TELLING STORIES

Tattoo artists and studios were illegal in the state of Oklahoma until 2006. People who wanted safe and legit tattoos went on road trips to the surrounding states to get their permanent ink art. Christian conservative values taught me that tattoos were ‘bad’ or ‘trashy’. It was for sure not a lady like thing to have done to yourself. A tattoo on a female was the same as a short skirt. It labelled you as ‘easy’ or ‘asking for it’. Of course, this didn’t keep me from wanting one or thinking that tattoos were super cool. It just meant my body wouldn’t be seeing one until I was no longer a dependent. Even then, it took me several years of living on my own (with Chris) before I felt brave enough for my first tattoo.

Every tattoo on my body tells you a story of the person I was in that time. At first, I didn’t see it. I sort of discovered the stories of the old tattoos while writing about the new one. A tribal elephant on my ankle tells you a story of an impulsive moment in Vegas, a woman who was discovering her wild side. My Ganesh on my back tells you a story of removing obstacles and moving into a better way of living. The words on my arm are part of my story of managing my way through sewer backups, caring for a dying husband, and then really hard stuff that comes when someone dies like getting the right size coffee can to contain their ashes. “Je suis forte.” It’s the moral of my story, a cross stitch to hang on my body as a constant reminder that if I can do that, I can do anything.

So what story does this new bit of art on my body tell?

It kind of tells the story of my past.

For the first thirty four years of my life, I lived in Oklahoma. I was born there and just like every kid growing up in the rural school system, I know the song from the musical by heart as well as the B.C Clark Jewelry jingle. I know the places they show us on Reservation Dogs. We had a nesting pair of scissor tail flycatchers living in a tree where I grew up. We saw them every year. I pulled wildflowers from the pasture. I collected native plants during my Oklahoma Taxonomy of Vascular Plants course in undergrad. The Indian Paintbrush is my nod to my Oklahoma roots. There are people and places there that I will always love even though for years Chris and I talked of moving from that state. Without Oklahoma I would not have a claim to Chris. We would not have met. His initials are part of the vintage camera in the tattoo. He bought me the first camera and saw a potential in me that I did not see and sometimes still struggle to see. The camera in this tattoo tells a story of who I’ve become; it’s me. I’m the camera.

I have always been the camera.

Later on in the evening after I got the tattoo, Michael was carefully inspecting my arm. I asked even though it was too late “It doesn’t bother you that I have Chris’s initials carved into my arm?” He was adamant in his reply. He said that this tattoo is a work of art with the native Oklahoma flower and the camera. He said “Oh, no. I’m not bothered at all. I don’t belong in that tattoo.” And he’s right. This tattoo is not part of our story and who knows, maybe someday I’ll get a tattoo that tells a story of us. Though for now, this tattoo story feels like an ending.

It feels like enough.

Special thanks to Eric at Fountain City Tattoos for taking my clipart idea and turning into something magnificent.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In the summer of 96, I went to Hawaii with my parents. It was my third time to visit and for this time we chose to stay on the island of Maui. I don’t think we every would have gone to Hawaii at all if Dad had had a different job. We were very fortunate that American Airlines, at least at that time, treated it’s employees very well. Traveling to exotic places was always a little complicated with Dad. He was so tight with a dollar. We could go and stay in nice resort hotels because all of his discount options, but we were not allowed to spend any money. I got brave on this trip and told Dad that he had to let Mom and I rent snorkel gear. While we were at the activity hut getting our gear, we convinced Dad to not just get us the gear, but to book a full snorkel excursion. The attendant sweetened the deal by throwing in tickets to a luau if my parents agreed to go to timeshare seminar.

And Dad went for it. I think he even considered buying into the time share.

This turned out to be the best family vacation that I had ever experienced with both parents. Mom and I snorkeled and saw sea turtles while Dad chatted with the guys running the boat (his favorite thing). We drove all over the island exploring all of the things. There was a fish taco shack we stopped in for lunch one day and I am still laughing at my Dad’s reaction to a young pregnant woman who walked up to the shack. She was wearing a sarong that left her huge pregnant belly exposed. I thought Dad’s eyes were going to bug out of his head. I stood and posed with Mom under one of the many branches of the 150-year old banyan tree in Lahaina. The last night of our stay, we went to the Old Lahaina Luau where we ate wonderful traditional dishes and watched in amazement at the dancers. There were few moments of bickering and I can remember my mom having a genuine smile on her face most of our time there. It was truly a wonderful and magical vacation and I hold tight to those memories. Maui, hands down, was the best of the Hawaiian islands I have visited.

That 150-year old banyan tree (miraculously) is the only thing from our memories that is left standing in the town of Lahaina. I am grateful to have all of those memories and to the hospitality of the people of Hawaii.

Ways to help:

• Maui Strong Fund

• American Red Cross of Hawaii

• Aloha United Way

• The Maui Food Bank

• Maui Humane Society

If you have ever been to Hawaii or even if you haven’t but it’s on your bucket list, consider making a donation.

A BATCH OF RANDOM THOUGHTS

The other night, I decided to remove my toenail polish and clean up my toenails. They were not long enough to require cutting, just a little filing back. As I moved from toe to toe, I got to one toe where the nail was quite a bit longer than all the rest, like it had gotten skipped over during the last pedicure. I said to myself that this is my coke nail and that thought cracked me up like you wouldn’t believe. I did not mention this to anyone until now, mostly because the only person I know who would have found it to be as hilarious as I did is no longer physically here.

Michael and I have slightly different senses of humor.

Today is Michael’s first day back to work after a nice but weird summer break and I have to get back into the routine of things. One of those things is spending time on Sundays to prepare veggies for the meals we have planned during the week. I started doing this back in the early Spring and wanted to slap myself for not starting this habit earlier. I just didn’t realize how much easier this would make my life. Well, about a month ago, I received a newsletter from Wirecutter about this vegetable chopper. Normally I would say no to any kitchen gadget. No one needs a special tool for cutting avocados or pineapples. You just need a good set of knives, but this chopper went into my cart because sometimes I’m a sucker.

The chopper arrived and Michael immediately cut his finger on it while washing it. We had not even chopped a vegetable yet. It didn’t really come with instructions, just a small sheet of paper describing the different blades and a list of safety rules on the box. The best, most favorite safety advice on the box hands down goes to number two on the list: Get the kids away from it. That is the exact sentence. Since Michael has already demonstrated that he can’t be trusted with the new chopper, every time he goes to use it I yell “Get the kids away from it!” I don’t think he thinks this is as funny as I do. Really he should feel lucky that I let him use it. I had a mandolin for about five minutes once. I sliced open my thumb with it on the first try. Chris took it away and I never saw it again.

I used the chopper on Sunday to get our veggies ready for the week and I love it so much. Every time I chop onions, it looks like I’m bawling. Red, teary eyes. Snotty nose. The works. Even if all I ever do is use the chopper to chop onions, it was worth the money. It took me a minute to dice an onion and then it all fell into a closed container. The container is big enough for me to chop an onion and a bell pepper without needing to be emptied. Then I easily poured the contents of that container into a ziplock baggie and labelled it ‘Tacos’. There were no tears or sniffles in the process of chopping onions and my life is significantly improved. That chopper cut down the amount of time I used to spend chopping vegetables by half if not more. I got a bunch of things accomplished yesterday because I spent less time chopping.

Coke nail toenails and vegetable choppers, at first, don’t really sound like they belong in the same category, but both of these things are excellent examples of self care. I’m taking care of my toes. I’m eating lots of vegetables. I’m finding ways to make it easier to eat those veggies.

