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.

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!)

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. 

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... 

summer sadness

all my grandparents are dead

 all of them now live with me

and  I am as tired as they are

calibrating so many endings

sadness settles--a misreading

a waiting whimpers in veins

possibilities turn impossible 

like feelings I try not to feel 

 I've told myself: I've no right

things are good, it's summer

even skies are on my side &

sunshine is...  the  purest kiss

 but I go full sol  to soulful 

to the solstice of  solipsism 

I  know  I... cannot fly, yet

mindlessly look for wings

_________________

Pic: Out with Max and Huck early in the morning. The dogwood friends gave me for my birthday is in full bloom this week. L said she'd picked out a Kousa, because it is a late bloomer like me. She really gets me :).

ode to my summer

the tree golden in early summer                a leafy umbilicus into light                summer weeks stall forever                nothing happens day after day                until you forget what you've forgotten                and in this shaded solitude                the soft echoes of omniscience              even when I can't hear them                I can't stop listening

________________

Pic: Empty nest! The baby birds have flown!

 

anticipatory story

my mother is old, my father older

the hopes in my heart older too 

I will them to come back daily

the way every day shows

the way every day shows us

loved ones and love come and go 

they go where? are gone how?

go ahead and tell me, though

I won't want to know

really won't want to know

how details rip truth like velcro

float in water like a miracle

or a corpse or an insect

I think it's a window

and like a window

in each story where we're still alive 

it is not the vertigo of certainty

telling the usual ways of love

at times, mourning knows

only mourning knows

____________________

Pic: Father's Day blooper reel. Big A's tee says "Doodfather" because he's a very indulgent dog (goldendoodle) dad. Max and Huck just couldn't stay still. I talked to my dad early in the morning... I miss him a bit extra because he's not up for (is just too old for) 24-hour travel and is not coming later this month with my mom and sis. 

what we have here

(here) is the door I promised, my darling

the moon growing full with welcome

late in the evening as our day turns

it is holy to need someone so

(so) scrutiny doesn't concern us anymore

our breath weakening in the breaks

like a broken stone collecting 

freedom, opening

(opening) trust deep as the release of cicadas 

from earth--their rising a resurrection

from the profound time of dreams

and dirt and promise

_____________

Pic: It's the one month of the year our rhododendron is in bloom; I'm in awe every time I glimpse it.

justice and care

As armed National Guard troops are called to push back on unarmed civilians in Los Angeles protesting masked ICE agents (why on earth are they masked like they're the KKK???!?!?!) who are conducting workplace raids and storming elementary school graduations, this passage from Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba's Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care comes to mind:

"If your tactics disrupt the order of things under capitalism, you may well be accused of violence, because "violence" is an elastic term often deployed to vilify people who threaten the status quo... Conditions that the state characterizes as "peaceful" are, in reality, quite violent. Even as people experience the violence of poverty, the torture of imprisonment, the brutality of policing, the denial of health care, and many other violent functions of this system, we are told we are experiencing peace, so long as everyone is cooperating. When state actors refer to "peace," they are really talking about order."

And I like what Rebecca Solnit said today to people in L.A. about creative resistance: "Shut it down. Slow it down. Wake it up with decentralized protests. Military people are good at violence; that's what they're trained for. But Angelenos greatly outnumber them, know the city intimately, have a thousand ways to make a ruckus and gum up the works. I hope people will appeal to the California National Guard that they're on an illegal mission and should never act against their own people like this. Also, Hollywood, pretend you're in an action movie. Because now you are. Deploy your stars, your special effects, your set designers. Maybe a stunt woman or two."

Pic: The bushes by our front gate were so overgrown, they were hazardous. When driving, we just couldn't see traffic while we were turning into the street. Big A started to trim the bushes the other day and stopped when he realized that there was a nest with baby birds. He was upset because one baby had fallen out and he hoped the parents would still come back to the nest and take care of the rest. Yesterday, we peeked, and it seemed like the babies (we think robins) were doing well. I can't say how happy it makes me that he cares about things like this.

dream politics

There's schadenfreude to those two horrible people having a snitty shouting match in public. But the horrors and the cruelty don't stop with them so I must keep on protesting. 

The story of the young man who died because his maintenance inhaler became too expensive is nightmarish. The wholesale, wide-ranging cruelty of the people in power gives me elaborate revenge fantasies where they experience everything they're causing for other people. The "Big, Beautiful Bill" has got to go. The people they've removed from their families have got to be returned. Federal agencies have to be restaffed, re-standardized, re-funded... it may take years to reverse the uncaring viciousness of the last six months. Not that where we were six months ago was ideal.

In my dreams there are pickets and marches and wars every day. Yesterday, I was bossily moving someone closer to a TV camera so their poster would get more attention. The closest I came to that in real life yesterday was when I moved a planter closer to a spot of sun.

Pic: Black squirrel nibbling. Despite having lived in Michigan for well over a decade, black squirrels still delight me. This one's delighting in a tidbit they found in the grass. 

three updates and three book-ish developments

1) Just wanted to say Nu's not in trouble for the other night (and neither am I). At this point, letting me know where they plan to be is more about information than permission. It's just been such a whirlwind of sociality since graduation, I flounder at keeping track. 

2) As of today, little puppy Lego is still available. I thought today (Boss Day!) would be decision day, but Big A asked what if Max and Lego (who will be Max's size when full grown) gang up on Huck who is tiny and old--that is giving me pause. Also, should I be taking all the puppies? I feel a bit greedy like the Melissa McCarthy character in Bridesmaids. (But then look how happy she looks!)

3) My mom and sis are coming at the end of the month!!! Or at least we have tickets, so that's progress.
_____________

1) My book was done. But I now have to make some serious edits because it's about trans politics, and the last few months have changed the landscape of trans rights significantly. The illustrator came through with some amazing work this week, and that is giving me the boost I need to complete this task.

2) I started the year wanting to get out a chapbook of poetry, and have made absolutely no progress. I have not even made any moves or submitted to any journals or anthologies. It's June. I should start. I'm glad it's summer and have some time to devote to this project.

3) Pic: Contributor copies of a poetry anthology I have a few poems in arrived today. Right now, it's available on Amazon, but I'm avoiding that site. It should be available directly from the press soon. All the poems in this anthology started here on the blog--most have undergone massive revisions except the one I wrote for Nu, which shows up with minor tweaks.

talky-talk

A day for visitors! 

L and I took a long summery walk in the morning and then L disappeared for a while and showed up bearing this month's bookclub book and a ton of cut lilacs from her garden. The whole downstairs smells so heady.

LV stopped by later for tea and treats and we just jabbered away through tons of stuff and pizza delivery and he helped me break up Max's excited and immediate friendship with the pizza man + desire to explore his van. LV didn't leave until the imminent arrival of my C U N(ext)T(uesday) club, where he rightly felt he would be out of place. 

Big A and Nu crept in during the short time no one was around to sneak some pizza for dinner before doing their own thing (nap before work, swim with friends).

It was supposed to be pizza and movie night, but the girlfriends did not pick a movie and we just talked for hours instead. We're going to do the celebrations everyone feels they missed out on--BL didn't get a bachelorette party during the pandemic, for instance.

Everyone agreed that I need a third puppy, so I either have the best friends or they're all enablers. I got to confess in a safe and supportive space that the other day I thought Nu was kissing me goodnight, but they were actually kissing me goodbye, and I didn't realize until the morning that they had not spent the night at home. I did not know where my kid was at 10 pm or any point after. Yikes.

Pic: Peonies from my walk with L this morning. What even are these colors?! I love summer.

Ughs <--> Ohs

The NWSA proposal EM and I submitted together didn't get accepted, but the one I submitted by myself did. I wanted to go with her!

I ran out of moisturizer while traveling with the kids and sampled Nu's Vanicream, and it's a dream. It may be the one thing Miranda July got right in All Fours. (That and the bit about dogs.)

I got my travel course evals--high marks, but very few comments. It would have been nice if some of the kind things people wrote in cards and emails were in the course evals--I'm up for assessment the year after next.

I got a copy of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings (from a Goodwill) because a student (Hi, CW!) wanted to work on it and am reading it now. I expected to hate every minute of its appropriative voice... but have to say it's quite respectful and suspenseful.

A poetry anthology I have some poems in is now on Amazon and getting promoted heavily by the editors... and I'm worried my mom might see. I know she'll not like that I wrote about some of those topics.  

Pic: I watched this frog swim up to the little solar fountain like they were a kid in summer camp swimming up to the buoy in the middle of the lake. Their name is Popchyk. (Big A is reading The Goldfinch on my recommendation and we talk about the puppy more than any other character.)

"Grad U Ate"

Nu's grad party!

It was going to be outside, but then it looked like rain, so we moved everything indoors. The house was full of people who've known Nu since they were a baby/toddler and it wasn't just me getting emotional about this celebration.

Nu who'd consented to this party just to make me happy admitted at the end of the evening that they'd enjoyed being made a fuss of... !!! YAY.

