Seeing silver linings

A friend asked on Facebook what was the most fun you'd had during stay-at-home orders. I had a hard time thinking of one REALLY fun thing, but I thought of lots of little nice things. 

I've made pies, cookies, kouign-ammans, croissants, pan dulce, ice cream, and many other delicious treats. 

I've gotten to read multiple books to Lochlan. 

We've had many more family movie nights than usual. 

I spent quite a bit of time and effort creating the front yard I've been dreaming about for years. 

I did my first (and possibly my last) cross-stitch.

I've been able to over-hear my kid's schooling, which is... not always wonderful, but it's interesting. 

I have been able to teach with my cat on my lap, a LOT.

I got a new hummingbird feeder and a bird feeder, and I can see them from my desk, and we have hummingbirds visit basically all day long. 

I have been walking for exercise, and on a handful of occasions, the big kid has come with me and we've had good talks. The rest of the time, I've enjoyed audiobooks or music, and looked at houses, and smelled the orange blossoms and roses, and stolen a fig or two when the ones overhanging the sidewalk first got ripe.

I've used the hot tub with Ant and the little one a LOT, and it's been nice to sit in there and play and talk and stare at the backyard, dreaming of what else I might do or add to the garden. 

I bought an outdoor heater and we watched "The Mandalorian" outside with the neighbors (probably about half the episodes, we watched together). 

I didn't spend much on gasoline or work clothes or school clothes, which was kind of nice. I didn't go to Ikea and Target and World Market and just buy impulse items, either. That was kind of a nice break. 

I dyed my hair multiple silly colors, because when you're not on campus and your hair is behind a set of headphones and no one sees you from the back, who cares?! Not like I need to look professional -- I teach barefoot now. Hell, I only wear a bra with a wire about once every two weeks now! 

I decorated the front yard much more enthusiastically than usual for the holidays. I baked an extra set of cookies just for the neighbors, and they brought us vegetarian sausage rolls (the Mandalorian neighbors) and cupcakes (the younguns across the street that we're just getting to know). 

On the occasions I *have* had to go out, traffic has been lighter, parking has been easier, and you no longer have to wait in long lines at toll booths -- just fly through and pay the bill that comes in the mail later!

With no commute, I rarely feel rushed, and often have time to unwind and read and hang out between work and getting dinner on. 

Are there things that have been outright awful, things I miss, things I cannot WAIT to get back to? Of course. But there are good things, too. 

Art & ennui

So, I've been wanting to art lately. What kind of art? Eh, I dunno. 

I want to sing, but when? Where? Not in a choir or with a band, surely-in-these-times. Not in my house where I'm self-conscious about annoying my loved ones*. Not in the garage which is cold and where I could be heard by my street's many walkers. And the other day I tried to sing a bit and couldn't get the note I was looking for, so probably I can't sing at all anymore. Also, I can't play any instruments that one sings along to, so I'd have to probably learn guitar or something first. No time.

I want to use my encaustics materials to make art, but what if it is bad? What if I make a mess? What if I make art and it is awful and then I feel bad about it taking up space? 

I want to write, but ugh. I don't feel inspired. I mean, I'm mainly using this blog as a way to occasionally force myself to sit and type things sometimes, and I appreciate the 5-6 of you who are regularly reading it. But as you can see, I have very little of import to say, and I'm not sure the way I see the world is very interesting right now. 

And also, there is a mess to clean and six-year-olds to make snacks for, and a cat on my lap, so I just don't have any forward momentum. 

Bleh. Poo. 

In other news, my hummingbird feeder is lively, and one even -- at last! -- sat on the little hummingbird swing very briefly. 


*Not that singing in general annoys them, but the kind of singing where you practice the same song over and over to try to get it right -- I think that might be annoying. 

Dreams & lights

 Lochlan asked me how you remember your dreams, and what dreams of mine I remember. 

I don't remember my dreams often -- usually I have a hazy impression right as I wake, and then it's gone. But it happened that yesterday, when he asked, I had had a lengthy and strange dream that I remembered well, and it had culminated in seeing my grandma and giving her a big hug. 

What I didn't tell him was that it looked like she had been crying, and she was a little shorter than I remembered (which is tough!), and I promised her I'd go to therapy. You don't have to keep promises to dream-grandmas, do you?

*~*~*~*~

We got the kids in the car to go looking at Christmas lights last night. I always like to, but everyone else has a more lukewarm response. Ant has bad memories of being dragged around for hours (although she seemed happy to go), Lochlan wanted the phone, and Kai doesn't like anything (although he also hopped in the car without argument). 

The "Fab 40s" neighborhood not far from us always decorates a lot -- a few streets coordinate the color of lights wrapped around their trees, and a few string lights overhead across the street. There are always a couple really stand-out displays, including one with multiple wooden cut-outs of characters from Star Wars, Spongebob, Trolls, and more. Last night one place had some sort of projection of Santa on a high window winking and waving. There was a vintage fire engine decorated up and "rescuing" a mannequin hung to look like he'd slipped while hanging up lights. There were enormous reindeer, a Santa in a vintage car, and luminaria. Along with us and other drivers, there were several horses with small carriages, a pedicab, a big hayride pulled by two horses, and a parade of classic 50s cars and trucks. It was nice. 

Well... we did have some complaints. People were walking to enjoy the display as well, and VERY few of them were masked. Kai eventually (read: after three blocks) decided he had a headache and wanted to go home. And of course, people were driving weird (like, letting you go when it was their turn, or not using signals and just SITTING there for no apparent reason). 

But overall it was pretty nice. 

Bah, humbug!

A few years ago, I wrote a list of my favorite Christmas songs, and why I loved the ones I did. 

A few days ago, Sweetie almost pissed herself, thinking we were going to get into a car accident because I screamed NO and made a sudden movement, all to keep myself from having to hear Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time."

I don'y know why I have such a visceral reaction to that song in particular, but let's get right to it: there ARE some Christmas songs I hate. 

McCartney's pile of tinsel-covered poo is emblematic of what I dislike about the rest of his solo and/or Wings stuff: it's catchy, sappy, and devoid of any of the conflict and intrigue of the Beatles' music. You can practically hear the cash register noises as he gets royalties, but does anyone LIKE it? Does anyone find it MEANINGFUL? Can you build fond Christmas memories around "The word is out About the town So lift a glass Ahh, don't look down"? Also, did you KNOW those were the lyrics, or did you, like me, process that whole song by remembering only "SIM-ply HAV-ing a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME" over and over?

Around this time of year, my friends on Facebook start posting videos by Pentatonix, an a capella group of sincere children who are perhaps a small cult. They sing beautifully, and they often take on the classic religious carols I actually like. But they do so while smiling beauty queen smiles and looking admiringly heavenward (that is, if they're not directing their soulful gaze DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA). 

Sidebar -- just after high school, I accompanied some friends of mine to an event at Rancho Seco park. It's a lovely park 45 minutes or an hour outside of town with a lake, and it is perhaps best known locally for also being the site of a nuclear power generating station. I didn't drive, so Mike was driving, and his girlfriend Dawn (who was my friend) was in the passenger seat. Both were LDS (Mormon), which wasn't unusual. Although I myself was a godless heathen, I attended a school with a fairly large Mormon population and was friends with several. I even attended a Mormon dance once. Anyway, Dawn was (and is) a lovely person, but scarred, as so many people are, by strict adherence to and belief in her very religious upbringing, and their relationship carried some disturbing hallmarks of what would become a very troubling marriage. Anyway, we were driving along on this warm day on the way to the park, and the song Creep by Radiohead came on. I liked the song then and still do. We all sang along to it. But of course, when the vulgarity passed, they quieted. And then the lines, "I want a perfect body... I want a perfect soul" came up. To my surprise, Dawn's voice rose in volume significantly, she squeezed her eyes closed sincerely, she gesticulated -- she sang "I want a perfect soul" like it was a gospel song. She MEANT that shit. (To be fair, that may be how I sang the line "what the hell am I doing here?" shortly thereafter.)

And THAT is the vibe I get from Pentatonix. They want a perfect soul. They will take this song and smoosh out of it a RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD ALMIGHTY IN THE HIGHEST. And then they will stare at you to make sure you get it, too. Do you get it? Do you really? Mary, did you know? In Excelsis Deo? The Lord is come. LET EAAARRTH RECEIIIIVVEEE HER KIIIING!!! (Eyeballs you meaningfully through the camera.)