I’m making my life easier.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

My coworker/friend who is in charge of our fitness facility gave birth to her first child this week. We all received photos of proof of life. One photo was a family group shot showing that all was well and the second photo was a solo shot of the newborn. All you can see are the two hands of a nurse holding up a red, angry faced baby. The look on her face is not one of fear. She’s not crying because she’s hurt. Her face is a perfect representation of rage.

And that is my favorite picture of the week.

Michael sent me a video this week of Kriya Yogi talking about how the financial web of constraints we have built for ourselves will be the thing that keeps us from following Jesus when he comes back to this planet. I argued that money would not entirely be the thing that makes people reject Jesus, but that it will be their mistrust and fear that will keep them from following. I also argued that Jesus currently already walks among us in various forms. It just doesn’t create the sensational click-bait style of headlines that the Nazis and Trump create. We are a society riled and united by our hate and fear of things that go against our ideas of societal normatives and there are people who have learned to manipulate this trait to their advantage. This hate that is fueled by those fears is the thing that keeps us blind from the true teachings of Jesus and the possibility that he’s walking around us right now.

So what does this have to do with pictures of red, angry babies?

It takes a very special adult human to remember their own birth, but I want you to imagine it for it moment. You’ve just spent the better part of a year (normally…I spent less time than most) cocooned inside a warm safe space. Actually, for the most part, it’s pretty great in there. Plenty of food and napping. It’s probably one of the few times in our lives when we are truly well rested. Then we are forced to leave this safe wonderful space in a traumatic and painful way. Suddenly we find ourselves in this space where the light is too bright for our little eyes and it is cold and terrifying. Now some babies take it all in mildly with a little suspicion. They might cry a little bit but nothing too loud and expressive. They cry more out of fear of the unknown than anything. Then you have those babies that tremble with rage over this new environment. These babies…these are babies that get it. They know they have just been forced into a world filled with trash both literally and figuratively. I don’t know what kind of baby I was when I entered this world other than in hurry to be here, but I like to think I was also boiling with rage at what I found when I did enter this world.

I see each and every rage filled baby as a potential ally because my secret fuel for a constant practice in kindness and fighting against the hate and racist people of this country is rage. Every story I hear about white privileged males harming and or killing a person of color and or a person of the LBGTQ+ community, my rage sends money to that person in need. My rage makes me get to the polls. My rage is the thing that forces me to stop and pick up the bit of garbage I just crossed paths with on the sidewalk. I know it sounds crazy, but being so angry at the way things are makes me want to just be better, and I see each rage filled newborn as a being that has the potential to learn to use their rage for good. I want to say to them that its okay to be angry about the way things are, but what do you want to do about it? Use that rage to for the greater good. Also, there is quite a bit of joy is showing these little angry babies that while yes they have entered a garbage society, there are so many beautiful things to be found in the garbage.

I am grateful for new allies.

AUGUST IS MAKING MY ANXIOUS

Last week when I sat down to re-do our dry-erase calendar, I got a little jittery when I started about thinking about all the things I needed to put on the calendar. Then I realized that most of those things I needed to put on the calendar were really things that are happening in September. But then I realized that things that needed to go on the calendar for August were things that I needed to do to be ready for September and I crawled inside myself and turned off the light switch. I recently saw a posting from a Facebook friend who is also a therapist about the anxiety of starting a new school year and this is exactly how August feels.

What’s that fable about the ant and the grasshopper? Something about being lazy until the last minute and then starving to death during the winter because YOU DID NOT PREPARE?!?!?! It’s me. Hi. I’m the grasshopper. It’s me. Except it isn’t me. I’ve always been the ant in this story. Ask anyone who knew me in college or even my coworkers. If I am required to do a presentation at work, that presentation is prepared a month in advance. I am not a procrastinator, usually, but now I’m procrastinating all kinds of things. I’m procrastinating scheduling my yearly cholesterol check. I’m procrastinating scheduling that stupid colonoscopy. I did almost schedule an appointment with Michael’s dermatologist, but they aren’t taking new patients. So now I’m procrastinating on finding one who is taking new patients. All of the above requires talking to someone on the phone and I straight up toddler style stomp and whine do not want to do that.

My procrastination does not end with preventive health care, though. I’ve agreed to teach a four week beginning yoga series in September. I have to figure out how I’m going to cram my usual eight week course into four weeks without killing my students, but I haven’t really even thought about this until yesterday. I even sort of forgot about it. Then sometime around 3:00 AM yesterday, I woke up and said “Oh…wait. I’m teaching yoga next month on Tuesday evenings.” What have I been doing all summer? I for sure have not been taking advantage of the extra time allotted to me while the Cabbage and Michael are home doing all the chores. The chore fairies of summer are gone. The Cabbage is on vacation with their mom and Michael goes back to work next week. I think the biggest thing I accomplished over the summer was reacquainting myself with where middle C is on a key board.

On the last day of this month I will be hanging my photos in a downtown Starbucks. It’s happening. I checked. Which means I now have twenty three days to get my shit together. Today. TODAY. I ordered more prints. Prints that will need to be put on matting backs and into plastic sleeves. Prints that will not get here until the middle of this month. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!? The things I have left to do to be ready for September’s show is as follows:

• Figure out prices for selling

• Make name cards with price tags for all framed prints

• Figure out that whole Venmo QR code thing

• Sleeve up all non framed prints

• Throw up three or four more times and hyperventilate into a paper bag

Actually…that list isn’t so bad. Most of that list could be taken care of by the end of the week. The non-framed stuff doesn’t need to be really ready until October 6th. I think most of the anxiety is coming from inexperience. I have no idea what I’m doing or why I’m doing this. Imposter syndrome settled in hard when Chad told me that he’d only ever had one photo in an art showing before and here I am filling up a Starbucks. The not enough crowd has started jeering pretty loudly in my head even though everyone around me keeps telling me how great this going to be. Look, I want to believe the crowd who thinks this is great, but I am a fraud. I might as well be hanging coloring book pages on the wall.

Now to be fair, while writing all this, it stressed me out so bad that I called and made that cholesterol check appointment and I’ll get a referral for a dermatologist while I’m there. I also sent a spreadsheet of expenses for the show to Michael so he could help me decide on pricing. He is a math teacher. I’m taking advantage of this resource. I guess, what I’m learning is that I need to write about freaking out over not doing the things I need to do in order for me to actually do the things I need to do. I’m not the ant, but I’m not quite the grasshopper.

I’m more of a grub worm kind of a bug that just digs down deeper in the winter months.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

My offering for grief camp was to teach a couple of yoga classes related to grief and loss. My plan was to talk about poses that can be soothing during times of immense grief and sequencing of movement to help distract the brain from its constant chatter. While teaching the first class, I shared my story of how grief has defined the yoga practice I have today. That story begins with J and a complete derailment of my yoga practice. There was a large chunk of time when I couldn’t even look at my yoga mat, let alone stand on it and be present in a practice. I have told this story a number of times and I never get through it without choking down tears, not even after eighteen years.

