Tiny Rituals

Dateline, 2015. We rise early in the morning, my feisty 8-year-old and I, and head out to a soccer field.  As the youngest of five, she is all in for this gig, having tagged along to her older siblings' games and tournaments since she was born. Now it's her turn and she is beyond enthusiastic. Rabid might be a better word.

Early mornings are her favorite time to head out to a field, and games at least an hour away are the best. She loves to get up while it's still dark, pile her soccer backpack, pillows, and blankets into the car, and doze on our way to a game, holding a warm cup of hot chocolate and watching the sky lighten through half-closed eyes. We trundle down I-80. As we come around the wide curve in Albany, Golden Gate Fields appears, floating on the edge of the bay off to the right.  She perks up, stretches her body as high as she can, and starts to look for horses.

Golden Gate Fields is the local race track and in the early morning, trainers and jockeys are busy. From the freeway, we catch glimpses of horses practicing on the track, walking amidst the stables, or circling around a hot walker. We count as many as we can and as we pass the fields mere minutes later, we announce our findings: A 4 horse morning! A 2 horse morning!  A 9 horse morning!

Zero horse mornings are always a disappointment.  

On mornings we aren't together for her drive to a game, she excitedly reports the total to me later.  Her siblings – older, cooler – roll their eyes. I gush with enthusiasm and tell her how many I saw on my travels that day too.

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Dateline, 2019.  It's way too early in the morning. I'm trying to get my 12-year-old out the door. Turns out, she did not, as she assured me last night, have her entire soccer uniform and she still needs to find one blue sock. Frustrated, I growl something about how it's her responsibility to be ready for her game and it's not me who will be late to warm-up. She growls something that may or may not be actual language. She doesn't eat the food I made. I don't have any encouraging words to share. We each glare and fume and think uncharitable thoughts.

The car is thick with silence, and neither of us so much as glances at Golden Gate Fields as we drive by. This is most definitely a zero horse morning of our own making. Forty minutes later, she slams the door without a word and disappears into the misty morning. I sit in the car grateful to be by myself and generally annoyed that she's such a bi–– ...bitter little pre-teen.  What happened to my sweet girl? When did we become adversaries? Why did we stop counting horses?

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Dateline, 2022. My fifteen-year-old leaves in the morning with her older sister, who is now her main chauffeur. That precious car time we used to have so much of vanished one day without warning, and it turns out that I miss it. Mommy Brain has blissfully erased the frustrating mornings from my memory bank. I have time for other things now, but I know that her high school years will break the sound barrier as they whoosh past me. So as the car pulls away, I am both grateful for a quiet house and also a little melancholy about the nearly grown girls speeding down the street and away from me. Being a mom is confusing that way: always two competing emotions at once.

I settle into a comfortable chair with a hot cup of coffee and my laptop. I'll get some work done this morning and then take the dog for a walk, or play my fiddle, or binge-watch All Creatures Great and Small. I am positively giddy at the options. All my kids are old enough to do their own thing now and they need me less. Or at least differently.

Thirty minutes later, I am absorbed in a good book, when my phone pings with a quick text from my youngest. 

Time stands still and then rewinds, back to those lovely early mornings, back to the simple fun of counting horses and sharing the numbers with each other. Who knew it would stick?  Just for a moment, there are no competing emotions, just gratitude: for horses, for her, and for the tiny little rituals that bind us together. Smiling, I turn back to the good book. All is right in my world. 

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Note: Shoutout to Hideout and Suede, the handsome boys in the photo at the top; photo cred to my friend Janelle who is busy every day with these two.

The Truth is True, Even When It's Not

I have been cleaning up my laptop lately and finding really old files of all kinds of things. Today, I am posting one of the things I found. I have absolutely zero recollection of writing this piece, but apparently, I wrote it in 2018, during Lent.  2018 was a shit show: not only did it follow the single worst year of my life (2017), but our entire country was dripping with Trump droppings. Maybe that's why I don't remember writing it – I may have tried to erase that year entirely from my brain. 

Anyway, this is what I wrote back then.  It is imperfect and sloppy and not entirely sensical.  And it was good to find it today.

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

The truth is true, even when it’s not.

I have been praying the rosary every weekday morning during this Lent.  The first time I did it, I was flooded with relief.  Spending time so differently—without noise and clamor and news and the distress that comes through my radio and my smartphone—felt like a gift to myself.

