snow!

today we drove up to mount hood for some play-in-the-snow time. the snow was too dry for a snowman, but we did get to sled, make snow angels, and stop for donuts on the way home. a splendid specimen of a day as far as i'm concerned. here's some joy:

funny thing is, we drove an hour to the snow and right when we pulled up into our driveway this afternoon, it started to snow like crazy. bug and kai are out there now, making a snow dude, and i can overhear them being eager and adorable outside. i'm not at work this week, but i can't stop thinking of this poem, and of its last commandment:

Undivided Attention
By Taylor Mali

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's
birthday gift to the insane -
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,
Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and
I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?
All the greatest common factors are delivered by
long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks
or come through everything, even air.
Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year
my students rush to the window
as if snow were more interesting than math,
which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway,
spinning slowly in April air,
so almost-falling, so hinderingly
dangling from the neck of the movers' crane.
So on the edge of losing everything.

Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

( Amen. )

a belated happy holidays

hello again out there. hope you had some happy holidays. we had quite the shebang of a christmas-- anne's kids (+ partners and littles) joined us in portland for the festivities. there were 11 kids under seven in our house, which was mesmerizing and overwhelming and fun at the same time. this week promises more down time, and i've been relishing in reckless acts of de-cluttering, and enjoying the tree before anne tells me it's time. i am not a fan of the tree going away, and i haven't even gotten to set up slumber and sleep next to it yet.

here are our two holiday cards, which we hope to get out by march along with adah's birthday party invitations:

x's and o's to the loved ones, which is most likely you.

well hello out there.

it's been a while. while there are parts of this december that i have absolutely savored, it's been one long advent. this month has been marked by the death of my sister-in-law diane, who left too early, and here we are again, wondering how we're gonna muster up some feist to share with this world since it's now missing some more. i can't even begin to say how heartbreaking it was to watch my 13 year old nephew bury his mother, literally and figuratively. and at the same time, it was really heartwarming to sit shivah with di's loved ones, and eat and laugh and cry, and do all three of these some more.

right before we left chicago, bess and lisa brought the twins to our hotel, and i finally got to meet them. love at first sight. here's a picture of my mom and bess doting over effram, and kai having a sweet moment with lucy. my dad and lisa are not in the frame, but there he is in the corner, questioning lisa about how much money she makes. nice.

we survived the rest of the month by baking our asses off-- lots of cookies, peppermint bark, several pans of marshmallows, endless pounds of butter. we've been having evening dance parties with christmas carols and walking at night to look at lights. anne and i have also been a little stunned, because right around thanksgiving, adah became possessed by the devil and he appears about three times a day in raging-kicking-screaming fits like never been seen before, which are inspired by who knows what. yesterday it was because i stirred her yogurt and you could see the blueberries in the bowl. you just never know, people. watch out! anne and i hope to not be in a psychiatric ward for christmas. good thing i have my leopard snuggie for some comfort in these trying times:

i have the feeling that i won't be allowed to wear this work anymore in january. boo hiss.

no NaBloPoMo and a general update

i love having this record of family life, but i find it so hard to get here most of the time. i don't particularly love to write, but i need to write and love the result of it. it's national blog posting month, and although i have SO been enjoying many of my friends' daily posts, there's just.no.way. i have the stamina for that kind of marathoning. because every night i want to be in bed with anne, my heating pad, and a plate of cookies on my chest by around 7:30 with no other obligations whatsoever. i have an old lady stuck inside of me, and she won't leave. i also have a little stomach ache of grief, am anxious about upcoming bonnie-less holidays, and how to be present with joy without really being glued to the pining.

i also have a million little committments that i'm doing outside the realm of the regularly scheduled program of our busy life, like organizing the food for st. andrew's upcoming auction, planning five hours worth of activities for 20 kids for an auction sign-up event i accidentally became a co-leader of, and getting ready to stand in for bonnie at this year's children's peace fair, where we'll be providing the space and materials for kids to paint their visions of peace and portraits of their families. i don't even want to think about the 35 report card narratives i have to write in the next couple weeks. anyone for hire?

back at the homestead, we've been crafting with leaves, crayons, needles, pumpkins, and tissue paper stained glass. adah mentions on a daily basis that she'd like to be an ah-tist when she grows up, so we're trying to keep her fed in that way with lots of projects and creative mess. i still don't know how to operate a sewing machine, but i did finish my first embroidery project for bess and lisa, which was a sweet quote embroidered horribly on a sling. and speaking of lesbians with children, the state of maine voted to take away the rights of same-sex couples to get married. infuriating and sad. this, however, makes me laugh. civil rights victories are always built on the foundation of all the defeats that came before them, but still...

here are some october pictures to keep you company.