A few months ago, I was feeling extra squishy and unhealthy. I could feel my fat cells marching like ants from my limbs and settling into my gut and I was frustrated. I was frustrated because I was doing the work, walking the steps, mindfully eating. I was doing all of these things even though I really just wanted to be napping. I just kept forcing myself to move. I fell for the advertisements for perimenopause supplements and a twenty eight day wall pilates app. I started stressing about food and water intake. Am I eating enough protein? What happens if I’m a calorie over whatever the app recommends? How can I find time to do all of this and get on my yoga mat? When can I just rest? Why do I weigh 176.8 lbs with all my clothes on and 173.0 lbs with no clothes on? Do my clothes really weigh 3.8 lbs? Why am I freaking out over being the same weight I have always been give or take a pound? How do people have time to do ALL the exercising we are being fed to believe we have to do?!? All of this has taken time away from yoga.

It was Chris who reminded me that J would feel terrible knowing that he was the reason I stopped doing something I loved. There are still times when I am on my yoga mat when memories of that day when J died will bubble up from its storage locker in my brain. Those are nudges to be more careful and methodical in my practice, maybe avoid a pose or two. I have built a practice for myself that adapts to my grief feelings. This practice has sustained me through multiple tragedies for sure, but it never ceases to give me confidence in my current body. Tuesday evening during my second aerial yoga class with Roze, I came into a strength challenging pose and when she cued us into the pose, I popped right into it without hesitation. Once there I was shocked and wide-eyed. How did my body do that?!?!

This body is much stronger than I give it credit for.

I sometimes think about what my body would look and feel like today if I had allowed that day eighteen years ago to end my yoga practice. Maybe I’d be into running or biking now. Though, I know myself and I can’t see that I’d ever be into running, but who knows. I used to be really into kickboxing and step aerobics. Alternate timelines and universes exist, but I can’t imagine it. Really, it is not that I can’t imagine it. I’d just rather not imagine it. My physical confidence is always sitting on shaky ground. The only place I’ve been able to feel truly confident and relaxed with this body is when I’m on my yoga mat. I know I have said this often here and I know I have many gratitude posts about my yoga.

This is not a gratitude post about yoga. Instead, it is a gratitude post about making time to do the things we love that nourish our bodies. I am also grateful for Chris’s reminder all those years ago. You do not honor the loved ones we have lost by living for them. We honor them by living our own lives the best we can and continuing to do the things that bring us joy.

WHAT IF THE PATRIARCHY DIDN'T EXIST

In 1963, three (male) anthropologists, unearthed the remains of a woman nearly 10,000 years old. They found that she had been buried with a projectile point that the men declared to be a '“scraping tool”. The male-centric consensus was that women were/are gathers while men are always the hunters. It took fifty five years and the discovery of a 9,000 year old woman buried with a hunting kit, for this narrative to change. Since then it has been concluded that hunting was/is a gender neutral activity.

This is a prime example of how men have been shaping the history of women and their roles in society for hundreds and thousands of years. I don’t even remember what started the conversation, but recently the Cabbage mentioned an old book of fiction written by some male author telling a woman’s story. I said that I “prefer to no longer read women’s stories written by male authors.” The Cabbage then replied “But what if they do it well?” My response was “Good for them, but men have been writing the story of women and thus defining the idea of what a woman should be for so long that I no longer have the energy to waste on yet another male perspective of a female story.”

This ended our conversation.

I was not completely enthralled with Barbieland. It sounds great. All woman government. A Supreme Court of only women. Women scientists. Women doctors. Women Nobel Prize winners. Every woman in Barbieland is extraordinary in some way. Extra. It is so extra that even Stereotypical Barbie questions her ‘enoughness’. This is where my thoughts get real complicated. In fact it sent me into a tailspin of research. Did you know that the original Barbie was inspired by a German doll that was based on a comic book character named Bilde Lilli, a voluptuous pin-up that was sold as a sexy trinket for World War II soldiers? Ruth Handler may have made some very slight changes, mostly in marketing and she probably did have good intentions in introducing a doll that she said was to be “aspirational”, but this “aspirational” doll’s narrative began as male driven story. Barbie was introduced as a fashion doll for dress-up play in 1961. It took several years for those dress-up clothes to resemble astronauts and doctors. Which left years of little girls aspiring to be pretty and the type of woman their daddies would like.

It is literally impossible to be a woman…

Gloria in Barbie, played by America Ferrera

This is the start of Gloria’s (played by America Ferrera) monolog on the expectations of women and all the contradictions in how we should conduct ourselves. Having to be a perfect Barbie in a perfect Barbie world is exhausting. How many times do we hear Margo Robbie’s character say “I’m just Stereotypical Barbie.”? Even this Barbie thinks she should be more. This group of male executives dreamed up a place where every woman is extraordinary. Barbieland is an expectation to be more not an aspiration for more. Expectations and aspirations do not have the same definitions. Barbieland is a product of the patriarchy. There has been criticism of Barbie’s easy forgiveness of Ken’s actions in this movie. I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that Barbie had maybe two days of Ken’s bullshit introduction of the patriarchy. Ladies, we’ve had years of this bullshit.

This may sound like I did not like the movie. That’s not true. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I’m a huge fan of Greta Gerwig, the writer/director and I believe she found a fun and entertaining way to tell a story about women. Go see it. The music and dance scenes are spectacular. Just be prepared to have some thoughts.

Did you know that women have thoughts?

I LOVE HER I HATE HER

From age four to probably eight or nine, I was strictly a Strawberry Shortcake girl. Thanks to Mom and Katrina, I owned every Strawberry Shortcake doll that was produced between 1980 and 1985. I had themed bedding and dishes. Even the canopy on my bed was made from material patterned with Strawberry Shortcake. It was a lot ridiculous, but sometimes I miss that canopy bed. I can remember loading up all the dolls into the giant, plastic, Strawberry case, grabbing a blanket and marching out to the pasture where I would spend hours making those dolls have all kinds of adventures.

I wasn’t much of a Barbie girl.

Look, I tried. I wanted to like Barbie. Really. I did. I had two or three Barbie dolls and two of those Barbie cases that held the dolls and all the clothing. I spent a lot of time organizing the ‘closet’ of my Barbie cases. Most of my readers just read that sentence and said to themselves “of course you did.” What? My Barbies had a lot of clothing thanks to a mom who sews and loves garage sales. There was plenty to organize. This is really all I did with my Barbies. They did not have adventures. They had closet clean out parties. While this post is not intended to go in this direction, I have to point out that this explains a whole lot about the person I have become.

Any way… Barbie… I wanted to love her. Even when I out grew her, I wanted to love her. For the longest time, I owned an Astronaut Barbie that I kept safe in the original box. I wanted to buy into this idea that women could be anything because, LOOK! Barbie’s an astronaut! Chris and I made almost weekly trips to Toys-R-Us to just browse. He’d roam off to the SciFy area and I would roam around the Barbie section debating the need for the Doctor Barbie or the Veterinarian Barbie. I felt that Doctor Barbie was pretty important because for years before they released this one, all the Mattel line had was a nurse Barbie. The first time I saw it, I wanted to fist pump the air and shout out “Yeah, that’s right! We can be doctors too! Boom!” Once I made it past the career path Barbies, I would be smack in the middle of all the stuff I hated about Barbie, the fashion plate unrealistic beauty standard Barbie.

These were the Barbies I had been given as a child to play with because those career path Barbies didn’t really exist yet. They were not doctors or lawyers. Their sole purpose was to be beautiful and have the tinniest waste imaginable with perfect tits. I did my best with them, spent time brushing their hair and changing their outfits, but it didn’t take long to get bored. They just did not represent anything realistic to me. I was not a fashion plate kind of girl and criticism about my weight told me I would never come close to attaining that kind of beauty. Over time I would eventually end up cutting the hair short on all of them. I painted on pubic hair and added a drop of red nail polish to their underwear. Some acquired extra piercings and a tattoo. They sold some shoes for books. My mother said that I ruined them, but I argued that I improved them. These Barbies said “We can do anything we want. Period. Fuck the patriarchy and the social construct horse they rode in on!”

