my youngest redeemedby a school that values her

It’s about damn time

this flawless photo 

captures love, poverty, plains,

and even puppies

my grandmother’s life:

Great Depression stepping stones

with Kansas backdrop 

a thousand words, here:

trapped behind dust storms and loss

in the search for truth

At lunch, we share our stories. What did you do? When did you do it? Who was it with?

She is still in my care, but the time when I must let her go is ever-present. I don’t want to think about her truly being gone, but … alas, high school is the stepping stone to adult life.

I was sixteen… I could drive… and it was with someone I wish it wasn’t.

I was nineteen… and I regret it too.

I was fifteen… And I learned from it, and grew from it, so it’s all good.

The loss is so close to me I can taste its bitter tears on my tongue. Hours earlier, she left her backpack in my classroom to meet him upstairs in the cafeteria. Normally she gets her tray, a smoothie or a sausage sandwich, and returns to eat in my room.

Not today.

Today, she only came back to retrieve her backpack. No boy trailed behind her, and when I asked, “Where’s the boy?” she gave me her leave-me-alone look, and my two Nepali students giggled and said, “Miss, I can’t believe you’re going to allow her to date. You’re so much nicer than our moms.”

But what am I to do? Whether she sees him for a month or five minutes, could I really put a stop to the spinning wheels of time, to the carousel Joni Mitchell sang through my childhood?

This is the child who, at two and a half years old, stayed up longer than me at my cousin’s wedding to dance until the band. Went. Home.

This is the child who, at nine, learned how to speak Spanish even though she’d ignored all lessons in America for the previous four years, because once we were in Spain, Spanish was required to. Make. Friends.

This is the child who, at age fourteen, stomped off into the wilderness with three of her fellow Girl Scouts and adamantly told them that they weren’t lost, only to call me ninety minutes later and declare, “We’re lost. But we’re together.”

I certainly can’t tell her, “Stop.” She’s been spinning since she was a little girl, and I am not the world she spins around.

I was sixteen. I was in love with a loser.

But I didn’t marry him.

Isn’t that all that matters?

a dream vacation 

must start with the dream itself 

(found in books, of course)

decades-old neon

marking nights with its marquee

sign of history

Cycling city

From window shopping to roads

(It’s heaven on earth)

Homecoming spirit 

Shared with my three growing girls

My babies no more

i’ve hit the gold mine 

with my daughters, coworkers,park, architecture:

the microcosm 

of the world we wish for:

flowered, diverse, fire.

i just want flowers

that i’m not allergic to 

to brighten my day

Twenty minutes. That’s the exact time from clipping in to standing in line, 5.6 miles, endless car traffic, and a nearly-empty bike lane later. 

I do love Mr. White. He’s a beautiful human being in every way, shape and form. He knows how to make a presentation, with few words and lots of pictures on a PowerPoint, and he genuinely cares about our kids.

But this is my third back-to-school night, I had to leave my three girls in a mess of emotions and mess of a kitchen as my oldest cried and begged again for Snapchat because all her friends are planning Homecoming on a thread without her and because my youngest wants to sell cookies on the corner to earn money for her school Yellowstone trip.

I was reminded, as I pedaled across my city, answering two phone calls (WTF??–one from the school district, one from an insurance salesman) on the way through my Bluetooth headphones, after checking my email and seeing Riona’s latest missing homework, after arguing with Mythili about leaving Izzy alone about the quality of character of her latest crush (whom a colleague warned me about today), that it’s only. Tuesday.

But. It was a pedal, not a drive. There was no traffic. There was no string of red lights. There were only a mostly-empty path and the brutality of my frustrated shouts of, “On your left!!” Mythili set up my saddlebags for me before I left. Riona managed not to burn the cookies. I sent Isabella the snapshot text of what Riona’s missing, leaving her in charge. And I have given in to Snapchat for my in-the-closet-crying daughter, if only for a week. 

And in twenty minutes, my filled-to-the-brim-with-ice water bottle melted into lukewarm, late-summer water. In twenty minutes, Pandora pounded out my angst. In twenty minutes, I made it to back-to-school-night number three.
In twenty minutes, I wrote this post.
And it’s only Tuesday. Let’s see what I can make of twenty minutes tomorrow.