I like a lot of R&B music, but I have very little patience for one of the hallmarks of the genre: melisma. Melisma is that thing where you sing one syllable but a bunch of different notes. Do you know the song "Let's Hear it For the Boy?" When she sings "Let's give the boy a haa-ah-ah-ah-he-ya-a-and," that's melisma. If it's built into a song*, I usually don't mind it. It's when you're expecting a song to have a certain meter and number of syllables, and it diverges wildly from that that I feel it's kind of cringe-worthy. Think of "America the Beautiful" when they go "Ame-hey--hey-heerica." There are a lot of singers that do this to Christmas music, and I start flipping stations. We heard "Jojo" the other day singing something like "Chestnuts ra-hoasting on an O-o-whoa-whoa-ho-pen fay-ya-ya-ya-yuh-her." No thank you. 
(* A Christmas song with melisma built in? Gloria In Excelsis Deo!)

"Do they know it's Christmas" has gotten a lot of well-deserved hate from better writers than I, but I will just add my note: I like the IDEA of Band-Aid raising money for charity, but the lyrics could not have been worse if they were intentionally trying to write a parody of this kind of thing. It's sounds like Lucille Bluth could have sung it.

Lucille Bluth

"And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life

Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"

First of all, Africa is quite large, and parts of it definitely will get snow this year and every year. Ever heard of "The Snow of Kilimanjaro"? Well, it's IN AFRICA.

No rivers flow? Not even the NILE AND THE CONGO? Jesus, pick up a globe or something. This bitch read Heart of Darkness and wrote a Christmas song. Just kidding -- Heart of Darkness prominently features rivers!

And do they know it's Christmas? Well, after we spent decades colonizing their asses and sending missionaries to convert them to Christianity, yes, I'd guess that many of them do!

Further, it is the Edward Gorey comic of Christmas songs. It is the Wednesday Addams of Christmas songs. It is the Edgar Allen Poe of Christmas songs, and I LIKE all of those people/characters and I do not like this. 

There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing

Is the bitter sting of tears

And the Christmas bells that ring
They are the clanging chimes of doom

Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you

I mean... I... We're thanking GOD right now that the "clanging chimes of doom" are for somebody else?

All right, that's all for my Very Scroogy Sing-a-long! 

Be well, friends. 

Winter break

 Well, I haven't really talked about distance learning. It's... different.

I'm doing my best, and I'm putting a lot of time and effort into it, and we're doing okay, my students and I. 

I always wish I could give them more -- more time, more engagement, more help. But we are limited, and that's that. 

Many of them -- I guess I am bragging here -- are saying that mine is their favorite or best class. 

My student teacher and I have started mini-conferences, asking four students to stay after each class and then talking to them privately in breakout rooms. We have four questions: Is there anything I can help with in this class? How's the rest of school going? Are all your needs met in general? Would you like to set a goal (short-term or long-term, academic or personal)?

It's been great. When we're in breakout rooms, we really get to engage with the kids in a way we can't in a larger group. Many will turn their cameras on. Many have set important goals, including things like getting more sleep and remembering to eat. 

Today was the last day until January 4th, and I'm glad to have a break, although I've already told several of them that I'd be checking emails (I would have anyway). And I'll certainly be planning -- we have a lot of stuff coming up. 

I really do miss the classroom experience -- seeing them, commenting on their new shoes, noticing the baby picture tucked into the clear cover of their notebook, shooting the shit with a handful of them while we eat lunch.

But we are doing okay! 

I'm trying to transition into a Christmassy feeling, although it is somewhat harder knowing we won't be doing most of the Christmassy things. No shopping, no brunch with my auntie and cousins, no white elephant exchange with the other side of my family, no open house here for my friends.

I am baking and whatnot, mostly for Christmas, but also partly just stuff I like -- I've been making milk kefir, and we really enjoyed a lemony kefir yogurt we got at the farmer's market. I made lemon curd today, so I think mixing that with the kefir will be the perfect amount of sweetness and tartness. 

I also made hot fudge and caramelized rice krispies, and stirred them into an ice cream base for a really remarkably good ice cream.

I'm about to pack up my treats to drop them off on people's porches. The nice thing about a pandemic is that people are home most of the time, so you can pretty reliably drop stuff off and text them to take it inside right away. 

I'm behind on a big crafting project I took on and am at least temporarily demoralized about it: I got the wrong width fabric and I'm not at all sure I'm going to have enough. And I cut one pattern out wrong. I'll still be able to use it, but it puts a hitch in my giddyap. 

We've created a very hygge sort of feeling around here -- the couch faces the fireplace, the tree smells lovely, there's a blanket and pillows out, and a cat on my lap. It's no big social season, but it's all right. We're safe, we're loved, and we're protecting future seasons. As the song goes, "From now on we all will be together as the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bow. And have yourself a merry little Christmas now." Someday those faithful friends who are dear to us will gather near to us once more. 

Growing and foraging and complaininess

As I hoped, getting in the habit of regular writing makes me remember that I have things to say!

So...  I like food. I like preparing and cooking food, I like feeding people, I like eating, I like preserving food, I like fermenting food, I like gathering, growing, planting, harvesting, foraging for and tasting food. 

I also like watching shows about food. Right now I am sort of switching between Padma Lakshmi's "Taste the Nation" and Zach Efron's "Down to Earth." And while I generally enjoy them both, they've also both flirted with an idea that I want to address. 

"Imagine!" a bandana-wearing expat living in a house he built in Costa Rica. "It's like your whole front yard is a garden!"

"I've never gathered my own food before," coos the supermodel-pretty host. 

"People don't know where their food really comes from, or what it looks like," the "health guru" says, trying a cacao bean. 

Friends. You can find out where your food comes from. You can gather and eat stuff. 

I mean, I realize I live in a Mediterranean climate near a river, but that isn't a particularly miraculous set of circumstances. Food grows in lots of climates -- just different food. 

Along the river, there are blackberries. I have picked fennel from the side of the freeway (there is a TON of it). Amaranth grows all over. 

The "imagine your front yard is a garden" guy made me roll my eyes, because my front yard IS a garden. And I know that's not possible for everyone; I invested time and money and labor into it, and I own a home with a yard. But you can grow herbs on the windowsill.

You literally do not have to go to Costa Rica to gather food. No, you may not be able to pick fresh coconuts in Toronto, but what does grow there? Apples? Pecans? 

And no, we're not all going to get to try a cacao pod picked fresh, but all this "do you know where your food comes from" mysticism should be a thing of the past now that we have the Google. Yeah, a cashew is weird-looking as it grows. Now you know. 

Anyway, if you are interested in food, that's about the only thing NextDoor is consistently good for. People will offer to let you glean their citrus trees, their figs, their olives, their cactus fruit... 

Shoot, last Spring when Sac State was more or less abandoned, I picked bags of kumquats, and I gathered enough gingko nuts for a decent snack (roasted in oil and salted). I left a note for the neighbors down the street asking if I could pick their oranges. They said sure, and I made marmalade. 

I love to learn about food and where it comes from and how it's prepared, and I think we should promote the idea that this knowledge is, in fact, accessible. 

Writing: my grandmother's junk

 My other grandmother, the one we nicknamed "Granny Boone" for the distant town she moved to before my kids were born, I don't talk about nearly as much as Vida. 

I actually spent more time with Grandma Jean growing up -- she babysat me after school until I was in about junior high, and even then drove me to ballet classes, or I'd stay the night at her house if my mom was out of town. 

I sometimes joke with friends about how much TV I watched as a kid, and it was a LOT. My grandma was not the kind of hands-on experiential-learning grandma my own mom is. She was an on-the-couch-watching-soap-operas or occasionally dragging-me-on-errands grandma. 

I spent a lot of unsupervised time, and while some of it was watching TV, and some of it was burning ants with a magnifying glass with the neighbor kid, and some of it was up a tree or on roller skates, I spent a fair amount of time sorting through junk. 

My grandma's junk was impressive, monumental, and almost hoarder-like. At times, she'd go through an area and clean it up for a while, but the junk almost always encroached again. 

I'm going to pause here and apologize to my mom, for whom this was traumatic, both growing up and as a sandwich-generationer who had to sort through it and clean it up. For me, it was a treasure. 

The small junk drawer had an assortment of broken pens, timers, rubber bands, paper clips, magnets, twist-ties, expired saccharine tablets... all the stuff you don't know what to do with (the answer is, throw it out). 

