striving for ordinary

We tried to have an ordinary day around here. After watching several youtube tutorials, Nu made pots de crème, which were sublime. So I guess the day was elevated into something special. 🤗

But there were no scary phone calls... no panic... no being terrified in the moment and traumatized repeatedly after...

I could get used to this.

Pic: Nu's pots de crème (in repurposed Mentos gum containers).

how CAN the kids be alright?

Nu had just raised their hand to answer a question in Spanish class; I'd just landed in my office and poured myself my first cup of tea. And then both of us got the news that Nu's school was on lockdown due to an active shooter. 

I've lived in fear of this since Sandy Hook, but there's no preparing for this kind of call from the school. Thankfully, it turned out to be a hoax. And everyone's okay.

But as I canceled my classes via email and sped to the church where families were supposed to pick up their kids, I kept thinking of this morning when we'd run a little late and Nu had to sprint to make the it on to the school bus... I kept wondering if I'd spend the rest of my life wishing they hadn't made it on to the school bus. 

I guess there's always a low-key anticipation of this happening if you live in the U.S. I remember not sending the kids back to school until well into the new year after Sandy Hook, although I didn't seem too bothered by a gun incident in a neighboring school district last month. The other time I had to pick up the kids due to a gun threat was when they were at ecocamp together.

This is a messed up way to live. I couldn't bear to be apart from Nu for the rest of the day after I picked them up... and I got absolutely no work done... Tomorrow, I'll make up for it tomorrow.

Pic: Students gathered in the football field from a news article.

un-Monday

It felt a bit like I was playing hooky today. 

After I dropped Big A off at the train station and my precious Bluey car off at the dealership for battery updates, L picked me up and we headed to Ted Black Woods for a hike. It was beautiful but super icy, so I was glad L had brought trekking poles for us to use... they saved me from wiping out so many times and made me feel like an all-weather champ. I'm wondering if I should put trekking poles on my otherwise empty birthday list...

I was back by 10:30 to hold meetings and work online for the day, so I got some stuff done. But I did spend nearly two hours stressing that the courtesy shuttle wouldn't pick me up in time for me to pick up Nu and then panicking when it didn't, so there was wasted time. The driver who finally picked me up in the nick of time was third-generation Lebanese and I enjoyed our talk about diasporas. (I asked him about the audio book he'd turned off when I got in--books are such a passport to conversation!)

Back home things fell into dinner, kid time, and class prep mode, but it still feels like an atypical Monday and a bit unsettling. It's not helping that I can't stop humming Young the Giant's "The Walk Home" with its lonely heartbreak and its messy homage to the wind telephone.

Pic: L's sneak pic of me using her poles at Ted Black Woods.

 

tall portents

trees make me feel small 

and immense all at once

each connecting me to all

--the rich darkness of roots

under my breath I'll call

for a spring into existence

from extinction in leaf fall

--secretly yearning to be lost 

_______________________

Pic: Baker Woods with Big A.
 

a time for ice hockey

Into the woven silence--shouts

--like applause in the quiet 

of song just ended 

O these joyful, prayerful wars 

--ice in the curve of a river

smiles up at the sky

Pic: The Red Cedar is frozen solid; when we rounded the corner, MSU students were playing ice hockey on it.

and so we abide

I've so crossed so many rivers this day

some over and over as night falls 

clouds scattering like children 

to a preferred rendezvous 

with you I mark the present of now 

rippling like the joy shining 

from syllables of a song 

just half recalled

and above all, the shock of welcome 

the glacial startle of kindnesses

that engulf what I've become

on this other side 

--------------------------------------------------------------

Pic: Red Cedar River/Beal St. Bridge

"I could have danced all night"

I woke up feeling so light and unburdened because of Big A's job moving back to Michigan. And I've been dancing on air all day.

Big A started doing the budget and has been very gloom and doom, but nothing will bring me down. Financially speaking, we were not where we're expected to be before, and we won't be there now... or for a long time--but those precise details won't really impinge on our daily life and happiness. 

Pic: Scout and Huck super excited to see Nu off at the school bus stop. I feel like this too (about the move back to MI, not the school bus).