I started writing this all before seeing the Barbie movie because I was already having thoughts on it that I didn’t want to lose. I was writing this during a week when I had one too many interactions with men who questioned my abilities because of my female parts. I had one man explain tape to me and that I could get tape at Home Depot. My friend Amanda said that she would not have been surprised if the man told me that I needed to have my husband go buy the tape for me. Then Sinead O’Connor’s death hit the news and I deflated. I remember the first time I saw her. It was in her video for Nothing Compares To You and I was struck by her beauty, both physically and musically. When you get a chance, listen to her rendition of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. An amazing artist and such a brave advocate, she was our Joan of Arc standing up for the abused and saying a firm “NO” to corporate music and the commercialization of her art.

I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace - Sinead O’Connor, Emperor’s New Clothes

I know now that when I altered my Barbies I was attempting to make them reflect a person I wanted to be. Cool. Tough. Brave. A warrior. I may have managed to be half of those things. We’re taking the Cabbage to see the Barbie Movie tonight and while I love and trust Greta Gerwig’s vision, I have a feeling I’m going to love/hate this Barbie as well. A Barbie who questions death and existence and who struggles with the idea of hurting Ken’s feelings even when he’s driving her crazy.

That kind of Barbie may be too relatable.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last Friday, Michael convinced me to go on a long bike ride out to eat tacos. Most of the ride was on a nice paved trail that wound through a wooded area. We passed a pond where I saw a beaver hut and a deer. We rode under overpasses filled with wonderful graffiti. I saw so many things I wanted to stop and photograph, but I didn’t because this was a bike a ride. If I’d been alone, I would have stopped a thousand times. Eventually we ran out of trail and had to take to the street, but the street wasn’t busy. The ride was easy and the tacos were delicious.

We hadn’t made it too far into our return trip, still on the street part of the journey. Michael was the leader; he has the gps and I didn’t really know this area. Every thing was fine until BAM! it wasn’t. Michael’s back tire exploded. It sounded like a gunshot. I had never witnessed such a thing. It was kind of spectacular. We stood on the side of the road debating about what to do next. Michael asked if I thought I could find my way home to get the truck and I was hesitant with my yes. I probably could have found my way home, but I wasn’t certain that would not happen without some wrong turns. We had stopped across from a small neighborhood and woman and her daughter came out to check on us. They had thought it was a gunshot and came out to make sure we were not hurt. Then the woman offered to drive me home and my first instinct was to say no because I don’t want to be bother. We were not close to home, but for once I set aside my internal ‘I don’t want to be a bother’ woman and took her up on the offer.

In our small talk during the drive, we discovered that both of us are from Oklahoma. She grew up in Miami and when I told her that I grew up in Collinsville, she said “Oh! I know people there!” Then we spent some time trying to figure out if we knew the same people. We shared life stories about cancer and catastrophes and at one point the woman said “I think I was destined to meet you.” When she pulled into my driveway, I offered her gas money and she flat out refused. I thanked her profusely as I hopped out of her car. Michael loaded the bicycles into his truck when I showed up to rescue him. As we started to drive off, we saw the woman again. I rolled down my window and waved so that she could see we were alright.

The inner tuber for Michael’s tire was replaced the next day and then exploded again while we were on a pre-dinner bike ride. This time we were right behind a shopping center that contained a sports bar and only three miles by street to our house (we’d travelled about seven via trails). Michael rode my bicycle home (like a bear on a bicycle) and left me at the sports bar. We dropped the bike off for repairs the next day and his whole back wheel has now been replaced. We went to lunch after dropping the bike off at a place that we’d never been to before. The food was not great and waiter was so weird and awkward. I met all of his strangeness with a smile and a nod and patience. Afterwards, Michael made a joke about about how kind I was to our weird waiter. I said “Kindness costs me nothing.”

I said this flippantly and when I really think about it, it is not entirely true. Kindness is a muscle that we must exercise. The more we use it, the easier it is to be kind until eventually you don’t even realize you’re making effort. The stranger who rescued us has trained so well that she didn’t ask “Can I give you a ride?” She said “I can give you a ride.” I want this level of kindness strength. I am not just grateful for the kindness of strangers, but for the reminder that kindness must be a daily practice.

THE VACATION

When someone at work would ask me where I was going for vacation, my answer never really sounded too enthusiastic. As the time got closer and closer to the trip, I found myself having to come to terms with why I was not as enthusiastic as I probably should be to be going to Seattle for a week. This would be my first real, non-work related vacation that I have gone on in well over a year. We would be staying with Amani for the first half of the trip, a person I love with as much heart as I have left in me. I love the Pacific Northwest. I should have been vibrating with excitement to be there. The Sunday before we were to leave, I sent a text to Amy because I knew she’d be the only one to understand this particular hesitation.

The last time I was in Seattle was with Chris and we were happy and life was great and we were still friends with the couple we were staying with in Seattle. What if I run into those people?

“Those people” refers to a couple we were friends with who turned out to not be good and honest friends. I am still furious with the two of them for how they treated Chris, who played a minor yet innocent part in their melodramatic marriage woes. Even though Seattle is a big place, I worried about the awkwardness of seeing these people. Amani lives in the same suburb as them and even though the chances are slim to none, I was still feeling anxious. I was also contending with memories of Chris and I gleefully exploring downtown Seattle together. We both considered this to be our first real vacation. Previous trips were either camping or bargain getaways to Vegas. We had starting thinking about traveling to the places where we might want to live one day and Seattle was at the top of that list. We spent hours talking about how we wanted to visit this place and now we were finally doing the thing. All of my memories of us are bright, technicolor images of us smiling at the camera, smiling at each other, smiling at everything. Ridiculous, painful, joy. Now I was going back to the city that started the quest for a new place to live, with a new family.

Synapses were about to be re-mapped.

There is an act in the play Almost Maine about a woman who has travelled to Maine to see the Aurora Borealis. She sets up her tent in an open field that belongs to a man named East. He comes out to ask her what she thinks she’s doing camping on private property. She’s surprised by him and his questions because she’d read somewhere that people in Maine let hikers camp on their property. She explains to East that she’s there to see the Northern Lights because it is believed that the lights are the spirits of the dead walking with torches to heaven. Her husband has just died. She’s there to see him off and say a final goodbye. During her exchange with East, they keep passing a paper bag back and forth and every time it leaves the woman’s hands, she gets distraught. The bag contains her broken heart. By the end of the scene, East dumps the bag and begins the process of fixing it.

This is the play that Michael has chosen for his students to perform in the Fall. When he chose it, he asked me to read lines with him, which swirled up a hornets nests of feelings of the countless hours reading lines with Chris. The day we left for Seattle, Amani sent us a text about the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis and I thought about that scene and what it would be like to see those lights. Though, after being up for almost twenty hours, neither of us were up for a midnight excursion to hunt down the Aurora. So our first day in Seattle was spent lounging and recovering at Amani’s. I sent Michael and the Cabbage out over the next two days to explore Seattle without me, while I stayed with Amani. She was hosting a grief camp, Grief Out Loud. While Michael and the Cabbage did a lot of the things that I did on my first visit, I sat with my grief and bonded.

