yesterday and every day

MSU Spirit rock

 

"a fair day's work"

 

I stole this pic off of At's Twitter this morning...

and find myself looking at it all the time...

Not sure why (I mean he looks so good and so grown up but still)...

Even Ammama, his #1 fan, doesn't get it. 

But At used to love Capt. America, and I think my brain is seeing his circular UAW placard as a mashup of Capt. America's shield.

"Capt. America but make it union"  

"boys' mom" note

So apparently it's National Daughters' Day, and my FB feed is full of lovely people posting about their lovely daughters and I'm loving it esp. as I no longer have daughters this year. (The kids have made Huckleberry an "honorary bro" so I now have four boy-kids.)

Nu has had a cold for a couple of days and spiked a fever last night, so we headed for the drive-through Covid-test this morning. They couldn't find Nu's health records and I was quietly panicking because I thought it was because I'd decided to leave the sex column blank, but it turned out that my tired brain had given them the wrong year of birth (I gave them At's!!). I can't wait to see the AMA's recommendation that sex be removed from birth certificates universally accepted.

"the next time you want me"

Phoebe Bridgers singing for me as I soak and relive some recent conversations about... of all things... Pet Sematary. (You know, the Stephen-King-novel/movie where beings buried in the "Pet Sematary" come back to life but are disappointing and different and zombiefied.)

First I had a general epiphany about how nostalgia-fueled decisions to go back to the way things were rarely go well. "Going back" to places, people, whatever... never goes as planned. Perhaps that's the true moral of Pet Sematary. It came up in some conversation with Big A. And then suddenly because we'd talked about Scout's health, he was trying to get me to promise that I would never clone Scout. An option I'd never considered before but seemed tempting. But Big A rightly made the point that Scout is his own person and cloning disrespects that etc. OK? OK.

I was telling the kids this over breakfast some day this week, and I don't know if they appreciated their parents' deep thoughts. But they immediately started a tally of who in the family would put people in the pet sematary. Apparently neither human kid would. According to them, I totally would. And their dad--well... apparently he has a strong sense of medical ethics and wouldn't. But... he'd still probably put me in the pet sematary because he's so attached. And then, they riffed, when pet-semataried mom starts stabbing people and stuff, he'd be all patient explaining things like "Puppy, remember we talked about not stabbing people?" 

For a conversation that included so many deaths, including my own, that last line in its authenticity still makes me chuckle out loud.

people-ing

A long walk-talk with KB yesterday; I begin to feel I can handle the world again.

Early morning chat with my sister; figuring out all the things on our list for this year--many of them impossible without a passport (which I don't yet have as everything's so backed up). But she makes plans seem possible anyway.

Midday yoga in the forest with Nu and L on either side of me; a sort of peace washes over me.

Garden party at our place this evening; the comfort of sharing food with CF, SB, SD, and AH and others. 

Talking to strangers on an FB Golden Doodle page about Scout's difficulty walking; lots of new things to obsess over and bring up with doc/E.R. visit in 48 hours.

Baby cousin K and her partner J arrive tomorrow; I get to spoil them. 

instant classic

I smile every time I look at this picture of mom and her siblings weak with laughter (I bet it was something my uncle said) at my aunt's 60th birthday weekend.

And I love that this picture was taken by my baby sis who dutifully took tons of pics because I couldn't be there.

hot take

Back walking along the Red Cedar with L today... Scout and Huck heard her at the door when she came to pick me up this morning and went bonkers to see her as she'd been taking care of them while we were gone. Lovely walk; lovely talk; lovely L.

Canceled my planned walk with BS (it was too, too hot and I was way too tired after catching up on housekeeping and new student schedule changes). I was going to cancel my walk with EM too, but she canceled first. Ha. I didn't even have to plead for the pandemic pass as we'd established.

Still thinking of At's impromptu detour yesterday to the Battle of Homestead site. Still thinking and still processing... and so moved by the small donor-funded memorials (physical and virtual) and their commitment to solidarity and workers' rights. 

@ the Andy Warhol Museum

 

Silver Clouds!

#LaterPost

mini-vacation

 

A quick trip to Pittsburgh... 

my anxious face is hilarious.

Here's a better one of the kids at the lookout after we rode the Monongahela Incline.

#LaterPost

american euphoric

 

I got a good picture of S and J with all the grandkids for the family holiday card. I wish I had gotten the childhood portrait of Big A just behind At's shoulder... but Scout's butt wouldn't fit.  

*

Obviously, I titled this post as a riff on Wood's American Gothic, but my capability for normalcy and jokes about American-ness is dimmed by the horrific news from Afghanistan and diminished in the emotionally exhausting aftermath of having just finished Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies.

a solidly socialist... snuggle

 

Scout + At + Paulo Freire.

a time of discernment

My humans are each engaged in a personal time of discernment...

Nu is figuring out being 13, their gender, and responsibilities and anxieties around high school...

At is experiencing post-graduation life and making meaning of his impromptu gap year...

Big A is dealing with a change of employer and the potential loss/depletion of research funds...

I appear to be panicking at will and slipping into periods of sadness routinely... None of it is inexplicable--if I think about it I can pull up tons of reasons why I should be sad. But it's not particularly discerning or meaningful.

