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.

this brat is back

Thanks for the well-wishes and messages of support, everyone! I'm back! Reentry was "uneventful." And so quick. Immigration did not even need our passports--one quick face camera scan, a green check, and you're through. The whole thing took less than two seconds. That's the good news. It's a bit unnerving how rapid and extensive the system is and how recognizable we are, though! 

Every time, I read the word "uneventful" in your comments--Nance, Lisa, Jenny, Nicole, Steph, Jeanie, and J--I felt like you were sending me a coded message of support. Ever since I shared that I was worried that my social media alignment might make things sticky for me at immigration, you all have been so kind about sending good wishes. It's a sign of the times, I suppose, that no one thought I was overreacting. And in a way that escalated my anxiety, because I could see it wasn't all in my head. Even three months ago, most people wouldn't have considered my fears legitimate. Engie was quite positive I'd be ok, and I'm glad she was right. 

Anyway, I made it through with a watermelon charm hanging off my backpack, my kuffiyeh and other Palestinian solidarity materials in my suitcase, and without scrubbing my social media. It's part of my resolve to be true to myself, not to "obey in advance," and to participate in "good trouble" when I can. 

Pic: On that note, I headed for the Palestinian solidarity march yesterday (half a million strong, by some accounts) and got this photo of Palestinian flags waving under the blue sky and Big Ben's tower. + I met up with someone I met online back in October when we were being onboarded as instructors to teach students in Gaza. KK was just as lovely in person and we had a nice chat as we marched for close to three hours.

the last supper

There are thirteen of us at the table. But just our awesome, regular selves. (No Jesuses or Judases.)

Headed for home come morning! At least half the class has journaled about not being ready to head home. Not me though.

I was both right to be worried about the tornado yesterday, and judging from the photos of the devastation I've been seeing, I wasn't nearly worried enough! I did tell Big A that I thought he should call in back-up and go home to check on the kids, but he talked me down. And I quote: "It’s inconceivable that our house alone was hit by a tornado without damage to any other structures. Meaning if Nu was under rubble EMS would already be on our street." And later, "I have multiple sick patients right now and multiple procedures….I can’t leave anytime soon regardless." Plenty of room for a fight, but I'm just glad everyone is alright.

Pic: A lucky restaurant find--a "food hall" with a variety of cuisines. So perfectly in keeping with our "cosmopolitan" theme.

Immigrant Mom Tours

I didn't increase the course fee for this travel course, because we had a surplus in 2023 (it's every other year). But gosh, it has been a challenge with the way the dollar is doing and things generally being more expensive in the U.K. anyway and because of Brexit.

Things worked out because I booked and arranged every bit of this trip myself to stay within budget, comparison shopping for the best prices like the immigrant mom I am. Ironically, Big A does all the other travel arrangements in my life, so I don't have a ton of experience. I'm so glad all our reservations worked! 

Today we used our final reservation to head out to St. Martin in the Fields to hear Edward Picton-Tuberville and Harriet Burns in concert.  The acoustics were ethereal, the performers were excellent, + they were so young, they gave me Sally Rooney vibes. 

A bit of drama in the morning as there'd been a tornado warning back home, and Nu had gone to the basement with Max and Huck after Big A had headed off to work. And then we lost touch with Nu, and I began imagining my babies were trapped under a pile of rubble. It was the middle of the night, and we couldn't rouse At or any of our neighbors, so I finally called the police station for a wellness check. I probably got on their nerves by telling them repeatedly that Max and Huck would be noisy because they would be taken by surprise. But IYKYK, I guess. I did not want my babies to become a part of the 10,000 pet dogs U.S. police officers shoot every year. (Everyone was fine. We'd lost power and Nu had fallen asleep--it was the middle of the night, after all.)

Pic: We couldn't get near Trafalgar Square on the day we did the London tour because it was VE Day and there was a parade. But I love Landseer's lions, probably because they look like dogs, and wanted a photo of the class with one. I didn't want to be in the picture because I didn't want to pass my germs on. But people insisted, so here I am skulking, looking like a Darth Vader wannabe. I'm actually smiling behind my mask!

I wonder what At's Pre-K teacher thought

I dosed up on Lemsip (which is like Theraflu, but works better) and we headed out to Oxford for another day of lectures with Robert J.C. Young, who had been my professor and is a Fellow of Wadham College. 

I'm glad we didn't cancel. 

I thought the room he'd booked for us at Wadham--the Cecil Day Lewis Room--was a lucky coincidence. But as he told my students, he booked it precisely because back when I was there, that was where we had our seminars. (Cecil Day Lewis the poet is the father of Daniel Day Lewis the actor!)

