eleven welcomes
 in students’ eleven tongues
 from my daughter’s hand
 
 she is raised with love
 (hate isn’t welcoming)
 yes. it’s that easy.
 
 

I have two jobs now, and they may as well both be full time. Tack these onto my other two previously-employed jobs: full-time mama and part-time college professor. I might as well pull my hair out now, even though the students haven’t yet walked through my door.

Job number one: teaching two classes with new curricula; one I have taught for many years but must constantly revamp because I have the same students year after year, and therefore cannot teach the same content. The other, an honors eleventh grade English, I have never taught, though The Crucible and The Great Gatsby may as well be the plague of my existence. Back to the drawing board, take five.

Job number two: five emails, four classroom visits, three classroom check-ins, two verbal requests, one mildly-sarcastic PD a day. I am a “leader,” a “coach,” a semi-organized mess of a bridge between the administration and the teachers.

I remember when I was in Spain and it rained so hard that people were afraid to drive and I put on shorts and Crocs and walked two miles with a raincoat, an umbrella, and an REI backpack through calf-deep puddles to ring their doorbell. “Karen, eres tu??” “Si, claro.” “Solamente una americana podria trabajar en este tiempo.”

Only an American would work in this weather.

On a holiday.

On a Saturday.

On. Any. Day.

I heard it so many times that it became a part of my blood. Only an American would be told, “You have to have top-notch lessons, no cell phones out for any student, everything must at all moments be tied to the Common Core State Standards… and also, make sure you then check in DAILY with all the defiant/needy/tardy/absent/distraught/crying children to make sure their home life is OK… and also, even if you’re calling home with positive news, make sure you fully document it in the computer system… and also, if students have phones out which teachers are not allowed to take, make sure that you rate them lower… and also, if students are intoxicated, FINE, send them to the dean.”

My former coach stopped by today. “How’s it going? What are you worried about?”

What could I even say?

“You’re not here to coach me this year, so what will I do?”

“I have two full-time jobs and no way to do either one well?”

“I don’t have enough time in the day to soothe the crying soul and alleviate colleagues’ complaints?”

“Everything.”

There was no answer. There is no answer. I am a teacher, the underpaid, thankless job that has ten more tasks piled up each year. The Americana, wishing I could be a Spaniard with wine served at faculty meetings at 11 am.

Only an American would endure this world. This hate-filled, hopeless world. This presidential evil, gotta-solve-this-with-our-solvency world. Only an American would sit through five faculty meetings in four hours and come out… just a little hopeful. Knowing that every minute of every day is so filled with business and thought and empathy that, walking down the hall at 13:56, looking at my watch and rolling my eyes on the way to copier trip number twenty-seven this week, my colleague says to me, “I know that look. I know exactly what you’re thinking. It’s almost 2, and there’s no way in the next ninety minutes you’re even going to come close to what you wanted to accomplish today.”

Only an American would endure this.

And so we must. We must teach to the Common Core. We must count how many cell phones students are using. We must think about our own identities and own up to our biases. We must check in with every kid every day and make sure they’re surviving this shit society we’ve placed before them. We must walk in calf-deep puddles to do our jobs.

I have a million jobs now. Being a wife, a mother, a teacher, a coach, a friend, a colleague, a mentor, an attendance-caller, an IC-updater, a cell-phone monitor, a daughter, a sister, an online blogger, a limitless writer.

Only an American would do this. So let’s do this. Let’s start a school year, and, for real, make America great.

For once.

baked good bribery
 to make the meetings run smooth
 on our souls ‘ training
 

filled with anxious joy
 her first day of middle school
 (my baby no more)
 

Our days are filled with real and fake interactions. Online posts, real and fake news, frightening images, presidential non-proclamations. Terror. Hatred.

And love.

Before we begin our individual narratives, let’s take a moment to look at the whole picture. The city neighborhood with a simple walk to the park on a Sunday evening. What might one see? A creek swelling from a two-hours-past downpour, bubbling up with white rapids and ready to irrigate the constant green lawns that make Denver beautiful. A crooked, cracked path filled with walkers and cyclists and girls on scooters.

