where it hurts

Today would have been mom's Boss Day. 

I bit the bullet and informed HR at work and FB on the socials today. I hope this means I won't have to go over the details with everyone one by one, because I don't think  have it in me.

Writing up a reflection of Amma was easier than speaking, which I still can't do without breaking down.

It hurts everywhere. Some of it is from a record number of bumps and bruises over the past few days. But it also just hurts all over. 

I don't have the wherewithal to find it, but I heard a snippet on the radio before all this went down about how fibromyalgia (which is what this feels like) never shows up alone, but is always pinned to depression, of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), or traumas.

Pic: My mom treasured this photo because her name was Manu and I took this for her on a 1998 trip to Hawaii. 

saying goodbye

At and Nu have been so lovely and supportive. I've chuckled once or twice because I seem to say some really cliche stuff, but they listen attentively and treat me gently. I wonder how long this can last.

At first, I breezily told the kids that they were welcome to come home this weekend to be together and tell Ammama stories. Then I went back and made it clear that although I made it seem like they COULD come if THEY wanted to, what I really meant was that I really needed them to come, if they could. So At and Nu made plans and got home today. At took the Flyer from Ann Arbor; friends went to pick Nu up from college.

Knowing they would be home and would spend tonight here was something that got me through yesterday.

I walked to TJ's (still don't trust myself to drive) to get flowers to make a garland for the altar and predictably cried; At's friend H found me crying in the street and very kindly walked me back home. 

Later the fam told our favorite stories about Amma while the Aditya Hridayam played and wished her a safe and peaceful journey onward. Her ashes were mixed into the Kaveri at Srirangapatna today. 

Pic: The fam at the altar we made for Amma. 
(I did not want friends dropping off trays of food. But at some point I stopped protesting because it didn't make a difference and I'm so tired. It turns out, all those friends did know best. It was such a relief not to worry about what people were going to eat.)

life is dukkha

My dad spoke to me kindly and firmly and mere hours later the cremation has already taken place. There will be a celebration of life in December when I can take the kids to Bangalore. I saw my mom garlanded and looking different on a video call... I haven't been able to stop crying. My whole face hurts from crying and every part of my body.

Everyone is at my sister's house. Aunts and uncles, cousins. A lot of neighbors. Friends. I'm beginning to get a bit overwhelmed here as well. I am grateful for the love and care, but also just want to curl up in a ball. I've cried snottily on too many people in the last 24 hours. Typically, that's an honor reserved for Big A. 

For someone who usually loves being around people, I'm realizing that this is one moment I want to be alone. I've done stuff like pretend I'm not home and left people on read. I know I'll have to tell people at work and then probably on Facebook so I don't have to tell the story (and cry) hundreds of times, but I'm dreading that.

Pic: Mom on her 75th birthday. I love that my sister and I both picked the SAME photo for our altars!

motherless child

I had lunch with Nu, tea with JG, din with Big A...

And went line dancing at the Shuffle with a tableful of friends... where I was proudly sharing Amma's photos and telling stories about her childhood and celebrating her recovery... 

I'm guessing now that's around the time she passed away in her sleep.

She would have loved knowing that a whole tableful of people were talking about her. 

I can't believe I will never see my Amma again. 

How can that be?

book-loops

Obviously books and reading are always polyrhythmic and reverberate off each other in a jazz-y way. But I've been looping through book connections recently in ways that made me smile. 

Kadiatou is a character in the new Chimamanda Adichie novel Dreamcount, and when I read Christian Cooper's Better Living Through Birding (our city's "Grand Read" book; Cooper will be here next month) I was reminded that Kadiatou is also the name of the activist who used the 3-million dollar settlement from the unlawful gunning down of her son Amadou Diallo by NYPD to start a foundation to help other immigrants.

I was quite taken by Anand Giridharadas's The Persuaders, which had great suggestions on how to be persuasive and change people's perspectives and thought I'd try Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind which sounded similar... except that Pollan's book is about how to change your mind through the use of psychedelics (including LSD, psilocybin and MDMA). Ha! He makes the point that middle age is the time to do this since we're probably stuck in habitual ruts though. Consider me sold.

When I mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass yesterday, Sarah mentioned how awesome Kimmerer's second work, The Serviceberry, is and mentioned giving her firstborn a copy. My firstborn gave me The Serviceberry for Christmas and that's what got me into rereading Braiding Sweetgrass!

And finally, the work of two wonderful authors I know. I wish I could introduce them to each other. Sunny Singh who met with my students in May has a new book of short stories called Refuge out! And as David Shulman's latest article in the New York Review of Books  was a couple of months ago I'm rereading Tamil, one of his classics. David was the head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem when I was there in 1998. Both Sunny and David have been forthright and outspoken about the genocide in Gaza from the beginning and I am so grateful for their moral clarity. 

Pic: I piled all the books I mentioned here on the table for a glamshot. 

"gratitude fosters abundance"

Thank you for the words of encouragement in the comments yesterday... I didn't realize how much I needed to hear them until I heard them. I'll pass it on to At, but please know they really, really helped me too. 

I was a bit downcast today--I blame the cloudy then rainy weather, the national and world news, dropping off excess from the campus gender-affirming closet at a donation center that took me past the homeless encampment, and watching Alien: Earth with Big A last night. Corporate greed and fuckery are everywhere and worries for my kids, kids in general, and the world kind of took over my brain. 

I'm rereading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass and she gets right to the heart of it: “modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest peoples. The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated.  Grain may rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot pay for it. The result is famine for some and diseases of excess for others.”

She fills my soul when she talks about how gratitude fosters abundance (when we say thanks, we find so much to be thankful for!) and how she taught her daughters to garden so "they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.” So I spent some time with the trees, grass, and plants when I got home to reset. There is so much to be grateful for... It's only a question of redistribution.

Pic: The Maple River on my way to work. It's what the kids and I used to call our "deep breath of beauty."

https://www.pocobrat.net/2024/05/standing-in-beauty.html   

https://www.pocobrat.net/2024/02/check-1-2.html 

https://www.pocobrat.net/2020/01/sunrise-snip.html

https://www.pocobrat.net/2019/10/here-comes-sun.html 

https://www.pocobrat.net/2021/11/maple-moment.html 

At crossroads

Today was At's last shift at Chipotle and At re-posted this ironic-meta-celebratory picture of themselves reading about themselves from three years ago when they made labor history by unionizing. It has been three years of hoping to change workplace systems and being jerked around by corporate intermediaries. After three years of negotiations, they just weren't able to reach a contract and worker pay has been frozen for the duration. This has been so depressing and frustrating. (This happens to be the case with the historic Starbucks workers unions as well--although there are over 500 unionized stores, not a single one has been able to reach a contract.)

2022 was euphoric. It felt full of possibility... like things were at the tipping point. Governor Gretchen Whitmer wrote At a letter; there were articles about At in Slate, Labor Notes, Jacobin, The Washington Post, NPR and on and on; Bernie Sanders tweeted their win; Michael Moore dropped At's name; and then... two+ years of stagnation. I keep telling At that this still counts for so much and that they've made a difference. And I 100% believe all of it. I hope that with today's closure, At is able to find the next thing to get fired up about and that peace and success follow. (Between this disappointment and the recent personal tsunami, what a sad year it has been for my first-born.)

Pic: At's repost today from 2022: "at the first ever shift at the first ever unionized chipotle reading about some nerd." (The nerd they're reading about is themselves in The Washington Post. Also, the 14K likes on that tweet!) Normally, I wouldn't post a pre-transition picture, but since At shared this one publicly today, I guess it's ok. 

fugue

the road home winds slow 

my bicycle is nodding 

doors open drowsily

why must I tell this story 

                      the edges hesitate
                      tomorrow is unstated
                      but sure to arrive early 

_____________________________

Pic: I thought these were slugs on my hellebores, but they're teeny, tiny frogs--each one the size of a pea! The wonders I continue to discover, sometimes even in my own backyard, amaze me.

being a refrain

another day needs assembly 

even as the season begins

its theater again 

again the thousand mouths  

agape in hungry joy 

and song

singing like leaves crackling 

of the ache I've carried 

since I was 15

perhaps I should still be 15 

second guessing every

possibility: if, what if

as if in an infinity mirror until 

an appropriate darkness

descends like kindness

_______________

Pic: Huck needed to be carried part of the way by Big A on our long, hot Sparty walk. Max is a bit jealous. 

staying close

Big A and I celebrated my dad's birthday today by going on a long hike in Sleepy Hollow State Park with my colleague friends and their families. 

The other doggies were off leash, and Max started to protest-cry about that, so we decided to try taking his leash off. We did so with great trepidation, but Max did so great! 

He'd frolic a bit up the path then loop back to check in on us and then weave his way up and then back again. In this way, he must have done twice the number of miles we did. Huck was content to trot on at our usual pace with brief pauses to "smell the news."

Pic: An incline in the woods.
 

celebrate good times

It's my dad's birthday in India... I'm there in every way except in person... And in the meantime, over here, I'm celebrating with JL, DV, and EM, whose birthdays are this week.

When I dropped something off for Nu this afternoon, they wanted to take me out to lunch* and then we kept talking, talking, talking until it was four hours later and I had to reluctantly say I had to go. (* They wanted to take me out to lunch, but the bookstore where we ended up did not take their college "munch money," and I insisted on paying so they said they'd take me out another time. I didn't plan it that way, but this means we'll get to hang out again soon. I'm feeling fairly Machiavellian and celebrating this too.)

Pic: Birthday morning pic of dad, sis, mom. All the hearts.