away i went

i have been so busy playing dr. sears that i have not, in 3.5 years, been away from my child for a weekend. i'm happy to report that i got through my three day vay-cay to seattle without a lick of separation anxiety, and was pretty elated the entire time. okay, i did speed a little on the way home to pick up bug from school, and i did wander around the city yearning to buy my girls presents, but for the most part, i basked in the glory of my complete lack of responsibilities.

ace flew in from vermont to meet me in seattle, which was so very kind of him, and every ten minutes or so one of us felt compelled to profess our utter happiness. unsurprisingly, we are fantastic traveling companions and had a blast with all the speed wandering and all of the food. he agrees with me that if you split everything, you get to eat more. which is fun.

it began with brunch at macrina. since you want to know what we had, it was this: maple polenta topped with two eggs and bacon crème fraiche, herb-roasted potatoes, an organic greens salad, and seasonal (that was questionable) fruit. we also had a buttermilk waffle with fresh washington-foraged huckleberries, brown sugar mascarpone, and toasted almonds. it came with a side of bacon and we washed it all down with some excellent espresso drinks. while we were hungry and waiting for this food, we got a loaf of olive ciabiatta and ace had a moment of culinary clarity. he decided that after all these years, olives were actually good. phew. next thing you know, erica will be craving mustard and i might find a good way to prepare brussel sprouts.

besides eating, which did take up a considerable part of our time, we also saw capitalism: a love story (2nd matinee in 3 years? and oh how i love a matinee), scored a quadrilla for 50% off at a natural toy store, reminisced over some old-school ani difranco and practiced gratitude that we are no longer 20, walked halfway across the city to the center for wooden boats and missed the boat, watched people take pictures of their donuts at this place, washed the donuts down with some wheat grass, looked at photographs, slept in, goodwilled, debated over the caramelized beet ravioli at el lago or the supposedly luscious lasagna, anddecided to go for the ethereal meatballs and handmade fettuccine.

my frugal self was plummeted into a world of gluttony minus the drinks. we decided that we need to do this regularly-- pick a city and explore it. where should we go next?

thanks for everything, ace, and thanks to annie for being such a great boat-making maddy, and for taking our kid to the theatre for the first time and for being all around supportive and encouraging. i was grateful for the time away, and also grateful to be back.

septembering

september was largely a month of birthday celebrations and new beginnings. for more pics, click here. an update with actual words might come in the near future, in addition to a picture of our new housemate emily with a cabbage larger than her head.

grateful for this dear dad:

for bug:

http://www.vimeo.com/5596521

Thinking About Bonnie Tinker by Lisa Sinnett

There's a kaleidoscope in the conservatory where I’ve stopped with my daughters. There’s a circular bed of sand with sticks and rocks, and above, the lenses and mirrors. We shift the sand around and look, and each time the picture is different. If you look deep inside a kaleidoscope, what you see is the ocean of patterns of light, surrounded by a rim of darkness, curving away like night falling.

Trying to write about Bonnie Tinker is kind of like this. The ways in which Bonnie touched people’s lives are complex, shifting and beautiful.I first met Bonnie the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns talent show fundraiser at our Quaker Conference. She was standing on her head in between acts to raise money—we connected somewhere in between a twenty-dollar bill and a bright pair of socks.

I didn’t know she’d had such a far-reaching effect on the world back then—At the conference, I came to know her as an amazing workshop-leading, music-loving, peace-activist luminary, and I needed what Bonnie and others in this fellowship believed at their very core: “We are learning that radical inclusion and radical love bring further light… Our experience with oppression in our own lives leads us to seek ways to bring our witness to bear in the struggles of other oppressed peoples.”As I learned about her life, I would understand her beliefs more deeply As the roots that nourished her work as the Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, Inc.—the racially diverse group of sexual minorities and their allies in Oregon and Southwest Washington that came together to oppose anti-gay ballot measures in Oregon, and to accompany others who are doing the same kind of activism across our country.

With her wife, Sara Graham, Bonnie raised three kids—Alex, Josh, and Connie. A member of Multnomah Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon, and of Seriously P.O.’d Grannies, she developed the LARA method for non-violent conflict resolution based on Gandhi’s principles. The Founder and Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, Inc., she also founded the oldest domestic violence shelter on the West Coast--Portland's Bradley Angle House, which is still in operation. Her family was the victor in a well-known Supreme Court case that set the precedent for free speech in schools—Tinker vs. Des Moines School District ruled students could protest war in school.

Love Makes a Family “seeks to provide a public voice for all families, especially for those subjected to social, economic and legal discrimination due to sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.”

Feeling this acceptance through Bonnie’s presence and work helped me to set down a mask that I had been forced to wear my whole life without knowing why. My mother knew that she was gay when she was a high school student in her rural Michigan school, but growing up, we never knew.

