Took the kids to yoga today

almost every bite at breakfast
is all please and bargaining
every footstep up to class
echoes with reluctance
every pose is desolate
as exit wounds
                                            I'm holding, steadying, angling
                                            them in my side vision--where
                                            they're right there--by the door
                                            so my practice speckles with
                                            chuckles overfilling and now
                                            spilling from my lungs

We're nicer on the way back
loosened and relaxed--me
from yoga, them because
they're done, by the time
we're home again, it's all
already a memory
                                          And I think there will be other classes
                                          warmed by them, memories of them--
                                          keeping unspoiled from year to year;
                                          the quiet, slow wonder of a stone
                                          released and now flying lightly
                                          borne forever over the water


_____________________________________

Took the kids to yoga because the health chart was a desert (Friday, Dec 28th).

_

NYE: 4/6

It's just Nu and Scout and Huck and me tonight (Big A is at work and At is out partying).

The plan is to snack, watch girlie movies, and cuddle until midnight.

Mission accomplished, we're taking our barely sleepy selves to bed to read till we fall asleep.

Earlier that night...

_

Station

Her eyes grow cloudy
soon there will be rain
her thoughts steal past
like slow, noisy trains

No, that's really not me
No reason it would be--
Her heart mourns parting
mine's torn from certainty


_

Umm Om

Made it to an early yoga class in the socks PJ gave me in Philly when we organized the SALA conference two years ago.



I'm not there yet, but... my. socks. were. a. hit.





_

Meditation

water bridges these banks
sun must spill everywhere

I can ask, I can seek
who knows how long

as if it matters--
there's no reason

for despair
(if so it is)

#MSU #RedCedarRiver

Small Merry

The child-pleasing disparity between tree height and assembled presents is unintentional. But I had a lot of fun putting together themed gift bags--a patronus bag (puppies for Nu, sloths for At); a re-construction (ha!) kit (W.E.B. DuBois, Chernow's Grant, a bio of Robert Smalls); a happiness and wellness set (Lin Manuel's Good Morning Good Night, a treat-yourself journal, and some feel-good plaques); stocking stuffers were Imagination Library donations, Salus Center donations, and refugee school donations.

In other news, this wasn't the best Christmas ever (despite Nu's ardent protestations)--like we've not even been able to take a family picture for the holiday card yet.

But we did our best: we ate well; we hung out and cuddled; we went to L&T's party in our PJs, one set of grandparents arrive tomorrow, and we can try again next year.

Onward!

Silent Night...

(And then this declaration on the way home: "I'm going to shower before we watch Home Alone--that way I don't have to shower on Christmas. Who wants to spend Christmas showering?")






_

Train Travel Be Like

And we're back!

H A M I L T O N!

Someone was Prom King and picked prom night over Hamilton tickets we'd had for the past six months the last time we went... but he came this time... he loved it.









Same old balcony seats.  In fact, we looked up the old tickets and somehow, we'd ended up with the very SAME tickets as last time.

And apparently, the show makes me very emotional. First I stomped off when it was mentioned that I was walking slowly and then I left the fancy restaurant before we ordered because all they could offer me was rutabagas. So much drama for one evening!


_

A Plan

I'm traveling--or so
I have been telling
everyone--so now
travel--will unravel

Perhaps periphrastic--
or no--logic underlies
my disguised, feigned
un-annotation of terrain

I prep through these fears--
it helps a little that millions
of years of orbital earth will
still spin in place for me

_

In the Old World

I am to reread their wrinkles
search their weeds for memories

even as ancestors' eyes are forced
to close, go masked, invisible.

It will make sense
until you ask about it.

*
They want to open my mind
wrest, twist it wide

then tip it like the overfilled point
of a plate, at the moment when

you're suddenly sated,
free of the desire for it.

*
I mime their scolding for I have no will,
and I am meek. Still they are forgotten

even so, every time--memory by memory
in a language my children will never speak

Aiyo--to think I meant at the start
to hold and shape love

as it pooled its fast and fluid
escape in my heart.

****