I had to tell my students the funny story about when I took At to one of Robert's parties in NYC (after he'd moved to NYU). Hoping for good behavior, I'd told five-year-old At who came with me that it was for work (as it was!). There were a lot of British and European folks at the party, so there were a lot of those greetings where you hug and then kiss on both cheeks. Lo and behold, later that week when going through At's schoolwork, I came across this gem: "My mom went to work and kissed everybody." I always wonder what At's teacher thought of that.

Pic: The class with Robert J.C. Young (and C. Day Lewis on the wall)

"Boo, you 'ho"

I think I'm sick. 

Of course, the correct response to that (on our family chat anyway) would be "Boo, you 'ho" (without the hard "r"). 

It could be the pollen merrily floating around. I've dosed myself liberally with Lemsip and am currently loopier than ever.

Pic: Our picnic at Hyde Park today. People declaiming from set Hyde Park pieces (Orwell, Shaw, Marx, C.L.R. James, William Morris) or topics they're passionate about (The Globe's R&J, Bram Stoker's Dracula, guns in general.)

my real life is waiting

I can count on the fingers of one hand the days before we're scheduled to head for home! I'm trying to stay in the moment, but home is definitely calling. London looks like a vacation, but it's actually a 24-7 gig.

I miss Max, Huckie, Nu, At, and Big A fiercely. Pictures of their dinners together or Max asleep under furniture with just his tail poking out can make me happy... or cry.

And I can't wait to get back to routine. I've lost touch with my Duolingo, I keep forgetting to take my vitamins, my hair feels so different...

Things to do after arrival are beginning to pile up: Committee meetings, writing deadlines, final grades... Also: watering my zillion plants, Nu's graduation party, traveling to my baby cousin's wedding reception in NJ.

Proposal reviews for NWSA are due this Saturday, so I worked on those for a while. I'm almost halfway done and beginning to feel less panicky about being done in time.

Pic: Getting to tour Bloomsbury with Cindy and Mike was fantastic. Here we're at the bust of Rabindranath Tagore. The piece that C&M declaimed was the same piece I'd assigned for our reading this morning, so that was extra cool.

Big Maya and the Jinx

In the first week of classes while we were talking about cultural appropriation and the habit colonizers have of naming other people's stuff after themselves, the class decided that we should name something iconic in London after ourselves. Someone proposed that Big Ben should henceforth be called "Big Maya" and that kind of stuck. Every now and then there'll be a reference to "Big Maya" in someone's homework when I'm grading after a long day to bring me a chuckle.

This particular class has been a delight. They handmade me a Mother's Day card. They quote in loco parentis at me. They've taken to posting candid guerrilla pictures of me on the group chat with entertaining observations. All the graduating students have said how happy they are that their last class is with me.

I was just thinking I was so lucky when--at the very next sightseeing stop--one person did some yelling. Talk about jinxes. I was so surprised, I started crying (behind my sunglasses, luckily). I excused myself for a while, reminded myself that I was a Big Maya, that the young person was responding from fear, and that this is part of being in loco parentis too. All good now. 

Pic: Long bus tour today to visit Stonehenge (here), Bath, the Cotswolds, and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Marx or... Lennon

Happy Mother's Day! Mine started with a phone call to my mom and finished up with a long phone call with At. Texts, reminiscences, and photos through the day and the promise of a proper celebration when (if) I get back.

A walking tour of Karl Marx sites with some students in the morning. I was joking that we should guess if the groups gathering at the meeting point were there for the Marx tour or the Beatles tour. And clever AB ad libbed that we could call the game "Marx or Lennon." (Said like "Lenin.") I almost died laughing.

A visit to Shakespeare's Globe later in the afternoon where they staged Romeo and Juliet as a western... and it worked so well! In the scene where Capulet threatens Juliet (Act 3, Scene 5), he brandished his gun on his daughter and wife and it was such a great accessorial representation of his toxic patriarchy. There was an awesome moment of chemistry between Mercutio and one bright-eyed, curly-headed member of the audience we were all buzzing about in the interval as well.

Pic: The view from our seats. Mercutio did unspeakable things to the pillar we had to imagine from the look on everyone else's faces.

tea and ceasefire

Pic: A proper afternoon tea at The Orangery in Kensington Palace. Our day of indulgence!

And a good day to revisit the wonder of how the world has only two words for tea: Tea if by Sea, Cha if by Land.

Back home in Michigan, the morels are up. I want to tell Summer to hold back until I get back.

Feeling a bit lighter as we're are halfway through our trip and the countdown to home is ON.

And when I called my mom for Mother's Day, I heard India and Pak have a ceasefire! I'm so relieved!!

"Facts Tell; Stories Sell"

I'm a bit of a ninny when it comes to navigating my way on the Tube and around London. I'm so thankful for the students who have the knack for it and help seamlessly. 