She told me: “I was married in 1959. We were told to be loyal to God and country.” The thought of acting on her feelings with her girlfriends? “Dangerous.” I asked her about this, but she became silent. “There was a girl. Two girls. People suspected them of being gay.” She was silent for a long time. “I thought one of them committed suicide.”

That was the secret about our family—and it was like we were in the Witness Protection Program. Everything felt tentative, like we were playacting for a program about a family instead of being a family, but not knowing what we were upholding or why. We had activity, but no intimacy. How can there be intimacy when one person in the family has had to sacrifice her identity in order to survive? Everyone was deeply affected by this. We had the burden of being her unwitting jailers—yet we were her protectors, too. And we didn’t know any of it until mom came out to us when she was in her fifties.

I am thankful to Bonnie Tinker and to all the other activists who are opening spaces for families, and liberating people like my mother, who I am finally getting to know.

Many people have written or spoken about Bonnie and her wife Sara Graham’s journey facing discrimination and obstacles during their decades together. Bonnie worked for full inclusion for same sex unions, not only domestic partnerships.

In Bonnie’s own words. “The M word matters. It confers social standing. It confers social acceptance. Marriage confers legitimacy. Our children will be declared legitimate. Marriage is about families taking our place in society with full respect.”

But there is still work to be done.

If you ever met Bonnie in person, you would see how much she sought to understand other people’s perspectives, and promote the common ground that we share. If you could hear her calling on the Spirit of Tinkerbell to impeach George Bush, or if you could see her getting arrested with the Seriously Pissed Off Grannies, you’d know what a surprising, memorable, and creative human being she was.

She was killed in early July in Virginia, where she was attending a Quaker conference, when a Mack truck turned in front of the bicycle she was riding and ran her over.

I think of Bonnie’s way of being in the world now and I remember something that her younger brother Paul said once. He said, “I want to have eyes like bees, and see the world from all the different facets.” Bees see the world complete, one perspective at a time. Bees see colors we don’t see. They see sunbursts of blue and red where we see only white.Thank you, Bonnie, for helping us to open our eyes and see the world a little bigger.

We’ll miss you.

With Love,
Lisa Anne Sinnett
Detroit, Michigan

this and that

the transition from home to work (for me) and home to school (for bug) has been a pretty good one, actually. there was the expected first few days of holy terror in the morning, but those simmered down at the end of the first week after adah privately pulled my mom to the side for this confession: "actually, i really like school." the past two mornings have been much more calm and uncluttered by the nervous outbursts of "i don't want to go to school!" i think she's decided to reserve that phrase now for middle school, which is understandable.

and speaking of middle school, oh how i'm enjoying the outward energy and silliness required to keep those kids entertained and learning. i'm pleased to report that two weeks into the school year, i'm still in a honeymoon phase. and have i mentioned what a blessing in disguise this almost-back-to-full-time -work has been? frankly, i had a terrible experience teaching part-time the last few years. i was grateful to have extra time with adah in the afternoons, but i felt so entirely shitty about my work. i only got to see 1/4 of the school, and i felt less committed and motivated than i ever have. there's a lot to be said about staying for almost the entire day and getting to see the kids in the classroom and at breaks, recess, lunch, etc., that forms a whole new relationship and fosters a totally different level of engagement. i also get to talk more with my peers, which is energy-giving in itself, and my paycheck is much easier to look at. benefits all around.

what else? seul! seul, our favorite housemate evah, had to go back to korea, so we had to eat pie and wish her the best and say goodbye. bummer. does anyone know anyone who might like to marry her? fraudulent green card marriages are only punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

i'm so comforted by the fact that today we welcomed fall. summer clearly wants to stay, but i'm ready to let go, and this season is perfect for that symbolic gesture. i'm ready for a slower pace-- afternoons with my family in front of the wood stove, rainy day walks, lots of baking, and long baths, in particular. and i'm going to learn how to embroider, dammit. so we're sending away summer by collecting early fall treasures and eating dinner outside on blankets for as long as we can stand it. so entirely exquisite:

my girls waiting for dinner last night. the crowd went wild for sandwiches. note to self: keep it simple.

tonight anne's away in seaside receiving a work award for her excellence, so here's a sweet view of bug waiting for her macaroni and cheese with broccoli:

while we were eating i mentioned that i was going to call grandma sara to see how she was doing and adah's response was, "you mean without grandma bonnie?" i meant in general, but that, too. the kid's brain is amazing. she proceeded to ask questions like, "where did grandma bonnie and grandma sara meet? and "how did they start to live in the brown house? "she thinks about that woman a lot. seriously comes up in a couple different conversations per day. sigh. people say that kids don't remember things until they're four or five. i'm hoping they're wrong, and she'll always have a sense of bonnie.

