Once Upon a One-House-For-All

Once upon a time, there was a big, bricky house filled with all kinds of characters.  Over 2,200 of them, in fact.  Tall ones.  Short ones.  Some loud, others quiet.  They were good to look at from a distance, a lovely mix of blacks and browns, white sand and sunshine.

The variety did not stop there. Rich, poor.  Christian, Jew.  Trans and straight. Even Democrat and Republican could be seen, bumped up together in orderly rows.  Some were whip smart while others took their time figuring things out.  Which was just fine, thankyouverymuch.

On any given day, this motley crew was funny and sad and complicated--often, all at once.  They worked hard and often failed, but, sometimes everything lined up just right, which felt pretty great.  And--my God!--in those bright moments, they were something to see!

For the most part, they got along.

Sure, there were the crude cat calls, the microbursts of violence exploding in a flurry of fists.  And, on just about any day, you'd find one or two of them huddled in a bathroom stall, tears rolling down a cheek.  But always--always--there'd be someone else reaching out, building a bridge, waiting behind as the laggard caught up.  Just to be sure.

In this once-upon-an-every-single-school-day place, people knew that they may not always agree with each other, but they also were certain that they would find a way to work together, when needed.  Sure, it was messy and even a little scary to reach out to the "other," but that seldom stopped them from standing up when it was the right thing to do and extending a hand when one was needed.

And, because this is a fable, I dare say that even the adults found a way to get past their differences.  Woven into the rich fabric of this house's lore are fanciful tales of MAGA fans, Bernie supporters, NRA members and Sierra Club volunteers drinking beer together! Perhaps it was the hops that bound them.  More likely, though, it was their commitment to the young ones that helped them look beyond yard signs and tweets.

Whilst I know that it needs no saying, I shall say it anyway:  This was no place for a Cyclopian politician, who drew lines not in the sand but, rather, with a knobby stick dragged furiously through wet cement.  Although even he would occasionally be invited in, to blow hot air into the auditorium, his fetid breath clinging to the backs of bored teens, whose heads slumped into their laps, where tiny devices blinked and glowed furiously back at them.  Even he might find himself changed staring into a crowd of all those others.

No, this was no place for partisan tomfoolery, though parts and wholes were discussed daily in science and math classes.  Here, within the  rough-hewn walls that rebuffed the relentless, endlessly changing winds,  folks got down to the real business of life--learning how to live it, shoulder to shoulder, arms linked and eyes wide open.

A River Runs Through It

Isn't this photo amazing?  I saw some version of it on Facebook recently and couldn't get it out of my mind.  Captioned as the place where the Atlantic and Pacific meet, I brought the concept to the lunch table, where all things frivolous and fantastic are discussed.  There, its legitimacy was confirmed, and so I believed it.

. . . until this morning, when I did a bit more research on Snopes.

While the photo is legitimate, Snopes identified the accompanying text as misleading.  Turns out, this image is of sediment-heavy glacial-river water being carried by ocean currents near the Gulf of Alaska.  One of the first photographers of this phenomenon, ocean sciences professor Ken Bruland, also debunked the idea that this delineation is impermeable.

"They do eventually mix, but you come across these really strong gradients at these specific moments in time."

When I read his quote, I had to remind myself that he was talking about water, not our country.  And yet, his explanation easily could be applied to the United States at this specific moment in time, don't you think?

Consider my original source of confirmation--the lunch-table crowd, which is made up of a smart bunch of folks.  When they told me it was true, I assumed that it was.

But it wasn't.  Not exactly.   It's a good reminder that I need to leave my tribe sometimes and venture out for additional sources. 


His quote packed another punch for me, as well.  A hopeful one.

"They do eventually mix, . . . "

In a time when politicians and news agencies seem only to focus on the bookends--the weirdos on both sides--it's good to be reminded that, in many ways, we are still mixing it up with each other in that messy middle, where most of us reside.

Bruland also offered hope when explaining the line between things.  "Such borders are never static, as they move around and disappear altogether, depending on the level of the sediment and the whims of the water."

Regardless of what we are told each day, we are less either/or than we are both/and.  Maybe it's time to clear the sediment and resist the whims a bit.

Buckle Up, Boys

Move over, Katniss Everdeen!  There's a pudgy, "middle"-aged white woman from the heartland who's had enough, and she's not gonna to take it anymore.

Granted, I can't shoot a bow without some bruising, and I prefer protests that wrap up by late afternoon,  so that I can get back home in time to make dinner.

But, still.

Still, I've given birth--twice!  And had cancer, to boot.  Plus, there's a limited-edition badass beer with my face on the label.

Oh, and I also have developed a super power in the past few years--invisibility. Which means you don't even see me anymore.  And, while that can kind of suck at times, there are advantages to your limited vision of me.

So, yeah.   Ignore me at your peril.

Actually, ignore us at your peril, you puffy, privileged white boys in Washington.   You have seen nothing like the patience of a pissed off woman.

And, by the way,  there are five million more of us than there are of you.   Not to mention all of the good guys out there who stand with us, because they know a good thing when they see one.

Some folks have wondered why I'm retiring when I still love my job.  In part, it's so that I can join the fight without fear of consequences.  And I'm thinking there will be consequences . . . .

