A blur

I am so tired tonight I can hardly keep my eyes open. Ol was up at 4am with a nightmare, and I was never able to get back to sleep. I spent the day at school taking photographs of students new and old, some nervous, some utterly at home, some keen on talking, some inward and unsure as we all have been some or many times. Some of these bright faces I've known for up to six years; some of those are like my own nieces and nephews. When I interact with these children, I feel lucky that my own boys get to learn and spend time with them. 

I didn't bother counting how many of the same routes I drove on repeat today. I was just happy I could keep the windows rolled down, a fall breeze gusting through as (mostly) good music played. 

Sometime, ages ago, I made it to yoga. I had to leave early to be at school, but the 65 minutes I spent centered on my mat were tremendous. And I don't mean that in any way but literal. The woman next to me twice dropped bagged crystals from her cleavage -I am not kidding- and finally laid them all on her blanket. Beyond that momentary distraction (and, admittedly, the time I spent periodically throughout today pondering substantially-sized crystals housed in billowy mesh bags of various pastel hues tucked in a lycra yoga tank and yet still tumbling forth), I was so grateful for the quiet time in which I was to focus on me. My breath. My practice. My strength. My connection with all around me. Yoga. From the Sanskrit "yug" meaning to join, unite, yoke.

There's also an element of subjugation in that Sanskrit meaning, but I'm not going there. Except in the ways it makes me consider how often I do subjugate my needs to those of the loved ones I tend and the issues I care about and advocate for. Which are decisions I want to make. But still. It is essential to step back sometimes, and yet, despite decades of practice, I continue to find doing so a challenge.

Tom hugged me last night, and half-jokingly quoted from Good Will Hunting: "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." 

"It is!" I replied. "I never say 'no." 

"No, honey, I know that. I mean, it's not your fault if another volunteer doesn't step up. That doesn't mean you have to fill in."

Food for thought. But I am getting better.

The boys have had a marvelous first week of school. Their school. That dreamy, exceptional place whose cost makes me quiver but which always seems worth it. And god are we forever so damn fortunate to be able to do this. Truly. I think about the rather lousy education I had access to growing up, how flummoxed by everything I was when I got to college, how desperately I had to work to catch up. I learned so much during the catch up, but it was a bear of a challenge, would have been easier to build along the way instead of tacking up a foundation, shell, necessities, and an addition all on short notice. But alas. My lucky boys.

Today during my pictorial tour of the student body I happened across Ol's class. He didn't see me at first but I saw him. Racing across the playground, sweaty and mussed, eyes flashing with joy, voice without a care in the world calling out to old friends and brand new ones. He spotted me and ran over, draping himself atop and across me. "Oh, mama, I love to see you at school. I love you! Can I help you?"

Did I ever feel that gleeful and free in third grade? In second? In fourth? I am nearly certain I didn't. What about the glee I felt today in Ol's embrace? And in Jack's when I picked him up? Hard to articulate that, really.

And yet in this soft, fuzzy skein of love also threads a few strands of overwhelm, a chokehold that I thought would have loosened by now. No one tells you motherhood doesn't get easier. I mean, it does in some ways, but in others, no dice. 

We desperately needed to go to the grocery store this afternoon, after I'd left the lower school, raced to the middle school to get Jack, raced back to the lower school to get Ol. I had been gone from home since 8:30am and was sweaty and beat. And the thought of taking both kids with me to the market just before the 5pm crowd descended was not something that made me enthused. It made me feel yoked and overwhelmed and pissy about being out of milk. 

The kids were not badly behaved, but let's just say they weren't calm, either. We left with milk but also three pints of ice cream and the most bizarre assortment of items for "picnic dinner." And my head was spinning. I felt like one of those malfunctioning Fembots in Austin Powers, all blowing gaskets and puffs of smoke and lolling eyes. 

I don't have any words of wisdom to tidy this post up with. I feel rusty and dry here which vexes me to no end. But I made it to yoga, and I saw my boys in their elements today, and I helped out and met some new people and hugged lots of old friends and the greatest teachers who guided my children and are now friends, and I still managed to cook us all dinner and tuck my boys in. And there is a lot of love swirling around. Lots of memory of this day sixteen years ago when I lived in New York and a dark plume of smelly smoke and ash and char and destruction blew up the avenues towards my apartment. 

