A Nu Name!

Nu's baby name has stayed the same, but their formal name change became legal today! We've been using their new formal name for a few years now, and it suits them so well, so I didn't think I'd get emotional at the court hearing... but of course I did.

It was such a relief to have everything go so smoothly, and it was such a blessing to have the entire experience with our courts--from the filing clerk all the way to the judge--be so respectful, supportive, and affirming. 

The judge took the time to compliment Nu, find out how to correctly pronounce their Sanskrit name, remark upon their smile... They also exempted us from having to publish the name change and sealed the documents as a measure of protection and support for an underage child living out their authentic life. I am so grateful for these kindnesses--I know too many parents from states like Texas and Florida who basically have had to flee as their kids were in danger from the anti-trans laws that have gone into effect over the last couple of years. I wish our experience were more universal.

Nu was sick today and stayed home from school. I kept them fortified with gingery lemon soup, honey tea, and banana muffins (the last item by request). We'll celebrate with a proper celebratory dinner and cake (with our At!) on Wednesday. 

Pic: Nu with Big A at our Zoom court hearing.

building a mystery

1) It's no mystery that I love Jennifer Finney Boylan, I've basically fangirled since I met her in 2011. I don't know though, why I waited so long to read her collab with Jodi Picoult--Mad Honey. For the last couple of days I've been waiting to finish all my million persnickety multiplying duties so I could sit down with my book. Just finished it today, and there were so many parts that brought me to tears and so many twists I didn't see coming and so many parts I just had to reread. It was so good. 

2) I was in a mad panic yesterday because I had written up a paper proposal about the Jhumpa Lahiri collection, Roman Stories, but couldn't find it in my email or the Google doc I'd been working on with some colleagues on another proposal. I finally found the huffy title I'd used ("Tell Me Where it Hurts: Ailment and Alienation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories"), by using Google History, and after over an hour of searching every doc I had opened in March, I finally found the notes I made. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

3) I got brave today and went looking for the snake I saw three weeks ago. I wore long boots, made a lot of noise, and was on high alert. But Mx. Slithers seems to have disappeared just as mysteriously as they appeared. I'd read that snakes don't like strong smells, so I took some old packets of curry powder and scattered them in that part of the garden, hoping to scare them away forever.

4) Pic: Huck, Max, Big A, and I out on our post-dinner walk... It's a mystery why our fluffy doodles think they can take on our neighbor's muscular German Shepherd, but they always do their version of trash talk as we pass. 

no stranger world

what if the the days 
called us to 
                                            speak to the strangers 
                                            seek them out
they who have much 
to share of the dark and day 
                                            whose names are conversations
                                             whose hellos are history 
when the voiceover

of memory 

                                            is the scream of a dark dagger 
                                            but sometimes lilts to tomorrow 
saying me saying me
saving me saving me
                                            for it may be as hard to get into a world 
                                            as it is to get out of it 
I too was a stranger once 
how strange that was                                
                                              let it be
                                              let me be

______

Pic: In the woods out front in the evening light. I've been thinking a lot about the way refugees are being described in this moment--partly because we used to live in Yellow Springs (Big A's old hometown), which is close to Springfield, OH... in fact, Big A was born in a Springfield hospital! Also, Haiti itself is both inspiring as the first country to win independence from slavery, but tragic for the way France has tethered it to poverty in retaliation. And I love the stoics and more recently, Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of cosmopolitanism as "bringing the stranger in." I would find it wonderful to live in a world where there were no "strangers."

a proper Friday the thirteenth

Pic: My friend PJ sent this photo of the wildfires (one of four!) raging around her home in Redlands, CA. People two blocks north of them have been evacuated, but PJ and her partner and their menagerie of animals are still sheltering in place there... at least for the moment.

PJ's pic was both a reality check and a metaphor for today--I just had to disengage from some tasks to focus on other more pressing ones. This has been a week of missed appointments and misunderstandings but luckily the work week is at an end and I get to rest, reset, and restore my settings. 

to the left, to the left,

I recognize the stakes for women, LGBTQIA+, children, POC, etc in this election. But I'm not happy with what seems to be the obvious choice either. I don't want "the most lethal fighting force in the world." (We already have the most lethal, most overfunded, most expansive military presence in the world.) I want an end to poverty and homelessness. I want accessible and high-quality K-12 ed and free higher ed. And while we're at it, I kind of want cool, high-speed rail systems...