A pavilion that neither group reserved and yet they both share, the lilt of Spanish words rising into my memory, the Arabic floating past the wafts of hookah smoke from head-covered women. Both groups barbecue their versions of the perfect meat: pork loin on one side, halal beef on the other. In perfect harmony, they laugh and talk and provide a kind of peace one can only find surrounded by greenery.

And love.

Before we begin our individual narratives, let’s take a moment to walk with our families in this park. We continue on, hearing a dialect from an African country (as Ngozi Adichie would say, “non-American Blacks”) in the soccer field; an official game with a yellow-shirted ref and all; ages nine to thirty-nine, experts at passing and kneeing. Further along the rutty path, we see an African-American boy and girl racing their new bikes against each other, against the sunset, against the wind, as their too-tired mama tries to keep up fifty feet behind them. We see another version of Spanish with two girls in matching Sunday-best floral dresses, their father sidling alongside with what must be a silent infant in his top-notch stroller. Two white middle-aged women give us the questioning eye as they speed-walk in the opposite direction. A Middle-eastern male volleyball match reaches full pitch with three quick strokes as the wives sit on a 1970s park bench and watch their children drag their feet in puddles under the swings.

You and I? We can have it all: the setting western sun. The glorious scents of roasting meat and sweet tobacco. The raging creek. The tall pines and thick-as-moss grass. The summer Sunday.

It may have taken me ten years to convince my southern-Baptist-raised husband to open his eyes to a world that includes everyone, all races and colors and sexual orientations and belief systems, but with patience, persistence, and stories like this, he changed his narrative.

In a group messaging stream this afternoon, a colleague begged us to interpret her crazy cousin’s rant about protesters having their guns removed from their homes. She wanted verification of his facts, renunciation of his belief system, support for her own.

We responded. We researched. We proved him wrong.

But did we change his narrative?

He needs a picture, not a fact-check. He needs an image as bright as this one, in a park on a summer Sunday, where all the world’s a stage (and we are but players, thank you Shakespeare). A stage for acceptance, for peaceful coexistence, for every belief system that the world can hold… all trapped within one square mile. He needs to see that America is a quilt, not a melting pot. That we each fit our squares into its pattern, its ravenous waters, tall trees, sultry sunsets. That we belong here, all of us, intertwined for the betterment of humanity, for progress, for the future of our world.

For love.

With a kind smile, a gentle nod, a we’re-in-this-together comment, we can change the narrative. One person, one step, one sunset at a time.

Take my hand. Walk with me. And open your eyes.

baking builds friendship
 sweet taste of togetherness
 in each recipe
 

Twenty Augusts ago, my mother took me to the fabric store so that I could pick out the colors and pattern for my marriage quilt. Coming out of a dark breakup, I’d been on a burnt color kick, and chose a burgundy red as the primary color: the color of love, of broken hearts, all in one.

Twenty Augusts ago, on a late and desperate night, I ranted into an online ad in Yahoo Personals about how immature and disrespectful so many men are, and why can’t they just GROW UP and choose a real relationship with a real commitment? (I was nineteen, drunk on broken-heartedness, and my words were much more eloquently displayed than what I can remember here, though still honest and succinct).

Twenty Augusts ago, a quiet blue-eyed airman with a sexy voice and a thick southern accent promised to meet me at Pete’s Kitchen, the grungy, never-closes greasy spoon landmark of Denver that boasts the best breakfast burritos and the saltiest drunks at 2 a.m. He sat across from me eating a club sandwich and hardly saying a word. As he walked me to the car, he plucked at stray threads popping out of my shirt, efficiently snipped them off with his ever-present pocket knife, and grinned beneath those baby blues with a quiet, “I’ll take care of you,” nod.

