snapshot

I found a stash of our Flickr photos online while looking for something else and took a screenshot of this one; originally taken in 2008 with my Nikon D40X on some unremembered mini golf course. 

I don't know why I love it so much--no one's even actually smiling... but Big A is holding the kids both so protectively and the kids are so tiny and portable and healthy and it just seems like a snapshot of a simpler time.

(In other news, my campus-wide presentation went ok, but didn't reach the numbers we'd projected; I do wonder if it was a good use of 15+ sabbatical work hours... but if I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done... and it deserved to get done.)

can't stand

To see war advance in such excruciating detail across Ukraine in real time has been many things including terrifying and has induced a lot of helplessness and hopelessness... 

There's so much hegemonic and military brutality going on all over the world, all the time... 

It's a wonder we are able to function.

Today I had crippling weltschmerzen.

 I did not function.

thawing pains

the day's a disaster though

its song summons laughter

rolling like water over sun 

blinking on/off like a halo

snowy realms are escaping

vulnerable with empathy

whole worlds liquefying 

like tears into spring mud

Scout hands his paw to me

warm as a steady blessing

while I lie to my mother:

saying everything's alright

Pic: Neighbor CC's from her canoe on the Red Cedar

brighter days

I know I'm tired of "the white stuff" as StephLove called our March snow, so I'm choosing to look back at the birthday message JG and MB sent me a week and a half ago from a sunny beach in Moloka'i. 

In honor of this sweet photo, I picked Moloka'i as the next book to read. 

From reading the back of the book, I gather the protagonist gets leprosy... And it reminded me of the summer when I was nine and had a pale patch on my skin... And OMG, before I could get in to see the doctor, I must have had at least a dozen adults--parents, aunts, uncles, etc.--prick me with a safety pin. Each of them asking the same question: Did you feel that? OW! YES! It hurts! (One loses sensation with leprosy and they were trying to figure out how worried they ought to be.) It was maddening then but seems kind of sweet now.

I watered and tidied my zillion plants, managed a solid Sunday clean, set the clocks forward, and then soaked till I turned pruney. I was going to make a simple Spanish tortilla for dinner (Nu's chickens are laying everyday now and we need to use up the eggs), but I found some heavy cream, pre-roasted spaghetti squash, and red peppers in the fridge that needed to be used up as well so they went in there too. It was fine, but the apple-blueberry-arugula-cucumber-feta salad with red onion and balsamic glaze that we (maybe) invented was amazing. It's our second time making it this week!

Getting back to work after dinner, so tomorrow can feel manageable. We "Spring Forward" today, and it's supposed to warm up this week; I'm looking forward to it.

and another one

Ok! 

I did it and it seemed to go well and it was very gratifying. Extra thanks to Nu, who helped me position and photograph slides and thanks to the two fellow panelists who said they'd already put in orders for the text I'd worked on. 

Also, I surprised myself by finding enough time to run 4 miles (a lot for me), pre-prep a stir-fry for dinner, check in with LB and KB and wash my hair. Sometimes a big event day has me shoving everything else aside, so this felt like a moment of growth. 

I rewarded myself by finishing the novel I'd been reading, and am unwinding in the bliss of not having to show up anywhere--in person or virtually--tomorrow.

centering

Serious face (and reading glasses) on for chairing the Michigan Academy WGS section conference proceedings. Just so incredibly invigorated by the work of students and colleagues who presented and happy to build some mentoring and networking in there too. 

I have another conference (SALA) coming up tomorrow where I will have to present a paper, and then poetry selections to finalize for Jaggery, tons of  22 advisee and committee meetings next week, and a campus-wide women's month presentation on the same day of Nu's first appointment with a new therapist. Add international and pandemic news, what I'm reading (Laurie Frankel's This is How it Always Is), surprise snow instead of spring today, and the knowledge that Big A will be home for just two days in the next eight and it has me feeling... panicky. 

