Glen Helen (Lost)

I imagined myself walking, 

morning made itself a hike

No one knows where I am.

So no one can help me now

(if they wanted to)

If today I woke up 

some other died 

in my place

(with my face)

These roots for rock

lean on mossy claws.

Open, distance unlocks:

the wrong turn every time 

and lengthens why I'm here.

Become beautiful. Unreliable

--like leaves aged and plaid.

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Sometimes Only Mama Will Do

That's Hot

It was hot today. Really hot. A hundred times hot. So hot that when one of Li'L A's cross country teammates demurred about running with his shirt off because he was too fat, he was told, "Dude, it's too hot for bad self esteem today." (HeHe, Gulp, and Sad Face all at once.)

Nevertheless Baby A's first day of nursery school followed by a potluck at her sweetly hippy-dippy institution of early learning. After I got home from work, I wore a sari and Baby A wore a scarf draped as a "half sari" over her trousers. (I wore my favorite Rosie the Riveter button as a sari brooch.)

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In the Middle

So Li'l A is in middle school now. And over the weekend, checking on cousin P directly in the path of Hurricane Irene, I was the one who got comforted. P told me that having this child in middle school would prepare me for when he goes away to college. Given the health insecurities of the summer, all I want to do is spend every moment with my kids lolling around, "snuddling," having picnics, but time is so tough. So tight. 


The middle schooler gets home at 6:30 weekdays (Cross-country training after school). Sidebar: And I hate that cross country trains five days a week and meets on the sixth day to race (like Christian gods) but my spacey kid turns out to be unable to play team sports that require him to visualize and this is the kind of activity where he can zone out and still get good-for-asthma exercise. I hate that for two hours a day I have no way of contacting him. He leaves his cell phone in his locker when he runs--naturally. And also, since they run all over the village, the glen, everywhere, I have no idea where he is. Feels so strange. But I am letting go. And then suddenly it's the weekend, but he's invited to some workshop on "facilitation" from 10-3 and then goes away to a friends sleepover. But I continue to let my peacock fly  baby bird go.

And I'm letting go sometimes out of necessity. School now starts at 8:45 and since my first class is at 9 and 45 minutes away, I'm trusting in him to gather his school things, let himself out, lock the door behind him, and bike to school. By himself.

That screaming is coming from inside my head.

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SUPER 8

Loved it. And the shout out to Dayton was the highlight of our quiet midwestern phase of life.

We've been putting off seeing it because of the Lupus-suspicion related anguish and Big A's even weirder hours. And as we walked into the movie theater, Li'l A said--I look at that poster for Super 8 and  I have no idea what it's going to be about.

I should have taken that opportunity to give my mom a heads up, because she told me later that she kept counting and recounting the kids and kept coming up with just six, so how were they the Super 8? She was thinking of the kids clubs we used to read when I was a kid--like Secret Seven and Famous Five :).

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Street Fair

Crowds happen, conquer: insurgent,
choric in cheer, sucking sweetness
from sun-slicked haze.
I am astride Xenia Ave
kids in hand, hands so sweaty
their fingers slip, tickle in my grasp

Hellos + kisses fall, leave, re-echo
become a bouquet of belonging
I carry proudly down the street
I am strident;
I am mouthy, masticating,
planting gum for art.

I am completely klepto
with happiness
I'm making my own megaphone
I am become a landmark:
"I am standing
right next to the lady with two kids."

Our dinners slumber in styrofoam,
our water bottle empties to carry lassi.
Fun has been buying a foam-tipped bow
filling a plastic fish with colored sand
and the roar of laughter and trash trucks
after a thousand minivans vanish

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Cemetery Road

The lillies hold their buds
graves look like boxes
are actually books

were actually houses
eyes are hard
as glass looked through

this room, this city is empty
aloneness floods tunnels
I imagine only a little

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Flow

Amma, my mom, teases me about living in a village because her family has been city folk for over three generations. (Her grandfathers--her actual, biological grandfather and his younger brother--ran away from their new stepmother to make their fortunes as diamond merchants and to write poetry in Madras. Childhood memories of visits to any jeweler in the city is replete with Amma's oh-so-casual mention of the Jalagam name resulting in a flurry of special treatment.)

But on a day like today when Big A and I needed to talk through stuff, I'm glad I live in this village and across from Glen Helen. Talking about how we spend our free time and what social commitments I make on our collective behalf--which we really needed to do--is so much easier when I'm concentrating on how to navigate stepping stones across a waterlogged creek rather than on how to word watertight demands.

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This Yellow Springs Life

I thought the highlight of today would be my date at the opera this afternoon with Big A, but as it turned out, it wasn't.

Big A's colleague had two spare tickets to Ira Glass on tour and they were ours for the taking. And we took 'em. And yes, it was awesome to listen to and see Ira Glass, but that wasn't the highlight either.

Saturday morning line up for me and the kids while Big A sleeps off his night shift involves the Farmers' Market, getting to choose their free book at Dark Star, spending a couple of dollars--via birthday gift cert--at Mr. Fubs, and trying to get home to listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and This American Life over lunch.

As it turns out the opera and Ira were across the street from each other, but I wanted to go with Li'l A. So the highlight was to have Big A let me enjoy the second half of the star gala at the opera by myself while he braved the wilds of the midwest to retrieve the Ira Glass tickets so I could dash home, change out of opera togs, grab some of the pizza that had been delivered, and go back downtown with Li'l A in tow.


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