Mean Girl With Crazy Overbite

Finn, who is not Tessa.

I admit it.  I hate Tessa.

I hate her stupid haircut.  Her dumb dirty-blonde hair.  Her tinny, awful voice.

In fact, I hate her so much that, in all these years of living near her,  I've never even bothered to find out what her stupid name is, until this morning, when I was forced to learn it.

"TESSA!  STOP it!  Or I'll bring out the water.  I mean it!  Okay.  I'm getting the water. . . "

Again--the damned water that never appears.  And, again,  I am left calming myself, cursing that stupid purse dog and her tiresome "owner, " as though any human has any chance at all of owning Tessa.

It's like a scene from "Groundhog's Day."

Every morning, tucked into the corner of her Tom Sawyer picket fence, Tessa lays in wait, giddy with dreams of gaslighting Finn and me.  It's as if she can sense that, by the time we reach her yard, I'm finally peaceful, having just forgotten who our president is. 

If Tessa were an 8th grader, I'd call her a mean girl.  She's Scott Farkus, with an ugly overbite.  And her owner is that desperate stoolie by her side, always threatening to act, but never quite following through.

To be fair, Tessa didn't get this way on her own.  She's the product of years of reactionary, waterless threats, not a backbone within miles of her.  And therein lies the rub for me.

Tessa, it turns out, is the perfect product of her upbringing.  Which makes my thoughts turn to baseball . . . .

Baseball might be America's favorite pastime but it makes a lousy repository of parenting tips.  If we've laid the foundation at all, three strikes are two strikes too many.   Empty threats eventually are exposed for what they really are--veiled permission to repeat the infraction.  And even a dumb dog is smart enough to take advantage of that kind of loophole.

As a dog lover, I'm ashamed of how much I hate Tessa.  But maybe my gripe isn't with her after all.  Maybe it's with the robed woman underneath the porch light, who always shows up 30 seconds too late, uttering nonsensical sounds falling on deaf doggy ears.

Maybe she's the one who needs a time out.

Dissing My Mission

Why is it that so many people are so quick to ask why anyone would want to work in a school?  And--equally baffling--they often say it like it's some weird,  backwards way of supporting us and what we do.

Do you think that, had I become a lawyer or an accountant or a dental receptionist, I would have donned belly-dancing garb with my work pals to shake my booty on some steamy summer evening?  Yeah, no. 

I'm pretty sure that at least half of the dumb, joyful stuff I've done in the past 30 years is because of my school pals.

Maybe--just maybe--those of us who have chosen education as our career path aren't as lost or as desperate or as misguided as everyone else thinks.  Most of us really like the young 'uns.  The chaos.  All that potential, wrapped up in hope, just out of reach.

And, as fun as my colleagues are (and--oh, my--are they a fun bunch), it really is the kids who draw me back to the building each Monday.  Even the annoying ones.  Maybe them especially.

Let me be clear.

Tests be damned.

We adults who show up at school every morning--in the office, in the classroom, in the halls, in the cafeteria--we know what really matters--the relationships we forge with those young folks.  The chance we have, each day, to really see them.  To count them among the counted.  To love them, even when they wonder how anyone could possibly love the messes that they are. 

. . . granted, sometimes it helps when we ourselves are messes.

So, to all of you who can't imagine what it is that would draw anyone into the schools for a living. . . I do believe you are trying to be supportive.  But your support would be more welcomed in a vote for what we do, in a nod to the value of young people, in a donated sackful of clothes you no longer need that might help a young person feel good at school this year.  Minus the beaded bra and thumb cymbals, perhaps.

Ode to Joys

Even though I was nearly 500 miles away when this little beaut grew its wings, I felt deep joy at its introduction to this wild, weird world.  Of course, the mother in me would like to point out that the reason I was able to experience this joy was because my kids--decent beyond decency, good beyond good--filmed its wet-winged release so that I could experience it.

I cannot imagine a world without joy.  Especially right now.

What if it turned out that the best thing we could do in the face of so much ugliness and hatred was to simply enjoy something when the opportunity presented itself? To refuse to let that  moment of joy be taken from us?

It strikes me as wonderfully radical, this notion that joy, like breakfast, should never be skipped, lest the world come unraveling before our very eyes.

Last week,  I read an article about U.N. Ambassador Nicky Haley telling a group of conservative teen leaders that "owning the libs" (a term new to me, although it also hit close to home) was nothing a true leader would pursue. After reading it,  I realized that maybe I'd been played all these months.  And, yet, I also saw a sliver of hope in her message to these young leaders.