But one step at a time will get me there. First step: finishing up my slides for tomorrow's talk. Second step: preparing to let tomorrow be another dry shampoo kind of day.

coming back in years

linked as casually as a road
hissing between this city and the next
then linking onward to the next and the next

 

alone we are born and in tears

then relate to mother, grandmother, another

extend our miniature bodies with immense hope

 

and always love--growing ever greater,

even greater than life--we may never speak

again, yet our echoes surrender new conversations

temple scene

The kids went to the Hindu temple with me over the weekend. As I was getting the offering tray of flowers and fruit ready in the kitchen, I yelled up at Nu to wear something respectable to the temple... please don't put on yet another emo tee with skeletons on it... 

And then I yelled up again: never mind.... 

I mean, Kali statues at the temple are practically wearing skulls as a necklace; my 14-year-old can wear what they want.

slips and slides

I started the day walking with L, who will be away for a month. It wasn't the best day or time for a walk as it was pretty icy, but I couldn't pass up the chance to say goodbye to L, whom I'll MISS SO MUCH. Not even 20 mins in, I slipped and fell "very gracefully" as L assured me 😁😂.  

Not usually an office day for me, but I had to prep with some students for upcoming conference presentations, so I headed in. Plus I was putting together goodie bags for International Women's Day anyway--it started as a cozy and convivial MacCurdy Event, and I'm not happy about its distant-sterile pandemic avatar, but it's better than nothing. Fun chats with colleagues and dean during drop off...

While rushing home so I could take a virtual meeting, I realized that (a) my day was very busy and people-y for someone supposedly on sabbatical (b) filling my day with so much busy work is a clever and virtuous way of NOT doing the writing I'm supposed to be doing. 

Pic: Office nook--I repurposed the top of an office supplies box as a tray.

this thing on my finger

      The spinning diva offers: "if you like it then you should have put a ring on it..."

or else what, I remember thinking--we should date someone else

     or once there's a ring on it we'll belong to them?

I mean, I really didn't get it. After all, I didn't even get a proposal from you

I don't recall ever talking about marriage we just seemed 

to think we'd be together: Typical Pisces-Scorpio 

with trouble distinguishing where our bodies and destinies separated.

But we did say we didn't want diamonds mined from sorrow 

so in other historical ruin, we turned to my grandmother's

wedding necklace that had been broken down into tiny necklaces 

for her four daughters and then into earrings for many granddaughters

--the honor of this landscape retreats, struggles, is small

I haven't even worn that ring in years... it gets in my way.

Here--now: we're making dinner, my fingers slicing things and then 

slipping, and the blood and the nick on my hand lose a battle

pain knots into a big bow of something sure to heal by tomorrow

it calls for the return of care, reduces your grand calling as a doctor:

to a childish charge... the blunt and careful binding of bandaids. 

Then you're gone for two days but I wear this "disgusting" (our 14-year-old) 

bandaid you wrapped around my finger, extending this trivial thing, wondering 

about separation and affection had you only... put a ring on it.

_____________________

I mean, I did say I was going to write teenage poetry when Big A is away at work (second para). Clearly, it wasn't an empty threat.

everything's a seesaw

On the one hand, these strollers that Polish parents left at the train station for Ukrainian parents to use as they cross the border with nothing... on the other hand the racism against foreign students trying to leave Ukraine... Life continues to give with one hand and take away with another.

A read that gave me life last week was this mom's account of life with her trans daughter in Jezebel--unfortunately written to demonstrate the humanity of their lives in the light of the new laws against trans kids.

And I finally finished Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. I don't know why I didn't read it when it came out, because everyone was raving about it. And I understand why everyone I knew was raving about it, because they probably felt it was about them--it's certainly very slice of hipster/Gawker-style life. I got stuck on the casual mentions of child sex abuse in the early part of the novel with the record producer in the 70s picking up teenagers. And then I kept procrastinating on picking it up again. But I finished the rest of it in one swoop this afternoon and it was brilliant.