on a brighter note, here's the little one procrastinating on coming indoors for bedtime, pretending that she was going to sleep on the porch.

i like her.

adah's first day of preschool, but not really

so last week bug had her preschool home visit, which was absolutely sweet. one of her teachers came over to play for a little while and brought her a magic rock that has a glistening line through it when you face it towards a window. we've been getting her ready for this day for weeks: her first day of socialist indoctrination, otherwise known as "preschool" in this country. anne took the day off work and i had a fellow teacher cover for me so i could attend the open house this morning. the plan was for us to stay from 9-11 and then leave the kid there until 3:00.

a little before 11 i started to warn bug that we'd be leaving in ten minutes or so, and asked her what fun things would she like to show me before then. some crying ensued, and some "i want to see exactly where you go." one of the teachers overheard my transition talk and asked, "do you think school starts today?"

um, yeah.

turns out this reading teacher didn't actually read the calendar correctly and we've been preparing the kiddo for the first day of school that really wasn't. we also learned that there is no school on friday either, so would anyone like to babysit?

oops.

adios, summer!

this was my first week back at work, and with the immense separation anxiety the bug has displayed throughout the summer, i wasn't sure she'd let me go. but you know what happened? she said, "bye mom, have a nice day. i love you!" and then began working on a puzzle with her dad.

what a dear. she's been somewhere different almost every day this week, and she's been handling this transition really well. in the last several days she's spent time with alex and laura, my mom, grandma sara, and janet. i pulled up to the westwood's this afternoon and there was janet and bug, picnicking on the front lawn with apples and a nut bar, sitting amongst lots of bandaged dolls with various ailments. janet won adah's heart, and i think it was mutual. i feel so fortunate to have such a loving and supportive community around us.

i also feel pretty blessed and privileged to have a job outside the home. not just because of the the soaring unemployment in oregon, but because over the past couple months i have been explicably aching for... something else. specifically, more time, more freedom, maybe some motivation outside of the culinary arts-- some activities in which i can stretch my brain a bit. i have absolutely loved my summer with the little one, and i also loved getting into my car last monday morning, going somewhere ALONE, and arriving at work and getting to think and plan all day for my incoming other little people. i'm excited about the upcoming school year, and feel challenged, motivated, and appreciative of my schedule.

i love the variety and complexity and independence that is staring at me in the face.

how we'll remember august:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rhapsody1110/AugustWebAlbum?authkey=Gv1sRgCPTat6Wnt6amRA#

we-love-it-here-thank-you

a time bomb is about to go off, so i have to hurry. we just had the best weekend ever. anne took friday off, and we were so happy she could come adventure with us for the weekend. because since she's not a gym or woodshop teacher, it makes summer planning kind of difficult. first we went to tacoma, where auntie liz and uncle seamus live. adah loves them, and when we're at a portland pool and she is on a raft, she will

randomly say something like, "float me over to tacoma so i can be with seamus and liz!"

oh the camaraderie. here are some snippets:

the morning after we arrived, there was some nail painting, adah running around with the cats' nylon toy on her head, a visit to the zoo where there are puffins AND seahorses and camels to ride. don't tell PETA.

after THAT, we ate the best cupcakes in the entire world, and while adah slept, anne and i drove to seattle to stalk molly wizenberg of orangette fame, and to eat at her new restaurant delancey, which knocked our socks off. there is no other pizza after delancey.

next morning: bainbridge island, home of seamus' parents and lots of beauty. i have 30 pictures to post right here, because the aesthetics of the entire experience made every moment a delightful one. forgive the overwriting, but it's true. so many beautiful things. like my wife and kid:

and tree swings, and herbs growing in olive oil cans, and little pieces of art everywhere, and food growing, and fresh ice cream, and our rainbow dinner:

adah was strikingly comfortable there, which can be attributed to the gentleness and kindness of sue and thomas, our incredibly welcoming hosts, and their beautiful stretch of land she got to romp on.

here she is making everyone some carrot and lettuce soup after our walk to the beach for some impromptu tidepooling:

the fun continued, with homemade popsicles and a funny seamus accent:

and it didn't cease to continue because we then went to a wood-fired pizza party in the backyard of some seriously nice people, and this gave liz and adah some time to run and roll down hills:

uncaptured: seamus pretending to be a rhinoceros with adah on his back, and the ferry back-up and our arrival at home about 4 hours before anne had to leave for work the next morning.

the end. time bomb.

living it up

i have to go back to work (outside-the-home work) in five days. thoughts of lesson plan ideas are started to infiltrate my brain and are keeping me up a little at night, so already my mind is back at work. i won't complain about this too much-- i really do consider it an utter privilege to be able to have 2 full months off with my kid and still receive a paycheck in the mail. it should be this way for everyone if that's their fancy. i feel very fortunate for our long and exuberant days.

