late-July thoughts

I shouldn't have said it was nearing the end of summer yesterday... What I meant was that it was the end of summer break... for me. 

Our D.C. trip is in a week, and I'll be in a full-day workshop (8-5) the day after we return. That's soon.

I can't believe I'm whining--what an incredible privilege it is to take a break as an adult. I always wish everyone got mandated time off. In my family, how nice it would be if At and Big A had at least a couple of weeks off to read, lounge, and turn off their alarms... How much better their health and wellbeing would be. 

 To someone's text enquiring after me, I responded "I’m good… waking up to the reality that one way or another it’s almost August…" And then on reconsideration: "I mean it’s August THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW 😂😭"

Pic: Still summer in flower time, clearly.

the times

Don't ask why I'm up at 3:27 a.m., but now I'm worried for friends and family in Hawaii and on the West Coast as tsunami waves from the Russian earthquake make their way across the Pacific ocean.

I was just thinking yesterday that this has been a beautiful summer--not too hot, just enough rain to keep everything lush, NO mosquitoes, a record-breaking number of fireflies and butterflies...

It has also been a month since At's ex SLE died, and this was the month of my mom's heart attack and Big A's mysterious illness. And suddenly--or so it seems--we're nearing the end of summer.

Pic: Nu is filling out health information forms, and Max thinks he can help. Huck milling around (under Max), is thinking about joining in, because she knows stuff too. I can't believe Nu will be off and living in the dorms in a few weeks!

What I'm looking at

One of my summer tasks was to do a closet cull. It hasn't happened yet. Could still happen, I suppose! 

Another one was to put together a chapbook of poetry. I have been working on that a bit. I started wondering today... if that should be two chapbooks. 

Instead of trying to force the nature pieces and the family/politics pieces into the same space, perhaps they should each have a separate volume? It might be easier to articulate a theme that way. 

A lot of the time, the nature compositions are untethered--they matter to me at the moment of writing, but may not be interesting to anyone else because they don't tell a story. I'd be sad to lose all of them though.

Pic: purple flowers by the river, reflection of trees and sky. When I looked at my post-walk photos, I didn't know what I was looking at at first. 

this familiar walk

after the sharpness of one thing, another
the hope or hurt you choose 
to keep you company 

in places many-sided by trees, air, & earth 
the living, rooted prairie becomes
everything you love

so that trees take the shape of your parents
and grass spreads like the sweep
of family sharing news

you wear it on your breast, this belonging

softer since being torn... a different 
feeling to the same song
___________________

Pic: Geese on the Red Cedar. With Big A today. What with my family visiting and then his bike accident and illness, we hadn't been on our "Super Sparty" walk in ages. 

trying to be strong

Gaza Poets Society has shared many beautiful poems over the years. Yesterday their message was a stark and anguished plea:

"Save our children"

What else is left to say? How can we go on in a world where children are willfully being sniped at and starved to death. I hope we can let the food waiting outside the Israeli blockade get through before it is too late. Everything else can wait.

*

Big A is so much better (fingers firmly crossed) and a good thing too, because he's back at work tonight. I think he could do with at least a couple more days off work, but he's on the schedule. "I exist to make a profit for the hospital's shareholders," is how he explained it to me.

Pic: I took Nance's advice and took A to spend some time with trees... Things have been so nerve-racking, we've barely been outside together. 

not out of the woods or hospitals yet...

Big A's fever finally broke late last night, but this evening we were back in Urgent Care because he had extreme nausea. 

My mom is doing better but not so well that they're ready to release her from the ICU.

Someone I was talking to said it sounded like the universe was pranking me. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to yell "I give up!" or "Cut it out!"

Pic: The beautiful Monarch I saw on the milkweed out by the mailbox last week.

telling everyone I know

I usually don't post very much on FaceBook... But I needed everyone I knew to pull for my mom...

and they really came through.

That's the thing I have to love about Facebook, when you need people, everyone from your fifth-grade best friend to the newly-appointed president of your college shows up for you. 

I'm so grateful for everyone's well wishes, I hope they work for my Amma. 

Pic: Screen-grab from my FB post today

back

The two on the left are now back in Bangalore.

I started the day stupid sad, but got progressively better as I crossed tasks off my to-do list.

