still life with Claritin

Headed home from Yellow Springs today...

I love how vibrant this little village is; I dislike how much the Miami Valley messes with the kids' airways.

here we grow...

Antioch School nursery mates just nine years ago... on the cusp of various high schools now. Nu and the other kids loved their ambles across Art on the Lawn and Glen Helen. Us mamas sprawled out on the lawn with cold drinks sharing how we had felt "lifted up" by each other for years. And... RK remembers me every time she cuts watermelon into wedges 🤗.

a solidly socialist... snuggle

 

Scout + At + Paulo Freire.

of darker days

> Torrential rains last night and then a pretty innocent-looking morning. Yet at my all-kids-pre-breakfast cuddle/huddle, At remarked on how it already looked darker at our regular wake up time.

*

< Started Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies. FML, I didn't expect so much of that first chapter to be about Trumpfzzzz. It has been such a relief not to have to deal with that din on the daily.

Out + About

Back to school shopping at Hot Topic and Culvers' for dinner.

#TeenInChargeTales

a time of discernment

My humans are each engaged in a personal time of discernment...

Nu is figuring out being 13, their gender, and responsibilities and anxieties around high school...

At is experiencing post-graduation life and making meaning of his impromptu gap year...

Big A is dealing with a change of employer and the potential loss/depletion of research funds...

I appear to be panicking at will and slipping into periods of sadness routinely... None of it is inexplicable--if I think about it I can pull up tons of reasons why I should be sad. But it's not particularly discerning or meaningful.

Anyway, something that brought me a momentary chuckle today: I'd switched Siri to "Indian voice" recently. And good thing I did too. When I turned the phone's flashlight on by accident today, I was both faraway and flustered and slipped into Indian/British mode, asking Siri to turn off "the torch." And... it was done even before I stammered out "I mean flashlight." Nice discernment, Indian voice Siri.

Pic: Waterlilies at MSU Horticultural Gardens.

as time runs away

sometimes I speak of myself

in past tense, in third person

--I fall asleep, it's another day

I fall asleep and it's still today

life conveys me, an escalator
I ascend without any attempt 

I make meaning of everything

as time runs away, unmasking

all these unwitnessed narratives

and somedays will remind me 

of me, as I sift for obscurity

dowse for light... stay for me

Pic: T. J. Jarrett