But today was one of our days to head to Oxford, and I know my way around that city SO well. We had our lecture in a seminar room at Pitt Rivers Museum, which a student aptly called "hodgepodge museum." I mean there are cases generically titled "the human form in art" stuffed with artifacts from disparate eras and areas. Our lecture was with the wonderful Will Allen who gave us the nugget that is today's post title. When advising people on immigration data, he said he always tries to give them a story to take away. 

I had to do a fair amount of in loco parentis-ing today and hope it was helpful. Later, I snoozed off on the bus to students good-naturedly arguing about video games and then dreamt about them. In my dream they were racing each other down the sidewalk and laughing hard and my father watching them from the other side of the street with me, asked me in the indulgent, tender way he has if these were my kids. I guess they are.

Pic: Our class on the steps of the Sheldonian Theater. It is the center of Oxford (and where my diploma ceremony took place!) but the building is important to our class for another reason. It is where Chimamanda Adichie's deservedly viral talk The Danger of a Single Story was recorded.

Multicultural Metropole

Our class went to Metropolitan University for a talk with Sunny Singh today. I had the same soft argument with Sunny as I've previously had with Big A. Sunny and Big A think Ta-Nehisi Coates is being lionized for "doing the bare minimum in speaking out against genocide" while I'm grateful that when so many continue to be silent, he's using his platform and risking his career. 

If I'm all cosmopolitanism this and kumbaya that, Sunny leads with a reckoning of "enslavement, colonialism, and genocide." She was dropping truth bombs and later I had to check in with students who were visibly upset and trembling. One of them said that it just hit them that their taxes would always fund genocides they didn't believe in. Devastating. 

Later a nice meander through Altab Ali Park, Bangladeshi Brick Lane, and Spitalfields Market to round off our morning of multicultural London. 

Pic: A bonus song at the end of Six, when the cast encouraged us to take pictures. It's a weird energy to check out a musical when you're homesick and worried about so many things in the world. But also, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself while stranded halfway across the world, doing my job like everything is normal. It's my mom's birthday and I had a nice chat with her--can't say it helped my homesickness or my worry. 

Elgin Marbles and Radcliffe Lines

Pic: With the British Museum dome above us. We talk a lot of trash about The British Museum and their culture of "taking" and "borrowing." But when we're actually there at the museum, the dominant feeling is awe for the sheer wealth of human accomplishment on display.

Choice quotes: "No matter where you're from, you'll feel at home in the British Museum because there will be stuff from your home country there." Ha. 

"You mean to say he just took the stuff from the ancient Greeks and then named it after himself?!" Cf. Elgin

And I can't help thinking how the India-Pakistan discord is the legacy of British misrule, mismanagement, and drawing hasty borderlines. 

"Come What May, We're Here to Stay"

Afternoon lectures today at the University of London via colleagues River Baars and Lola Olufemi. River's lecture was about British Asian Youth Movements (AYMs), and as promised, they "seamlessly" integrated the supreme court decision about Palestine and the biological definition of woman into their lecture. Students were blown away by Lola's radical revisioning of time and multidirectionality. "I feel like my brain grew three sizes," I heard someone comment.

In our morning session we connected the cosmopolitan threads linking a bunch of stuff from Eddy Grant's dancehall hit "Electric Avenue" and the Brixton Uprising to Stokley Carmichael/Kwame Ture sparking the Black resistance in the UK. The cross-cultural solidarities amongst everyone "politically black" in the UK is particularly heartening with British Asian Youth Movements supporting everything from Black Lives Matter to the Bradford 12. Today's post title is one their lasting slogans. But I like the one they borrowed from The Children of Soweto too: Don't Mourn; Organize!" I know that'll play in my head the next time I'm worried about the world.

Pic: A mural at the top of our street with the words "No child should be a part of war. Ever." I expected to get homesick and sad next week, but I'm--inexplicably--already there. AND after I wrote that, I found out from a text DV sent me just now that India and Pakistan are at war. I called my family, and they tried to calm me by saying the south is usually safer. But also that they're having "mock drills" today to prepare. It all feels so surreal.

Eye on London

Pic: It's our tourist-y day with a river cruise and visits to several major London landmarks. A good way to overcome/work off our arrival fatigue and jet lag. Here's the class looking adorable with the London Eye in the background.

I usually have students declaim some of the famous landmark poems at the landmarks. Some of what we read for today included: Louis MacNeice “London Rain,” William Wordsworth “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge 1802,” William Blake “London,” Robert Bridges “Trafalgar Square,”  D. H. Lawrence “Hyde Park at Night, Before the War,” Amy Lowell “A London Thoroughfare at 2 am,” Brian Bilston “They’re Renovating Buckingham Palace,” Evie Shockley “London Bridge,” John Betjeman “Summoned by Bells at St. Paul’s," Theresa Lola “Flagship of Buzz,” and Patience Agabi “The London Eye.”  I especially love how in the final poem there's a glimpse of Wordsworth writing "Westminster Bridge" and the shoutout to the older poem, down to the year 1802 cleverly reconfigured.