The front bedroom with a door adjacent to hers was sometimes a guest room, occasionally a landing pad for my ne'er-do-well uncle, and somewhat less junky in general than the other room. But it did have the buttons. The buttons were in a large 20-25 drawer case, and they were in NO ORDER AT ALL. There were single buttons, old buttons, new buttons, big buttons, and sets of six lightly tied to white cards. I used to offer to organize the buttons for her, but I was mainly playing with them, and I am not certain she ever used a single button out of there. 

The other bedroom was the real undiscovered country. At one point, huge rolls of pink vinyl lay higgledy-piggledy across the other junk. (I think she had offered to re-cover the chairs at my great-aunt's beauty salon.) There was a giant shelving unit of plants with grow-lights. There was yarn and fabric and a sewing machine and boxes and magazines and broken chairs and a green hat of knit-together beer cans and... it was a wonderland, is what I'm saying. 

The garage, which I was less-inclined to explore because it was quite dark, and probably just swimming in tetanus, had multiple coffee cans full of screws and nuts and bolts and macadamia nuts (I'm not saying I know why they were there, just that they were.) She had a chest freezer so frozen over that I used to like to go in there and chip away at it with a putty knife. 

In the rooms that weren't as cluttered, there was lots to find, too -- a big stereo cabinet with room underneath for records. A pitcher and basin. A million Reader's Digests. Two bookshelves stacked with books. An amber cookie jar that often contained store-bought macaroons. A jar with ribbon candy stuck together from Christmas.

Sometimes she'd make a big batch of jam and you'd come over to find the counters covered in terrycloth towels with the jam jars sitting upside-down. She had a metal mesh conical strainer for making jellies. 

Other times, she'd make a bunch of candy before Christmas. Sometimes she'd melt chocolate in a Crock-pot and use a bendy hollow plastic spoon to dip the caramels. The whole dining room table would be covered in wax paper and candy. 

The windowsill in the living room had African violets, and she was always half-heartedly growing an avocado pit in a jar in the kitchen window. She kept a pot of coffee on all day, so the house forever smelled like slightly burnt Yuban. 

I cringe to admit that I have junk drawers -- not whole junk rooms, but the garage is borderline -- that the kids may enjoy rifling through on a boring day. I know I should be more ruthless at throwing things away, but like Oscar the Grouch, I love trash! 

Tony part 2 (I have no interest in consistent titles, sorry!)

 I don't know if I've mentioned this, but despite being a pink-haired punk-rocker who listened to Depeche Mode (and being friends with the weirdos of the drama club), I was pretty square, and so were all my friends. I never even smelled pot until college (at which point I realized I had TOTALLY smelled pot when my aunts and uncles were gathered!) other than once at a Tesla concert. 

So when I say I was still going to parties with high school students, I assure you, it wasn't weird. We would, like, watch Animaniacs and listen to our friends play guitar. 

Anyway, I still always enjoyed Tony's company when I'd see him, even though it grew rarer. Sometimes in high school, I think you can wrap yourself in a magical world where anything is possible, and Tony used to use that -- spinning yarns to his girlfriend about how it was possible he was a werewolf. I used to roll my eyes, knowing it was ridiculous, and just more of Tony's desire to entertain and be the center of attention. 

One of the last times I saw him was at a party. He had graduated by then, too, and was cooler than cool, wearing purple jeans (it was the 90s!) and shades on his head inside. 

I remember getting the call that he'd died. I was in the office at my mom's house, sitting at the big wooden desk where my early home computer sat. It was a gut punch. I couldn't even really understand it. When I told Mom, she already knew, but it had come as a surprise to her earlier when she had to -- in her role as deputy coroner -- notify his mother, and she saw a giant picture of him on the wall. (His first name was Donald, which we teased him about but he never used, so when originally got the notify, it didn't occur to her who it was.) 

He was in an accident -- it was unclear exactly what happened, if I recall now, but it seemed like a mechanical failure rather than him being drunk or falling asleep. His pickup truck swerved across the center lane into oncoming traffic. He was driving with his girlfriend as a passenger, and she survived. 

I went to his funeral along with most of our friends. As much as Tony had been a part of my life, in some ways we hadn't been part of his. He had described his mother as "strict," and prone to "freak out," but we didn't actually know he'd grown up in a Mormon household.  The service was at an LDS church, and I can still remember the blond woman in a drapey pink dress singing "Wind Beneath My Wings." I was so upset by the choice of song -- I barely know why anymore, just a general sense that it didn't fit him. It wasn't right. 

Tony had spent countless hours, countless nights with us all, and none of us spoke at his service. His "best friend" was someone we'd never met. It was all so strange and... I was so sad, too. 

I used to think I could explain my outburst -- I started to laugh. I laughed hysterically. I laughed loudly. I used to think that it was because the whole thing felt so inappropriate, so wrong for who he was. 

My friend Stacey, who was always more concerned with keeping up appearances and not making a scene, practically smothered me with her body, throwing her arms around me and her weight on me. But she had barely done so before my laughter turned into sobs. 

Tony was gone. Tony, my some-time brother, my twin, my drag doppelgänger, the loudest voice in the room and the center of every circle, was gone, and here we were at a pale pink service with a woman singing about someone who faded into the background and held others up. The sun streamed in and caught dust motes, and I sobbed and sobbed until I collapsed, wrung out, in Stacey's lap. 

I don't know what we did next. I didn't drive, so surely someone else drove, but we went to see "Pulp Fiction," a movie that Tony had enjoyed. I don't remember watching it. We went to Burger King -- a store that was around the corner from the room where I'm typing now -- and I annoyed my friend Sean relentlessly, until he actually was kind of mad at me, by dumping the contents of salt and pepper packets in his hair. I was zoned out and tired and wanted to cause trouble. 

A few months later I had a dream. I may have narrated it here before. It was an awful day. I showed up naked to school. I forgot where my locker was, and then my locker combination. I had a test I hadn't studied for. Everyone laughed at me. I sat down on a bench to cry. 

And in the limited view of the ground at my feet, I suddenly saw a pair of Doc Martens and the cuffs of a pair of purple jeans. I looked up, and it was Tony. Real and flesh and blood. It felt like. 

"Hey," he said, affecting a boxer's posture and throwing a few fake punches, hopping on his feet a little. "You want me to beat somebody up for you?"

"You can't," I laughed ruefully. "You're dead." 

He dropped his hands and stood straight again, feet planted. "I know," he sighed, resigned. "But if you ever need me..." 

"I know." 

And that's pretty much the end of the Tony story. Of course. There were no more fun times, no more stories, no more showing off, no more tall tales, no more parties. Except for the friends we shared, I never met anyone else who knew him. 

I wish I had, just so I could hear one more story, have one more memory. I wish he'd gotten to live and take up more space in the world. 

Four -- you know, they're not on consecutive days, and that's okay.

 I have a lot of ideas for the writing that I *could* or *would* do.

Sometimes I think about writing my own autobiography in the form of little essays about the people who changed me.

Sometimes I think about writing about the people I knew whom I always remember when a certain song comes on. 

Tony fits both of those project ideas. 

I think I was already a senior when I first met him, and he was a junior. He hung around the drama kids, of which I was probably a central figure by then. He and I and one other friend ended up getting cast in The Martian Chronicles as astronauts, so we had matching coveralls, although he was about six inches shorter than I was! 

I will admit right now that of all the Bradbury I ever read, I understood The Martian Chronicles the least, even though I had that role. I remember there was a big dance scene, and maybe a gorilla played by a guy named Steve? It's unclear now, but to be fair, it was unclear then.

Anyway, Tony and my friend Jen, also a junior, started to flirt and then date, and Tony also became pretty good friends with my male best friend, Greg, and my boyfriend John. It was natural that we spent a lot of time together. 

He was funny. Like, hilariously funny. He was one of those center-of-attention guys who kind of needed to be funny, but he also genuinely was. 

The song I most closely associate with him was called "Hunger Strike," by Temple of the Dog. It had been a collaboration between artists, and a fundraiser. Tony and I both liked to imitate certain singers -- my best impression was Suzanne Vega -- and he loved belting that out. He'd ball up his fists, lean backwards, and in a growly impression that sounded a little like all the grunge-era singers, with the clenched-jaw emphasized, he'd sing "I'm goin' hungraaaaaayyyy."

