and other stories

I think I told a story that wasn't entirely mine to tell yesterday. I may have to scrub it soon; I'm sorry. 
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Overall, a better day today although I did cry--once when the Chappell Roan song "Casual" played on the radio. A few months ago, At and I had joked about how I'm probably like the mom in that song who has no chill and invites the person her kid is casually dating to her house after only two weeks. SLE and I got serious about each other pretty quickly. I can't believe or get over how I will never see her again.
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Nu and I took Max and Huck to the vet for their yearly heartworm shots today. The books we collected for the waiting room made me chuckle--it was the latest Hunger Games book for me and the collected works of Audre Lorde for Nu and not vice versa as one might reasonably expect. 
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It was the 101st birth anniversary of James Baldwin this weekend, so I read some Baldwin and lit my devotional candle. And it was my Boss Day today, so I took myself for a long walk, bought myself some perennials that were on end-of-season sale for fall planting, and got Thai food for dinner.
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Pic: Huck likes to climb on furniture because she's the shortest in the family. She wasn't happy to hear the vet say she may have been exposed to a tick bite (blood test results will clarify tomorrow). But she's happy to hear that big sib At will be hanging out with her and Max this weekend and they don't have to go to "boarding school" as she calls it.

close up

As StephLove rightly surmised, my fears about At visiting Arizona were tied to both brownness and transness. And while carrying a passport would help establish citizenship, it might have opened up a whole set of questions about gender. I would, of course, have some worry about my young adult child traveling by themselves, but these fears are very much based in 2025 USA, and especially places like Arizona. I would be less concerned if At were visiting Los Angeles or Seattle, for instance.

Speaking of which, I'd mentioned a while ago that At might be moving to Seattle. I may not have mentioned that it was to move in with SLE. So that is not happening. 

And At may not be going to SLE's memorial service this weekend in Arizona either. When At enquired about the address, her family wrote back that it was going to be "a small, family event not open to outsiders". At is freshly brokenhearted over this. I told her that the family is grieving in their own way and that she ought to respect their wishes. Which is 100% how I feel. And also, if they're going to be hostile to her, that's another reason not to go. At and SLE's foster sisters and friends should plan their own memorial service. 

Pic: I love this bird feeder that suctions on to the window and lets me see birds, like this cardinal, close up. I thought it might make Max and Huck a bit bonkers, but they barely notice.

I keep the yesterdays

for  the sake of  this photo 

every moment is surrender 

for I am eager and take too

many--yet each avid echo

                                         remains and ruins

                                         edits and evades 

                                        all capture while

                                        I,  a wakeful and

                                        fading hunter 

unbearably full of bravado 

persist--if only I could focus 

on edging meaning with light

I'd see how visions can return

                                        in the breaks

                                        from seeing--

                                        stitching up 

                                        our aging nows 

                                       and aching forevers  

_______________

Pic: Yes, I did take way too many photos of the sunset yesterday. 

"Michiterreanean"

The beach was calling, so today was a beach day with friends. A late lunch, the art fest in Grand Haven, and then we flopped on the sand until it was dark and time to go home.

Seeing how "the third coast" is a thing, we wonder if we can make "Michiterranean" happen.

Pic: Beach selfie. I know I'l be thankful for this reminder of sand, sunset, lake breeze, and book time in a few months.

tripping

everything today feels like it has happened before
before you leave, I fix your smile in my mind
the scent of your forehead from babyhood 
any other time it would be just my love

this time in urgency, I stoop to say

carry your passport with you

and text me a copy of it... 

stay safe... my love

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Note: At was here for fam dinner with a friend and told us she was going to Arizona for SLE's memorial next week. It sent me into a bit of a panic to think of her going to Arizona all by herself, TBH.

Pic: Huck and Max are misbehaving a bit a the dinner table, Nu's expression says they'd never have been allowed to get away with such behavior, what's up with that?

late-July thoughts

I shouldn't have said it was nearing the end of summer yesterday... What I meant was that it was the end of summer break... for me. 

Our D.C. trip is in a week, and I'll be in a full-day workshop (8-5) the day after we return. That's soon.