I feel like even just four years ago, forgiving college debt, taxing billionaires, Green energy, and expanding Medicare was a bigger part of the conversation than it is currently. And hearing the two candidates basically argue about who'll deport more immigrants and conduct more fracking is dismaying. The Overton Window* of what seems politically feasible has drifted waaaay to the right and needs to move leftward...

*I've been using the term for a few years now, but I didn't realize until I went to link to it that it is homegrown in Michigan!

heart-shaped tree

If there is a heart-shaped tree     might it have heart-shaped roots        does it live in a heart-shaped world where we too might be invited in?      Oh, I am being silly?        I guess I am being silly.     I know.   I know I've never stopped...       I never stopped looking for love everywhere after all.      Is a heart-shaped tree an address?     Does anyone live there?       Could it be a home?     Could it be a trap?    Could it be both like a spider's web?        It is here in my life         adoration stronger than addiction      One can go almost everywhere from there. 

______________________

Pic: A heart-shaped tree! I used to love finding heart-shaped things... Here's a link to Drew Barrymore's work Find It In Everything 

today's three

1) Young the Giant was opening for Cage the Elephant this evening, and I got tickets to the show as a birthday present back in March. I've loved Young the Giant for over ten years, especially "Mind Over Matter" and most recently "The Walk Home," so it was a pretty perfect present. The show was terrific! Matt Shultz, Cage's lead singer, was on a scooter with a broken foot but had SO. MUCH. ENERGY. 

2) I read yesterday's comments, and I'm so touched by the concern and... a bit freaked out that I don't seem to be responding appropriately? It's not that I'm fearless--I was a proper ninny when there was that active shooter on the MSU campus in 2023. So maybe I'm just foolish or foolhardy from not recognizing the danger I was in? For whatever reason, this closer encounter with a gun seems not to have registered in my consciousness at all. And even as it was happening, I was translating it into an absurd dinner party story.

3) And I completely missed today's presidential debate. I doubt I missed anything significant. I heard on the news that 30% of people polled said they were waiting to decide whom to vote for based on today's debate performance--I cannot fathom what they could learn that hasn't already been repeatedly demonstrated.

Pic: Young the Giant in concert at Pineknob Theater.

our strange logics

green the river, green the woods
if we don't have time, time has us

              enflamed with error, the things 

              we mutter soon become mantras 

you must try to forgive everyone  

who said things/happen/a reason 

               finding chance, choice after choice,

               and ways to fold time in your mouth 

steal your turbulent hopes from us

send it toward your own ripe pause

________________________

Further details from the "Gun Story" that surfaced after a few retellings.

1) The kids asked me what the gun looked like and I couldn't remember because I wasn't looking at it. What were you looking at, they asked. That's when I had to admit I'd been distracted by the dog in the backseat of their car and the family erupted into howls of laughter. 

2) On why I'm not afraid I'll bump into the people with the gun again. Their car had temporary Missouri tags, I imagine they were visitors here for the weekend and are no longer in town. (Also, I got a picture of their tag, so I'm not completely useless.)

3) The confused/amused look Big A and I gave each other when the young police officer repeatedly told us they were very unnerved and shaken by this incident. It was very Gen Z of them. 

___________________________

Pic: The river is so green from reflecting the trees here! The Red Cedar in the woods behind L's house.

flickers from other places...

Max is a goofball whereas Scout was a sentimental intellectual-savant, but they do look a lot alike and have some very similar habits. Like Scout, Max loves to be with me when I light the oil lamps in the evening, and sighs the same way Scout did when he settles himself for a nap across my legs, he even plays catch in the same silly way. 

Every morning when we wake up, the first thing Max and I do is go out to the corner where we made a Scout memorial. I ring the wind chimes, while Max (less sentimentally) pees. The other day I was playing catch with Max and he came around the corner just as Scout used to and as I mussed his ears and face, the solar lantern flickered awake although it was not at all close to darkness. It truly felt like Scout was laughing in the moment alongside us. 