The quiet, the repetition, the reverence for things eternal: all of those seemed to bring me back to myself in a way that actually made me cry.  It felt right and just to be spending my time in that way.

I know why I thought of doing this in the first place: because of Ann.  She loved the rosary, loved Mary.  She had what is called a “devotion” to Mary – a special connection to the Blessed Mother that buoyed her and sustained her.  When she was sick, she and her family visited Lourdes, looking I’m sure partly for a cure and also for peace.  She didn’t find the cure.

I started doing the Rosary to feel closer to Ann.  Or maybe to be Ann.  When I am feeling the weakest and the least confident, I try to channel the people I love who have qualities or characteristics that I aspire to, like my dad’s ability to charm people and make them feel special.  When I’m feeling socially awkward or overly self-conscious, I think: “Channel Larry.”  And sometimes, I find a way to turn it around and focus my attention on other people.  It’s not a nice thing to do for others: it’s a survival mechanism for myself, a self-care strategy that has the added benefit of making other people feel good.

When I’m feeling disconnected and lonely, I think: “Channel Ann.”  And sometimes, I find a way to imitate the way she radiated love and goodness and made other people feel just plain blessed in her presence.

So I started doing the Rosary, so that I could maybe start to understand why Ann loved it so much.  To find in the repetition something of the deep peace she radiated.  

As the days have gone by, I have struggled a bit with the practice.  It feels odd to be repeating words like “save us from the fires of hell” and “pray for us sinners,” even though I have no problem with the idea of sin.  It feels both out of touch and relevant at the same time—a dissonance that is sometimes OK with me and sometimes, for lack of a better word, really weird.

It makes me wonder what Ann would say if I could ask her: “Why do you love the Rosary so much?”  But of course, I cannot ask her that, and realizing that I can’t ask her that, or any other question, ever again, brings on waves and waves of regret and sorrow.  That I didn’t ask her more questions when she was here, that I took for granted our friendship, that I behaved as if she would always be there for me.

She isn’t here anymore.

Yesterday, as I was saying the Rosary, I kept thinking about something the priest said at Ann’s Rosary, the night before her funeral Mass. He was describing her, and he talked about how our gathering to pray the Rosary was so fitting, because of Ann’s special devotion to Mary and her own love of the Rosary prayer. An unwelcome thought crossed my mind: “Was Ann perfect?  No one is perfect, but the way this guy is talking, it sure sounds like she was perfect.” I’m don't know why I had that thought. I think it all felt unreal to me: Ann dying. Us being gathered there, participating in a death ritual.  And it felt like we were celebrating a saint, a mystic...a unicorn. But the truth is, Ann was better than anyone I've ever met at actively, purposefully loving the people in her life.

And then I thought about eulogies in general, and how when we talk about the people we lose, we talk about their perfections. It is true that Ann was perfect. She was perfectly Ann. 

Did she have annoying qualities? Was she ever impatient with her kids, or too tired to do one more thing for them? Did she and Eric fight, or did she ever feel like a failure, or did she ever give in to weakness? I’m sure some or all of those things are true.  And still, she was perfect.  The truth is true, even when it’s not.

Not sure if I'll keep the rosary thing in my life, but I'm grateful for all the things doing it each day has made me think about, and especially grateful for the ways it is keeping Ann present and close.

Daybook: 9 January, 2022

Outside my window, the sky is piercing blue, the air is sharply chill. The planting beds are heavy with recent rains and replete with weeds that I should be pulling.

I am thinking about many many things: Aren't we all? I'll share the first five I can think of. (1) the stupid pandemic and how radically it has altered all of our lives; (2) the pile of laundry I need to get through; (3) my goal (at work) to raise $375,000 this year from individual donors; (4) the three large manual typewriters on my dining room table that have been there for two weeks (rendering the table unusable) and how I want to sell them so I can get rid of them and so I can use my table again; (5) the fact that I can never seem to get up early anymore. I used to get up at 6 or 6:30, and now I can barely crawl out of bed on the weekends before 9 or 10. Is it the cold winter weather? Is it the pandemic? 

I am thankful for the beignets my husband brought home this morning for all of us to enjoy, from Devils Teeth Baking in San Francisco.

From the kitchen: Coffee and beignets.

I am wearing grey yoga pants and a long-sleeve black shirt. So, basically, my uniform.

I am creating space. Always, forever, trying like hell to create space.