I can't believe I'm whining--what an incredible privilege it is to take a break as an adult. I always wish everyone got mandated time off. In my family, how nice it would be if At and Big A had at least a couple of weeks off to read, lounge, and turn off their alarms... How much better their health and wellbeing would be. 

 To someone's text enquiring after me, I responded "I’m good… waking up to the reality that one way or another it’s almost August…" And then on reconsideration: "I mean it’s August THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW 😂😭"

Pic: Still summer in flower time, clearly.

the times

Don't ask why I'm up at 3:27 a.m., but now I'm worried for friends and family in Hawaii and on the West Coast as tsunami waves from the Russian earthquake make their way across the Pacific ocean.

I was just thinking yesterday that this has been a beautiful summer--not too hot, just enough rain to keep everything lush, NO mosquitoes, a record-breaking number of fireflies and butterflies...

It has also been a month since At's ex SLE died, and this was the month of my mom's heart attack and Big A's mysterious illness. And suddenly--or so it seems--we're nearing the end of summer.

Pic: Nu is filling out health information forms, and Max thinks he can help. Huck milling around (under Max), is thinking about joining in, because she knows stuff too. I can't believe Nu will be off and living in the dorms in a few weeks!

What I'm looking at

One of my summer tasks was to do a closet cull. It hasn't happened yet. Could still happen, I suppose! 

Another one was to put together a chapbook of poetry. I have been working on that a bit. I started wondering today... if that should be two chapbooks. 

Instead of trying to force the nature pieces and the family/politics pieces into the same space, perhaps they should each have a separate volume? It might be easier to articulate a theme that way. 

A lot of the time, the nature compositions are untethered--they matter to me at the moment of writing, but may not be interesting to anyone else because they don't tell a story. I'd be sad to lose all of them though.

Pic: purple flowers by the river, reflection of trees and sky. When I looked at my post-walk photos, I didn't know what I was looking at at first. 

this familiar walk

after the sharpness of one thing, another
the hope or hurt you choose 
to keep you company 

in places many-sided by trees, air, & earth 
the living, rooted prairie becomes
everything you love

so that trees take the shape of your parents
and grass spreads like the sweep
of family sharing news

you wear it on your breast, this belonging

softer since being torn... a different 
feeling to the same song
___________________

Pic: Geese on the Red Cedar. With Big A today. What with my family visiting and then his bike accident and illness, we hadn't been on our "Super Sparty" walk in ages. 

recs, hacks, and saves

A couple of recs: 

This NYT quiz on dreams--I'm what they classified as "a big dreamer" but there's plenty I learned about how we dream in the process of taking the quiz. 

This list of most recommended books in The Atlantic. I'm horrified I've read so few. 

A couple of hacks:

If you hit a paywall and don't want to pay or don't feel like supporting Islamophobic/Transphobic outlets like The New York Times or The Atlantic, you could use archive.is. Paste the URL of the piece you want to read into the second box (the one that says: "I want to search the archive for saved snapshots"). Usually, that should do the trick. 

I figured out this next hack myself! When I came back from last week's health nightmare, I found I wasn't able to leave comments on some (WordPress?) blogs like Nicole's, J's, and Jenny's. "Mod_Security" kept telling me that my server was "Not Acceptable!" (Threatening exclamation point and all.) But if I toggle my computer WiFi to my phone's hotspot, I can!

Pic: I saved this meme to my desktop years ago... Good save. And I guess those little things did save me and keep me mostly sane.

trying to be strong

Gaza Poets Society has shared many beautiful poems over the years. Yesterday their message was a stark and anguished plea:

"Save our children"

What else is left to say? How can we go on in a world where children are willfully being sniped at and starved to death. I hope we can let the food waiting outside the Israeli blockade get through before it is too late. Everything else can wait.

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Big A is so much better (fingers firmly crossed) and a good thing too, because he's back at work tonight. I think he could do with at least a couple more days off work, but he's on the schedule. "I exist to make a profit for the hospital's shareholders," is how he explained it to me.

Pic: I took Nance's advice and took A to spend some time with trees... Things have been so nerve-racking, we've barely been outside together.