*

I woke up from an intense dream last night in which my dad was asking why I hadn't placed a "pottu" on him. For the most part, this is a benign request--you'd place a pottu (the vermillion mark) as a blessing; I put one on myself every time I leave the house, or on the kids when they join me in meditation. But in Tamil slang, "putting a pottu on someone" can signify they have passed away and you're paying your respects to their portrait by putting a pottu on it. So obviously, I woke up dreading the day. Thankfully, it turns out I have no prophetic qualities, and the day passed uneventfully.

*

We had our annual Ganesha seek-and-find today (postponed from Friday). The kids found all 32 Ganeshas, showered them with rosewater, anointed them with turmeric and vermillion, and decorated them with flowers. I translated some Sanskrit slokas for them to enjoy, and they insisted on singing "Happy Birthday" in English as well. They heard about our adventure from yesterday, had so many follow-up questions, and were suitably celebratory not to wake up as orphans today.

Pic: The fam at brunch... Big A, Max, At, and Nu with Huckie underfoot. (I'm trying so hard to ignore the giant pile of napkins waiting to be folded behind A.)

the one with a gun

We'll be telling this story at dinner parties forever. 

Big A and I were on our usual walk to Sparty through the MSU campus when a car careened around the bend and barely screeched to a halt at the stop sign. There were a lot of student-pedestrians around and I have a big mouth on me, so I yelled out, "Slow down!" I guess someone in the car had a big mouth too, because they yelled out, "Boo, Bitch!" This upset Big A who took off running after their car, and they sped off. 

Except they looped around and screeched to a halt next to us again. And three of them (two of them sans shirts) got out of the car. As they got closer: Big A asked for an apology; I told them they were going to hurt someone if they didn't slow down; they accused us of looking at them (which we had been). Then the older guy in his twenties said he was going to get his gun, and... reached between the car seats, got his gun, and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts. I thought I was going to burst into giggles at that point, because this very white guy with a gun kept advancing on Big A, liberally using the N-word, and telling him to get "stepping to it." And then everyone was just staring at each other--we didn't want to get shot, and they didn't want to shoot us, I guess? We told them it wasn't right, I threw in a final instruction to slow down for good measure, we said we were walking away, and so we did.

They took off in the opposite direction... but then they looped around again and pulled up about ten feet ahead of us. That's when I pulled out my phone and called 911. And they took off again, this time for real, when they saw me dialing. And we never saw them again. But we did have to wait for campus police to show up and make a formal report. And then we stayed on the lookout on our way home and snuck our way through the woods just in case their car was still around somewhere, laughing with the adrenalin of it all.

Big A is nice because, I asked, and he said that I hadn't escalated when I yelled at them to slow down--I was doing the right thing and speaking up. I am not so nice, because I told him that I didn't need my honor protected just because some rando called me a bitch, and that he should not have escalated by running after them yelling "What did you call my wife?" etc. Anyway, it was an unlooked-for Saturday adventure.

Pic: Brilliant sky, brilliant Red Cedar--the view from the bridge shortly before it all went down.

Friday vibe

This week seems to have gone by in a rush, but today went quietly. Today is Ganesha Chaturthi, but everyone had work/school so we'll celebrate properly on Sunday.

I worked with my serious independent studies students and took meetings and sat on committee meetings... and yet somehow managed to miss the English department meeting (new time)! It was embarrassing, but my colleagues were very kind about it.

At the end of the day, I printed out the flyer for the book from the publisher's website and plugged my forthcoming publication to the marketing team. My voice has been hoarse for a week, and a former student at the event thought it was hilarious and kept pretending it was because I'd been partying too hard. If only.

Back home, Nu was partying hard--they were out to the football game, senior paint party, and dinner with friends, so Big A and I fed Max and Huckie and made ourselves dinner. I made a very pretty matchstick salad of peppers, carrots, cucumbers, basil, and mint as a bed for the dumplings Big A was frying up. We missed Nu, but I guess this is us on the reg from next year. 

One of the girlfriends sent me a picture of the game, and Nu was in it! I shared it on family chat and claimed I had spies everywhere, but Nu was unfazed and rolled their eyes. When Nu got home at midnight, they shared a compliment they'd been hugging to themselves all day. Their English teacher had told them that they saved Nu's work to read last because it always gave them something to think about. Aw!

Pic: I took some new colleagues an "office-warming" gift. The "ribbons" are in our college's signature plaid and are actually shoelaces.