the embrace of trees

for Nance
there are so few ceremonies 
in absence 
I fall asleep in this shade and know
this is no mean season
it is a season of faith, of falling haptic
and helpless into hope
knowing we'll not run out of time
or light until nine or ten, 
so there is time to see the world as entry
...as a luminous archive
to take turns at impossible gifts, escapes, 
and knowing 

that even if we haven't seen gods by now
we've surely seen angels

________________________

Note: The title comes from Nance's comment yesterday. I was a bit dismayed the poem came out with some religious motifs as Nance is agnostic, but I comforted myself by reminding myself that I know she believes in Nature.

Pic: The Red Cedar through the trees on my first long walk of June.

summer rain

as if geography is destiny

leaves turn miscellaneous 

in our anthology of trees

just gentling into time

all we can grasp for now 

is this softness between us 

a metaphor for unexpected  

meaning--as if we invented it

_______________________

Pic: I didn't check my work, but it has been nearly a month since I walked by the river. I took a long walk today, and it felt SO good.

Ughs <--> Ohs

The NWSA proposal EM and I submitted together didn't get accepted, but the one I submitted by myself did. I wanted to go with her!

I ran out of moisturizer while traveling with the kids and sampled Nu's Vanicream, and it's a dream. It may be the one thing Miranda July got right in All Fours. (That and the bit about dogs.)

I got my travel course evals--high marks, but very few comments. It would have been nice if some of the kind things people wrote in cards and emails were in the course evals--I'm up for assessment the year after next.

I got a copy of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings (from a Goodwill) because a student (Hi, CW!) wanted to work on it and am reading it now. I expected to hate every minute of its appropriative voice... but have to say it's quite respectful and suspenseful.

A poetry anthology I have some poems in is now on Amazon and getting promoted heavily by the editors... and I'm worried my mom might see. I know she'll not like that I wrote about some of those topics.  

Pic: I watched this frog swim up to the little solar fountain like they were a kid in summer camp swimming up to the buoy in the middle of the lake. Their name is Popchyk. (Big A is reading The Goldfinch on my recommendation and we talk about the puppy more than any other character.)

ceremony (and the start of summer)

I guess I'm still not American enough. Why don't they hold graduation in their own auditorium, I wondered. The high school auditorium is pretty huge, but not Big-Ten university basketball stadium huge, which apparently is the size you'd need to accommodate Nu's graduating class and and their families.

(Incidentally, "accommodate" is a word Magic Johnson, once a player at this very stadium, used very inventively. As in: "I did my best to accommodate as many women as I could." They have his name up there and it reminded me.) 

Anyway, it was a full day--breakfast with one set of grandparents, lunch with another, then off to pick up people for the ceremony, and back at our place for dinner... Nu is currently away celebrating with friends.

I can't wait to get into my summer routine. Tomorrow we have an all-day department workshop. So perhaps I can start from this weekend, which conveniently happens to be the beginning of June? Yay!

Pic: Watching as the students throw their caps into the air. How much hope for the future is gathered in this one place! I clapped for each and every graduate and am so happy and hopeful for all of them.  I wish admin could have found a way to spend a moment to honor the senior student who died last year. 

"Grad U Ate"

Nu's grad party!

It was going to be outside, but then it looked like rain, so we moved everything indoors. The house was full of people who've known Nu since they were a baby/toddler and it wasn't just me getting emotional about this celebration.

Nu who'd consented to this party just to make me happy admitted at the end of the evening that they'd enjoyed being made a fuss of... !!! YAY.

I set out my kumkum bharani for people to place a vermillion blessing on Nu's forehead before they left. And my favorite thing about my multi-ethnic community is how each person made this Hindu tradition their own. While some people placed a dot (bindi/bottu), some drew a cross, or a crescent, and even... a smiley face!

Pic: Nu making a silly face because I asked for a pose. Behind them, their cake that says, "Grad U Ate." (I learned what the kids were saying and the pun wrote itself!)

"Even a wounded world holds us"

Thank you for the kindhearted words yesterday, everyone. I am lucky and grateful to know you. Your words helped.

As did this quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) that came to me via L: 

"Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift."

Pic: This winsome chipmunk who lives inside my broken Buddha also brought me cheer yesterday.

not the post I expected to write on returning

I did not expect to be overcome by such crushing sadness today. I was happy to be headed home, but with the travel term and the wedding (two of my big summer things) safely in the past, all the things I've tried to set aside spilled over inside. 

I guess there were fissures all along if I look back. My strangely titled post about cousins, for instance, is likely because I was trying to suppress having read about Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, the Palestinian pediatrician who had to identify the charred bodies of nine of her children after an Israeli airstrike on her home that day. 

Another airstrike yesterday on a school being used as a refuge by families yesterday, and I think the fact that my tax dollars contributed to this and supports the systematic starvation of hundreds of thousands of people feels too much. All the donations we make personally will not help if there is no food to be bought. How have we--as humans, as Americans--let this genocide continue for 19 months? 

(There was also the minor stress of sharing a hotel room with my kids, one of whom continued to feel a bit under the weather. Did I wish they'd do a bit more? Yes. Did I ask? No. I need to get better about this.)

Anyway, it all came to a head when we were dropping At off at her place. I started crying, then At and Nu were also sharing sad snippets and crying in the car. Big A was calling to find out where we were, but I couldn't even pick up the calls. Then At suggested a walk around the block to clear our heads. So we walked for a while... we found a small park and Nu and At gave the spinners a go. 

Pic: Nu and At at the park. It made me smile to see my kids... acting like kids.