He also did a mean Tracy Chapman, oddly enough, but he'd usually change the words to just narrate whatever we were doing to the tune of "Fast Car." "I've got a subway sandwich. You've got five minutes, before you have your class but I'm gonna skip and sit here. I'll finish my sandwich and then I'll have a cookie."

My high school boyfriend John was a dramatic, good-looking, kind of weird kid whose mom was born in Japan and was almost 70. She loved me. She also tolerated a lot of me and other friends hanging around, and she got pretty used to us going in and out. 

One Halloween, Tony, John, and another friend named Randy all decided to go in drag, essentially. They got a bunch of women's clothes -- mostly from John's many older sisters, I suspect -- and got all gussied up at John's house. When the left the room, John's mom taciturnly greeted Tony, thinking he was me! (It was 1992, and he had skater-boy longish hair, while mine was relatively short.)

For various reasons -- largely just that I was babysitting his younger brothers -- I spent a lot of nights at Greg's house, especially during the summer. Many times, we'd stay up late playing D&D, then all crash on the enclosed back porch. Tony always had to tell his mother it was boys only, so I'd be real quiet while he checked in on the phone.

I think it's common for high school kids to form fake families. My own students do it, introducing kids their age as "their mom" or kids of different races as "my twin." Anyway, Tony and I declared ourselves brother and sister, and I think because of the passing resemblance exemplified by Tony's drag costume, we kind of passed with others, too. 

Tony talked in his sleep. I thought for a while it had to be a put-on, because he would say the funniest things, and he was such a comedian anyway... I assumed it was for attention. But he never once broke into a grin, or even appeared to be awake. Once I listened to a long monologue about how "of course bears and gophers can be friends. They both live in the forest. They both hate the police." Once he advised some dream listener, "Confused? Try a fraction!" 

Once school started and he was a senior and I was in college, I saw him less. There were still occasional parties on the weekends, and I'd see him there, even after he graduated, too. 

<I need to turn in for the night. More on Tony soon.>

Writing day 4

 I'm struggling to find inspiration to write today. 

My 12 year old has some pretty serious mental health issues. I suspect that in a previous generation, they'd have been institutionalized. That's not a value judgment or anything, just something I was thinking about today. 

They yell at us, panic, curse, and claim executive function issues that prevent them from doing almost anything -- from bringing dirty dishes out of their bedroom to school assignments. 

The kid regularly insists that we should let him* walk the neighborhood after dark, walk to the river and over the levee by himself, walk to CVS in a pandemic to buy energy drinks. But tonight he didn't want to go into the backyard to retrieve the sweatshirt he'd left out there, and our reluctance to immediately jump up and do it for him escalated rapidly to high-pitched screaming and accusations that we hate him. He stayed in meltdown mode for half an hour, and it petered out with a long crying jag. 

I mean -- I KNOW I don't deal with his issues, and I know I don't know what it's like. But "Hey, do you think you could find some spoons in your room and bring them out so we can wash them and serve dinner" is met with "I CAAAAAAANNNNN'TTTTTT! NO, okay? You don't UNDERSTAND!!! I'm incapable! I'm going to DIIIIEEEEEEE!!!! And I know I'm USELESS and you HATE me. WHY ARE YOU LOOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT???? DON'T LOOK AT ME!" 

But if he asks us to go out into the cold backyard for something he doesn't *really* need, when I'm barefoot and the cat is cozy on my lap and I'm doing work and I so much as hesitate, it's like I may as well stab him in the face, and another screaming meltdown ensues.

It's exhausting. 

And I feel like the easier move? (There's no easy move -- this is a very hard parenting job) would be to just JUMP to his every whim, let him destroy the bedroom, buy a dozen new spoons a month, to be delivered via Amazon subscription service! To avoid eye contact and curtsy and walk out of the rooms he is in backwards. 

But he'd be such an insufferable fuck. 

I mean -- to be fair -- he is already an insufferable fuck. But he would be the kind of insufferable fuck who would also never have friends, a job, a lover, an education, or, in all likelihood, a roof over his head. (I guarantee he will want to strike out on his own, but no roommate or landlord on earth would tolerate his way of living for long.)

So I will continue to ask him to do the smallest things, fairly infrequently. And he will scream and yell and occasionally threaten murder. 

And he will probably fail 7th grade, but he might get away with it because of the pandemic (and they're not really following his IEP very well, so I *could* make a stink). 

And he isn't really gaining any self-management skills or housekeeping or self-maintenance skills. 

And I don't know what to do with MYSELF. Like, I want to run away, but we're under a stay-at-home order, so I really shouldn't even go take a soothing drive. 

And I want to hide in my closet, but I have another kid, too, and I really can't be the mom who hid in her closet in their future therapy sessions. So I just have to suck it up and be cool and carry on and be strong and hold it together and go to sleep and get up and get exercise and work and get him up for school and get his medication and encourage him to eat things that aren't popcorn and just... be normal all the time. 

I think I CAN. I think I can just keep going. I think I can autopilot indefinitely. I think I can just stiff-upper-lip forever. I think that's who I am. 

But if you get a collect call from Tijuana, it's me. 




*The pronouns are shifting. It's complicated. He now feels he is non-binary, and that she/her is wrong, but prefers "it," which is pretty widely recognized as a dehumanizing slur. 

Writing, day 3 or whatever

 Hey, remember two days ago when I was like, "I'm going to write something every day?" Good times, right?

In thinking about my grandparents' bathroom, I got to thinking about the rest of their house, too. I could go room by room, probably. I remember that in the master bedroom, they had these enormous wooden shelving units that contained untold treasures, including several short, brown wigs on styrofoam heads. This always puzzled me, because my grandmother had a full head of hair, it was ALSO short and brown, and I never saw her wear a wig. 

There were also little odds and ends, many of which I have still -- hatpins, belt buckles, screw-on earrings. Side note -- I wore a pair of the screw-on earrings the other day. Given that the clamp-on sort of clip-on earrings are deeply painful after a few hours, I'd avoided trying the screw on kind, which look like tiny C clamps and I was sure were miniature torture devices. But no! I was comfortable in them all day! Quelle surprise.

The corner bedroom at one time had a crib in it, but as I got older, it was converted into an office where my grandmother always had a pretty decent new computer. Not that she ever became very adept at computer use, but she liked to have a nice one. She did some of her genealogy research on it, and otherwise had programs like "Reader Rabbit" for the grandkids. 

The third bedroom is the one I spent the most time in. It was the kids' room, and all of us grandkids spent some time there. There was a trundle bed, and another big set of wooden shelves and drawers, this time in a pale beech finish, and in those cupboards were the toys! Oh, I loved the wooden blocks and their smooth, cool rounded edges. My grandparents were pretty tidy people, and they had a small house and a big family, but no one ever seemed to get too fussed about me building long castle walls in the middle of the living room with those. 

There was also a campfire marshmallow tin with more toys inside, and a set of Legos with a green square Lego base. There was a shelf of Little Golden Books, and there was a small table with a wooden top and metal legs. I turned that table upside down and it was a boat. My grandmother had rather psychedelic taste in carpeting, so it was easy to pretend that I was protected from a sea of sputtering hot lava on the red shag carpet. 

Once I stood on the bed and looked at the grown-up books on the shelves up there. I found something illicit -- the Joy of Sex? Our Bodies, Ourselves? I can't remember now. I do remember the fear of discovery. 

The bedrooms had a hallway between them that made a little L shape, and the hallway opened on the dining room on one end and the living room on another. What we kids delighted in (and got scolded for) was hiding, running, and slamming the doors on one another. 

Imagine it is one day in the early 1980s. I am there in the house. A few of my cousins are there. My parents and aunts and uncles are there. It is no special occasion. We probably ate dinner at home first. And now the adults are playing pinochle, and we are playing with toys and running and yelling. 

The table where they play is in the small dining room, which has curtains that hang to the floor. There is yet another big wooden shelving unit that partially separates the dining room from the living room. The dining room table has a cover on it, some kind of padded naugahyde thing, that protects the surface. And then there is the kitchen. 

Say you are six or seven. Say your mom is health-conscious, so there aren't a lot of packaged treats at home. Say the adults are distracted with their game. 

Here are your choices: in the kitchen, next to the stove, there is a shelf that contains cookies. There are Flaky Flix, Fudge Stripe cookies, Nilla Wafers, Ginger Snaps, and maybe Oreos, maybe marshmallow pinwheels. 