I am going to play my fiddle today if it's the last thing I do before head hits pillow tonight.

I am reading About a Boy, by Nick Hornby, a light-hearted fun read after the much heavier book I just finished: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. I recommend them both!

I am hoping that my two adult sons get their own place soon. They moved back to the Bay Area and into my tiny house three weeks ago. They/we are actively looking for an apartment for them, and we all need it to happen soon.

I am hearing the beeper on my microwave going off every 60 seconds, indicating that someone heated something up for themselves and then forgot to retrieve it.  It's anyone's guess how long we all just let the beeper go before one of us deals with it.

Around the house, there are too many piles of my two adult sons' belongings.

One of my favorite things: My dog.  She's not a thing, but she's my favorite.  She is sitting on my feet right now as I type.

A few plans for the rest of the week: figure out how to practice my fiddle and get exercise while also working full time.  It's very challenging to do it all.

And a picture: My daughter sent me a photo of her desk at college; she goes to the University of California, Santa Cruz.  I absolutely love this photograph: it is so her.  :)

Ahhh, college life!

I invite you to join me by posting your own daybook; the text in italics are your categories (or you can make up your own).

From the Flagstone

From the flagstone in the far corner of the garden
All I see are flames leaping from the copper pit and
Manzanita branches, sketching dark lines against the not-yet-night sky.

I’ve been sitting here for hours, finally just sitting,
Letting night descend, letting plants seep and mingle into darkness.
Listening to the irises and the ribes.

The dog runs back and forth, shimmying in the November air,
Tearing through fallen leaves,
Dancing in the disappearing light.
She has taken over for the bees, dashing from plant to plant
while they sleep and wait for the sun to rise again.

This patch of earth and stones and trees and grasses,
Is ours. Our place apart from concrete and cars, electrical lines and insatiable billboards.
Our place to sit, to stare, to listen.
At rest in a world of bees and flowers and shifting light.

Rope Swing Summer

 

Image by bednuts from Pixabay

Near the far end of the back forty,

Off to the right,

A space opens up in the brambles that line the creek.

He swishes through high grasses to the opening and enters. 

From the top of the slope, he can see the rock slab at the water's edge and

the thick worn rope hanging from a branch stretching across the creek. 

He climbs down to it, reaches out, grabs hold.  The sturdy length gives him enough slack 

to pull it all the way back up the slope.

The worn path at the top makes room for two or three steps before push off.

 

He flies through the summer day.

Air rushes by, smelling of dust, heat and dry grass.

He feels the rough hew of the rope in his hands; 

It catches the grooves of his calluses, promising to hold on.

He glides back and forth, again and again,

Over the sweet blackberries on the slope,

Over the water tumbling across the creek bed rocks.

 

This is not the day the branch will give way and snap, 

landing beside him with a crack on the hard slab.

This is the day he snacks on garden apples and blackberries, 

snags his jeans on thorny branches as he pushes further in

to snatch the plump ones just out of reach.

 

This is the day he enters the opening and disappears for hours,

So far away he’s in another world, free to be anything, do anything.

It’s up to him when he finally drops the rope.

 

And when that moment comes, he watches it swing a few times before coming to stillness again.  

Sweaty, purple fingertips, he climbs back up and into the back forty.

Crosses the dry grasses and salutes the garden apple trees. 

He slams the screen door on the way in.

Knuckleheads, Home From the Dance

My parents were the cool parents: they let me drive around in our sleepy one-horse town before I was officially licensed. Emphasis on sleepy. Nothing ever happened there, so they figured nothing would ever happen to me.

And they were right...until they weren't. Until one night at 2 am, when my friend Samantha and I returned home from a dance in the next town over. No, they had not let me drive that far, but they did say I could take Samantha home once the friend who had driven us there dropped us both at my house. So we had enjoyed the dance and then a party afterward–no alcohol for me–and then arrived back at mom and dad’s.  

We hopped in the orange and white Volkswagon van I learned to drive on and headed across town. She lived up in the hills, relatively far away (but still: sleepy town, nothing going on, you get the idea). I had never actually been to her house, so did not know that she lived at the top of a very long, very steep driveway. We pulled up to the bottom, and I pondered the hill before me, one hand on the gear shift of the van. 

Now, the smart thing to do would have been to have Samantha hoof it up that hill. We were both quite smart teenagers, so let’s just say it was a glitch in the fabric of the universe that we did not use our smarts to make the decision in front of us.