So I devised a plan in response to all that owning.

But it turns out that my new approach to this crazy life is actually my old approach to it--to never turn down an opportunity to embrace joy, to stand gape jawed in the presence of a newborn monarch butterfly, its wings still wet, its mind wondering where all the good milkweed is.

Joy, I believe, just might hold the key to something better.

In fact, I know it does.  . . . a better me, to begin with.

Now, Juxt a Minute!

I love this photo my neighbor Gary took--the beer in the foreground, the nuns and Calvin and Allie and soon-to-be Theo in the background.  I love it because of its juxtaposition--things that a person might not normally fit within a single frame.  And yet, here they are, tucked in together.  No wide-angle lens necessary.

As an ex-Catholic living on a very papal street, the fencewalker in me feels fine enjoying my nun neighbors and my now-UCC religious roots.  Certain that I can happily have both, just because.

I can't decide if my love of odd bedfellows and my tendency towards fencewalking are reasons or excuses for me.  Do they inspire my actions or explain away my inaction?  Chances are, the answer falls somewhere in between.

And yet, I have a handful of beliefs that are anchored in certitude.  For instance, I fervently believe that the only way we will get through these dark times is if we walk out together--nuns and ex-Catholics, believers and deniers, Democrats and Republicans, white and black and everything in between.  Odd bedfellows make powerful communities.

That said, you'll understand if the thought makes my stomach a little queasy . . . .

I mean, I wasn't the greatest Catholic and am hardly anything to brag about at work or at home or sitting in the back pew with a handful of other religious orphans, quietly composing my grocery list.

But I'd like to think that I'm willing to show up and give things a whirl.

Considering all of this, then, I'd say that odd bedfellows generally inspire me to act, even in the midst of my discomfort.  And that is a good thing.

As for my well-developed fence-walking tendencies?  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I lean into these when I don't want to lean into anything else too terribly far.  Or when I want to kind of fake it.

When I was what my friend Matt and I referred to as a "bastard lovechild " in the English Department (what else to call someone who only taught journalism and pop culture?!), I'd use my fence-walking skills to try to fit in.   Hungry to be mistaken as an intellectual (a highly-prized label in a literature-soaked environment), I'd feign excitement about polysyllabic words, philosophically-driven mission statements and heady discussions about the "why" of things, despite being a who-what-when-where kind of person.   Soon enough, though, the jig would be up, when a true scholar would ask me to look over her rough draft and I'd find myself drowning in commas and compound sentences, not knowing how or where to even begin.

Alas, it turns out you can't teach an old Strunk-and-Whiter Faulknerian tricks.

Still,  I  appreciate the different ways all of my English bedfellows teach and speak, despite my continual return to the comfort of a 20-word paragraph.

How can I explain this love of diversity living next door to a tendency towards the non-committal?  Look in the mirror and tell me yourself.

We are all much messier than the shiny slivers of selves that we portray on social media.  We are hypocrites and hypochondriacs, yet also capable of being deeply moved in the presence of beauty.  Maybe--just maybe--our truest selves are found at the antipode of purity--living at that furthest point from the clearest thing, muddied and relieved, and certainly not so easy to understand.  Juxtaposed from within.

You know.  Beautiful, in a sloppy sort of way.

The Real Birther Movement

I'm no bra burner.  But I also don't do the laundry.  Mark does.  And that's only because I once almost started a fire after putting our children's wet,  down-filled winter coats in the dryer, so this division of labor is as it should be.

It's important to know what's in your wheelhouse and what isn't.  So, what's in my wheelhouse these days?  Really, the question should be who is in my wheelhouse.

Women, that's who.

And it turns out there are lots and lots of women in the United States right now.  Just four years ago, in fact, there were 5 million more women than men living in the U.S.  On college campuses,  56 percent of students are women, as are nearly 58 percent of college grads. And, if you happen to live to 85?  Women outnumber men nearly 2 to 1 in that demographic.

My point?

Sweet God, men!  Start behaving.  Like, two years ago!!  And, frankly,  why are you still running the show in Washington?

True, we may make less money than you, but we will always make more children and milk than you.  And there's a reason that women, not men, give birth.  Survival of the species comes to mind.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm nuts about men.  Some of my favorite people are men.

But it'd be stupid to put them in charge solely because of body parts.

So I just would like to remind you men out there (and let's be honest--white men, mostly.  Plus, Ben Carson) that there are more of us than you.  And we are strong and capable and have endurance like nobody's business.  But, really?