In a narrow cupboard by the door are fewer treats, but your grandfather's roasted Planters peanuts are there. 

In the garage, there is an outdoor fridge with sodas, including half-size cans of Orange Crush. 

On the dining room divider, in a drawer, are hard candies, but not many. Perhaps a bag of Starlight Mints. 

By the front door, on a little table, there is a blue knobbly glass jar full of Starburst. These are my favorites, in this order: red, pink, yellow, orange. 

Sometimes I think about the rooms as they were, then as they were when they changed, and then how they must not be now. 

I think of my grandparents, both gone now, puttering around the kitchen to make a little salad. 

I think of the piles of newspaper clippings they kept, and the way my grandma said, "Oh Fanny" when she got up, and the way my grandfather leaned forward, one palm on his thigh and his elbow jutting out, when he wanted to say something he really meant. 

Writing, day 1, the frog

 Hello. I hardly ever write here anymore, because I hardly ever write anywhere anymore. I am trying to make distance learning go well, and it takes a lot of time, so I watch a lot of cooking shows on my down time. 

Anyway, I've been feeling the urge to remember that I can write, the urge to wish I was a good writer, the urge to be inspired to write... and decided maybe the best I can do for now is just write a little, about whatever, pretty frequently. Please feel free, if you have an alert of some kind set up on this blog, to tap out. 

So! 

The Frog. 

When I was little, my paternal grandparents had a little rubber frog in the bathtub. Their bathtub was avocado green, and the frog was stiff and old and had maybe seen better days. Other features of my grandparents' bathroom were a wooden toilet seat and lid, and a vast collection of Tone soap in a bowl. 

On the rare night when I stayed at my grandparents' house, I'd generally have a bath. I liked the stiff rubber of the frog, and the warty bumps on his back. 

I was quite small when my grandfather had a stroke, and I understood little about it, but I knew it had happened in that bathroom while he was shaving. Sometimes afterward I wondered if the little frog was scarred by the experience. If he'd seen it. If he had been changed, somehow, by the close proximity of my grandfather's death that didn't happen then, yet. I wondered if it was haunted. I wondered if my first cousins also took baths and played with the frog on the nights they stayed over -- more often than me. 

There was a preponderance of green. 

I knew he had almost died. I knew he got frustrated searching for a word, now. I knew he cursed in front of me, and it brought him close to tears in his anger and embarassment. But my grandparents' house was still a swirling sea of color and love and it was safe now. Grandpa hadn't died. But what had the frog seen? 

Lochlan is turning 6

I don't write on this blog much anymore, but between the approaching twin milestones (starting Kindergarten and turning six a day apart) and the absolute charm this kid shows as they learn and grow, I have to do a tribute, I think. 

Lochlan doesn't much mind being quarantined. It means lots of moms, lots of screen time (sigh), and lots of wearing pajamas all day. 

But Loch has also grown by leaps and bounds over the last 5 months (and not just the nearly inch-and-a-half in height!). Loch's gone from recognizing letters and hesitantly sounding out words, to enthusiastically asking about signs, wanting to read the chapter titles of the book I'm reading, and absolutely zipping through the nature books we insist on before screen time begins. We've even caught Lochlan reading a Star Wars encyclopedia quietly in the backseat, only occasionally asking, "What's a w-e-a-p-o-n?" 

We insist on doing some exercise, and given several choices (and the heat and bad air quality), lately the number one choice has been yoga. We do it together, and Lochlan seems to really enjoy it. 

When it isn't so hot and smoky (we are in the middle of fire season, and it's REALLY bad), Loch has very nearly got the hang of bike riding, which is awesome. I'm hoping soon we can go on rides together to the park, or home from Grandma's.

One night Loch seemed a little amped up before bed, and I also think we'd seen the word "meditation" somewhere, so I ran a little deep-breathing and visualization, and now L wants one every night before bed. 

Sometimes Lochlan is very astute. I was having them sort, count, add and subtract some mixed nuts, and Loch looked at me sideways and said, "I know why you're doing this. You're trying to make sure I'm ready for Kindergarten." 

Loch also says the sweetest things. I gave them two kisses on the cheek the other night, and then Loch turned my head to give ME two kisses. I said, "You have the sweetest heart." Lochlan replied, "Well, I didn't put it in there! You did!" 

Loch is a very wiggly, moving kind of kid. We like to take videos of Loch eating ice cream at the coffee table. Loch stands up, half-dancing, shaking their booty side to side. At the moment, Loch is doing laps around the living room, periodically jumping off the couch. 

Loch really, really likes to be close to me. They still ask almost every night if I'll sleep in their bed. They will crawl right on top of me if I lie down. There's a near-constant stepping and sitting on me, with accidental knees to the boob. Lochlan LOVES my "big belly" and says it's so soft. Loch likes to set up camp next to my desk, so there's often a 3 foot ring of toys and crumbs between my chair and the rest of the room. 

Loch can be very sensitive, cries easily, and is sometimes quick to anger, but also loving and forgiving. A couple weeks ago, we were on a long car ride, and Az was in a wicked mood. Az had said several really intentionally mean things, including that Lochlan didn't love Az. But a few minutes later, Az asked Loch if Az could have some of Loch's car treat -- jelly beans -- and Loch happily handed them over. 

Lochlan doesn't feel 100% like a boy or a girl. Lochlan has some anxiety, and makes us take photos of things that will soon be gone forever. My camera is FULL of pictures of a grape, a goldfish cracker, the TV with an animal on a nature show that is about to be prey. 

I'm a little sad that Lochlan's 6th birthday will be a very small affair due to Covid-19. I'm more than a little sad that Kindergarten is going to look so different than I had hoped. We got the kinder teacher who LOVES Lochlan, and who has been "claiming" them as her own since we walked around on campus with Loch in a baby carrier. But Lochlan is a very resilient kid -- smart and funny -- and will be fine, I know. And someday we'll be back in real school and Loch will have friends and playdates and birthday parties. In the meantime, I am making a stupidly-elaborate cake that only a few of us will ever taste. Because this kid sure as hell deserves to be celebrated. 

Quarantine time!

Hello! Sorry I've been away for so long.

What a weird time! My school district made attendance Friday voluntary a little over a week ago, and communication was kind of terrible, and then they closed Monday through Wednesday, but before we even got our heads wrapped around that, we were closed through April 13th.

Are we distance learning? Who knows? Not right now. I am working from home, but doing what? Also who knows? I mean, I am contacting families, finding out what their technology capabilities are so we can eventually do distance learning, and sometimes adding enrichment stuff on the Google classroom.

It is deeply strange not to see my students, and also to have it be so sudden without any chance to say goodbye and leave them with a few reassuring words. It is entirely probable that prom is cancelled, and perhaps graduation as well. I think IB exams are cancelled (although I don't know how public that is yet, so I'm not telling kids).

As far as home, are we homeschooling? Uh, a little? Not that much, to be honest. It is pretty hard to simultaneously do my working from home and run preschool and sixth grade, while also making breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And frankly my 11 year old is PISSED about everything all the time, so me asking her to go do work of almost any kind is met with a "no." And what am I gonna do, ground her? We're all grounded already.

There are pros, too. I've gotten the garage cleaned, made some yummy treats, organized the games cabinet, played with pony beads... We've watched several movies as a family, which we rarely do.

I've been running in the morning instead of going to the gym, which is different and interesting. It's been a little cold, and my joints kind of ache, but it's nice to try something new, sort of.

Ánt and I have been watching some shows together -- What We Do in the Shadows and Sex Education -- and between that, the school, the work, the baking and cleaning, and whatever else, I've have not a single moment to myself. I've started barricading the door (okay, just opening a drawer so you can't open the door) when I go potty just so that L doesn't throw the door open and go, "Mom, Mom, Mom... Can I tell you something? The Pokemon who are poison type can use vine whip attack."

Even if I put on headphones to listen to an audiobook, unless both kids are on screens, I get interrupted every few seconds. (I am literally being asked about Pokemon right now, as I type. I am ignoring it.)

What about our national crisis itself? A little worrying, to be honest. My parents, in-laws, stepdad, and brother-in-law are all in high risk groups. We're really trying to stay home and help "flatten the curve" of how fast the virus spreads, but I admit that our kids and the neighbor kids are having a hard time with the distance, and we've gone to a couple different grocery stores to try to get essentials. While we have everything we really need, if the hoarding continues, we're going to be eating a lot of farro instead of rice, that sort of thing.