One of the last activities Amani had us do was to write a letter to ourselves from a person we are grieving. It was the kind of activity that made me look at Amani and tell her “I hate this.” It was so easy for me to write pages and pages of a letter in my own voice about how disappointing I am without Chris. I could go on and on about how I’ve done everything wrong, how I am the absolute worst, a failure. Instead I sat there with my composition book (the kind that Chris seemed to always have an endless supply of) and tried to hear Chris’s voice. What would Chris have to say to me now? I thought about his generous personality and that there was a reason why everyone loved him. In my letter, I allowed Chris to speak kindly to me. He didn’t tell me I was doing everything right. I couldn’t be that kind to myself, but I did allow him to tell me that he understood the choices I have made. There was a condoning of my choices.

I am always with you.

Love, Chris

I ended that letter and put a lid on my grief. Michael, the Cabbage and I left Amani’s for a condo in downtown Seattle. We spent the next two days doing all the touristy things that Chris and I didn’t do, like travel up to the top of the Space Needle. We went to museums and on a boat tour of the harbor. Raw fish was consumed daily. We walked many many steps and talked about what it would be like to live there. This is a discussion I’ve had with Michael every time we’ve visited the Pacific Northwest, a discussion Chris and I had thousands of times.

Some things change but some things don’t.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The month of July is a subscription renewal month for me. My Yoga Alliance membership is due, along with teacher insurance. I have to renew my rights to my old domain name and also my current Square Space account. Every year, when I get those reminder emails about this or that automatically renewing and billing my card, I think about not renewing any of it. It is a moment of pondering about gain. What do I gain from all of these subscriptions?

Of course if I want to teach yoga, I have to stay up to date with all of the yoga stuff. There was a time I was maintaining all of that while not teaching because I felt that I would probably eventually go back to teaching. Which I did. I’m not teaching much, one class a week, subbing a class here and there, but it is enough. I feel content. I have been considering the idea of approaching a studio about doing a yoga enhancer workshop (incorporating yoga props into a practice), but this is something I don’t want to take on until after October. Keeping the domain and Square Space account feels a little splurgy. There is zero financial gain here. Maybe I’m helping someone. Maybe I’m teaching someone something new. I have no idea. But I do it. I blog because I love it. I teach yoga because I love teaching yoga. The answer to that question about gain that I ask myself every year is that I gain mental health and joy in inspiring others either in their own yoga practice or through my writing.

I am thankful to have both of these outlets.

That being said, it is nice to take a break every now and then. There is a lot of giving of myself when I teach yoga and when I share I my thoughts here. Sometimes it is good to step away and recharge that giving battery. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m stepping away for two weeks, hopefully filled with with fresh thoughts and pretty pictures.

IT IS NOT A STRAY

I had two very different stories rolling around in my brain when I sat down to write today. I’m choosing the less angsty one. Also, I’m too tired dig too deep into what patriotism means to me in this current environment. So here is the second story which sort of explains why I’m too tired to do any deep digging.

We knew something has been coming into the house at night or attempting to because most nights we close the kitchen pet door. We’ve just gotten used to the idea of letting the cat fend for himself at night, but there have been a few nights when we’ve forgotten to close the door. Josephine knows when it is not the cat. She just knows. I mean, she’s a barker. That’s what Schnauzers do, but she reserves her barks for outside. Something is seriously off if she barks in the house. Every time she’s gotten out of bed in the crazy morning hours to bark at the bedroom door, I’ve scooped her up and placed her the bed with a firm ‘wait’. Then I quietly open the door to go investigate and every time, the coast has been clear with the dog door in place. Then I open the bedroom door and Josephine tears out of the room, snarling, grunting and barking through the dining room and kitchen and out to the backyard.

I never see anything. It is all just an illusion or an idea of something, a presence and I kind of feel like I’m going crazy.

Chris, Amy and I decided for our last year in undergrad to move out of the dorms and get an apartment together. We searched relentless for an apartment and finally landed the top floor of a house that had been converted into apartments. It was a total dump and landlord was reluctant to rent to college students. I think the only reason we got the place was because Amy walked into the office with a check for a down deposit before the landlord could could change his mind. Good lord, the work we put into that place. All the cleaning and painting, but it was ours. We bought groceries and cooked meals. We hosted so many breakfast for dinner nights.

Then the mice came.

So many mice.

It started out small, a loaf of bread with teeth marks puncturing the bag. Then we found mouse droppings on a can of soup. Every time we found evidence, we’d clean out the pantry, set traps and then buy new groceries. But things escalated and we’d find the evidence of mice in more than just a loaf of bread or on a can of soup. We threw everything away, completely emptied the pantry and started eating out for all of our meals. Chris kind of snapped when reached this point. There was one evening when we had just emptied four mouse traps. Chris reset them and then we started putting our shoes to go out for pizza. I hadn’t even gotten my laces tied before we heard the snaps of all four traps going off. Chris built a maze out of cardboard and he’d sit in wait for mouse to come out and get trapped in the maze. Then he’d use a can of hairspray and a lighter to make a flame thrower. I don’t know what the result of this was. I did wake up one night to the sounds of him beating a mouse to death with a dustpan.

Shit got dark.

We did eventually manage to rid ourselves of the mice and our lives returned to normal. Breakfast for Dinner night came back, but I have trauma. I don’t just obsess about mice. If I wake up with a bug bite, I immediately start questioning. Is it bedbugs? Fleas? Both? Do I need to clean my house with fire? If I see one mouse, I am one hundred percent convinced that somewhere in the walls or attic of my house there is a whole cast of mice from Ratatouille living it up. So this thing with the our early morning visitor/s is just kindling for my panic fire. We’d finally settled on the idea that we had a stray cat sneaking in to eat the cat food and I was okay with that. Then, at 5:00 Tuesday morning when Josephine barked at the bedroom door and we went through our usual routine, during my initial scan of the dining room, I saw it. There he was, a small raccoon sitting on the bench, inches away from the cat food bowl. I looked towards the kitchen door and sure enough, the pet door had been left open. I looked at him and said “Okay…you have to leave now.” Then he looked at me in a way that said “Are you sure?” I nodded my head and said “Yeah. You need to go.” And he left.

At least I thought he left.

Instead, he and a friend scurried up the wall and tucked themselves into the corner near the garage door. So when I thought it was clear and I let Josephine out, she went straight to that garage corner and started barking her little head off. Getting them out of the garage was not easy. I had to wake up Michael, but did manage to spook one of them out by opening the garage door. The second one, the one who was all “you sure I have to go?”, that one had to be shot four times with the garden hose before agreeing to leave the garage. I guess I kind of feel some relief now that I know what has been coming into the house. They’ve been really nice and polite for raccoons. They haven’t gotten into the garbage or tried opening the fridge. They haven’t pooped in the house. Really, the only evidence they leave behind is an empty cat food bowl. The one I had a conversation with is actually really cute.

EXCEPT THEY ARE WILD ANIMALS!

We’re back to square one, spraying the yard with fox urine and setting the trap. We caught a possum in that trap last nigh/this morning. I have an unopened Costco sized container of fox pee crystals and my next plan of attack is to leave large piles of it around all of the doors. I’m waiting to do this until the night before we leave for vacation to maximize the repellent. If this doesn’t work, well…I guess we have new pets.

