ISDK (I Still Don't Know)

Repost from February, 2011 – I came across this post the other day looking for something else on my lil blog. I enjoyed reading about the kinds of things the kids asked back then, and I really loved being reminded about their sleeping chests rising and falling, and the murmurs and whimpers of slow waking.  Morning is still rich with promise and possibility, although the questions they ask now are harder. 

On Christmas Day, we went for a walk somewhere pretty, and they let me take this photo. When I look at it, I think I could answer their questions all day long for the rest of my life and call it a life well spent.

Here is the 2011 post:

Kids come with a lot of questions. Most of them, I cannot answer, or at least not without research. Here are all the things to which I said "I don't know" this weekend:

• How far does a bullet fly?
• Why are white people called Caucasian? Why does it sound so much like Asian?
• What does the 'A' stand for in double A batteries?
• Is Hosni Mubarak a good person?
• Would you wear a burka if it was part of your religion and you lived in a country where the president made it illegal to wear one?
• What is the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian? Yeah, I thought I knew that one until I utterly failed to explain it coherently and ended up with an IDK.
• When was the last time a volcano erupted?
• Is Justin Timberlake nervous right now?
• Why can African American people use the n-word but no one else can, and why would they want to?
• How are you going to fix your computer? (This after the power cord prong thingy snapped off inside my laptop, rendering it un-power-up-able.)
• Can I go to the skate park tomorrow?
• Why do women always say other women are beautiful but men don't talk about how other men look? Actually, I did come up with a pretty decent answer for this one...but went with the IDK at first.
• Can you make us some popcorn? I was so brain dead by the time this question came up that I literally answered: I don't know.

I pondered all of these questions, as well as the ones I was able to answer more fully, as the cold morning light shifted from grey to bright across my bedroom this morning. Pinned as I was between a four year old knee in my back and an eight year old arm across my chest, I considered how many questions these little warm breathing bodies have. They are quiet now, the only time they will be all day. This is my chance to recharge, to get ready for another day full of words and questions, endless chatter and conversation. And probably some yelling.

Morning is rich with promise and possibility. My overwhelming love for my children pours out of me as I watch their sleeping chests rise and fall, and listen to the small sucking noises and the murmurs and whimpers of slow waking. Can I freeze time for awhile just to watch them sleep, where they literally look like angels who miraculously grace my presence every day? I try. I want to stay in this warm and quiet little world, where love protects me like the heavy homemade quilt that covers us. I want to live here forever. But at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot drawing near, and I know that in a precious few moments, they will be awake and asking question after question, and they will at some point in the next few hours seem more like demons bent on breaking my spirit than the angels they are in the quiet early spaces of each day.

Will I live up to their expectations and their questions today?

IDK.

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Never Enough Words

When I was little, in our house in San Francisco, my parents – the wonderful Larry and Rose – hung a banner on the wall. This was the 70’s: it was probably canvas, or burlap, or felt, or some other hippie fabric. It said: “Each one beautiful in God’s eyes.”

Because of that banner, I went out into the world believing that there is beauty to be found in every single person, no matter their circumstance or story. As an adult, I had an a-ha moment, when I realized that that banner was responsible for my world-view and for the kind of person I strive to be. Each one beautiful in God’s eyes. The implication being: behave accordingly. I am grateful to my parents for hanging that banner on the wall and launching me into the world steeped in that message of love and hope. 

So that’s the first thing I am thankful for, about being Larry’s daughter. There is a whole lot more. And since I wish he were here right now, I think I’ll just address this next part of what I want to say directly to him.

Dad, thank you for creativity. Thank you for giving me a lifelong appreciation for art and for people who make art. Your pottery, painting, music, storytelling, hospitality and more are present in every single one of your three kids and seven grandkids, and we will forever remember the ways you have inspired us to pursue our own creativity. We will forever remember your boundless enthusiasm for our artistic endeavors.