Both Ánt and I have had illnesses with a cough -- hers with no fever and mine with one. I took a course of antibiotics, which does seem to have made me feel better, so my doctor was probably right that I had an upper respiratory infection. But who knows, you know? It does sound like some people get a mild or even asymptomatic version and pass it on to others without knowing. I hope I haven't done so.

At the moment, while we are hearing about deaths from COVID 19, it hasn't affected anyone we know personally. But the scale of it sounds like eventually we will. So while staying at home is a bit aggravating (especially for an extravert like me), we know it's for the best, and we're really trying to follow best practices.

A's birthday is on Wednesday, so I'm going to bake a cake, and the neighbors promised to bake a cake and eat it across the street from us, so we'll all have cake at the same time. I also have some friends sending her cards and artwork, so hopefully it will be special even though it will be necessarily small.

Okay, all for now. Hope I don't sound petty or petulant to complain. They say if you stay at home, you are personally preventing hundreds or even thousands of deaths, so the fact that I'm almost out of flour to bake with and the kids are arguing over whose Haagen Dasz it is seems small in comparison.

New Year a-coming.

Well, I'm on vacation, which is the main reason for the post -- I feel relaxed enough to sit down and write without thinking about how I need to fold laundry instead.

But it's a good time to reflect, as well. My uncle's memorial was today, and I am deeply sad that I'll never get to go "jam" with him again, but I also have enjoyed seeing the new babies in the family, learning of more on the way, and getting to hug and talk with and even laugh with my aunts and uncles and cousins.

I have one uncle -- my OTHER favorite uncle -- who really wears his heart on his sleeve. I mean, none of us are stoic, exactly (my dad tries real hard), but if there was a myth or a sci-fi story about the figure whom the town relied on to express all their emotions, this would be my uncle M. And there's a certain extent to which it makes everyone nervous or uncomfortable -- even me! I cracked a dark joke to him the other night ("I thought I would be the first to go." "So did we! There was money on it.") to cheer him up. But you know, a couple years ago I heard a song, by 90s One-hit wonder Lisa Loeb, of all people, in which she sang, "Feel what you feel." And I burst into tears in the car! I remember thinking how nice it was to be told to just go ahead and feel your feelings, not feel guilty or bad or busy or whatever else. Since then I've been trying to "feel what I feel," and let others, too. It's okay for Uncle M to feel what he feels, even if they are big, messy feelings. He lost a brother, a good man. Grief is the right feeling for right now.

Sigh. Anyway.

The kids have both changed a lot this year. This time last year I was just deciding whether to enroll Lochlan in early kindergarten. I talked and thought about it and decided I would not. I was worried about his ability to focus, his complete lack of interest in learning to read, his kind of shaky motor skills... I made the decision just about one year ago. And it's not as though I didn't question it! Two friends whose kids are both a couple months younger than Lochlan decided to do early kinder, and I wondered whether I was holding him back. But we've spent another year with a deeply caring preschool teacher, another year of short days, another year of long hours playing with Grandma, and a lot of those skills I was worried about are falling into place naturally.

He almost certainly also has ADHD. He can focus for HOURS on things he's interested in. In fact, he's pretty advanced at playing Legos*, and he will sit and play chess with me (a beginner version with a lot of assistance) for 40 minutes, easy. But if I ask him to get his shoes on and he sees a dinosaur toy on the way (or hell, *thinks* of a Pokemon), it's toast. There's no way he'll remember he was getting shoes. I'll ask him to put pants on, he'll want to talk about dinosaur facts, I'll ask him to put pants on, he'll go to his room and say, "Oh! My carnotaurus!" "What are we doing right now, Lochlan?" "I don't know, what?" "Pants." "Oh yeah! Pants!"

He has his rotten moments, like any kid, probably, but he's the most empathetic, kindest kid I've ever met. Last night, he wanted to pass on his turn rather than taking my king, because he was worried I'd feel bad if I lost. Tonight, he thought I looked sad, and he followed me to give me a sip of his milkshake.

Azadeh has changed a lot, too. She's become... easier. Mostly. I mean, pre-teenage-hood has hit, and sometimes her mood swings are a lot for her (or anyone in a 5 mile radius) to handle, but she's also more willing to clean her room a little, or get ready for school, or do the little things we ask. We got a cat the weekend after Thanksgiving, and although she never showed much interest in our existing cat, she's really enamored of the kitten, Hetty. She always wants the kitten to sit in her lap, gives her toys, looks for things the cat might like in the store, and asks whether she's doing things right, like encouraging the cat to be gentle. She even guides Lochlan (sometimes not so gently) in how to treat the cat. I think she sits still more often just so the cat will sit with her!

She still has a tendency to be negative about most things, but she's been more enthusiastic about things too, like which middle school she'll go to, or learning to bake. Tonight I asked if she'd help with dinner, and she said sure. Then I TRICKED her -- I told her how to cut the onion, the celery, the carrots. I told her when to add the noodles... And all the while I pretended to be busy with other things. Oh, I stirred, added salt, and did a few other small things, but basically she made the whole soup. I even made her taste it for seasoning and test the noodles for doneness. At the end I told her she had made the soup, and she was surprised and proud. Later, she apologized to the rest of us for the big pieces of vegetables, and I said I liked it, that it was "rustic." She asked what that meant, so I said they were hearty and not fussy. She said, "Thanks for making 'you're bad at chopping' sound like a compliment.'" I could tell she was really tickled, though (and the soup was good!).

I'm not really ready for any kind of year-end review, but I'll be glad to put 2019 to rest. If I have a resolution, it's going to be that instead of fretting about every political thing that comes my way, I'm going to focus my energy as much as possible on ONE useful thing, and I think that thing is going to be voter registration. I may even do a voter registration drive with the students. Heck, they can get service hours.

All right, take care. Do good. Feel what you feel. Tell people you love them so they know, just in case.

*He can put the Legos together from sets for kids older than him, and although I help by sorting out the pieces he needs next, he does the building. He can even put them together with the piece he's building oriented differently than the one illustrated in the instruction book (which I cannot!). It makes me think he must have pretty decent spatial skills. The only thing is, if it has wheels, he wants to put the wheels on RIGHTAWAY. Like, he'll put the wheels on five or six steps early. I don't know why -- he's just ready for wheels!

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful, as always, for life, health, shelter, food, and all the things we can take for granted but many people can't.

I'm thankful for my wife's transition and that she's here with us today.

I am thankful for my two unique, creative, loving, special goofballs, one of whom crawled into bed with us this morning while the other made cocoa for them both. (Granted, the thumping this involved sounded like the drum intro to "In the Air Tonight," but it was a nice gesture.)

I'm thankful for my good friends and colleagues. I have been better about asking for support lately, and it has improved my life.

I am extra-thankful that my bestest friends are all on these really stable, happy, upward trajectories: jobs, homes, babies, partners, art...

And I am super-thankful that I've been making a concerted effort to spend some time with my friends, and they have spent the effort back, and I feel less isolated.

I am very thankful for my family, my parents, step-parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and warm, loving sisters and brothers in-law. This has been a trying couple years -- my grandmother passed, and then my uncle. I saw a photo yesterday with my great-grandma, paternal grandparents, and uncle on his wedding day to my aunt, and it jolted me -- all these people I loved are dead. But at the same time, I'm so grateful for the years I had with them, for the clear, strong, positive memories I have with them, and for all they contributed to my life.

Especially as my friends (and younger cousins!) are losing their parents, I'm deeply grateful to have good parents in good health who live nearby and are loving, involved grandparents. I realize that there are at least four variables in that last sentence that not everyone has.

Under "miscellaneous," I am thankful for having moved the living room furniture in such a way that we all hang out in the same room. I am thankful that my garden mostly works. I am thankful for my cat Mina and for the new kitty we are getting on Sunday! I am thankful for both kids' good schools and caring teachers. I am thankful for my own students, their senses of humor, and their willingness to learn with me. I am thankful for my neighbors and my neighborhood.

And although we are living in American in 2019, and there is not much to be grateful for in the political world, I'm intensely grateful for all the people who are working to do *good.* In my own circle of friends are people working to help the homeless, undocumented immigrants, underprivileged kids, and so many more with so many organizations. As I write this, multiple of my neighbors and friends are running past my house on a charity 5k to feed the hungry.