Let’s do it, I suggested gamely, and up we went. 

The driveway had wide curves in it, and I did fine through the first one. On either side of us, the brown grasses of the Valley of the Moon waved in a gentle nighttime breeze, their carpet punctuated by scrub oaks here and there. I had enough speed going to be fine...at first. As the slope continued, and the second curve was upon me, I couldn’t keep the speed up. The van stalled, shuddered, and died, with little ole unlicensed, inexperienced me, gripping the steering wheel. A flush of panic headed up my spine, my hands trembled.  

We looked at each other. Nothing to do but try to start this bad boy up again, so I gave it a go. But after I started the engine, there was the small matter of needing to take my foot off the brake in order to give it some gas. Years later, I would become a bad-ass San Francisco driver who would have scoffed at the challenge, but I was not yet that driver by a long shot. I tried; I failed; I panicked. And the van started to roll backward.  

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I wailed, completely unsure which way to turn the wheel to stay on the driveway.  

“Go forward, go forward!” Samantha screamed. “I’m trying!” I screamed back.

Mayhem ensued as the van gained speed. I had no idea what to do, so naturally, I did nothing. I let the van go where its heart would take it, which happened to be off the left-hand side of the driveway, down over the waving brown grasses, faster and faster, until halted in its trajectory by an oak tree, that keeper of the California hills.

We stopped with a bang. Not injured. Not harmed in the slightest. Just completely freaked out, with the specific intensity of teenage girls. I burst into tears, while Samantha looked stunned and frozen, both of us entirely dreading whatever might come next.

Way up at the top of the driveway, a light went on. We looked up to see the silhouettes of her parents, pajama-clad, shoulders bunched-up against the cold night air, staring down at the Orange Blossom Special resting against one of their trees.  

Sleepless in the Kitchen

From her perch on the landing at the top of the stairs, she listened to the grown ups enjoying their dinner. Between the three couples, several courses, and many bottles of wine, there was a lot to listen to. With the nubby orange-brown carpet beneath her and her pink flannel nightgown pulled tight over her knees, she reveled in every minute of her eavesdropping.

They talked about small town news: “Did you hear that Jim is drinking again? I don’t think Susan will put up with that anymore.”

About the upcoming election: “Will you be at Kathy and Bob's election night party?” “Of course! We wouldn’t miss it–can’t wait to see Reagan lose!”

About their kids: “Yeah, we tried telling him not to go out, but what can we do? He’s a teenage boy, and he’s just not listening to us! Little bastard!”

Sometimes they laughed so hard the walls shook, their voices building off of each other and blending in raucous shouts that filled the whole house. She loved listening to them like that: happy parents, enjoying their friends, in a warm house. Spying on the dinner party gave her hope for her life and future.

After they left, all six of them spilling out into the night for a late cocktail, she tip-toed downstairs in the suddenly quiet house. Dishes and serving platters filled the table. Used cloth napkins, empty wine glasses, and mismatched silverware splayed everywhere. The adjacent kitchen looked as if it had fed an army, with dirty pots and pans, used measuring cups and ingredients occupying every surface.

She didn’t want to go to sleep, as her siblings had done hours ago. She wanted to inhabit the space where all those noisy, happy grownups had been until a few moments ago. She trailed her finger on the table, glanced at the sink full of dishes. And then she started to clean. It took her a long time and she did it with care. She wasn’t normally one to volunteer for extra chores, but cleaning up on this night seemed like the best way to say thank you to her mom and dad for hosting the happy dinner party, for creating a soundtrack of friendship for her to grow up with. She put away all the food, scraped the leftovers off of the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher, and gathered the table linens and started a load of laundry. She wiped down the dining room table and all the kitchen counters. Saving the best for last, she finished up by polishing the chrome on the old Wedgewood until it gleamed.

When the kitchen was finally clean, it was very late. Her parents would be home soon, she knew. Flicking off the downstairs lights, she climbed back up the stairs to the landing and sat down in her usual spot. Pulling her nightgown back over her knees, she smiled in anticipation and waited for them to walk in and find her thank you gift.

Daybook for 21 June 2021

Outside my window: there is a hazy blue sky that cannot decide if it is presiding over an uncomfortably hot day or a strangely cool one.