Kids in cages?

Girls for sale?

Eighty one cents to each dollar of yours?

I may be cute, but I'm not stupid.

Roots Run Deep

This morning, I woke with a hankering to return to my childhood home on Sumner Street, to see if my beloved Pussy Willow was still holding its ground on the southwest corner of our house.  It was an amazing tree, producing immense pussy willows (called 'catkins,' I learned this morning--how great is that?!) that I was certain were Guinness-worthy.

Earlier this week, Mark and I drove down the narrow alley next to our C Street house, gape-jawed by the sight of the Bradford Pear we'd planted, whose crown now competes with the peak of the roof.

For me, it's trees, as much as the structures themselves, that beckon me back to the places where I once lived. 

Trees are like lifelong friends for me, shining a warm light on old memories while also acknowledging the unmistakable march of time, skin cracked and stretched, limbs bent and aching.

They are the both/and for me--longing and hope all in one.

The photo above is of a beauty that lives in my neighbor Lisa's yard.  Or maybe I should say Lisa's house shares this majestic Oak's ground.  Immense and stalwart, it is impossible to ignore.  And nearly impossible to photograph, at least with a phone.  How can I give you a sense of it when I can't possibly fit it into the frame?

. . . maybe that's how.  Let it spill out of all four corners, too much for the camera.

I'm reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren--a lovely ode to science and nature, with trees taking center stage.  Yesterday, I had to put the book down after reading about a lotus seed that scientists nudged into sprouting--two thousand years after it'd dropped from its mama.

"This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell.  And then, one day, this tiny plant's yearning finally burst forth."  Jahren goes on to describe all seeds as being "alive and fervently wishing to be."

She might as well have been describing all living things, myself included.

It's true that I anthropomorphize just about everything, from trees to bugs to mammals, imbuing within them a swirl of hopes and emotions.  I don't think I do it because I'm so nuts about humanity and want to give nonhumans something to aim for.  Rather, I think I do it because it is the lens through which I see this world.  That said, I believe I am kinder to this world when I imagine its beating heart, when I see all things "alive and fervently wishing to be."   

Naming Names

I’m not sure I’ve ever bought into the whole “made in the image of God” thing.  For one, it seems a bit insulting to the divine, given our propensity towards appalling behavior. Besides that, it’s incredibly self-centered of humans to assume that we are god-like.   Give us a God complex and suddenly we start bellowing “Dominion this!  Dominion that!” like we own the place.   It’s all a little too much Old-Testament testosterone for my tastes

But I do like the idea of naming things.  And there’s no question that naming things is a godly activity.  

Names are often the first intelligible words we utter, which suggests that we are born with a need to name.  Mama.  Dada.  Rasta (yeah, Eric’s first word was the dog’s name.  Either that, or he was declaring his religious preferences).  Name something and then, in some mystical way, that thing somehow comes into being.  Which begs the question, without the word for something, does that thing actually exist?

Philologists--folks who study words and meaning--have found some compelling evidence that names and existence are closely tied.

The Egyptians were the first culture to name the color blue.  Prior to that, there is no mention in historical texts of that color.  And, even today, in the Himba tribe in Namibia, where there is no name for ‘blue,’ its members are unable to distinguish a blue square from a collection of green ones.  Hence, there is no blue there.  But the Himba also have far more words for ‘green’ than we have, which means they can discern types of green that we can't even see.  I like knowing that there are colors of green out there that I do not even recognize because I have no name for them.

Most of us have heard about Eskimos and how they have 50 distinct words for ‘snow.’  One could argue, I suppose, that when you are trapped inside while yet another raging blizzard roars on, what else is there to do but to come up with new words for the same old, same old?  A more accurate explanation, though, is that Eskimos have a keener eye, when it comes to snow.

Perhaps the key to our godly evolutions, then, is the acquisition of additional names for something that only has one name to us.  Beetles, for instance.  And then,  we dig in, sit back, listen and observe.  Intently.  Until one day when that one name explodes into 350,000 names.  

Tiger beetle.  Stag beetle.  Rhinoceros beetle.  Ladybird, firefly, predacious, soldier.  Blister, click and weevil.  

Oh, my.  

Naming names may not make me a god, but it does leave me breathless and amazed, suddenly aware of all the stardust and magic swirling around me.  And, in the naming,  I realize that I cannot unsee this wild space, where even 350,000 names are not enough for this thing I’d once simply called “beetle.”