessant?).

My sister and I took off for an early morning hike. We did a couple of midday ones last week, but the heat seemed to exacerbate her sadly near-constant migraine, so we thought we'd try a sunrise trek today. 

Later in the afternoon a matinee of Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at our local regional Theater. So hilarious (and Irish!) that when Nu and Big A heard about it at dinner they wanted to see it too, so I'm taking them next week. 

Pic: Being meta about my sister's tee and photography at the Beal Gardens pond. 

the party I wanted to cancel...

I had a wonderful MidSummer party planned for yesterday. I sent out invitations with my mom and sister's names the week their tickets were finalized. At has been valiantly making it to family dinners (and then then curling into my side on the sofa later), but I knew At wouldn't be able to come to an actual party. 

I really wanted to cancel this party... but I'd just invited so many people, some when I bumped into them randomly, that I was afraid that people would show up anyway.

So we carried on, and it was kinda nice to see people and see people having fun. There were flower crowns and butterfly backdrops for selfies and a bonfire for wishes and people stayed late into the night...

books and the best friends

Books are some of my best friends and my friends are the best. When I asked Jan Shoemaker if I could bring my people to book club, she told me to bring anyone I wanted--kids and puppies included. I didn't expect her to have a cake with my mom's and sister's names emblazoned on it. 

Nor did I expect L to flout all the rules of cake-cutting and delve straight into the center of the cake to pull out the piece with my mom's name for her to eat. 

I have the best friends.

Pic: Mom with "her" piece of cake. My name was on there too, and I made a lot of "who wants a piece of me" jokes. 

in honor of those who came before us

We're reading Angeline Boulley's Warrior Girl Unearthed for book club. Much of it takes place in northern Michigan--on Sugar Island where L had disappeared to last week, in fact. It is YA, but deftly deals with NAGPRA and the book is wonderfully infused with details about indigenous Ojibwe culture. 

So we took a road trip yesterday to visit the Ziibiwing Center where I was happy to introduce my fam and Mr. Ray to each other. On the way home, we stopped by my office for a picnic lunch.

Pic: Nu's photo of us by the college sign. (I cropped some of it out.)

we're worth it

Already unthinkably wild things have been done and said (by my mom, natch) and wilder things have been said in support (by Big A who is her sidekick, sometimes.) 

Pic: Max and Huck aren't quite sure what to make of it all. I seem caught by surprise (and so, so much happiness) too.

under pressure

My mom and sis are on their way!! They'll get here tomorrow!

I'm still finishing up some last-minute chores. I guess I could do them after they get here, but then they'd want to help... and they don't know how to do things as they have a lot of domestic help. I don't want to make them travel all this way to do housework!

Big A sweetly tried to reassure me that everything would get done, and I snapped at him that I was aware of that as I was doing it all myself. Poor Big A, trying to be helpful. And poor me, so irritable. 

Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky are voting with democrats to block Trump's horrible spending bill... keep up the pressure!!

Pic: Lansing Pride was lit this year, so many people!

Did I get this wrong?

The news seems so huge, I feel I must be understanding it wrong. Birthright citizenship ended in the United States today (or at least that's what it sounds like). So kids born here many not automatically be citizens of the state? And relatedly, each state can decide what it wants for itself, so we're more like a federation than a republic? We have no national laws?

Also SB1 (Senate Bill 1) prohibiting DEI in education was enacted into law in Ohio. So the Women's Center, where I worked before this (Wright State U in Dayton, Ohio), just closed and all the people I used to work with are out a job.

Pic: With Big A, Max, and Huck. In the grass, looking up.
 

to be able to see clearly

The day started with Jim Obergefell's voice on the radio to celebrate 10 years of marriage equality (how nice that it seems like longer!) and a long chat with bestie KB on her way to work. 

So it should have been a good day. 

But something KB told me kept haunting me. Apparently, an erstwhile colleague has been charged with sexually abusing a student. I've had this experience before where someone, who seemed like a good person and was exceedingly kind to me, turned out to have been abusive to the young people in his care. How completely unforgivable. And how sad, disturbing, and disappointing that I wasn't able to see it at the time and intervene before any harm was done. 

Pic: I can buy myself flowers... I  bought some water hyacinths and water lilies at Preuss Pets today (where I took this photo). Apparently, I can welcome veritable crowds to parties all year round without worrying about how the house looks, but I want things to look really spiffy for my mom and sis! (I also bought two lamps!)

memento amoris

A snake yesterday; zombies today. Only on film, thankfully. We picked At up from work and got a leisurely dinner and ice cream before seeing 28 Years Later, a franchise At and I are particularly fond of. It was unexpectedly tender for a zombie film. While the memento mori parts were predictable, the instruction--"memento amoris"--was not and it really resonated. Everyone will inevitably die, but will we have loved as much as we could?

While on love, here's an amazing poem I found this week. It's by John Roedel: on the days/when it feels like/I have no power/I serve others/you see/whenever I wash the world's feet/my hands/immediately/stop shaking. Wow. This is kind of true for me too.

And in the love department, we watched the Rick Steves tour of Esfahan ("extraordinary mosques and endearing people") because it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to see it for ourselves now. My love for that one particular shade of Isfahan blue comes from a picture in a book I had when I was eight or nine. 

And since the beginning of this year, EM and I and then Nu and I have been talking about Mississippi Masala--that movie from 30+ years ago with Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhary, which won awards and hearts for depicting a love affair between an Indian woman and a black man. So that's one of the many, many reasons we're so happy that Zohran Mamdani has won the primary as NYC mayoral candidate--that movie was made by his mom, Mira Nair. 

Pic: At, Big A, and Nu in the parking lot. I love them a lot.

our tiny hero

Big A had been at work last night and I woke up this morning to him shouting about something. 

He was shouting about a snake. A snake in the puppies' room. 

He'd been refilling their water, but Huck seemed uncharacteristically uninterested in greeting him and then he saw that Huck's attention was on a tiny snake that had probably made its way into the house via the doggie door. 

I helped by holding Max, and spotting the snake as it glided under and out of furniture (all the stuff you can see here)  so Big A could catch and release it. But it was fearless Huck who really helped chase it out the backdoor.

I wonder... what would have happened if Big A hadn't been refilling the water bowls at that precise moment. Would the snake just be roaming the entire house? Do we already have other snakes who just live here?

Also... I don't know if this is the same Mx. Slithers I saw last year. But yesterday, I did drop a lot of clove powder in the garden where I saw them last year to drive them away. I wonder... if that smell drove them indoors. So is this, too, my fault after all?

I was pretty shaken and after Big A went for a post-call nap. I had to emergency snuggle with Nu who was in bed and very sleepy and unsympathetic. ("Gawd, Mama--I bet it was just a little snake. If you want a garden there's gonna be snakes." Unsympathetic, but sensible?)

So grateful for Huck's calm and valiant work today. Our 12-year-old who, as our vet says, looks like a "perma-puppy" and acts like a kitty and is 100% hero.

Pic: Huck getting love in a friend's lap last week. 

the hits keep coming

I worked in the garden for six hours straight, with Max and Huck for company now and again, because I could not bear to be around the radio or my computer. I planted, replanted, cleaned the pond, fixed some fencing, and weeded a ton. They say we had a heat wave today. I guess? It was very hot and I was a sweaty mess by the time I decided to head back in. (I barely sweat usually, so this is kind of a big deal.) 

Also, I noticed flat white spots on my legs last week. I think I have IGH (Idiopathic Guttate Hypomelanosis). (Self-diagnosis via Google, and Big A concurs.) I thought it was age-related--like liver spots only in reverse, but no--it's because I'm such a sun-seeker. Also, as a proper Indian person, my first thought was leprosy, and it reminded me of the summer all the adults in the family tested me for leprosy with a safety pin.  

In serious health news, MIL had a mini stroke and has a cardioversion scheduled for next week. She would like me to enjoy my visit with my mom, but I wish I could go / feel like I should go be with her. In any case, this reminder of how quickly people's health can undergo a shift is unwelcome.

And world news continues to be awful. Children are eating dirt in Gaza while trucks with food to feed a million people are blockaded a few miles away. Plus we seem to be drifting into a war. I'm sorry for all the people in the bombed cities in Iran, but I was particularly devastated to hear Isfahan was one of them. I always longed to visit that ancient city known as "half the world." Also, I didn't think I'd be grateful for discrimination, but at least the military won't want my trans kids.

Pic: Yesterday I stopped by my office to pick up some books and water my plants and saw the college spirit rock had new colors. I wonder if it's the work of new Indian students or new Irish students. I've always loved how the mutual flag colors represent the alliances between the Irish and Indian independence movements. 

escape from injustice and war

Pic: Nu's photo of Max and me. I want to do only escapist things like read and snuggle and gaze into puppies' eyes forever and ever.

Happy SolsticeWeekend! 

Happy Free Mahmoud Khalil Day! 

I don't want to think about the Supreme Court's decision to ban gender affirming care to minors. I don't want to think about how the U.S. has bombed Iran... and if that means we're in another war now.

There are many poems about war. Here's Mahmoud Darwish's:

The war will end

The leaders will shake hands

The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son

The girl will wait for her beloved husband

And those children will wait for their hero father

I don’t know who sold our homeland

But I saw who paid the price

It's quite cis-het normative, isn't it? I didn't remember that about the poem... 

Five for Friday (Cheer)

1) Blog friends: Jenny listed five cheerful things to buoy herself up after a bad week and I could feel myself slipping into a funk (as my dad would say), so I decided to follow her example. 

Something beautiful that has given me great joy lately is Nance's piece titled "Night Rides."  I've gone back and reread it many times since she first published it. It's got that magical childhood nostalgia and evocative writing--transportive... transformative. 