some of them have been grief-filled, because we are sincerely feeling the loss of a grandma, but i have also felt a strong and genuine excitement about waking up with the little one and seeing where the wind takes us. it's been a summer full of fruit picking and preserving-- strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, marionberries, blackberries, corn, plums, pears-- the order in which they arrived. we have lots of jam for sweet breakfasts in winter, lots o' berries for smoothies and pies, and enough corn to help us remember how delicious summer tastes for a couple hundred days when it's cold.

we've also spent lots of time at parks, the pool, in sprinklers, and in puddles. if it doesn't rain, we make them. we've been riding our bikes to the library to fill baskets up with books, baking up a storm, visiting the amusement park, the zoo, and the science museum. we've also been having some lazy days of doodling, cuddling, and watching some charlie and lola with a big bowl of popcorn. luscious i tell you.

adah accomplished her goals of learning to climb trees, and everywhere we go she's on the lookout for one that's her size. she can also ride her tricycle all...by...herself... all the way to prescott and back. she has also been busy playing out her anxieties and anticipations about school, which she starts a week after i go back to work. she plays school constantly, wants to know exactly how many friends she's going to make, and what we're going to pack in her lunch. she still likes to eat. like a lot. mothers' daughter, i guess.

Rest In Rage by Matt Davis

Portland is a city (and the Mercury a paper) that occasionally erupts in bursts of vitriolic civic engagement over issues that could not be less important. See: The Cesar Chavez Boulevard rename. Also: Sidewalk tape arguments at the Rose Festival. And of course: Major League Soccer. There are very few Portlanders, I think, who are able to rise above the Rose City noise and focus on issues of genuine life-and-death importance. Sadly, there is now one fewer.

If there's a heaven, Bonnie Tinker is probably already bored up there. Unless there's some raging injustice over the distribution of harps and angelic foot rubs—in which case I guarantee Tinker will be causing trouble in paradise. Still, "resting" in "peace" seems inappropriate for Tinker, whose 61-year life was ended prematurely last Thursday, July 2, when a Mack truck ran her over at a Quaker conference in Virginia.

I first met Tinker in 2007 after she was arrested along with her partner, Sara Graham, for daubing the walls of a military recruitment center on NE Broadway with water-soluble fake blood, made from corn syrup and food coloring. Tinker and Graham led Portland's Surge Protection Brigade, a group of politically active senior citizens who became known as the "raging" or "pissed-off grannies."

The first thing that struck me was that Tinker and Graham had definitely done it. There was no denial. In addition they told me: "We're not sorry." And still they beat the District Attorney's criminal mischief case in court, arguing under the first amendment that the blood symbolized both Good Friday, and the blood of dying soldiers in Iraq. I admired their ability to turn the court case into a public discussion about the war.

Tinker and Graham were arrested again in June that year, after lying down in front of a World War II tank during the Rose Festival. "It's not right, at a time of war, to have a tank on the streets of this city," said Tinker, making no reference to any ongoing arguments over sidewalk tape that may have been also been "raging" at the time.

I hope young and creative Portlanders like us can take a lesson from Tinker's life, now that she's gone. It's a shame we can get mad over the noise regulations for food carts on Hawthorne or sucked into the minutia of the mayor's sex life while seldom directing our energy, our indignation—or better yet—our guts, toward the really dreadful shit.

On that note, the effort to recall Sam Adams begins in earnest this week [rolls hipster eyes].

Bonnie Tinker, you'll be missed.

these feets were made for campin'

last weekend we packed up our gear and went camping along the clackamas river with about 17 other moms and their kids. one of the gals overheard this conversation between two guys as they were walking past our group site:

"what's going on there?"
"oh, those are the lesbians with the children."
"how does that work?"

you know, because lesbians don't have reproductive organs.

despite the fact that anne got food poisoning, adah got stung by a bee (the second time this week), and i got my period, we had a great time. really-- i'm not being facetious. i love a good change of scenery, and it was really fun to connect with other parents and kids and watch them explore from dawn to dusk. we were only gone for a few days, but it felt substantial. here's a shot of anne doing what she does best while camping, which is swat at mosquitoes because they love her blood. and adah is doing what she loves best, which is throwing rocks into bodies of water:


in case you didn't know, lesbians in general (with the exception of us and the luria family) are not the type of rugged campers you might expect they'd be. with our tent, sleeping bags, propane stove and two big coolers it looked like we were in the camping ghetto compared to all the others. we were the first ones to arrive, but a few hours later people started to show up with camping condos that were equipped with kitchenettes, living room sets, covered porch areas, and lawn furniture, not to mention extensive cookware and high maintenence meal ingredients. we didn't even bring any chairs to sit on, so we had to walk down the hill to borrow theirs and see how the others lived. we had our propane stove resting on a half burnt 2x4 we found in the fire pit. we didn't run out of hot dogs or smores ingredients, however, and that's what matters. even with our minimalist gear, we got to wake up underneath swaying trees and sleep next to crickets. aaaaahhhhh. we also got to wake up to buddies. here's adah and mateo cooperating to make some kind of contact (none whatsoever) with the ball:



who wouldn't want to wake up in this world? and this isn't just my prozac talking.