Pic: From family dinner the day before they left. Amma, Chelli, Huck, At, Nu, and Max. I love everyone so much.... but have to say, Huck is the best poser.

from here to go-dhuli

our words tear paths

as if we are oracles

our touch gathers

courage as though 

there's no law for it 

mosquitoes now follow us home 

knocking on our window panes

like tiny trickster castaway birds

who are also sorrowful orphans 

it is yet a quiet sky

as the clouds go by 

in the long intimacy

of anguish, a golden

go-dhuli dust blooms

my mother has promised us love

and it is in this clearing: quiet as--

wary as-- gentle as-- worn as-- cattle

waiting and gentling into another time

_____________________________

Note: Go-dhuli, literally "dust of cows" in Sanskrit, the golden hour of sunset when cattle return home; it is considered to be a beautiful and auspicious time and is a nostalgic trope. Cows are revered as archetypal mothers (Go-matha) in Hindu-Indian culture. (I mean, that's where "holy cow" as an expression probably came from!?) Also, my mom and I have a very silly, longstanding act where we play cow and calf.

____________________________

Pic: Nu's photo of Chelli, Huck, Max, and me reading in the afternoon. (Or Chelli and I are trying to anyway.)

home and away

My India fam is back from the trip to visit friends and we've been inseparable all day. Time is running out. This is likely my mom's last trip to the U.S. I don't feel like I can ask her to undertake 24-hour travel for me again. It's tough facing it, but my once irrepressible mom is not as hearty or hardy. 

My sis and I have shared all the hacks and jokes we'd been saving up for each other. And she now knows all my walking paths, so when I send pictures of scenery, she'll know where they came from.

Big A is doing ok... It's his first wipeout in 35+ years of bicycling and I think that hurts the most.

Three nice things for me this week: 1) I got randomly picked as volunteer of the month at Helping Women Period and I shared that on social media in case other people wanted to get involved too. 

2) I got an email from the colleague who runs the travel abroad program conveying some generous remarks from a student. That was nice in itself. I didn't realize until I got a thank you from the provost that the colleague had copied other people too. I thought that was extra magnanimous.

3) One of the editors of a recent thing I sent off wrote to another editor about my piece: "Isn't this just wonderful?" It's not much and doesn't mean anything in terms of production--but it just seemed so cheerful and unfiltered, it has made me smile every time I've thought of it. 

Pic: Huck and Max. A bit serious--they like the extra pets with extra fam around, but they're not sure they like sharing me.

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. 

sweet liberation

With all the horribleness about the big, bad bill--it didn't particularly feel like I wanted to celebrate this fourth of July yesterday. 

But American fireworks are truly spectacular, so I felt compelled to offer to take the fam to the outdoor symphony and fireworks at Adado Park. TBH, I was relieved that my mom begged off citing jetlag, especially since waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks could mean she had to stay up until 10:30 or later...

But there was a freedom story to tell after all. There was a squirrel in the tea garden yesterday. They were as terrified of being indoors as I was of having them there and I was finally able to coax them out the front door. I thought that was the end of that. My sister said she thought she saw something scurry up a plant later, but I hoped she was mistaken. But then Big A woke up from his post-call nap to a chipmunk in our bedroom. This guy was totally unfazed by our presence, and had a quick little loop he'd carved out and didn't seem inclined to leave. Finally, Big A remembered that his grandma Louise used to use these humane traps thirty years ago, so he went and got one.  

They work (although they have bad reviews online).

Pic: The naughty fellow before we released him into Baker Woods. You know that saying about rescue dogs--"who rescued whom?" I feel like the one who's been rescued. And I wonder if we have a hole in our siding/cladding where all the little creatures are getting in... Also, the way Big A is milking this bit of heroism... SMDH.

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...

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.)

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!)

sequence

the fireflies are out          summer visitors          their joyful            light        indirect          without accumulation            a shorthand          lighting up the continuum      they are          ghostwords           winking like secrets          and           adrift as passwords     unburdened by footprints    play         stay    and hold        even as       our dimensions fold

__________________________      

Note: I was horrified by the discussion of whether we would be the last generation to see fireflies. Say it ain't so! 

(Also see Nance for the titles's connection to "sequins.")

Pic: Tiny turtle making its way up a rock on the Red Cedar. I seem to have one of these pictures every year... I'm fascinated by their progress.