Maybe I’ll call them Flim and Flam.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I missed the Kansas City Pride Parade this year because it was happening while I was flying back from Massachusetts. I keep seeing Insta reels from friends who walked in the parade and I get a little sad that I missed it. We did manage to take the Cabbage to Pride Fest the next day, but I didn’t really say anything about it. In fact, I didn’t post anything about June Pride and instead I’ve been over silently collecting Pride stickers to put on the scooter and bicycle.

So can I call myself an advocate?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I have made an attempt to write something regarding trans rights and this garbage dumpster that is Missouri Government many different times this month. I watched a beautiful story on CBS Sunday Morning about a family with a child that started second grade identifying as female. In response to the ban on gender care in their state, the mom said “I guess we just have to live in fear for a little while.” And my heart broke for this family. Once again we have a group of individuals who know and understand nothing about the science and medicine around the topic of the thing they are creating laws for. I could dive in real deep into the science of gender dysphoria and how there are five (only FIVE) mRNA transcripts associated with gender, but I don’t think I need to do that for my audience. The bottom line is that it’s your body, your gender identity, your sexual orientation and that is nobody’s fucking business unless you choose otherwise. And none of these things require governing.

Now, me sitting here typing all of that out does not make me an advocate. Voting. Respectful use of pronouns. Plain old just being respectful. These are things that make me an advocate. While there is a part of me that is experiencing some left behind feelings for not being in the group walking in the parade, the better part of me knows that walking in parades doesn’t make me an advocate. Instead of filling up space in social media with stories of advocacy, I was quite and left space for my friends and loved ones in the LGBTQ+ community to tell their stories. The common themes in every story I have heard or seen are bravery, love, and hope. It takes real bravery to be open about who you are in a world filled with people who hate you. It takes real love to be your true self and infallible hope for a world without the constant fear of those people who hate you. In every story, I have seen faces filled with joy and love because events like PRIDE month with parades and festivals provides safe environments for this community to be their true selves. Their joy is contagious and bolstering.

So as we wrap up Pride Month, I’d like to say thank you to each of you for your bravery in sharing your stories and filling my world with color and light. These stories are the things that I think of every time I think about skipping out on an election day. Those happy, joyful faces are my reminders that I am not too lazy and tired to write and contact my senators and representatives.

Your bravery is a contagion the keeps me fighting against hate every day.

CLEAR VISION AHEAD WITH A REAR VISION MIRROR

Anyone who really knows me also knows about my obsession with Wes Anderson’s movies. I have his films ranked by favorites and importance. If the story does do it for me, there’s always the creative visuals. When the day comes to remodel my kitchen, I’m doing it in Wes Anderson style with dark teal cabinets and light pink walls. My reward for sitting through a panel discussion on baseball statistics, was to see the new Wes Anderson film, Astroid City, in the theater. I posted something about having thoughts on the movie afterwards, which may have sounded like I had negative thoughts or I had been disappointed. That wasn’t my intention. My thoughts on the movie are not negative. In fact I loved it and have placed it number three in my list of Wes Anderson films. I probably loved it so much because I felt a little too close to the character of Augie, the grieving father in the story line traveling with his children and carrying along his wife’s ashes in a Tupperware bowl.

I’m a photographer. My pictures always come out. - Augie Steenbeck

A number of people have asked me what this movie is about and every time I’ve been unable to say anything other than “it’s weird, but really really good.” I don’t know how to verbally describe a movie about death and loss and the sidecar of crazy life that just continues to travel around with you in spite of your emotional state. Of course, in true Wes Anderson fashion, the events happening around Augie are over the top crazy and surreal. Yet no matter how bizarre the thing, Augie’s reactions are always the same bland, expressionless reaction. This is the shock and numbness that comes with loss. Things happen all around you, small thing and big things, but all you can muster up is a shrug and a ‘huh.’

The movie is a play within a play and at one point, the actor portraying Augie in the play breaks character and walks off stage. He says he needs a break and steps out on to a fire escape. The woman who was supposed to play his dead wife in a dream sequence is standing on the fire escape of the building right across from him. The dream sequence ends up getting cut in the play and the two have a brief discussion of it. Then the actor playing Augie says “I’m not sure I get it. The play.” The woman goes on to explain that it’s okay if you don’t ‘get it’. You just do your best with the parts you do get. Everyone interprets the script in their own way, just as we each deal with grief in our way.

We don’t have to ‘get it’.

One of the advertisement signs on the gas station garage reads Clear Vision Ahead with a Rear Vision Mirror. There’s another one across from this one that reads Death Rides on Unsafe Tires. Those signs are probably silly and meaningless to most, just something to draw attention with out much thought. For me though, those signs are my then and now. The first sign is something I am constantly doing, remembering and reflecting on the road traveled. Looking back every now and then to see the road behind you, reminds you to pay attention to the road ahead. That second sign was left for me by Chris, a safety warning from a man who worried about me doing things that he thought I couldn’t handle on my own. It is a testament to my strength (and stubbornness) all of the things that I have found that I can handle on my own. But I will concede that life is easier when you don’t have to handle things alone. That’s something that Augie also realizes. He doesn’t have to do this alone.

We don’t have to do this alone.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The longest day of the year happened on Wednesday and we have official entered the time of year when all I want to eat is some kind of a salad. I’ve spent my free time this week collecting salad recipes into my NY Times Cooking app. Most of them are just variations of tomatoes and mozzarella tossed in a bowl with olive oil and salt. I plucked a red cherry tomato off of the plant in the garden this week and handed it to Michael. He promptly popped it into his mouth and exclaimed “Holy crap! That’s so much better than the flavorless cherry tomatoes I bought from the store!” The plant is loaded with tomatoes. The problem is they are ripening slowly, one at a time. I shouldn’t complain. Last year, I planted two tomato plants. They grew tall and leafy and green, but they did not produce a single piece of fruit. This year, I have a plethora of green tomatoes.

And I’m going to eat them. With mozzarella.

I’m normally not the type that pays much attention to solstices, but this year I couldn’t help but notice that the longest day of the year happened in the middle of the week, a short week for some. Short weeks are tricky because they always feel like extra long weeks. Maybe it’s because I try to cram in all the work I didn’t do on Monday into the rest of the week. Wednesday is that day of the week that is generally harder to get through on it’s own without making it the longest day of the year. It is a rough place in the week for that amount of daylight.

I have ridden my bicycle to work every day this week with the exception of today. Fridays are for scooters. By the time I made it home on Wednesday, I had decided that I was done with the bicycle for the week. I was tired. It was hot. My bicycle was still making a rattling sound like it was about to fall apart. Michael had already tighten up all of the things and determined that the sound was coming from the battery being a little loose in the housing. Nothing a piece of tape or velcro couldn’t fix. We just hadn’t gotten around to doing it and once I knew my bike wasn’t going to fall to pieces while I was riding, I didn’t care about the rattle. But Wednesday felt different. For some reason, probably because I was tired and hot, that rattle was the worst. Plus, I just wanted to be home. That night, without any prompting, Michael went out and fixed the rattle. It turned out to be more than a loose battery situation. A screw fell out of the battery house when Micheal took the battery out to check things over. The rattle was indeed, my bike falling apart.

