What I Tell My Daughter

This is what I tell my daughter

Hug me like I'm the last one standing

Sink in and wrap your arms around me

Press your round cheek into mine

We are all of us too alone at times

and if I am standing between you

and the dark

And something you cannot face alone

If I am the edge of the earth for you

 I will shine

Lay it at my feet. But first.

First, wrap your arms around me.

Pandemic Phase

We the people are moving through our very own pandemic phases. Sometimes we shift through 4 stages in one day! What a day! 

                                                                                     (c. Jenny Holzer)

I think about this line so much. I can't seem to stop the intensity of tenderness and the absolute imperative of speaking it. I tell my close friends "I love you" so frequently that they probably all think I am slowly perishing of some hidden illness. It's all a bit messy and desperate and deep waters lurk everywhere. I like deep waters. We are coming through this with a 100% conviction of who is coming through this with us.

Brandi sings "Alone is the last place I wanted to be" and it hits. Be tender. Don't be alone. I will put my arms around every single one of you and not regret it.
 

Distilled

We are becoming distilled
down to what really
matters
BL 5.2.20

May 2. By then we had a sense of it. Five-plus weeks into lockdown, we were feeling something for sure. A little crazy, a little down, a little loopy, a little lost. Obsessed by whatever caught our attention and held it. A song, played on repeat, repeat, repeat. A food. An activity. We picked our poison or it picked us, and we went with it. For weeks. And we had a faint light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel mentality that was willful, blind innocence.

Didn't we all pick our people to hunker down with? The need to check in, check on, hear from them that day, that moment, is everyone okay. Are we good. Alive. What can we feel and how fast can we feel it and are we feeling the same thing? I had my small handful, and they were the ones that got the sudden laugh and had a healthy mix of dark humor and optimism. My poison. Life is shit this second but tomorrow or even in five minutes it might be startlingly welcome - let's go with it.

Time dragged on and froze and sped up, is it over I need it over and yet now I don't want to leave my home. I couldn't wait to leave my home and now I need to be back inside as soon as I can. I breathed an audible sigh of relief walking into my home office after being away all day at the office in June. My eyes scanned the skies day and night. Are we okay?

I saw the sun begin to set and I had to see it drop below the horizon, urgently. It was an imperative, I went to the car and I drove until the view opened up and I could see the sun meet the line of demarcation that was the world and in that moment all the worry fell away. Again, I need it again. That was the repeat. Again again again. When I have it again I will make it through this minute and then this day and then I will have another day. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Again, again, again.

And when we learned that no matter what we personally did to take care and care for others, the community well-being would hinge on what others did? Well. That our "next" would be determined by what they did toward the well-being of the whole? When we realized the thought of other's safety escaped so many that were selfish and maybe clueless and most certainly willfully oblivious? The next chapter, and we are in it. Man, are we in it.

Are we still asking if it will get better? Do we all know things will never be the same? Some things should never be the same. We are being distilled. Allow me to introduce myself.

On The Road With My Girls

It's about Day 103 of lockdown for us, as we continue to act like mindful mask-wearing home-staying citizens in a country gone mad.

These days are for driving with my girls. Spontaneous get-in-the-car sunset rides, with a playlist that jumps from one favorite to another as we demand only the favorites and everybody gets a turn. Or one lucky girl controls the playlist. We all say it's a Cage day or a Lana day or a Harry day and we play albums from one end to the next, in complete agreement on the mood. These are not rides for trying out new music. These drives demand a known quantity and an exact mood. And we ride. We get lost as we take random turns through the countryside. We hang a sharp left on sight of a small gravel road, and we see what's down there. We catch glimpses of the sunset's changing colors through the trees and we try to find an open field so we can see the clouds and the bursts of color. We sing together, with all the windows down and we have no holds barred, voices cracking and bursts of laughter at our ridiculous attempts.

We all yell when we pass a Tr*mp sign, and argue about whether or not we would get shot for taking it. We agree that when we pass a Women for Tr*mp sign that's the size of small car that we have gone too far into the country, and we turn around. We shriek in unison as we turn at a stop sign and come face to face with an enormous homemade billboard proclaiming the illustrious accomplishments of the man, and the girls run through their litany of researched wrongs, and I swell with pride at their clever insights. This is how it feels to have your heart walking around out in the world. This. Tumbled mix of closeness, sameness, awareness. All of the things that come together when the little people we make become big people with minds of their own - and we glimpse our own selves in horror and delight. These days are for loving without reservation. For saying what you hold dear and letting them know they are your world, no matter what. For letting your heart and soul shine right out of your eyes because life is too short after all, and there are no guarantees. Whoever rides shotgun that day gets my hand cupped along her cheek and then a gentle tug as I gather her hair in my fist. Don't forget you are mine.

Sometimes the mood is all dream pop and we stare silently out the windows and watch the beautiful fields roll by. In these moments we are each in our own world. Soft comments on beautiful barns, on idyllic homes tucked behind trees, the grazing horses that are so very Milton. One of us remarks on feeling "off" that day, and we let that one choose all the songs, circling around her and letting the sounds soothe the rough edges from the day. We know the drive is therapy, and is the balm for all things in these days. The right road and the right song and the right girls and we know we can get through this day. The music is very loud and we just want to drown every thought and be lost for a small space of time.