Thank you for your bleeding heart. For always noticing what other people were going through, for recognizing injustice and not accepting it, for making other people feel better in whatever way you could. I hope that I learn to put others first in the way that I’ve seen you do so many times. I know you felt the suffering of the world acutely, and I’m even grateful for that. You gave me a living example of a person who stands up for what he believes in and stands with the outcast, the ignored, the oppressed, the suffering.

Thank you for making me, and virtually everyone you encountered, feel special. This week, I’ve heard many stories of how you made people feel seen and heard. The pot of coffee you brewed for a heart to heart with this person; the amazon package that appeared on the porch of another; the way you never forgot this person’s birthday; the way you recognized a student who felt overlooked. Your special gift was making all of us feel like the most important person in the room, and I for one will wear that gift like a warm blanket for the rest of my life.

Thank you for being so damn funny. It has been a gift and a joy to grow up in a house that rocked with laughter. You will be proud to know – or likely you already do – that Katy and Tony and I have handled the past week, our first without you, with copious amounts of joking, teasing, and laughing. I only wish you were here to enjoy some of the truly excellent sarcasm flying around 43 France Street. You would approve. 

I could go on all day about things I’m thankful for, but there is Guinness waiting for us at the big party we are having in your honor, so I will wrap this up.

There will never be enough words in the English language to capture your life or your spirit. I will never be done saying thank you. I don’t have any idea how to say goodbye, so instead of doing that, I will learn how to carry you with me from this day forward, to hear your voice when I need it and feel your presence with me. You were and are beautiful in God’s eyes, and in mine.

Open A Drawer

Today's 15 minute writing exercise, from The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers, by Naomi Epel

______________________

I thrust my hand into the deep well of life -- in this case, the drawer of my office filing cabinet -- and came out with a parking ticket. That I have not paid.

Ah, the metaphor right there. The things not attended to. The niggling pieces of life that cause shame and denial. Shame, you say? Denial? It's a parking ticket. Pay it and move on.

Why does a slip of paper like a parking ticket, or the memory of getting it (read: not paying attention enough to realize I couldn't park in the miracle spot I thought I found), evoke such negativity and self reproach?

Option 1: It really is representative of the ways I don't pay attention, the ways I let life's small responsibilities and annoying demands pile up in ways that come back to bite me.

Option 2: It actually represents the ways in which "the man" is working every day, in every way, to keep. us. down. Control. Rules. Restrictions that thwart us at every turn. The capitalistic enterprise, squeezing pennies and dollars out of us every chance it gets.

Either way, this particular slip of paper makes me mad. Mad at myself, mad at the SFMTA, mad at inflation. Plenty of anger to go around, thank you very much.

What to do in the face of that anger? How to navigate the downward pull of self and municipal loathing?

RESIST. Everything is resistance. Instead of giving in to the loathing, ground myself in the sure knowledge that I am more than the profit I generate for the state, that I am more than a cog in the economic machine, that the parking ticket does not define me. Seems silly, no? Seems silly, yes. But it's the little things, man, that pile up and bite us, the little things that layer one on top the other. 

So what is the work? The work is to be the artisan, laying other, better things one on top the other. Do not let the parking tickets, and the missed train, and the leaking tire, and the Christmas tree decaying in the corner of the yard be the things that build up on your precious frame. Decide what belongs there. Make creative choices. Choose colors, forms, mediums that you love. You don't have to say why you love them. You don't have to justify a single choice, because it's your precious frame and your wild, precious canvas, and you can layer on these things: paella. fire in the hearth. goal in the back of the net. fiddle callouses. children. carmelized onions. music. crunchy gravel. all the things that reveal the great beauty all around you, in you, breathing between you and the ones you love.

Do not let T*ump or the utterly, shockingly, mind-numbingly disappointing political landscape occupy a single centimeter of your canvas. Layer beauty upon beauty and watch the slings and arrows -- and parking tickets -- bounce and slide right off.

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