I still wasn’t convinced that I would ride the bicycle on Thursday though. I sat slumped on the couch and told Michael that I wasn’t going to ride the bicycle for the rest of the week. He asked me why and I said “Because I’m tired.” He told me that was a valid reason, but even though I was moving a little slower than usual the next morning, it was the bicycle that I pulled out of the garage. I did for a micro second almost change my mind when I had to turn around a block later because I’d forgotten my helmet. I spent most of my ride peddling away while lost in my own thoughts. The morning weather was pleasant. I was exercising without really exercising and I wasn’t mad about any of it. I’d just finished mentally scanning the grocery list and reminding myself to add ‘coarse ground coffee’ to the list when I looked up to see that I was only a few blocks from work. I felt really proud of myself because I had made a goal at the beginning of the year to ride my bicycle at least three to four times a week to work. Michael even purchased the things my bike needed to install a basket and bought me the case that fits on the back of my bike so I have something to carry my lunch box. He did that so I could ride to work. This is week four of consistent bike riding meaning at least three days a week I have ridden my bike to work and this is the first week I’ve been on my bicycle four days in a row.

This makes me want to high-five myself with gratitude.

BASEBALL AND MATH

I generally do not give Michael Father’s Day gifts. I also do not push the Cabbage to do this. I might ask them what they plan to do for their Dad, but I do not drag them to the store to purchase a last minute “World’s Best Dad” mug. I respect that Michael is a father, but he’s not the father of any of my children. Father’s Day is not my responsibility. Those responsibility belong to the two people who decided to have the Cabbage. Though occasionally, I have ended up getting Michael a gift because I just saw something that I knew he would like and it just so happens to be near Father’s Day. Like one year, I got Michael a pastrami sandwich kit from Katz’s Deli. There was nothing in this kit that I could eat except the pickles. So it is not like he could really share, but I didn’t get it for him because I wanted the pastrami sandwich. I knew that Katz’s Deli was the best pastrami he’d ever tasted in his life and that being able to eat that sandwich again would bring him joy.

One of the few times I was in my car last month, I heard an advertisement about a lecture at the Linda Hall Library about the analytics of baseball. There would be a panel discussion of Big Data and statistics and how all of this changed the game of baseball. I think. I don’t really know. I signed us up for the free event. When the time came, we rode our bikes to Tiki Taco for dinner and then over to the library. I had never been inside Linda Hall Library. It’s a place I have wanted to visit for some time and I was not disappointed. It’s filled with old books and art deco light fixtures. It is the library you want to live inside. Michael and I got to the event early so I could wander around, but also do some people watching. It was kind of a predicable audience. Lots of older, white-haired gentlemen wearing ‘dress’ shorts and white socks pulled up their calves. One guy was wearing a trash panda t-shirt that Michael coveted. He looked it up and showed it to me. I told him he should order that for himself for Father’s Day because I never prompt the Cabbage to do anything. He made a noise of approval and I looked over just in time to see him write a gift note to himself. “To the best dad in the whole world.” We laughed and laughed about it.

Then we settled in for a talk about baseball and statistics and it was the most boring thing I’ve every had to sit through. And I’m a scientist! I had no idea what anyone was talking about or who anyone was talking about. This is what I heard: “Blah blah blah. Baseball. Pitcher. Blah blah War. Blah blah blah. That guy on third should have run to home. Blah blah blah.” All of this is fine. I am not a sportsball kind of person and I knew going in that I would not be the slightest bit interested in what was being said. I knew this because this was a Katz’s Deli pastrami sandwich kind of gift. While I was I hearing all the blah blah blah, I was paying attention to the joy that was happening on Michael’s face. When the moderator pointed out someone from the Royals in the audience, Michael whispered “I thought I recognized that guy!”. When the moderator introduced the first person for the panel discussion, some guy who built some baseball statics website, Michael shimmied in his seat and then turned to me to whisper “That’s a good website!” He laughed at the occasional baseball related joke and nodded his head in agreement to something a panelist said. He was in to it.

It was adorable.

When I told Michael and I had gotten tickets to this, he said “You’re going to be so bored.” I think he was thrown off by me getting tickets to something that would only interest him. I waived away his concerns about my interest level by saying that I was sure there would be some interesting aspects. I’m not going to lie, I found the panel discussion to be mind numbingly boring, but the people watching was great fun. The best part of all was seeing how much Michael enjoyed the program. That’s worth sitting through a panel discussion of “blah blah blah, baseball”.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

My cabin at Woods Hole was about a mile and a half from the MBL. They have a shuttle that runs between cabins and the main campus, but I was always off schedule in the morning. I either had just missed the shuttle at the stop or I was too impatient to wait for the shuttle. So instead of waiting, I’d walk a trail through the woods that lead to a paved bike path and then walk the bike path all the way into Woods Hole. The path conveniently ends right across the street from Pie in The Sky, a coffee shop and bakery with delicious popover breakfast sandwiches. It is an easy and pleasant walk and then there’s breakfast right there at the end.

The bike path is called the Shining Sea Bikeway and stretches from Woods Hole to the neighboring town of Falmouth. A long stretch of the path runs along the ocean, though from where I would start every morning, the view was more forest than ocean. The path sort of combines with a parking lot for overflow ferry parking as you get into town. An old church and cemetery sits on one side of the parking lot/path and every morning I saw the same deer grazing around the headstones. Once you pass the cemetery, there is a highly graffitied bridge to pass through. The graffiti art is not commissioned, but much of it is so well done that it should be commissioned. The last bit of graffiti appears as you exit the tunnel simply read: You will die. Make art.

I read this every morning as I walked into town.

I remember when my niece-in-law announced her intention to remarry. At the time, I said to Chris “It seems fast.” His response was “We’ve all learned, in a very horrible way, that life is short. Why wait?” And he was/is right, of course. After J’s death, Chris and I worked really hard at living our lives differently. There was less talk of things we wanted to do and more actual doing of the things. I have tried to maintain this approach to life even after Chris’s death. I met Michael one year and five months after Chris died. There are people out there who would gasp, clutch their pearls and remark on the suddenness of my relationship. There is a misconception that we must leave time to grieve as if grief is similar to a broken bone and heals within a given time frame. The reality is that grieving is endless. If I left time to grieve, I would still be spending my evenings alone on the couch with a bottle of wine and a sleeve of saltine crackers. Eleven years later. I have learned to leave space in my every day life for grief while continuing to live my life.

Lately my talk of things I want to do sounds more like a chore list than things that I actually want to do. That’s why I finally booked an appointment for that tattoo I have been wanting for the last eight years. I bought a really good backpack for my camera so I feel more comfortable carting it around and using it. I was determined to start riding my bicycle to work and I’ve ridden three time to work this week. Just recently I said to a friend “Life is short. Get a puppy.” I never once thought about turning this philosophy of life is short/ do the thing around onto my art. When’s the last time I told myself “Life is short. Write the book.” or when’s the last time I printed out a batch of pictures just for myself? I used to do this seasonally. A collage of photos of Josephine in various sleeping positions has been hanging over my bed for two years now.

You will die.

Make art.

So, thank you to this mysterious graffiti artist for this nudge to snap out of this creative funk I have wrapped around my shoulders. It’s summer and too hot for wraps.

QUIET

I haven’t experienced this much silence in … years(?). There’s the hum of mechanical things, nature sounds. No radios or TVs. No background chatter. The quiet took some getting used to, but not long to settle into. Once I started getting used to this new quietness, I realized just how much effort I had been putting into tuning things out. My ears began to open up and I found myself actively seeking noises. A rustling of the leaves could be anything from a bird, a chipmunk, possible a coyote. A snap of a branch revealed a deer, snacking its way through the cemetery I passed on a morning walk. Woods Hole is a bit of a thorny flower. I could easily find myself steps away from a stunning view of the bay or the ocean. The thorns come from the isolation. Without a car, you are a bit stranded. The closest grocery store is the town over, a forty five minute walk. There are no street lights and when the sun finally sets, the darkness is deep. Lights out is a serious LIGHTS OUT! I’m sure star gazing is amazing. The skies were overcast most of the time or filled with smoke from wild fires in Canada.