Nineteen Augusts ago, I married my blue-eyed soldier (two days after his twenty-first birthday) in a small stone church decorated with 1000 paper cranes that I had spent six months folding. We lit a glittery calla lily candle with our tapered-candle flames, and before the reception was over we promised we’d only light it on our anniversary.

Eighteen Augusts ago, my whole family drove across the country to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of my paternal grandparents. I walked around with a video camera interviewing people about their marriage, offering stories and hopes. When I interviewed Bruce, he said to the camera that he hoped he and Karen could be married that long. Everything he said and did was about his love for me.

Seventeen Augusts ago, he bought me a stone nameplate for my desk. I had just finished college that month and was about to start student teaching. He had just discharged himself from his first love, the military, because he knew I wasn’t a military wife. And yet, he thought of me, not his un-enrollment, and had my name engraved in gold, formal lettering to celebrate what was yet to come.

Sixteen Augusts ago, I started my career as a looks-like-them high school teacher with a pretentious department chair, disgruntled students, and so little support that each night began with a sigh or a cry. And he listened to my complaints and minimally praised the job he had and loved, and soothed me with his ever-gentle love.

Fifteen Augusts ago, we were expecting our first child, bursting with anticipation, hope, and happiness. We had just settled in to our first single-family house and were busy painting the nursery a deep blue, deep enough to match his baby blues.

Fourteen Augusts ago, we were first-child parents to our oldest, Isabella, a calm and flirtatious child who would travel under any conditions and not even make a whimper when she had motion sickness or was left in her room for over an hour to play. Bruce became a daddy with rocking coos, meticulous diaper changes, and hours of walking a colicky baby up and down the hallway; all with the same kind calmness he used when snipping my threads on that first date.

Thirteen Augusts ago, it had been a year since we had buried my great aunt Frances. My mother, who considered Frances her second mother, who had helped take care of her for years, both in her home and at her assisted living, was still terribly grief-stricken. But when she began to go through Frances’ things, she discovered many patterns, boxes and boxes of fabric, and hundreds of quilt pieces. So, stricken with overtime at her stressful job as an urban planner for an engineering firm, my mother began to sew Frances’ quilts for her granddaughters as a way of relieving stress and overcoming her grief.

Twelve Augusts ago, our second baby, Mythili, flew in my lap to Boston to meet Bruce in Maine for my cousin’s wedding. Our lives came crashing down between the time we bought the tickets and the wedding date; I had to fly separately because I was four days into my new job as a middle school teacher and Bruce, recently laid off, four days into his new job as a stay-at-home-dad. Meanwhile, he’d flown to Connecticut, sat with my grandmother for a few days, and was in the process of driving her up to the wedding. After the wedding, he would drive her the seven hours home, in the process getting screamed at about directions and Isabella needing food and the car being dirty and everything else an Alzheimer-ridden woman might say. As he told me the story, in his usual calm manner, he promised me that he had never gotten angry with her. (I already knew he hadn’t.) Taking care of my grandmother was simply, to him, an extension of taking care of our family.

Eleven Augusts ago, I planned a second home birth for my third child, but she wouldn’t come out, and when the midwife told me we had to go to the hospital, Bruce held me as I cried, helped me shower, and called my friend Meghan (who had been present at Mythili’s home birth) to let her know, knowing I couldn’t hold it together to talk. He talked to her for a few minutes and softly put the phone to my ear while she consoled me on one side and he whispered in the other, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything.” Because he knew that Meghan knew how much it meant to me, and when he couldn’t find the right words to say to me, he knew what to do. He has always known what to do. And when we were in the hospital and looking into each other’s eyes over our third little girl, and my sister asked, “What’s her name?”, he was the one with the right words: “Riona Francesca,” after my great aunt Frances.

Ten Augusts ago, my mother still had not completed more than a few squares of my quilt, but she had completed two quilts for Mythili and Isabella and was gathering materials from Frances’ heirlooms to create Riona’s.