mama needs a minute to herself

in the last post, I referenced how clearly adah remembers her last interaction with grandma bonnie.

it was the day that michael jackson died. i remember this because I was at the north portland library picking up a few books and I was amazed that about 15 minutes after his death, the librarians already had a display of books about him. librarians are magicians. but anyway, while i was there, i got a frantic call from bonnie, who was leaving for a quaker conference in virginia the next morning. In the great bonnie tradition, she had a million things to pack and do before she left, and she wondered if I could drop adah off to see a bean house they recently built. this was, for a couple reasons, a big inconvenience to me. i was at the library, adah was at home with anne preparing dinner for a lot of guests, and it was almost bedtime-- a time during which i am notoriously inflexible and committed, and sometimes need to be committed.

so grandma bonnie drove over to our house, ran into the kitchen, and proceeded to explain to bug where she was going and when they would get to see each again. they counted the tuesdays on their fingertips and bonnie told her that she loved her more than all the ice cream cones in the world, which almost made adah gasp. is that possible? yep.

so tuesday rolled around-- adah and bonnie’s special day together--and when adah asked about bonnie, we counted again on our fingers when she’d be coming back. but two days later, on thursday the 2nd, alex called with the horrible news: bonnie was riding a bike (to get in shape for a climate ride she was doing with alex and laura in September to raise money and awareness about global warming) and was killed by a truck on the virginia tech campus. irreversible. unfathomable. no more counting on the fingers. we had to tell bug that grandma bonnie was never coming back.

how children process grief is both mysterious and evident, but adah did seem to understand this: that when you love someone, sometimes they leave and never come back, and there seemed to be a direct correlation between this awareness and how she behaved a few mornings later when i tried to drop her off at a summer camp and leave her there, like by herself. she had been to this camp before, it was full of kids she was familiar with, and she would not let me go. with the support of a few other parent friends who assured me she’d stop crying a few minutes after i left, i tried to go. her wailing was so dramatic, though, that I hid in the parking lot for awhile to see if she would recover. after almost a full half hour, she was still screaming. her inability to cope was way beyond my comfort level, so I went back and got her. she has spent the last several weeks attached to my kneecaps, and has been following me everywhere, including to the toilet and to the shower which makes the days extreeeeeeemly long, and is making me nuts. she is terrified of me leaving.

am I reading too much into it? at first I thought it might be a combination of her being a little more attached since I’ve been home for the summer, and she recently stopped nursing, but there seemed to be a clear association between the news of bonnie’s death and her death grip on me. i’m talking regularly clawing on my clothes. it’s worrisome.

to anyone who’s reading ( which is who, by the way?), do you have any advice?

at a loss.

i haven’t been able to say much here lately. haven’t found the words to express how sullen we are, how heartbroken (insufficient word) we are that adah’s paternal grandma bonnie died on the second of july in a terrible bike accident, which you can read about HERE if you haven’t done so already. i can’t express how much we will miss her, and what an important part of our life she was.



bonnie tinker is the reason i am here in portland, my home. she was a mentor to me in my late teen years, was one of the first people who helped me get sober, and of course gave us the son who gave us our adah, which we will be forever grateful for. she was continuously a pivotal support for me as a queer teacher and a mother, and was an absolutely inspirational and crazy-making person at the same time. we love and loved her very much.



i mean seriously, how many kids are lucky enough to get a grandma like her? she was a forever rabble-rouser. she has an FBI record for her political work when she was young, and has been arrested several times in the past few years for protesting at military recruiting centers and standing in the streets for peace. her relationship with adah was far too short, and this will always make me ache. adah, cierra, and maya, her three granddaughters, were the lights of her life.