Also, Lisa kindly introduced me to Jeanie who blogs from my city. Jeanie has a brilliant smile and the kind of warm and intriguing personality that made me want to make up all the time I'd missed spending with her.  So I invited her to a gathering at my place a few weeks ago. As I was about to introduce her to L, L exclaimed, "I know that smile!" Turns out Jeanie is famous! SO many people at that party knew Jeanie from her work on public television. I didn't know I'd befriended a celebrity!

2) Summer break: Not only is it break time. I've achieved peak break-time brain. I had to stop and figure out what day of the week it was. Perfect!

3) Family: Big A has a new nickname at work; the nurses are calling him Dr. Zamboni. Apparently, the E.R. is usually full when he gets in to work, but they love how good he is at getting people care/referrals/tests/discharges, so they're relieved when he's on the schedule because he clears things up. Sounds like a superhero to me.

4) New students: Nu signed up for classes this week, so it reminded me that students are signing up and I peeked at my new student rosters.  And there are so many new-to-me students! Yay! (And also one student whom I've known since they were a toddler. We're going to their grad party tomorrow, actually. This goes against my self-imposed rule of no family or friends in my class. I'll work on dissuading them later this summer.)

5) Pic: From last October's trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. If you asked me, I would say I like water views and green, lush landscapes... but I constantly find myself thinking about these majestic, arid, red formations. Their dimensions make me feel so small and their endurance makes me feel so hopeful. I think I'm besotted with them. I went back and looked through old pictures. 

second-best

My sister's two-week trip to visit me might feel more like a one-week trip because she'll visit two very dear friends as well. Those trips are as short as they can possibly be--three days each, one day to travel each way and one day there.

To be able to write that down calmly without bursting into tears has taken me all of a week. It felt so petty to begrudge the other visits, but I imagined two whole weeks to ourselves with lots of downtime. Now it'll be a slightly busier schedule, but still so good.

Anyway, trivia today--just me, Big A, AH, and SD. We got second place after leading until the final wager round.

Pic: A shelter in progress? Along the banks of the Red Cedar.

Three Things from Tuesday's to do/done list

1) Trip to Ikea with Nu this morning. Our plan was to blast our Indian (Hindi, Telugu, + Tamil) playlist and I would translate key parts of the chorus for Nu. But the first few songs had predominantly English lyrics. "Oh, are they saying, 'Take the world and paint it red'?" Nu asked archly of this song, for instance. So we were laughing about that, and then Nu fell asleep. On the way back Nu played me their new fave artist--a Swedish rapper called Bladee (who raps in English). The auto-synth gave me a headache, but I was a good sport because the lyrics provided ample cues to talk about mental health, relationships, drugs, and sex.

2) I fixed my bad record of not submitting any poetry this year by turning in a submission last week... and received a rejection. (And immediately began to worry that I'll NEVER place another poem EVER again.)

3) In yet another marathon gabfest this evening with the CUN(ext)T(uesday) friends, I got excellent advice as usual. I need to work on making those long overdue (by years and years) medical appointments. I feel I'm very in tune with my body and don't need preventative tests, but I'm probably just telling myself that because I find mammograms and pap smears very uncomfortable. And while vaguely on medical subjects, I have to say the woman who helped me place Nu's contact lenses order was an absolute gem--not only did she find a $150 rebate, she called me five minutes after our call to say she'd convinced my patchy eye-insurance to pay up another $120.

Pic: Three canoes on The Red Cedar from my long walk yesterday. 

Joy and Power

I've been wishing people a joyful and powerful No Kings Day. And by all accounts, it seems like it was both of those things for everyone who attended. Some of my favorite signs were "No Faux King Way" (say it fast!) and a "No Parking" sign with the "Par" part crossed out. Gathering in large numbers with united purpose and creativity is joy and power.

I went with people, but was still a bit nervous about being grabbed off the street and sent off to a jail somewhere. It's just that crazy out there these days or I'm just that crazy these days. Either way. 

Just to make sure I looped in some joy, I hit the Farmer's Market and went to a graduation party as well. 

Pic: The crowd of protestors at the Capitol this morning. 

I got my way, but not the puppy

The third puppy was an impulse wish, so things may change yet again, but for now--I don't think I'm getting Legolas (Lego). 

Friends were uniformly supportive in their encouragement. To Big A's caution that three puppies might be excessive, LV scoffed that SIX might SEEM excessive, but not three. That still makes me laugh.

Big A, At, and Nu came around. (My mom used to say that I like to test people who love me. That sounds awful, and I probably do. But I don't think I was yearning for a puppy to test them.) 

Ultimately, it was another family member who changed my mind. We had a lot of visitors last week, and I noticed Max is a bit shy and seems to need his mama more than Huck or Scout did. He's usually rambunctious, so this public persona is a bit surprising. It made me feel like he's still a baby and needs more time as the baby of the family. 

Pic: Baker Woods with L. It was an explosion of green the moment I stepped in. So different from two months ago when I was last there with Lisa.