Nine Augusts ago, after driving to Tennessee and back to celebrate his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, I surprised him with a MacBook and an iPod for our tenth anniversary. We didn’t have the money; we had one credit card and three girls and nothing but a tax return for an annual bonus. But his eyes lit up like a shooting star and soon enough he had become such a Mac-tech expert that most of my coworkers regularly had me call Bruce to find a solution rather than asking the tech guy because Bruce was more patient, precise, and would work until he could solve any problem, and they had never met a tech guy quite like him. Neither had I.

Eight Augusts ago, we had two children in school, and we began to feel the weight of August, between one salary, one anniversary, two birthdays, and school starting (with all of its expensive supplies and uniforms) on the same week of two out of three of those events. August began to feel more like a burden than a blessing.

Seven Augusts ago, we enrolled our youngest daughter into preschool, and Bruce finished his associates degree in computer information systems. Life moved forward, August by August.

Six Augusts ago, all three girls had quilts made from materials found in Frances’ house. My mom had joyfully discovered that the lining in between squares in Riona’s quilt was made from nylons. Nylons! For the forty years that my great aunt had worked as a waitress, a maid, a hostess, and a supervisor at the famous Brown Palace Hotel, she had been collecting her old nylons and lining this quilt that now rested on her namesake’s bed.

Five Augusts ago, after quitting my job, renting out our house, storing our things, lending out our car, and un-enrolling our girls from school, we stepped on a plane with ten suitcases and a bicycle and moved to Spain. We had limited job prospects, a pile of debt awaiting us, and Bruce didn’t speak Spanish, but he came anyway, because love is love, a promise is a promise, and if I was going to Spain, he was coming too, to take care of all of us.

Four Augusts ago, we moved into a slumlord rental and Bruce started a job that would make him withdraw into a bitter darkness for three months. Because not every August is bright and thunder-less.

Three Augusts ago, my oldest daughter started middle school, Bruce was working at a job he liked that came with a new rental car every month, and the sun had returned.

Two Augusts ago, with Bruce’s dream job (with full benefits) secured just one month before, we bought our dream house. After just one tour of one house, we made an offer. With easy-to-clean hardwood and tile throughout, a flawless yard, and four bedrooms, the house eased itself around our family as calmly as my husband did, as if it had always been a part of us.

One August ago, I realized that half of my life, exactly to that August, had been spent in Bruce’s gentle arms.

It’s August again. Frances has been gone for almost as long as my oldest daughter has been alive. And my mother, now retired and stripped of workplace stress, has finished the quilt whose fabric I picked out twenty Augusts ago. She brought it to my house today while I was at work, all wrapped up and in an old box that was probably also from Frances’ house. She placed it on my bed for me to open; it is our first king bed and her first king quilt.

Twenty Augusts ago, I picked those colors because they were dark, brooding, and a little broken-hearted.

During the twenty years, between jobs, births of grandchildren, deaths of loved ones, and moving several times, my mother began to stitch the quilt. She struggled with the squares matching up and soon discovered that in order to make the quilt look right, she would have to add paler strips in between each square.

Paler, lighter strips. To balance out the darkness. To contrast the mood I carried with me twenty Augusts ago, just before I met my blue-eyed airman. To make a king-size quilt for our marriage bed, our connected-by-strings, centered-on-love, balance-of-light-and-dark marriage bed.

Twenty Augusts ago, I chose these colors. And with patience and love, my mother has embroidered her name on the quilt, on our hearts, on our anniversary.

Here’s to another twenty Augusts.

old friends are gold friends
 as sappy Scout songs promise
 through rain, China, years
 
 still the grins return
 yesterday is tomorrow
 for childhood friends
 
 

green bean miracle
 Japanese beetles no match
 in Colorado
 

twenty years ago
 we met in a grungy place
 (nothing with this view)
 
 he would hardly speak
 so i filled him with my words
 (he offered kindness)
 
 now he turns forty
 the space between now and then
 filled with three daughters
 
 our journey goes on
 filled with words, kindness, love:
 what makes a marriage