Out of darkness most always comes light, even when you can't see it for a bit. I see it today but boy am I tired. Hope y'all are well. 

SCHOOL!!!!!

OMG, school is here! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These whippersnappers are starting 6th and 3rd. 

A national suture

I have six sutures snaking across my upper back. The stitches look to have been sewn with navy blue fishing line, pulled taut and tied off into a grimace atop a fleshy ridge. Tomorrow they’ll be removed. By all accounts the wound has been beautifully closed by skilled hands. But really, what does that mean? Does it mean it will heal well? Look pretty on the surface? Smooth and soft, demure like a slight smile?

So much of life is never what it appears to be. Marriage is more constantly challenging, motherhood more regularly enervating, driving times but estimates failing to take into account traffic, other drivers’ skills or lack of, accidents, weather.

Our “president” is even worse than he seemed at first, a greedy buffoon with bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business success. He is, in fact, a truly horrible, greedy, mean narcissist who still has bad hair, bad ties, orange skin, and dubious business everything. He is a bigot, a racist, a liar, and a fraud.

It has been hard to be back here. Hard to return to swastikas and white supremacists and the pardoning of a man who unabashedly targeted minorities and made them suffer. It has been almost impossible to watch our “leader” make equivalent the neo-Nazi racists and those who peacefully (and even less peacefully) opposed them. There is no equivalent. None.

It has been hard to watch brave men and women who've fought in our military be suddenly banned from service because they are transgender. It has been sickening to hear bullshit claims that their medical costs are too much of a burden to this country, not worth their courage and service, when in fact our military spends five times that amount on Viagra and our deplorable “leader” has already spent more on personal travel.

The stitches itch something fierce and the skin around them is raw and red, irritated by the bandage adhesive keeping them slicked with ointment and padded and covered.

The country aches something fierce and so many are raw and red, furious and exhausted by the fight since our birth, since the Civil War, since emancipation, since suffrage, since battles for Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. Like the worst sort of full circle we have a "leader" - with bad hair and bad ties and orange skin and the meanest streak - who wants to take us back to before, to the time of our birth. To the time when only he and men who looked like him, potentially minus the orange skin, could succeed or even hope to.

Friends and family and millions of strangers spent the past few days battening down for and enduring Hurricane Harvey. It has been a Katrina redux to watch Houston flood. And our “president”? He pardoned a racist crook, banned willing and brave service members, and tweeted a book review on the day the rain started to fall. As if that imbecile reads anything booklength or not about him. He flew south during the campaign although he was asked not to. He’s barely said boo to Texas, a state that handed him its electoral votes, since Friday and might go visit on Tuesday.

While in the Netherlands I got to spend time with a friend there. She was lamenting her daughter’s nearly-six-week summer break; summers are tough for working parents. Who watches their children? Where? For how much? I said, I understand, we have twelve weeks.

Summer is now officially long in the tooth. I’m sick of it. The next eight days will be a slog, an uncomfortable fishing line grin snaking across the remains of August. The rose-colored summer break is at once marvelous and not at all what it appears to be.

And yet this is life. There is a PE uniform to buy (late) and braces to be set and schedules to be made. There is the weeding of the garden, the removal of all whose season has passed, the extra love given to all who persevere in the blurry pages between summer and fall. Perhaps we’ll get some more tomatoes, squash, and melons. But the arugula is long gone, the peppers and okra now wisps of hope. The birds have stolen all of the berries, and I have stopped fighting them. For this year at least.

I will try to find my way back to activism but also to the simpler things that enable me to better care for myself and my family. This fight is going to be a long one, and we all must both protest and pace. It will, potentially, take generations to undo and heal some of what Trump has wrought. But he is not the only one to blame.

This country has never adequately reckoned with its racist birth and past and the ways in which those old tentacles reach insidiously into the present. That failure allowed such a heinous individual to (sort of) win a presidential election, and if we, white America, do not deal with our wrongs now, we are as complicit as ever in laying the groundwork for another Trump in the future.

Stitches may capably close a wound but talented hands don’t ensure the underlying ill is excised. A lovely scar can mask ugliness. Just ask America.