There is good in the world, there is good in the world, there is good in the world, and I am thankful.

Uncle Eric

My uncle died today.

It was a surprise, not only because I didn't know he'd been having health problems -- Grandma was always my news source -- but also because he was my youngest uncle, the baby of the family.

Even though he was in his 60s, just by virtue of being the youngest, he always seemed young to me. When we would go out golfing when I was a kid (and oh, the memories I have of those early mornings with my dad and uncles), my dad was almost 40, rapidly graying, and a teacher. Eric was still in his twenties, which made him seem hip, young and carefree.

We always had funny nicknames for each other in the family, and he reveled in calling me "Kara Bear-a Ware-a Snare-a MacNamara," but as I got older, he never failed to call me by my full first and middle name. If I picked up the phone and heard a slightly nasally "Kara Ellen!" I knew it was him. (My other favorite uncle often uses both, too, but it has a lower, descending tone.)

But you see that exclamation point? That's because Eric said everything in an exclamation point.

"Kara Ellen! Did you tell you Dan and I are going to go see Tool?!" "Kara Ellen! Jules and I are doing Easter at our place!" (I haven't been to Easter at their place in 20 years, but he ALWAYS called to invite me.)

He absolutely loved music. Even some of my earliest memories are of him giving my dad record albums for Christmas -- I remember in particular being fascinated by the cover of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

He saw concerts as often as most people see movies, finding excuses to take his business partners as a schmooze or his kids as a bonding experience.

At my Grandma's wake at his house, he had the record player going.

I think I've made it plain that I'm close to my family, and I have a large family that is nevertheless surprisingly close-knit. My grandparents and aunts and uncles babysat me, and then they hired me for my first babysitting jobs. We went to everyone's birthdays and had all the holiday meals together. My dad and his brothers spent decades meeting most Sundays for golf or cards. Many of them still come to both my kids' birthday parties, even though they are only great- aunts and uncles, which is admittedly pretty distant.

But Eric loved music, and I was in a band and played the bass somewhat capably. He used to have some guys over to his place to jam, including an old dude he loved named Denny. He enclosed a little sun porch on the side of his house and kept the music stuff in there. So when my band broke up, he called right away and asked if I wanted to jam. I did.

I was no good compared to some of the guys he got in there, but they made room for people with varying abilities, and they often got pretty high, so the music sounded okay to them. About once a month (sometimes more often) for some years, I went over to his place, or to one of the other guys' houses, and we made some music. Often times it was terrible music and great fun. I loved playing Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath." Sometimes we'd just dink around, and once or twice I got on the mic and started saying goofy stuff. Eric absolutely lost it laughing to one improv I did called "Grandma's Big Back Porch." He liked to record everything -- every session from beginning to end. (I still have dozens of CDs labeled things like "Copious Notes: More Vicodin for the Drummer. F'ed out" and "Muscle Tone" and "Burn on Contact.") So EVERYONE heard the Big Back Porch song. (Full disclosure: he even played it at Grandma's wake.)

A lot of times, we'd take a break, and the other guys would go out to smoke. I'd start to head off, too, but he'd play a quiet guitar part to something like "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, and I'd stay to sing with him.

He also loved to go to "Old Farts," a music festival somewhere in the Deep South that he always wanted me to go to with him.

His enthusiasm extended to his kids, and I often heard about Dan's sports or school achievements, or Melissa's creative endeavors. He was incredibly proud of them no matter what they did, really. They've grown up to be very decent people, too, and I'm sorry that neither of them -- should they have kids -- will get to see the light in his eyes that would have been there for his grandchildren. (Important note: he does have two other kids who are both older and with whom he has recently reconnected. They seem like decent people too, and it's sad that their sort of budding relationship with him ends here. I don't mean to leave them out.)

Anyway, he was surprisingly young, he was full of boundless enthusiasm, energy, and love, and there's a lot we'll all be missing without him.

Rest In Peace, Uncle Eric, and may the strains of Tool guide you to your rest.

Good news

Okay, I have to be upfront and say that as Az gets older, I feel like there's so much I still want to share about her and her journey, but also that she needs and deserves privacy.

I'm not sure how I'm going to balance those, but I think ultimately I will have to come down on the side of her needs, not mine.

So without going into any great detail, I will say we've been making some changes and trying new things, and that we've had some pretty positive early results.

For example, we went to Hamilton last week (it was amazing). And often in the past, if I did some big, grand exciting thing that I was hoping Az would love, we would find at the end that she was entirely focused on the one thing that hadn't gone her way. She'd declare that she had a terrible time, because despite getting do to everything she wanted at the fair and getting a cotton candy, she hadn't also gotten a frozen slushy. It was so hard to be a parent and go through that cycle every time of "this is gonna be so great! -- Oh, this seems like a minor setback. -- Ugh, why do I even do anything for her when I can never make her happy?"

But anyway, Hamilton was terrific, and we both thought so, and someone even traded her seats for a better view (for reasons I won't go into, but it was kind of dumb of them!), and afterwords she got three cast members to sign her program. She looked SO HAPPY all day. And there was nothing, not the slightest thing, that brought her down. Even though traffic was awful and we pulled off in Pinole to eat dinner. She was just... cool. Easygoing. She just rolled with everything.

And there have been some other developments that, in any other household, would probably be nothing noteworthy, but in my case, I immediately called my mom to share the good news.

First, I gave Az a bowl of chicken noodle soup for lunch, and I said I loved her (I tell her all the time). She answered, "thanks for the food. I love you."

I played it cool until I got out the door, but she NEVER EVER EVER tells me she loves me, and she almost never says thank you about anything.

Later the same day, after Lochlan had already chosen a dessert, Azadeh asked if we could try the new gelato place that opened up down the street. So the two of us snuck out and got some gelato. And friends, she is weird about food. She hoards it, hides it, sneaks it, and sometimes eats like she's been in prison, guarding it. Mom and I used to get a small dessert sometimes when we'd go out to dinner, and we'd get three spoons, and she'd be SO greedy and weird about us even tasting it that we sort of gave up on the endeavor.

She NEVER voluntarily offers tastes of food. But I guess a lot of our "nevers" are getting disproven today, because last night she scooped up a bite of the "afternoon tea" flavor and handed it to me to try.   Again, I had to act like it was all normal and cool, but you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Anyway, I KNOW, okay, that saying thank you, saying "I love you," offering bites of food, and enjoying enjoyable events are probably not noteworthy in a household with a neurotypical kid, but I don't have that household, so I'm celebrating -- hell, I'm walking on air!

Bodega Bay

I should probably proofread and edit, but it's bedtime.

I took the kids camping this week. I always intend to do a couple day trips nearby, but unless we do a big week-long thing with family a 6-10 hour drive away, it seems we rarely manage and the school year sneaks up on us before my summer bucket list is crossed off.

I love Bodega Bay, and I found a 2-day mid-week spot despite my last-minute planning. It was perfect -- just a few sites away from the tall sandy hill Az had spent so much time running up and down last time (and even closer to the bathroom). 

It was in the 60s during the day -- sunny on Tuesday, but overcast yesterday, and cold at night. I kept it simple: the one-burner stove, no camp kitchen, and low-prep meals. 

The kids did a lot of running around playing, both at the campsite and at the hill, which I could mostly see from my camp chair by the fire. When I wasn’t stoking fires or washing dishes or making meals, I mostly read the book I’d brought, “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

***

I bought it because I’m teaching that new class next semester, and one of the ideas I feel like I need to know more about is “indigenous knowledge.” I had been turning the idea over in my mind a lot. Can I expand the meaning of indigenous to include students like my own, many of whose parents or grandparents are refugees, but who maintain strong cultural ties and practices? Can indigenous knowledge move with you to a foreign land? 

So when we were in Oregon, I saw this book and its subtitle (Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants) and figured I’d better pick it up. I didn’t entirely expect it to be a thrill ride, but I never mind learning new things, even if the text is a little dry. 

The text isn’t dry. I’ve been absolutely absorbed in it. The woman in charge of my recent training introduced us to the idea of “headlining” as a summary strategy, so here goes:

Indigenous Botanist Urges Readers to Recognize Earth’s Gifts, Reciprocate: Essays on cattail goo, mothering, ethical trappers, and mountains of algae.