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." --Isaac Newton

Play Misty for Me

I walked in a Gaussian blur this morning, glasses tucked inside my pocket.  It's an interesting exercise, to view the world through imperfect vision. . . . although it could be argued that there is no other way to see things than imperfectly.

I found this softened view at once disorienting and quieting.  Neighbor and dog, now smeared along the edges, became "probably Jan and Kira" rather than the certainties they usually are.  And the mist, which, yesterday, got in the way of things as it built up on my lenses, had a completely different effect today.  No longer a deterrent,  it became something I could just enjoy, as it found and held me, its cool fingers whispering "hello."

Halfway through my walk, my eyes adjusting to their new view, I found myself looking for the larger lesson, one I could apply to all the stifling ugliness outside of me.   No clouds parted.  No booming voice rattled me from my thoughts.  But I did see something--namely a large, dark mass huddled under a pine up ahead.  My mind went where my eyes couldn't yet take me, from a curious fox to a slumbering man.  It wasn't until I was nearly upon it that I realized it was a flattened cardboard box.

The lesson?  I need to shed my preconceptions and get close enough to see what something--or someone--really is.

There is something to be said for tossing aside a pair of glasses that guarantees only one kind of seeing.

This is the Place Where the Earth Was Breathing

Saturday.  5:17 a.m.

Mark is downstairs, eating a bowl of Cheerios before going to work.  I know this because this is what he does every work-day morning at this time.

It's not him I'm hearing, though.  No, I am roused by something else.  Something lower.  A rhythmic, older sound just outside my window.

I shuffle the sheets and turn towards the window, straining to hear it.   Too airy for a screech owl.  Too quiet for sirens.  It continues, even after Mark pulls the car out of the drive.

Eventually, I get out of bed and crouch near the opened window, waiting intently.  And that's when it strikes me.

Breath.  What I'm hearing is breathing.

The realization confounds me, so I grab a pair of shorts and head outside to look into things.  Finn joins me, his ears standing at alert, which offers me little comfort.

Bare feet on cool patio, I turn my eyes upward, taking in the last quiet moments of a night sky, tracing my fingers along Casseopeia's letter-like edges.  I know this is nothing more than a delay tactic, but I stand there just the same.

I feel unsettled by the task.

As I walk down the drive,  two competing thoughts name the source of the sound and I wonder what I'll find when I reach the space between two houses--a slumbering man or . . . nothing at all.  It is this second prediction that makes me think I'm not fully awake just yet.

I mean, how on earth could the earth actually be breathing?! 

Sure enough, there is no man laying crumpled upon the dewy, uncut grass.  Just the grass and the shrubs and the fence line, wrapped up in cricket song and earthy exhalations.  I stand in wonder, half expecting to see the ground lurch upward.

Eventually, I head inside, for raspberry preserves on English muffin, before going to the park, where a bushful of monarchs flits from flower to flower, as though it were just another day ending in 'y.'

Four Little Birds . . . .

I'm nuts about birds.  Always have been.  And what's not to love about them? 

I mean, they live outdoors.  They sing.  They fly.  And they don't need to buy outfits from Younkers, which just closed, because they are naturally beautiful. 

But, like everything that we love, there comes a time when they break our hearts just a wee.

This is a photo of a Baltimore Oriole (one of my favorite birds) that I saw last spring.  I was on a walk with school friends and the Oriole was in a mid-flight fight with a pesky Grackle.  Seconds later, the two feuding birds swooped low, in front of a car, and the Oriole hit the bumper.  I rushed into the street and nudged the Oriole towards the curb, where it died a few seconds later.  I took a photo of it--lovely and quiet and internally broken--as a kind of witness, I suppose.

We continued our walk and I pretended to be okay, although my mind and heart remained with that lovely, lovely bird, now growing cold on the street behind us.  I hated to think of it deteriorating, alone, on the asphalt, imagining a nestful of babies waiting for their mama.

. . . I'm a lousy faker.

Last weekend, Mark--who encounters creatures of epic proportion out there, where airplanes take off and land--brought home a hummingbird that had died in a hangar. 

My goodness, but she was beautiful.  That luminous coat.  Her tiny feet tucked under her soft, white belly.  And that thread-like tongue, protruding from her beak . . . .

I've been witness to two other lovely, post-mortem birds--an olive-green Ovenbird resting quietly by our sandbox on C Street and a perfect Cedar Waxwing laying on a sidewalk along M Street.

Each of these four birds gave me the chance to lean in and look closely.  In their deaths, I learned more about their lives. 

Holding the Hummingbird, I was taken aback when I parted its breast feathers and saw those tiny, tiny feet.  Leaning over the Oriole, I was mesmerized by the way the colors alternated on its wings.  Gape-jawed and ignorant, I had to hit the books to name that lovely Ovenbird, the only one I've ever seen.  And I don't think I'll ever forget finding the lovely yellow band that ran along the Cedar Waxwing's tail feathers.

I was looking through my address book the other day and found a page filled with bird names.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, next to the list of my human neighbors' names was a list of the birds I've met in my neighborhood since moving here in 2004. 

Both humans and birds have made this a very lovely place to live.

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.