every tuesday bonnie brought bug home filthy and fulfilled, having taken her on some special adventure. ask adah what she’ll remember most about grandma bonnie and she’ll say, “all the beautiful flower fields she took me to,” and “how she ran into the kitchen to say goodbye to me before she died.” (more on that later.) other recent adventures with grandma bonnie included a trip to the ER, picnicking in an iris field, visiting with a wacky turtle whisperer, hiking in the gorge, throwing rocks in the river, playing at a water park, running around the rhododendron garden, raising chicks and building tunnels for them, digging for worms, deciding where to plant a favorite cherry blossom tree (which they never got to) and lots of caring for bonnie’s backyard animals and garden. i specifically cherished their days together because bonnie stood in stark contrast to adah’s other main childcare provider: my mom, who is wonderful and present and loves bug more than anything, but let’s just say that her and bonnie are polar opposites, and I loved the spectrum of care adah has been receiving.


last weekend was bonnie’s memorial, attended by many hundreds. there were lots of tears and many songs—a combination of deep sadness and utter joy and gratitude for her life and all that she contributed to her family and our world. her siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews were here, and it was genuinely life-giving to spend the weekend with them. a powerful weekend, indeed.


we spent monday picking blueberries with alex and laura, and hunkered down for the heat wave at my mom’s, who is one of the three people in oregon with air conditioning. we hit a record high of 108. after sleeping here for the night, with actual blankets on (don’t hate me), i drove the mile home in the morning to feed and water the chickens, and when i got there, 2 out of 3 of them were dead. friends, i can’t really take much more loss, thankyouverymuch, but i did what had to be done which was a.) freak out in the driveway, b.) borrow a shovel from the neighbors since ours was nowhere to be found and i wasn’t going to be burying chickens with a hand trowel, and c.) phone a dad-friend. alex and laura came over and provided me a with hug and a hole. i contemplated lying to bug because i didn’t think she could take more loss either, but it was recommended to me by a few of my people that i tell the kid the truth. I did and actually felt a little better. adah is so frickin awesome and resilient and caring. first she showed off her subtraction skills: “so if two are dead, and we have three, that makes one left over,” she thought to herself out loud, and then proceeded to discuss what their gravestone might look like. it included a picture, and a small fence around where we buried them so no one will tread on junie or maeve. she was also part of the decision about what to do with eleanor, our one remaining chicken. all chickens want and need a flock, and bug could clearly empathize with that, so we brought eleanor over to alex and laura’s to join their chicken family so she wouldn’t be a sad and lonely bird.


adah is hopeful to get a few chicks in the spring, which will clearly be a way to honor and remember her recent time with bonnie, who we will be keeping here with us as much as we can.

sshhhh...

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster and faster then the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

- W.S. Merwin

if you listen closely you can hear my boobs talking

bug officially said goodbye to the magical elixir of breastmilk a couple weeks ago-- three years and a few months after her birth. it was a slow and gentle process, and members of my extended family and random strangers at fred meyer don't have to be appalled anymore at the site of a nursing toddler. and, to their relief, she won't be nursing when she goes to college-- my deflecting response to the interrogations of "are you ever going to stop nursing her?" geez. let the kid have her milk, dammit.

but here's some funny:

tonight, when i went upstairs to cuddle with her for a few minutes, she said, "i think i hear your boobs talking and they said they had a little more milk left in them." i didn't tell her how every few days i check to see if milk is still in there, you know, when i'm in the shower or something, because at this end of this long, loving relationship there is sort of a catastrophic "there's no turning back!" kind of realization, and there is some left that i'm holding onto a little. but i did my emotional roller coasting about this loss in months prior, in times i thought she was weaning but wasn't, and i now feel totally ready to move on.

i just said, "nope. none left." fortunately the moment was fleeting, and now we just have this bittersweet phew.

presence and berries

anne just arrived home from spending 5 days with her older kids and welcoming a new grandchild into our world. congratulations, miller family! and little music, i can't wait to meet you!

i thought i'd come downstairs and write for a few minutes while anne and adah make a tent upstairs and pretend to be worms.

normally when the other mutha plans to go away for longer than a few days it incites a little bit of panic and immediate exhaustion. that, and adah and i start planning trips to indian restaurants, a cuisine that is not really of anne's liking. i have to say, though, that these past several days are among the best days bug and i have had together for awhile. not because anne was gone, of course, but for a couple other reasons: the luxury of unscheduled time, and the grace of real presence. this was the first weekend in months where we had absolutely nothing on the calendar. there wasn't one thing we had to do, and the whole world felt open to us. i highly recommend the whole world being open to you.

as a family we have had a ridiculously busy past few weeks (i know, redundant), and i've been missing slow time with bug. i've also become increasingly aware how much time i spend in internet land, and i made a little vow to myself to be 100% available to the little one, and to be present to her wacky whims and desires for the weekend. we had a fabulous time as a result. we talked about things that sounded fun (tacoma, swimming, crepes, hiking, library, etc.) but ultimately it was the strawberries that won.