I am thinking about: my job. I work in development and communications for a charter school network, and the summer is always a time of reflection and planning. What did I and my team do well last year? Where can we improve? Remember the beginning of each new school year, when you had sharp pencils, fresh binders, and big plans to "be better" this year? Working for a school system means that I still have that experience. The big plans part starts early...that's what's on my mind these days.

I am thankful for: the beautiful game. We had an epically long, hot weekend of soccer with our youngest child, a weekend like we haven't had since before the pandemic.  Between Thursday night and Sunday night, we traveled many miles, ate lots of takeout, watched 320 minutes of girls pounding up and down the pitch, took one dip in a hotel pool, used many bags of ice to soothe sore muscles and to battle the 100-degree heat, talked soccer, watched soccer, thought about soccer, planned for soccer,...you get the idea.  On Sunday night, finally home and drifting off to sleep, when I closed my eyes I saw shadowy figures zig-zagging back and forth in my vision.  And all three of us -- myself, my husband and my badass 14-year-old soccer player -- enjoyed every angled minute.  We keep talking about how much fun it was. We are grateful for this thing that has pretty much taken over our lives, so I guess that makes us very fortunate indeed.  

From the kitchen: sadly, nothing special. I am trying to plan for a better kitchen week.

I am wearing: black yoga pants and a dark purple and black striped shirt.  And really clean shoes, because my husband oxy-cleaned my favorite tennis shoes for me after they had been on one too many hikes.

I am creating: epic to-do lists for my week.  My to-do lists are divided into four categories: (1) work stuff, (2) household and family tasks, (3) stuff for me, that makes me feel good, and (4) cooking and grocery shopping. Lists pretty much keep the whole AIRY-5 enterprise careening through the universe.

I am going: to pick up my daughter from her first day of high school summer school. Hoping we get along better on the way home than we did on the way there.

I am reading: too much Twitter, not enough actual books.

I am hoping: that my daughter gets the Trader Joe's job that she interviewed for!

I am hearing: an Amtrak train as it blows its whistle and barrels through West Oakland.

Around the house: sooooo many messes.  Too much dog hair on the floor; too much laundry to fold, too many projects left unfinished by too many people.  Must muster the strength to get them all to help me.

One of my favorite things: I'm going to repeat myself with this one and say soccer.  We really did have a great weekend, and I can't wait for more.

A few plans for the rest of the week: I plan to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary with my favorite person in the world!  Good thing that person is also my spouse. 

And a picture:

Sunflowers next to one of our
soccer fields this weekend.

I invite you to join me by posting your own daybook!

An Unlikely Pair, Linked Forever

A strange combo, to be sure.  Read on.

When I was thirteen years old, I got my first job working at a deli market.  Two doors down from Sonoma's historic plaza, the deli was a popular lunch destination for all kinds of people: shop workers, construction guys, tourists, and laborers. Jim, the owner who hired me, was a great boss.  He was the picture of decorum during business hours, until the older employees went home and the teenagers were left to close up. Then, he would swear like a sailor–always in jest–to horrify and entertain us. We loved him.

The "older employees" consisted of three or four women who became like a whole fleet of grandmothers to me. They were good country folk, hard-working, no-nonsense women who taught me how to make egg salad, prepare all the sandwich fixins, and slice deli meat on the giant electric slicer. They teased each other, but not me: they were strong, plain, kind, and funny.

Shone's Deli is also where I met Ann, the best friend a soon-to-be high schooler could possibly find, and we quickly knew we would be by each other's side for life.  Landing the deli job was a hugely positive development in my young life.

My first day of work, however, was not an auspicious beginning.  At first, everything went fine: I was soaking up all the training, figuring out how to make a roast beef sandwich just like the customer ordered, and ringing up orders at the ancient cash register, all while managing not to freak out when cute boys came in. But then, on my first solo voyage with the meat slicer, disaster struck. The tip of my left index finger got in the way of the spinning blade, giving the roast beef a little something extra as my A negative plasma spurted all over the slicer's gleaming chrome.

I did not react well to the sight of my own blood; the wooziness began immediately. Thankfully, the grandmothers jumped right in. One of them, Helen, whisked me away to the back room, magically producing a glass of ice water to calm me down. A couple more cleaned everything up lickety-split: no customers were the wiser. Helen bandaged me up like the experienced farm hand/mom/grandmother she was, and sent me home a wee bit early from my shift – and slightly lighter than when I'd arrived, now missing the tip of my finger.

I always felt kind of stupid about that injury.  I had wanted to do well at my new job. I didn't want to cause any problems or draw too much attention to myself. Bloodying up the workspace was not exactly the kind of value I wanted to add as a new employee.

But rather than making a big deal out of my mishap or lecturing me too much, Jim and the grandmothers just welcomed me back the next day. They were as matter of fact as you'd expect good country folk to be, and we all just got to work, smiling at customers and taking orders. The slicer and I got along fine after that and I never had another work place injury.  I went on to work there for four more years, until I graduated from high school and went to college.  It was a great, easy job, with fun people, and it put spending money in my teenage pockets.  All that's left now of that first day is a hardened, crescent-shaped scar on the tip of my left index finger.

I have developed an absent-minded habit over the years of circling the crescent with my thumb, almost surprised every time I feel how calloused and un-skin-like it has become. Every so often, I recall the day I got that scar.  I can hear the whirr of the electric blade and feel the sharp pain and the rising wooziness.  I also remember feeling stupid and silly, embarrassed about causing a ruckus on day one. Tiny as it is, it has always been a quiet rebuke to me over the years.

But then. Then something happened that might make me believe, for the first time in my life, that Everything Actually Does Happen for a Reason: I took up the fiddle. Two years ago, I started taking fiddle lessons after years and years of wanting to. Learning to play those beautiful strings has been one of the greatest joys of my adult life; it has also been extremely challenging. Those lovely sounds that professionals make? Those are the culmination of an incredible about of practice, coordination, skill, and technique. There's so much more to it than I ever anticipated, and I find my brain, body, and creativity stretched in multiple ways. My new hobby is a lot of damn work.

Happily, it turns out that having a pre-installed callous on one's left index finger is quite beneficial to the whole endeavor. One of the first things you have to accomplish when learning a fiddle is building up the necessary callouses on the second, third, and fourth fingers of your left hand. Thanks to Shone's Deli, I came to this party ahead of the game.  Yes, I still needed to build callouses, but my index finger was already a seasoned pro. Pressing hard with that finger produced no pain at all, and the little scar's moment to shine had arrived. Now, when my left thumb circles the hardened crescent on finger #4, I don't think about shaving off the tip of that finger with a meat slicer. I think instead about how that scar helps me play the D note in a A major scale. I think, with pleasure, about how my whole hand knows how to deftly move its fingers in order to play St. Anne's Reel and Angeline the Baker and many other traditional bluegrass and celtic tunes. I freakin' love that scar now.

Who knew that something that happened when I was 13, something I had only ever seen as residue from an episode I'd rather forget, would play such a central role in one of the most positive developments of my middle-aged life? Not I, said the duck, but I'm endlessly grateful to have experienced this happy convergence of events.

It makes me wonder what else in my life might be acting in this mysterious way. What strange scars and bumps have morphed into something beautiful and beneficial? Which ones will do so in my future? What gratitude am I missing?  How have the experiences of my life layered one on top of the other to get me where I am today, mother of five, wife of (still just the) one, fiddler, writer, pray-er, friend? It's a lot to ponder. All I know is that I find great comfort in discovering that something painful has become something joyful. There is so much hope in that discovery.

A tiny scar. A life-changing new practice. Linked forever, and beautifully.

***

Daybook for 14 June 2021

Outside my window: A perfect June morning is wrapping my neighborhood in its fragrant, warm arms, and all the birds are singing their appreciation. 

I am thinking: that I need a new attitude about my job. My current attitude has me unmotivated and unexcited about the tasks and projects on my work to do list. This happens to me every now and then, and could be related to the end of the school year.

I am thankful for: birria tacos. Specifically, the ones I got from this taco truck last night at this taproom.

From the kitchen: literally nothing. I made a very thorough meal plan and shopping list on Friday, but it turns out that the essential step is actually going grocery shopping which I did not do. There were too many other fun things to do this weekend.

I am wearing: black yoga pants and a cute linen, flowered top that I got at a thrift store. Actually, I also got the pants at a thrift store. Thrift stores are my jam.

I am creating: this post.

I am going: to the Outlaw Music Festival in October! Really looking forward to it.

I am reading: My Grandmother's Hands. A beautiful book. Why I am reading it is the subject of another post. I should plan to write that. 

I am hoping: that my daughter gets a job for the summer. Quickly.

I am hearing: the birds chirping in the perfect June morning.

Around the house: all of my daughter's stuff that she brought home from college. We haven't figure out where to store it all yet, and I think she is coming home with approximately three times the amount of stuff we moved her into the dorms with back in February.

One of my favorite things: Music. Listening to it, playing it, singing along to it, watching it live...all of the music things are my favorite.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Lots of soccer! No summer off for this soccer family.

And a picture:

This is what I saw when I looked up from where
I was sitting at last Saturday's soccer game.

I invite you to join me by posting your own daybook with these categories (or any others you choose).

White People: This is Not About You

When my kids were little, one of my daughters had a little bit of an issue with her sibling’s  birthday celebrations. With all of our attention being lavished on one child, she would act out.  She would be meaner than usual to the birthday kid, demand things from mom and dad in the middle of the party, and exhibit negative behaviors so that we would turn to her and away from the guest of honor. We would have to remind her that on HER birthday, we get to focus on her, and on her sister’s or brother’s, we get to focus on them. “This day is about someone else, and that’s OK.”

Typical stuff. Typical for a kid to have to learn how to navigate jealous feelings and how to have a generous spirit, even when you want things for yourself.  She was little: three or four, maybe? It can be hard when someone else is getting all of the attention; it can be hard to be three.

But when her brother had a bad fall that injured his kidney and sent him to the hospital, when we were so worried about him, and when all other family activities and considerations were put on hold, she didn’t do any of that.  She didn’t say “hey, what about me? Why is everything about him?”  I never once had to tell her “This is not about you.”  But that's what really needs to be said now, in this moment, to anyone who thinks All Lives Matter is a valid response to police brutality or protests for racial justice.

To my fellow white people who think that somehow you are being ignored, slighted, passed over or excluded when Black people and those who stand with them say #BlackLivesMatter, I deeply want you to hear the words “This is not about you” and figure out how to not be insulted. You are not less important because someone else stands in particular need of solidarity and support. I need you to take a moment, be quiet, and focus attention outside of yourself and your immediate world.  Take a moment to consider the possibility that something more immediately critical is going on and that’s why the focus is not on the rest of us right now.

You may have heard the house fire analogy: Yes, all of the houses on the block are super important and beautiful and it absolutely matters that everyone’s house stays intact. But the house down the street is engulfed in flames and that’s why the fire truck is there and not parked in front of your house, or my house. That’s a great analogy for why saying “Black LivesMatter” is not racist or exclusionary and why the All Lives Matter response is moronic and exasperating.

I also think about families, and how families can inform us on societal issues. A family is filled with different people and relationships, different experiences, just like society at large. And in a family, when one child is suffering, parents don’t turn their attention to the ones who aren’t suffering and take care of them first: parents take care of the child who is suffering first, and then they help the other children.  If one of them acts out and tries to shine a spotlight in some way on themselves, the parent says: “This is not about you right now.”  When my son was in the hospital and we didn’t know yet how bad the damage was to his kidney, I didn’t prioritize my other four kids and tend to their needs first: I focused entirely on him until I knew he was in good hands at the hospital, and then I turned to help his siblings manage their own responses to his accident. Significantly, some of them didn't really care all that much, which is also instructive vis a vis society at large. 

If you object to someone saying that Black Lives Matter, I wonder how you respond to other human suffering. If you assert All Lives Matter, I wonder why you think that the Black experience does not warrant the same kind of compassion as people who look like you. Why on earth is it necessary to bring the focus back to you -- or even to some hazy concept of "everyone" -- when a specific person or people is in crisis? I can only conclude that you don’t see Black people's suffering as valid. I can only conclude that you are ready to explain it all away, or assert that vandalism and looting are just as bad as murder, or that you simply are not hearing Black parents when they describe “the talk” they must have with their kids to try to keep them alive. I can only conclude that you are racist, even if you don’t know it, because you are not listening to or seeing the experiences of fellow Americans with Black skin.  

When you say All Lives Matter, I’m right back there with my toddler, looking at her in exasperation and thinking “What the hell is wrong with her? Of course we love her, but it’s not about her right now. Why can’t she just let so-and-so have the spotlight?” It’s annoying as hell when it’s just a kid’s birthday party: it’s frightening and dangerous when it’s about people’s lives.

My once 4-year-old daughter long ago grew out of her jealous, self-centered reactions and learned how to lift up someone other than herself. When will white people in our country do the same?