I took a day for myself and rode the ferry over to Oak Bluff on Martha’s Vineyard. The tourist season is just beginning in the cape. The island was busy, but not overwhelmed with swarms of people. I was able to walk right into the first bike rental shop and rented a bicycle for the day. I took the ocean bike path to Edgartown, stopping occasionally to take some pictures. There’s a bridge that’s featured in Jaws that you have to cross on your way to Edgartown. Much of the movie was filmed in this area. I had inadvertently put myself on a Jaws tour. I almost felt Chris’s hand on my brakes as I pulled over to photograph the bridge. I rode all the way to the far side of Edgartown, to a small lighthouse. The steps of the lighthouse was crowded with a group of small children eating sack lunches. I continued to walk past the lighthouse, out to the beach, picking up some shells along the way. A sailboat sporting an American flag for it’s sail drifted by and it was in this moment that I started to understand why this place felt so unsettling and uncomfortable.

In the days leading up to this excursion to Martha’s Vineyard, I had had a number of conversations regarding affordable housing and poverty. The Cape is a place of wealth. Beautiful houses with well manicured lawns sit in wait for residents who only spend maybe two months of the year there. Meanwhile, science researchers are struggling to find housing that is cheaper than three thousand dollars a month. America has a real misconception of poverty and who are or are not considered to be at poverty level. Poor does not conjure imagery of someone highly educated, but when you are barely making $50,000 a year in places where the median rent is over $3,000 a month, add on utilities, groceries, insurance and a hefty student loan payment, you are poor. Too many Americans are just one emergency medical bill away from homelessness. I found that being surrounded with so much wealth, and wastefulness honestly, to be off putting. And I wanted to like this place. I wanted to be able to ignore all of that but it is nearly impossible when my lunch of a cup of soup and side salad cost me $30, a loaf of bread was over five dollars.

I learned a lot about getting a lab space ready for visiting scientists, like how sea water tables work and things I should plan on for the next year. I learned to tune into the sounds around me and settle into the silence. I could have spent hours combing the beach for shells or just sitting in the sand and watching the sun drop down during sunset. There were moments of peace and pure joy, but I also learned that all of that comes with price tag that many of us cannot afford.

THIS AND THAT

Over the weekend, I had a consultation with an artist regarding my next tattoo. It has been scheduled for August and I am very excited to see what he comes up with based off all the stuff we talked about. It will be a camera and it will include Chris’s initials somewhere on the camera. That is all I can tell you. He asked me why I was choosing this particular design and I told him that I have my first photography showing coming up in September, something that every time I think about makes me want to vomit. As an artist who puts his art onto peoples bodies every day, he completely understood the vomit reaction. He’s used to working on a much shorter time frame. So I surprised him with all my planning and pushing the tattoo date to August. I’ve been sitting on this idea for over eight years. Two and half months is nothing.

But, all of this got me thinking about what I need to do to get ready for the show and I started breathing high up in my chest. I told Michael that I am not ready and he said we have time to get you ready. Then I gave him a specific task: find me space to flatten out the prints I ordered so they can be framed. He decided that his work bench in the basement would be a great space for this and immediately got to work cleaning it off. He also told me that giving him this task was very helpful because he cannot read my mind. Also, I never ask help. So he will complete this task and then sit around until I give him the next task. This turned out to be a good communication moment for us, which brings me to my next thing. It is June and since I will be out of town all week, we decided to do thing we do every year in June since we met. Every June, we make a conscious effort to have dinner at Bella Napoli’s, the scene of our first encounter. After work this evening, I will pedal my bike to Bella’s and meet Michael and the Cabbage there for half price pizza.

We are romantics.

Ten years is weird.

I have had two people in as many weeks ask me if Michael and I have gotten married. The answer is no. We have not gotten married and will not be doing so in forceable future. At least not until Michael manages to whittle my ‘hard nos’ down to a ‘fine, whatever’. He’s too busy with his education and school things to do much whittling. We can verbally renew a five year contract, though that may not happen until December. The contract renewal requires a Tiffany’s. Usually, any ole’ Tiffany’s store would do, but I really really want to go to the newly remodeled Tiffany’s in New York. The contract can sit it out in limbo for the next few month. This works very well for us and this relationship, but ten years does feel…strange. Yet, here we are still tolerating each other. Saturday, we took our growing collection of cardboard boxes and opened them up. We laid them out flat in an 18 x 10 rectangle and pinned them to the ground. The idea is that it will kill the grass and make it easier to dig out a spot for us to pour or own concrete pad. Some day we’ll put a shed on that pad. In the meantime, I keep referring to the cardboard space as my patio or (break) dance floor.

While a cardboard patio (of break dancing floor) is temporary, it is the beginning of something more permanent. I think this sums up our relationship nicely.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

For the last few weeks, my Instagram and Facebook feeds have been filled with pictures of graduations. I have scrolled through pictures of old high school friends celebrating their child’s graduation from high school, some even from college. There is a woman in the blogging community who I have followed since her oldest was a baby and she just this week posted pictures of that baby graduating high school. My heart swelled up for the young man and if I could do so without making it weird, I’d reach out and tell that woman she’s doing an amazing job at parenting.

The Saturday after Quinn’s graduation, Traci and I were floating in the pool conversing on how hard it is to encourage young people to do anything right now. This was not a complaint about young people today or rant of “in my time…” We both agreed that it is so hard to encourage young people because of the dumpster fire of a world we’re sending them into. We’re telling them to go to college so they can get a good job when so many of those jobs require so much more than a college degree. We’re sending them out there with our visions of the American dream of having a good job with health benefits and home ownership when the average cost of a home is unaffordable. Between the effects that climate change is having on food sources and human displacement, plagues, hate crimes and book bans, this world looks a little bit more like the dystopian fantasy worlds of Octavia Butler every day. It’s real difficult to tell a kid to be true to themselves when governments are making it illegal for them to do that.

People really struggle with the concept of inclusion and keep confusing it with indoctrination.

I recently finished watching A Small Light, which tells the story of Miep Gies and the role she played in helping to hide the Frank’s from the Nazis during the occupation of Amsterdam. Miep and her husband Jan played vital roles in not only hiding the Franks, but in smuggling Jewish children out of the city and into safe foster homes. We all know what happens to the Franks in this story. Otto Frank was the only survivor. One of the things that truly spoke to me in this story was how Miep continuously under played her role in saving the people she saved. In her mind, all she did was a keep a secret, but the reality is she kept a secret and managed to procure food for eight people with rations all while avoiding the gestapo. Years later, when she would speak to groups of her experience and the Franks, she would end her talk with this:

But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room. -Miep Gies

In spite of how sad and depressing it was to watch this series, it gave me hope. The rise in hate crimes and government bans on anyone not cis-white is evidence that history tends to repeat itself. If and when the time comes, I am prepared to hide and keep people safe, but in the meantime, I am grateful for the sea of new graduates that I see in my social media feeds. Because in each one of them, I see their potential. I can see them thriving and succeeding. I can see them doing more than turning on a small light. I can see them turning on so many lights, making a room so bright we all have to squint at the magnificence of it. Now, this is not to say that we should just dump all the work onto theses young people. Far from it. What I am saying is that it is nice to have a new wave of help in flipping on some light switches.