In line for tea at the cafe, a Canadian woman told me that she'd canceled her trip to the US and decided to travel to the UK instead. I completely understand. I also understand how kind people use these kinds of conversational gambits to suss out other people's positions and to offer consolation. 

London Blues

Pic 1: Our travel class is called "The Empire Writes Back: Adventures in Cosmopolitan England" and is obviously based on theories of cosmopolitanism. (More the contemporary Appiah-Sen-Nussbaum take on it rather the Greek version, but still.) My nerdy learners, whom I'm so proud of, were excited to tell me that cosmopolitanism had been a Jeopardy answer the day before we left, and that some of them nerded out to their families about it. (Student pic.)

Pic 2: In other nerdy news, I did very well on the trivia contest on the flight and then got a bit nerdier and beat my own high score. (My pic.)

In addition to these two happy pictures in blue, we've had some minor travel woes. There was considerable difficulty finding our transfer coach until the airport marshal helped us. Also, our Oyster cards, which are our main form of transportation inside the city, seem to have a zero balance although they're supposed to last us two weeks. This needs to get figured out tomorrow... but it's a bank holiday and may not. Pfft.

traveling (like) light

 

here, on our way

our connections belonging

only to ourselves 

history's hooks dangling

 carrying instructions

treading eternally in travel

flighty and watery 

brave before memory

yet imagining every thing...

foreign for moments

knowing our effects are light 

yet baggage enough 

for other people to live out 

of them for a lifetime

___________________________ 

Pic 1: Like I did last time, I got everyone identical scarves to loop onto our backpacks so we can ID each other easily. (My pic.)

Pic 2: I'm so grateful for this community of eager learners. They were willing to construct and present on their keywords and concepts in the airport on our long layover. (Pic by our travel chaperone.)

all the things

I managed to do all the things today:

I'm mostly packed (carry-on only for two weeks).

Took Nu to see Sinners again per request. (My THIRD time.)

Watered my zillion plants and asked them to stay happy and healthy until I return, please!

Decorated for At's birthday, got the cake photo-ready, and packed her presents. 

At is 26!!! Celebrated with At, dropped presents off at her place and then went to dinner with At and friends.

Booked it early to go to the CASA gala. (I couldn't let them down...)

Came home and realized that I'd left the student health info and travel health insurance docs in my office AT WORK, so I  made a two-hour trip to retrieve them in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. This is the part I didn't plan for and could have done without. 

Now I'm checked-in and waiting for Big A to drop me off at the airport when he wakes up.

Pic: FB reminded me that 15 years ago we hired a party bus to take At and a bunch of friends, cousins, and grandparents to a Dave and Busters to celebrate turning 11. (At and Nu corner right. How cute, chubby, and kind of portable! And Big A just beyond them... his hair!)

I'm there

let's not keep fighting           

                              the same wars         

their adjectives          

                           and geographies   

are only those of mortality          

                          speak surrender          

                          sweet surrender          

I don't think we get to escape          

                       anymore than clouds

                       can keep their shape          

the victory is that we were          

                  and sometimes 

we were together

______________________________

Pic: Sunrise with Max. As I get ready to leave for the U.K. for two weeks while vaguely worrying about being allowed to return, I think this is one of the many moments I will miss while I'm away. Not unrelatedly, I am so happy that Mohsen Mahdawi has been released. I listened to this interview he gave the day before, while he was still detained, and loved it so much I shared it on family chat. It's worth the ten-minute listen.

Spirit of Scoutie

We picked this spot for Scout's memorial because of the way he'd always come bounding up to greet me around that bend.

And while I didn't bury Scout's ashes there (what if we move?), we put up a wind chime and a solar lantern, and when Max and I  are out on our first walk early every morning, we (ok, I) sound the wind chime.

Big A and I talk about how Max manifests some of Scoutie's quirks--the way he snuggles in the crook of my knees, "side-mopes," wrestles with Big A and so on. He's not as interested in food, gentle with Huck or a crybaby as Scout was though. And Max worships Nu--Scout wasn't ever sure if Nu was his younger sibling or older sibling.

Now that I've written that out, it's clear how much Max is unlike Scout... But Big A says he has the "spirit of Scoutie." So sometimes when I come upon Max just chilling by Scout's memorial, it really makes me stop in my tracks.

Pic: Max out by Scout's memorial. (Nu's more matter-of-fact theory is that he's treed Kylo, our black-garbed squirrel and Max's arch friendly rival.)