It’s lovely, and it’s sad, and there is some crossover with The Sixth Extinction, which I also recently read. We have really fucked things up, my friends. But also, there is so much that is so beautiful, and I am grateful for it. It felt especially apropos to be reading the book with my feet in the dirt, my back to a blackberry patch that housed one family of quail and another of turkeys (at least). 

And not only apropos, but synchronicitous, as many things were this week. The night before we left for the trip, when I had been thinking of waking up on Grandma’s birthday, Lochlan reminded me that his stuffed duck was special because it was from Granny Vida. I heard the fluttering of a scrubjay in the bishop pine above me just before the sputtering of the fire, and the rhyming onomatopoeia delighted me. I stopped on the side of the road to pick a little fennel, then not a mile later, saw another woman doing the same.

As I read about a school field trip which ended in the spontaneous singing of “Amazing Grace,” my eyes welled up. The song is important to me because it was played at my Grandpa’s funeral some 20 years ago. But singing on school field trips, that too is something I love and miss, as we haven’t been able to take my kids on our usual Yosemite or Point Reyes trips in a few years. The kids don’t all know the same campfire songs or folk songs we grew up with, but they can all sing the songs from Spanish class together, or listen to us old teachers sing Beatles songs and, inevitably, The Cat Came Back.

And as I sat there, tears deciding whether they would fall or subside, wool socks growing almost too warm with my feet pressed against the fire ring, the night growing imperceptibly darker, a guitar sounded and voices rose up together to sing, “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.” The kids were already in bed, and tomorrow morning would be Grandma’s 92nd birthday, the second without her. 

***

Grandma got into geneaology when you still had to use family bibles and Mormon libraries, and she went full-tilt into it, joining associations, creating ahnentafel charts that had to have the daisy-wheel printer paper edge torn off, and going to meetings and conventions. She bought a computer. When she found a great-great-grandmother born in Indian territory, she floated the idea that maybe we had some indigenous ancestry. Who knew, right?
I’m not only sure now, that we did not, but moreso that it wouldn’t matter if we did. If this mythical great-great-great-grandma Cherokee princess (aren’t they all?) existed, we aren’t enrolled in a tribe, we weren’t brought up with those customs. They aren’t ours for the taking.

But there’s another part to it. If you played cowboys and Indians when you were a kid, you might have wanted to be the good guys -- the cowboys, obviously, with their white hats, vs. the sneaky, arrow-shooting savages who said “how” and spoke broken English. 

As most of us grow up, though, we idealize indigenous culture, realize, however shallowly and narrowly, that we mostly destroyed something pretty beautiful. So we smudge sage and get tattoos of dreamcatchers. (Because, boy almighty, aren’t colonizers something else?)

But it isn’t those tokens of culture that we harmed -- it was people, and our shared humanity. We collided with another group of humans and very nearly wiped them out, like a big rig hitting a motorcycle. 

***

Yesterday on the beach I saw something white and smooth. I thought it was an interesting rock, or maybe a shell. I tried to pick it up and it was held fairly fast by the sand. Unusual. I pulled a little harder, brushed some sand away, and thought it was connected by a series of roots. Was it a strange plant? Was it a rock or shell tangled in a plant? It wasn’t until it came free in my hand that I realized it was in fact a bird skull. I had likely ripped it from its vertebrae. The skull itself was clean and dry, so it wasn’t particularly gross. I took a few pictures of it for a friend and left it on the beach.
A short time later, I saw a mole crab upside-down, dead, I assumed noticeable for its bright orange eggs and for appearing to be intact instead of gull-eaten. I took a picture, flipped it over, and took another. Lochlan crouched by me and gave it a gentle poke as I put my camera away. “I think it moved, Mom!” I doubted it, but let him poke it again to show me. It bounced back slightly from the pressure, and I prepared to break the bad news, but then it wiggled its legs to make a run for it. A wave came in.

I’m not a spiritual person, but I respect the seriousness of Earth (I almost wrote gravity) and of life and death. But I also think it’s beautiful that energy doesn’t die, just changes. 

***

Today we went to a beach that was much more foreboding. We parked high on a cliff, and the parking lot itself was eroding, the emptiness encroaching past the guard rails so that several times I had to tell Lochlan to look down instead of out to sea.

I took my sandals off to walk on the sand, which was much coarser. I almost immediately spied another skull, this one a fish with surprising broad teeth on top. I turned around and saw human skulls carved into the sedimentary cliffs all around.
Azadeh went running from the surf. Lochlan and I climbed to get a better view.  The rocks abraded my feet. We sat and looked for pinnipeds, and we saw only sea birds, but Az called out, “A seal! Or maybe a selkie!” I smiled. She can be sarcastic and mean and surly, but there is still magic for her, and I am glad. 

It doesn’t matter that today is Grandma’s birthday. There’s nothing left to celebrate or to mourn. It is a normal day now. No cake.

But I’m thinking about her. I had cause to think about my college Psychology of Death and Dying class. Grief, the professor had explained, can be intensified both by how close you are to someone emotionally and how close you are to them physically. Do you see them often? Live in the same town?

I feel stupid, even, for mourning her like I do. She was ninety. She wanted to go. Many people don’t know their grandmothers at all, don’t spend the kind of time with them that I did, don’t have their until they’re in their 40s. She lived close to me, was loving to me, accepted me even when she didn’t understand me. I was so lucky, but also, Jesus Christ, I know what I lost.

***

I am wearing my homemade shirt with the floating otter family that says, “families belong together.” I worry that someone will say something mean to me, in front of my kids. Getting water for dishes at the campsite, or at a Starbucks in Petaluma. I can’t believe the sentiment has become partisan, but it has. Lochlan wants me to make him the same shirt, and I still have the screen and can easily make more. But what will the other preschool parents think? I can’t emblazon a political statement on my sweet baby and send him into the world, can I? He just likes the otters.

He slept last night with his head on my mattress. Azadeh was in the next tent, but close enough that I could hear her breathing, ask if she was okay when she rustled uncomfortably. Families do belong together. I can’t imagine being separated from these two. Hell, I’m going to break apart when they move out as they’re supposed to when they’re grown. But now? Lochlan still needs my help with the button on his pants! I can’t imagine them being taken from me and held in a cell like a dog kennel. These children are so soft.

We broke down a couple years ago and hired a housekeeper -- the woman who worked for my grandmother, in fact, who had an opening when Grandma moved into the senior aparments. She sent me a message a few weeks ago saying there was a family emergency and she had to go to Mexico. She filled my mom in on more of the details, which are not mine to share, but they are a reminder to me of just why people are fleeing to try to find a better life in the first place. This story has a grandmother, too, terrified for her grandbaby. How do you leave your extended family? How do you stay under the threat of violence? 

***

The drive home is unusually long due to road work and accidents. I have a lot of time to think, and I am thinking about the book, about how to reciprocate the earth’s gifts. Solar panels? A bee waterer? Planting wildflowers? I imagine building the herb spiral I’ve been thinking of, getting into my garden and just losing myself in a brick-by-brick maze of pollinator plants, doing what I can from a very small sphere of influence. 

We pass a trio of weeping willows, a tree Lochlan has been hoping to see for weeks. It hangs low to the ground, I’ll say, and he’ll point out an oak whose branches nearly sweep the ground. No, not quite. But here they are, and I point them out quickly. But Lochlan is fast asleep. I hope he is dreaming of selkies. 

I think I have to think bigger than my bricks and pollen. I think to give back to the Earth I have to recognize that one of its gifts is us, people. Our shared humanity. Our grandmothers. So I have to keep giving the world, its people included, my kindness. I have to do right by them, even if that kindness sometimes looks like marching outside my Congressperson’s office. 

One of the worst slowdowns today was at the Yolo Causeway. No surprise there. I check my rear-view frequently for motorcycles splitting lanes, so I saw the red flashing lights long before I heard the siren. I moved slightly right to let the fire truck pass in the shoulder, then two CHP cars. Only the fast lane was closed off, but after I merged and saw six vehicles and two motorcycles pulled over, I got a sick feeling. Bikers had been zipping through between us for hours, often at two or three times the rate of the cars, and the cars are oblivious. Shit, the car in front of me had heard the sirens and started to move *into* the shoulder. 

As I passed, I saw that the paramedics were helping a woman who was sitting up on the shoulder, and I felt tears well up again, this time of relief. It is too easy to be careless, to fail to look out for those more vulnerable. And we owe each other better.