my *every*thing people

 The fam does their thing. 

🏡🏕

Also: we watched Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave over a year ago at least, and we're still using so much of its dialogue as a shorthand for family jokes.

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. 

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!

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.

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]

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!) 

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.

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. 

"maybe-you're-just-like-my-mother" day

The human kids helped me clean and restock our Little Free Library and then all the kids worked in the garden--digging, clearing, weeding, pruning, and planting in the veggie plots. There are piles of autumn leaves everywhere, but the paths are now cleared and we'll need not fear running out of spearmint and/or peppermint (which came back strong over the winter) any time soon. Ha.

I had a walk with EM planned and the kids had planned to take me out for a walk later, but it looked like a downpour, so we stayed in, and they made me a big pot of tea, which we drank in the tea garden while we did a puzzle and then played cards.

Dinner was personalized mezze platters everyone helped to make. 

It was such a lovely day.

day/break/out

Daylight--it wounds the sky, gashes the clouds
--a jail/a madhouse would feel like a vacation
today. J/K; joke! I'm timid, presumptive
 
I send a few glances out--sort of as envoys,
like lighting small candles everywhere 
as though entertaining--protest

I think my mother once had hands like mine,
to measure submission as it crept up on us
--in the flicker of a lazy lizard eye

In my head, I just want to keep assembling 

these lines, ironically, un-wrinkling words

I don't know--back into distraction

____________________________

Meme from Twitter; TBH, the day is as gray as this picture.

scraps

I expected fanfare at sunrise

instead here is an aperture 

into resurrection

in immense welcome of it all

yolk of sun, soup of soil

feed the taste of return

solving the mystery of missing

things by... just growing in

limbs uncurling out

freed from winter's quarantine 

in the drama of the moment

rests a dirge for the day

[Ely Woods]

just

There's just a little.

But a little is about all I can manage right now.

[Baker Woods]

reflection

Just scraps of cherry blossom petals; dead leaves; dank water; my bundled-up, masked, shadowy reflection...

Somehow, I love these colors and shapes together.

[MSU Horticultural Gardens]

break

I had to push myself to put on my hiking boots and meet L this morning, but I'm glad I did... a bramble-y, mossy trek through Ely Woods along the Red Cedar, a brilliant blue sky, and L listening without judgement made things a bit bearable.

I thought I would work in the garden for a bit when I got home... but I didn't. 

I actually don't know what I did today. Ha.

Breath Song

Your breath's so imprecise in meaning
I can barely make sense as it swells
like lichen or love, the secrets it tells 

in its hard-earned and happy prison

Drawn between its vague borders

I learn by tracing the link of veins--

times, tie them to how you hold me 

sweet/safe for a heart-beat/a life-time 

[Picture from my perch where I was reading in the afternoon sun; wearing a faded, stained--but still favorited--summer blouse; marveling how the cherry blossoms are here practically overnight.]

Furrow

I might meet you in the street

"wait, wait" you might say
kneeling right there 
in the cleavage
of the year
so honest

pouring beauty
rubbing my belly 
keeping full the promise 
soon scrambling across my face

[Day 100 of 2021; Baker Woods with L this morning.]