we met a friend at sauvie's island and picked a couple of flats of berries. seul picked one of the flats, and when i asked her what she planned on doing with them, she said she had no idea, so i knew we would have a long night ahead of us. the strawberries were humungo and really sweet, so we had to do something with them right away or they'd get bad. a strawberry emergency is a good thing to have, however, so we stayed up until around midnight making jam and shortcake and plans for pies. on sunday there was a lot of licking of fresh whipped cream on beaters, and strawberry shortcake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. this makes for a happy kid and mom. just wait until tomorrow when we're back to millet and lentils.

but beyond photonutrients, this is really all just to say: thank you, adah, for making my whole world so happy. you make my heart hurt.

that, and happy birthday jojo. :)

may pics; staple removal; still can't wait for summer

if you'd like to see more pictures from the month of may, click here. i promise you'll find color there.

in other news, bug got the staple removed from her head this afternoon. anne's co-worker told her that the removal is usually much worse than the going in, so i opted to stay home and let the calmer one of the mama pair handle the experience. it went better than expected. in adah's words, "it only took like 2 minutes!" they waited a long time, which was the worst of it. anne noticed that lots of later-arriving people were getting called in before them, so she went up and asked what that was about, which was probably all the staff vying to take care of any other patient than a potentially volatile toddler with a staple in her head. when they got in, the procedure was once again quick and easy, and the nurse asked, "how old is she again?" and then "really?" more skipping through the parking lot, i assume, and a staple in a ziploc bag as a souvenir, which they stopped to show grandma on the way home.

***

the strawberries are officially ripening, and bug and i have a morning countdown. the first thing she asks upon waking in the morning, all pretzeled up next to me is, "do you have to work today? do you have to work tomorrow? how many days until summer?

glad it's saturday and almost summertime

phew. what a week. adah endured her first big injury and we endured that, and a week of hysterical resistance to going to sleep at night. the head injury almost gave me a heart attack, and adah recovered more quickly than i did. i was at work when i got a text from grandma bonnie that said, "call now." i assumed a tetanus emergency among other things, but as it turns out, they were sitting in yard chairs watching the turtle when adah fell backwards and hit her head on a big rock. she told me the bleeding was minimal, but that she might need a couple of stitches. i left work immediately because it seemed that urgent care was necessary, and when i got there and saw the blood all over my little's shirt, i didn't know if i could get through an emergency room experience. but bug was actually in pretty good spirits and was entertained by the tank full of fish as we waited. in the room we had to hold a numbing agent over her head for a half an hour while bonnie read books so that she wouldn't feel any pain when they cleaned the wound and put the staple in. yes, i said the word "staple." the worst, but apparently she didn't feel a thing. afterwards, the kiddo skipped and sang through the kaiser parking lot and began talking about which kind of ice cream she would like to eat. she was in a fantastic mood for the rest of the day. until bedtime, of course. that was somethin' else. the picture above is a depiction of adah and bonnie in the garden, pre-staple. and here's the little bug looking like she's being treated for severe head trauma: :((((. poor thing.

in other news, i am feeling pretty weighed down by some news i received at work this week. i lost my cherished part-time status and don't know what to do. the likelihood of finding another part time teaching job in this economy is highly unlikely, but every part of me is rebelling and resisting and unaccepting of this information. one of the reasons we chose adah's preschool was because it's close to my work, and i reaaaaalllllly wanted the opportunity to pick her up from school each day. i want to see what's she been up to all morning, meet some of the other kids and parents, the whole shebang. i'm heartbroken. this doesn't even touch the politics of home stewardship, which i find to be such honorable and time-consuming work. i'll let harriet explain it best.

on a brighter note, it's been beautiful lately and we are fully ready for summertime. adah talks a lot about how she wants to spend her summer days and what she'd like to learn. specifically, she would like to learn how to draw more flowers, ride her bike, climb a tree and drink tea in it when she gets to the top, put on her own shirts, float on her back in swimming pools, and pick flowers down at the ends of them. she likes to have conversations called, "what don't i know how to do?" so she can add things to her list. i love seeing her so delighted by the world and eager to learn, and i hope it's something that school never squashes. she also asks, daily, "what don't YOU know how to do?," i suppose in an effort to confirm that everybody's learning, all of the time, not only the littles. she is also looking forward to every type of berry, eating meals outside, hiking, baking muffins, swimming, collecting acorns (?), and drinking hot chocolate (?). oh, and going "roller coasting." she did have her first amusement park rite of passage last weekend, and when face to face with the opportunity to "roller coast," she was pretty resistant. she did ride on a space ship ride, though, that had some kind of gun for a handle that she didn't quite know what to do with. i know what you're thinking: what's next? videos? yep. i'm becoming a more and more lenient mama each day, and it's actually sort of a relief. tomorrow i'm going to give her a quart of high fructose corn syrup for breakfast.