The final five minutes are always for choosing the just-right song to end the ride. I listen for Isabella and her puff of "Ugh. Those bee-boxes." Because when we pass that bee-box field we are almost home and it is bittersweet and nearly dark and we long to keep on driving. She chooses Lana. Jadyn chooses Cage. I choose my pandemic anthem and we might just play all three and roll into the driveway late. It hardly matters in these days where time has become something altogether different. There are a number of things I will most remember of this time when the world fell apart and came together and I found pieces of myself all over again. The days that were for driving will not leave me, because they are not yet over.

June, Post-Lockdown

It's June 2020.
Things are a bit in shambles. Last week: Americans angry and in pain, feeling helpless and frustrated. Ineffectual and failed. Things are in shambles. School assignments incomplete and emails ignored. Let it be in shambles. Let things fall apart a bit this year. This is what happened in 2020. Things fell apart. We did not have organization and control and all of our ducks in a row. Americans acted with outrage, passion and anger. Out of pain and the stifling sense of no change. Never-change. Broken promises, broken hearts, broken social contracts, murder. A virus, a lockdown, a murder, a revolution. Things are in shambles inside and out. They will not get better until we have him out of our White House. We can bide our time. Organize, educate, mobilize. We will bide our time.

We are coming for you in November.

Who Makes The Decisions Around Here

This month, this week, this very moment, many of us are wondering what we can do, what impact we can have on the fiery mix of situations our country is still facing. How we can support change and tear down injustice, as just one person. What do we do when our cities are burning and there's so much to say. When there's murder. Incitement and provocation and the fallout.

Maybe you wear a cool shirt, or support your causes with bumper stickers. Maybe you rally and march and protest. Maybe you just have an aching heart and quietly wonder what to do.

Once upon a time in a PoliSci Club, on a campus nearby, my friends and I held a voter registration drive for the budding college voters - and this was our slogan:

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Because you can do all the things mentioned above, and you can have the fiercest heart that beats for change - but the most important thing you can do is to show up at the polls. The value of your name punched into that machine or on that absentee ballot? Your golden ticket. Stop thinking it doesn't matter. Stop thinking your vote in your local elections and precincts isn't a thing. Those votes lead to our city officials, our police chiefs and on from there to the cities that run our daily lives. We have got to do better at connecting the dots from the decisions we make at the polls, to the appointed officials, to the actions that shock and anger us in our communities.

There are so many things in our lives that get in the way of this simple action - from inconvenient poll locations to knowing the dates for local elections, to babies that won't nap or are having a bad day. I feel that pain, I have been the mom waiting in a voting line with twins in a double stroller and a baby sling carrying an ornery Phoenix. And on the other side of that exercise in patience was the small voice of my 7 year old when it was all said and done: "Mom, Martin would be very happy." (because aren't all kids on a first-name basis with MLK Jr?!) We can do better.

Don't let the frustration of what is about to fall on us dissuade you. The ugly words and propaganda. Don't let cynicism win. Show up. Maybe stop being so nice and hoping that the good guys will win. I know I will.

Many Faces

Faces of the mother 

Are many, oh sweet child 

You know for sure

they see us in all our glory

And they hear us in heartbreak

Small eyes watch how we

Move through this world

Aware

Taking it in to spit it right back out 

In our general direction 

Our eyes watch them, oh sweet child

There goes my heart walking around out in the world 

How we ever stand it

I’ll never know

How we ever learn to sew up the small tears 

Left in our hearts

I’ll never know

But will we ever get tired of the soaring 

Connection of that golden ribbon that binds us 

Not in this life

Or the next 

BL

5.10.20

A Lockdown List

A Lockdown List

Say yes to your hungry soul
Walk into the stormy night
Speak what you've been holding back
Sip whiskey at midnight
Think of the color of your best friend's eyes
(her beautiful eyes)
Make a list of the hugs you will give when this is over.

BL 4.26.20


 

Quarantine Got Me Like 2005

This is it friends, the moment that the wheel of time takes us full circle and as we pass by things forgotten, they become new to us again. I find myself distilled, paring down to what really matters. Dusting off my blog, as 2020 reminds me of 2005 days spent almost entirely at home with new twins and a toddler.

The quarantine and all it has brought to us - from the work realm and being absolutely slammed staffing healthcare providers in covid hot spots, to the home realm and homeschooling a hostile learner.

Another election cycle, where I last left you on the borderland with a heavy heart in 2016. Not much has changed. I am 100 years older and 100 times more cynical and yet hope is curled like a nesting rabbit in my chest.

Creativity is a funny thing. Artists and writers muse on it all the time, debating how to inspire it, how to maintain it, how to find it, why it goes missing from time to time. This spring it has found me again. Will report back.

 

Dreams

Friends, Past Me thought The Day After would be the day of unity and of angels inside.  Past Me thought we were evolving as humans, that we were constantly and continually moving into a higher realm of thought and deed. Past Me was a naive fool. The reality is... not only the day after, but this whole week has been one of movement through a shifting fog of grief and anger. Betrayal. My land is not what I thought it was. It has willfully elected a man who can only be described as crass, vulgar, arrogant. And those are the nice words. What stands before us is a man who has spoken and acted in ways that I have spent 15 years teaching my children not to act like. A man who has marginalized swathes of citizens. Yeah. This is gonna take more than a day to reconcile with inside. I'm sure the next stage will come to me soon enough, whether it be more anger or a plan of action. But today, still today, there is empty sadness.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes