Golden

Big A turns 50 on Monday... it seems like a very BFD. It has been wild to reflect on the changes over the decades.

After I made everyone some (frozen) pizza for brunch, we commemorated this BFD by playing several rounds of how-well-do-you-know-the-birthday-baby.

Big A kept looking to me and asking if I had the key to questions like favorite book and favorite song--haha. I guess it is difficult to isolate things like that. But better than the right answers were the discussions the questions provoked. I think we did great job of figuring out his favorite author (Kurt Vonnegut), his favorite genre (hip-hop, which also turns 50 this year), and everyone was 100% certain that he'd never been on a blind date (he hadn't).

Pic: Nu, At, Big A, Max, and Huck. I imagine I can see the lake through the windows...  We got in around 2 am last night. KB had said the front door would be unlocked and we should just let ourselves into her parents' summer place. The door was unlocked and I did let myself in, but I was a bit worried that we may have let ourselves into the wrong house... I relaxed only after I saw a family picture with KB on the wall. 

here we go

Although it has stayed mostly green where we are, I can see the colors turning every day on my commute north to work. I listened to chants in Sanskrit in the car and it was pleasant and peaceful and gave me some time to enjoy the poetic beauty of the slokas and puzzle out the agglutinative meanings of words I don't know (my favorite this week is samudra-tanayaya-- body like an ocean).

I am excited to finish the 1001 meetings scheduled for today and then take off with the fam for Big A's birthday weekend. 

I couldn't find any places on the water that would allow us to bring Huck and Max, so KB kindly offered up her parents' place on Torch Lake. The plan is to get everyone a light dinner, pack a backpack each, pick up At after his shift... and go!

Pic: A glimpse of the Red Cedar north of us from CC.

Fall into bed (or not)

In truth, I'm having a tough time of it--unable to sleep, plagued by unspecific anxiety, my brain overflowing with sad details. I was just congratulating myself for holding it together... Look at me: making breakfasts and dinners, prepping lectures and discussions, doing house projects, attending every work meeting, making plans with friends, researching the next book chapter, keeping my million plants alive!

And then one day the thousand-yard stare of a shell-shocked child won't leave my head and I have to excuse myself from the classroom to compose myself. But isn't it great how much lighter it feels after a good cry? 

Pic: A couple of weeks ago when it finally started getting cooler, I changed us to Fall bedclothes and now the bedroom looks so golden and cozy. I wish I could log more sleep hours than I am currently though!

seen and felt

I'm moved by all the people all across the world protesting the ongoing war in the middle east and especially by the thousands of young people chanting "not in my name." The protests put into action the Rabbi Tarfon quote that has helped me in times of crushing weltschmerzen: "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief... You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it." 

The two main constituencies in the U.S. organizing for a ceasefire right now are (1) Palestinians whose families are under attack in Gaza and (2) progressive American Jews, some of whom lost family in the Hamas attack. This is an incredible coalition that gives me hope.

And this snippet from Marwan Makhoul I have been seeing everywhere is simultaneously insight and benediction. The text reads: "In order for me to write/poetry that's not political/I must listen to the birds/and in order to hear the birds/the war planes must be silent."

May it be so.

in a critical condition

Ivy clings like memories even when all the tenses fall wrong

I keep looking over my shoulder for the children are slower and left behind 

I tried to bring them bandages and medicine but find only their cinders in the air  

I fall, then my face falls, my sight falls away, and

then my mask falls

I've answered grief as loud as I can but how could I be louder than my disbelief

I sweep up my footprints in the dust, my imprints in the sand, and let my fingerprints burn

I have mourned the dead; I am mourning the dead; I will always be mourning the dead.

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Pic: Ivy wall with L.

for I don't know where I am

the day will happen soon enough
the shout of the sun 
the hit of to-dos 

how I will climb up the afternoon
then slide down
to dinner 

the hours search with serrated teeth 

to stitch time up

into context

sleep is a circadian memento mori  

yet I step to it

stirring

its shadows frantic, lurking in gaps

but once its here

its here

Pic: Huck and Max, tails aflutter.  (Cuddle time!)

it is what it is

I was relieved life conspired to give me a day of silence to gather myself yesterday. And as it turns out, today was the opposite with extra people-ing: the beginning of Navaratri, Sunday family dinner, people at home, walks and talks I had scheduled with friends earlier in the week... 

And although I started out by merely going through the motions, each interaction refueled me in big and tiny ways. When I called my mom this morning, I could hear the hubbub of the hundred+ guests at the family celebration of Navaratri in Pondycherry  and then I got passed from mom to aunts and uncles and cousins--each a little rush of love. My dinner--a colorful chopped salad and a fluffy frittata inspired by Seamus Mullen's Real Food Heals was beautiful and filling. (Fun fact: Big A went to college with Seamus, and our friend CC dated him.) My garden walk with HK was lovely, and I also got to go on a long ramble--geographically and conversationally--with L. Lots of mutual check-ins and chats with JG, EM, JL, and BL... Nu's very serious demeanor during our impromptu dermatological consult made me (still makes me) smile and they gave me products from their own stash of K-skin care to help with my recent acne outbreak. 

These are all blessings I am so, so lucky to have in this imperfect and difficult world.

Pic: Water Lilies at MSU Horticultural Gardens with HK. I thought about cropping out the clump of weeds and gathered gunk, but it is what it is... 

I can't today.

And Big A is working, At is at his place, Nu is out with friends, my family in India is together at a family celebration...

So it's ok if I can't. 

I spent most of the day in silence gathering myself. I can manage conversations with Huck and Max fine.

heartbreak and gratitude

This James Baldwin quote is reverberating in my head as I catch up with the news today. "The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this is incapable of morality." How are we all just sitting around watching genocide in real time?

I spent over ten hours at work, on campus. I find myself thinking that when I'm an empty nester, I'll have more time to do stuff--like travel with students on alternative service breaks, do more on-campus organizing, etc. Sometimes, I hear another internal voice saying "Ugh, get a life." But I like this life. 

Big A went to the E.R. today (as a patient) to get a CAT scan, and we're both just so relieved and grateful that it wasn't what we'd feared it was. He has something and he's lost 20 pounds in the last six weeks and it's unclear what the next steps will be, but he's not going to die right away. I'm glad; I like him a lot.

In different conversations with At and Nu, I found myself so grateful that their convictions and the way they act on them is so... pure and principled. As SS said to me, imagine if they had rebelled against their upbringing and grown up to be bigots--I can't imagine it. Won't. Also grateful for my CASA kids whose birthday week it is, and who are such kind and joyful little ones despite all kinds of fuckery in their immediate circles.

Pic: Huck and Max after I put them in their room for the night. I love the way Huck is leaning into Max. Grateful they really like each other now.

the hang of it

I will myself to remember the contour

of this beast with no beginnings

this longing even when all is given 
even when nothing is desired

I really have no reason to remember 

the safe, ordinary history of today 

cautious happiness, habitual beauty 

its precious and explicit luck

I taste the escaped words, their notions 

of emptiness and openings  

in the release of the first silver raindrop

its receipt splattering in the dirt

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Pic: CC's view of The Red Cedar from her canoe. All of the feelings for the beauty of this day and the heartbreak of the news...

sweetest sixteen

I cannot believe our little Nu is sixteen. Or rather, I can believe Nu is sixteen, but can't believe it was sixteen years and one day ago that Big A and I were walking hand-in-hand through the doors of the NYU teaching hospital so I could get the Pitocin to coax Nu out. That day feels like yesterday.

Our Nu has always done things on their own time and the labor nurse who said they had an old soul was absolutely right. May this year nurture and delight my little darling.

(The My Little Pony celebration kit I put together was a hit as were the name-change docs we tucked in amongst their other presents.)

Pic: Nu decided they just had to build a gift-bag tower to the ceiling.