I set out my kumkum bharani for people to place a vermillion blessing on Nu's forehead before they left. And my favorite thing about my multi-ethnic community is how each person made this Hindu tradition their own. While some people placed a dot (bindi/bottu), some drew a cross, or a crescent, and even... a smiley face!

Pic: Nu making a silly face because I asked for a pose. Behind them, their cake that says, "Grad U Ate." (I learned what the kids were saying and the pun wrote itself!)

"Even a wounded world holds us"

Thank you for the kindhearted words yesterday, everyone. I am lucky and grateful to know you. Your words helped.

As did this quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) that came to me via L: 

"Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift."

Pic: This winsome chipmunk who lives inside my broken Buddha also brought me cheer yesterday.

Three-worry Thursday

The kids and I leave for the wedding tomorrow... we fly in and out of Newark airport, which has been experiencing tech delays and disasters lately. Whomp-whomp. We have plenty of time on both sides of the big event, so I'm hopeful that things will be okay. "Promise me you'll come back," L said.

And I hope At will have a good time at the wedding. It's her first big family gathering since transitioning. I don't expect anyone will be mean--everyone was simply lovely when we shared Nu's transition at another wedding, and there are other trans and non-binary kids in the family, but At might be the first trans woman. It's not a big reveal--I've had heart-to-hearts with my cousins about it + At and the kid cousins share social media, but there are bound to be people who will be finding out for the first time. 

Pic: I caught sight of this pair of mallards in the pond this morning and was worried they might nest here, because I've done my reading. Baby ducklings would have been cute, but I wasn't sure if Max and Huck would be gentle with them, so I acted like a very noisy human and they decided to leave. 

this is about everything

the world is different after rain 
its marrows open, singing, astonished

outlined in reflections and wet mirages

I mark myself in nothing now 

in the endless movement of trembling

meeting no resistance, passing through

only freckled with the dailiness 

of living and knowing we can wake up

like flowers opening their bright mouths

_________________

Pic: At and Nu surprised me with a M.U.M. (MakeUp Mother's Day) today. Their card was an "In Sympathy" card for being their mom. They think they're so ironic and funny. [eyeroll] After they finished laughing at their joke, we had a wonderful time raiding my closet for wedding attire to wear this weekend and picking out jewelry--with my kids clowning all the while. Then a leisurely lunch of sesame noodles (I'd already made that for dinner, I didn't know we were celebrating today) while watching Laapataa Ladies, until it was time to head off to various meetings and appointments. It was too rainy to do our usual Mother's Day gardening, but I get three days of travel with these loves later this week, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities to maximize our time. 

the world after

I can start again tomorrow
despite how much I don't 
like becoming divided
despite how much 
I... shouldn't be

find me there

there's no reason for sorrow 
in a  day  still  so young 
when old  letters catch 

me time traveling... I

wonder who holds 

your empty hand 

_____________________

Pic: Max and Huck fresh from the groomer, watching me fetch myself a cup of tea to drink in the tea garden, which is very jungly at this point. ALSO!! I didn't mean to imply the fam neglected my plants while I was gone. The zillion plants and watering them are my thing. I've never asked Big A or the kids to do it because it takes at least two hours (a week) and that's a lot. If I make the pots a bit swampy before I leave, they can usually wait two weeks. As you can see, the begonias, geraniums, and jasmines (heroes all!) are blooming.

catching up

Wow, did I really not expect to come back? The (human) kids and I are supposed to head to my Cousin K's wedding reception in NJ later this week. On the long ride back home from the airport, I realized that Big A had booked our plane tickets, but the wedding hotel was booked up when he'd tried to book us a room, and so I was going to call them the next morning and do it myself and then absolutely did not do that! Last night I realized that if we were going to go, we were going to have to be very lucky with hotel reservations. 

This morning, there were some rooms at a hotel nearby, so we're all set. 

Also, I didn't set up plans with NJ/NY people for the day after the reception, which looks free. 

And... I didn't finish inviting people to Nu's grad party next week. I should get on that too.

Today was just lovely. So much time with Max, Huck, and Nu (who conveniently had senior skip day). Then I watered the zillion plants. Most of them made it without me or water for two weeks! Some dry leaves, but nothing a few good soaks won't make up for. Only the the bleeding hearts and some herbs, gave up. Sounds like I'm throwing old-fashioned insults, but those are the literal plants that didn't make it. 

A long, lingering dinner catching up on all the little details of the past two weeks was balm for my soul. Also yummy--we combined, polished up, and then polished off two Thai dishes Big A had experimented with over the weekend.

Pic: Things abloom in London. I haven't taken a single photo since I got home.