Anyway, something that brought me a momentary chuckle today: I'd switched Siri to "Indian voice" recently. And good thing I did too. When I turned the phone's flashlight on by accident today, I was both faraway and flustered and slipped into Indian/British mode, asking Siri to turn off "the torch." And... it was done even before I stammered out "I mean flashlight." Nice discernment, Indian voice Siri.

Pic: Waterlilies at MSU Horticultural Gardens.

escape landscape

first: sun on high smiling down

then liquid, drenched in luster

leaves, trees, all this causality  

deciphering futures/scriptures

from beauty, I'm still interested 

to learn how to drift with light 

outside lies the anthropocene 

like moths lusting for a glow   

here I'm only: oh's, aw's, noes

mouth heavier than ever before 

I go after words and find sounds:

songs of sobs, verses of laughter

Pic: Baker Woods this morning with L. 
(Not pictured: swampy-slippery paths, at least one spill, and swarms of mosquitoes.)

movie heavy

It was my "Boss Day," and Netflix said Kal Ho Na Ho was available, so that's what I picked for the fam to watch. Feels so weird to think that movie is nearly 20 years old already. 

The songs made At remember dancing in the kitchen in New Jersey 🥰. There's a fair bit of queer baiting in it and the kids picked up on that right away 🥰🥰. Big A and At drifted away after an hour, but Nu watched the movie all the way to the end with me 🥰. 

At and I girded up for a second movie and went to see The Green Knight at the movie theater. Although there was only one other person at our 10:00 pm showing, I think it's going to be our last movie for a while unless things get a lot better. 

I love Arthurian re-visions and The Green Knight delivers sumptuously. Also, it's an era frequently coopted by white supremacists and their narratives, so Dev Patel as Gawain was so satisfying. And I guess it's about maternal machinations, so very apropos for me to see it with At. Ha. 

what goes around

I'm in despair with the pandemic rubbish all over again. Thank the universe for people making creative memes...

In other not news, August starts tomorrow, and a look at my summer list tells me that we're doing alright. I even got to do one of my big maybes--sit by the ocean. But things I threw in there thinking we'd definitely get to them (hammock camping, firepit nights) haven't happened because it has been such a wet summer.

 Still a few precious weeks left...

today in vignettes

An early morning walk with L after SO MANY days. Between her travels and mine, it's been way too long. The Radiology Gardens (where I snapped this pic) had a fundraiser, and we bought a giant planter of coleus each and lugged it around with us.

At took me to the car dealership earlier in the morning to drop Bluey off for a two-year service. When the check-in person asked if I needed a loaner or a ride back home, I felt so proud telling them that I "brought my son." The son in question was amused that when he stopped to get gas, I hopped out to help him, but was so lost around all the slots and buttons after two years of plugging in Bluey.

A boozy cousin B called as we were getting dinner on the table. A bunch of cousins are getting together at his new beachhouse in Pondicherry and he MISSED me. I've been seeing pics on cousin chat since, and everyone is talking about a big reunion in December. Today I'm pretending (even to myself) that this might actually happen.

And today is officially the day Nu picked their new name. We had tried a name that started with "N' for a while. But then one day as I was getting dressed, I saw Big A's money clip with his initials, and the thought that At would be able to use it one day slipped into my mind...  I wanted that for Nu too. Nu's new name begins with "A" too, so they'll still be the "Baby A" who debuted here in 2007. And even better, it kind of starts the same way as their old name, so I can course correct before I reach the end and avoid slip-ups. 

edit

I will not fail fall falter--
what is history but 

a storm that left 

us all bowed

although not forever long
I watch waves touch

shores and ships

--be calmed 

(I remember how old colonizers 

told us of monsters on maps

even--while wielding:

their sword-gun-pen)

_______

Pic: Flying home--skies never fail to fascinate me.

"memory-keeping"

Ten days ago, photographer Danish Siddiqui was killed by the Taliban. I know people who don't know his name, but would recognize his images right away. What images! Siddiqui's image of the Rohingya woman keeps showing up in my dreams a lot lately (I've been rereading Sea of Poppies and I think my brain's conflating things). 

SV, who's quoted in this New Yorker article, calls his work "memory-keeping, at a time when we have lost our capacity to think or remember." Here are some other galleries of his work in remembrance. 

"How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind"

Today I'm really feeling Liza Featherstone's essay in The New Republic: "How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind."

"I’m in no condition to receive this news. I can’t tolerate more worry, death, sickness, sadness, or pain—more mothers and grandmothers dying, and maybe even less bearably, children.

I’m not alone.

We are in the middle of another wave of horrific climate news, but many of us are too traumatized to pay attention. The more loss and horror we’re facing in the rest of our lives—whether from the coronavirus and opioid pandemics, economic upheaval, or the ordinary awfulness of cancer and death—the less equipped we are to take it in."

beyond

 

Family trip to Detroit today for the Beyond Van Gogh exhibition. It was trippy and magical.

The kids shared a Dr. Who episode featuring VVG, and perhaps that's why I found myself squeezing Big A's hand and tearing up in the immersive hall as all the beautiful brushstrokes began to swirl around me.