Shards

March 14, 2017 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

an afternoon wind
blew in a flurry of texts
and opened this door–

it knocked down a glass
from our dishwasher-less rack
(because all things break)

it sent me spinning
on my endless carpool trip
(keeping up with kids)

the sun was shining
on my student-made pastry,
unaware of shards.

i swept up pieces,
circled back to get daughter
and wash more dishes.

baklava melted
like rays of afternoon sun
in each of our mouths

(a reminder that
gusts of wind, circling drives
are just shards of days)

The Swirling Reality of Everyday Life

February 23, 2017February 23, 2017 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I watch the white world spin outside the third story window. Flakes, long absent, now twirl in a late winter dance, clinging to bare branches, reaching for a new hope.

I catch glimpses of the video–an analytical description of the autonomic nervous system. It is both too much and too little for me right now. The primitiveness of the hunt, the threat that is ever-present in our lives, has put me on this graph at full activation–State 1–always ready to react.

I want to be outside. To feel the flakes on my face. To bite the cold with shivering teeth. To pretend that winter will stay.

I want to be those bare branches, gathering snow in my arms, soaking up every last bit of moisture after too many days of drought.

The sky whitens as the swirls make their way across the city. The video provides a relatable example–how we react when we’re driving a car on a snowy evening and slide on a patch of ice. I giggle, minimally, and my co-worker turns her whole body towards me to be sure I see her how-dare-you? glare.

Does she not understand the irony? After a winter without snow, we’re watching a video with this particular example on a snowy afternoon?

Later, State 1 follows me as I rush out of the building, late to pick up my youngest. I find a parking spot half a block away and rush against the crowd of parents and children leaving the school. I stomp through the slushy parking lot and round the corner of the building as the first grade teachers close their doors. There she is, the final student standing in the cold, holding her hood around her eyes and huddling against the brick wall.

She asks for both of my gloves before we arrive at the car, blasts the heat, and turns on the heated seat, but she doesn’t complain. For once, she doesn’t complain, and I find myself breathing in, breathing out, like the wild animal described in the video, ready to let go.

But I can’t let go. It’s the drive on ice in swirling snow, the counting of thousands of cookie dollars when I get home, the friend over, the constant mess, the story told of the one day the older girls caught–and almost missed–two city buses, the trek across town to the bank, the grocery stop, the endlessness of the swirling snow and the swirling reality of everyday life.

Before I jolt across the parking lot that separates the bank from the grocery store, I hear the sirens. The sound of panic, the crashing of metal. The slipping on ice.

I grab the few frozen items I need off the shelves and make my way back into the snake of traffic. It twitches and slithers in the shadow of blinking red and blue lights. The accident, less than five minutes behind me, four cars splattered in pieces across the intersection, firefighters fighting the good fight.

That could have been me.

I think about the graph in the video, the curving line, the constant dip that we find ourselves trapped inside, unable to get over the hump that could save our lives.

The panic that sets in when our kids won’t listen, when we’re running late, when we fuck up an interview, when we slip. On ice.

I make my way into the snake. In slow motion, we weave through the mess of the accident. I breathe in. Breathe out. Think of the words I will write. Of the children I will hug.

Of the irony of this swirling reality of everyday life.

And I laugh.

(No one glares at me).

What Sundays Have Become

February 19, 2017 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Nearly nineteen years into our marriage, it is time for new furniture. A friend came over the other night, and as the girls piled onto my lap on the sofa claiming their right to me, the wooden leg busted underneath, exposing the reality of its twenty-year-old, hand-me-down state.

Hence, Bruce and I spent four hours today driving between stores, researching cat-scratching deterrents, and deciding on a leather reclining non-power furniture set… that we didn’t buy.

Instead, we continued our twenty-first century journey to the grocery stores. We bought the usual to feed our family of five: avocados and cilantro for our weekly need for fresh guacamole, bananas, apples, and clementines to fill lunch bags, chicken and sushi to make our dinners.

And something more: a stockpile of nonperishables. Beans. Pasta sauce. Brown rice. Cans of soup. Tea. Flour. Canned tomatoes.

Yesterday, my husband of nearly nineteen years and the man so nonviolent that he cringed at the idea of actually killing an elk the one time he went hunting, told me he thought it might be time to buy a gun.

Today, we decided to save our $2000 on furniture because we might need it to stock up on food and provisions before the coming of the war that inevitably will destroy our democracy.

This is what Sundays have become. There is no joy in errand-running, no hope for a new living room set. There is the impending doom of a future that none of us can predict nor look forward to. There are three girls in our home whom I fear will not have a future at all. There are tweets and executive orders and absent investigations and jaw-dropping obstruction.

Soon there will be food shortages. Rations. Militia.

It is all around the bend as we navigate from city to suburb to city on the highways brought to us by progressivism, searching for what we need today, for what we might need tomorrow.

This is what our Sundays have become: me sitting in my nearly-nineteen-year-old recliner, hoping this marriage, this world, my children, will live to see another nineteen years.

The Singles Line

January 8, 2017 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Siri failed me this morning. She didn’t tell me last night that my 4:44 a.m. alarm was only for weekdays. I woke before I heard a sound, in the dark of early morning, wondering how in God’s name had my body managed to wake before such an insanely early Sunday alarm. I lay there for several minutes, listening for the cars on Jewell. But it’s Sunday, I told myself. At 4:23, I thought.

Finally I looked at my phone, irritated that I couldn’t sleep longer. 6:06??? FUCK!

I rushed to the bathroom, hurriedly raked through my tangles, and put on my four layers of clothes. I started tea water, fed the meowing kittens who waited screaming at me outside of the bathroom, scarfed a banana, and threw together a PB&J for the road.

The road: warning signs lit up 6th Avenue. “Slow and go traffic from Floyd Hill to Empire exit.” It was 6:46. And the whole world rainbowed the highway with a string of red lights in search of snow.

I pulled into the parking lot at 8:19 after the harrowing icy drive over Berthoud Pass and backed into one of the final ten spots. I ran to the bathroom, rushed back to the Pilot, and began the tedious process of slipping dress-socked feet into hard plastic ski boots. I carried my skis and poles the thirty feet to the slope, clicked in, and headed 300 yards to the singles line.

Before 11:00 a.m., I had skied ten runs, a near miracle on a crowded day. I had chosen my lifts wisely, and I had only the snow and my speed to wait for. In the singles line, you don’t have to wait on anyone. You slide up ahead of large groups, of brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, young children, lifelong friends.

All day long you hear or partake in snippets of conversations.

“Look at that little girl. Not more than six on the double black! I didn’t do that till high school. And look–her mom can’t even keep up with her.”

“I can’t wait till Maddie starts skiing next year. She’s such a spitfire. She has no fear. She’s nothing like Miles, afraid of everything.”

“Once they open Vasquez Circle, the whole winter world will change. Only half the mountain heads over there because there’s 300 yards of road, and snowboarders won’t go near it. It’s all natural snow and just skiers. You’ve gotta try it.”

“I just finished taking a class at UCD even though I’m from Illinois. Sadly, this is my last day on the slopes.”

“Dad, how many runs do you think we can do before lunch?” “I can ski all day without stopping.” “Maybe five?” (At 10:36).

“Is this the singles line?” “Yes.” Long pause. Red beard below black goggles. Giant grin that glances toward the huge crowd entangled in the group line. “Aren’t we lucky to be single?”

Yes, yes we are. Never mind that my father hurt his shoulder and not one of my three girls wanted to get up and ski today and my husband doesn’t ski.

Today, I could have given in as everyone I know always does and always would. But I said I was going skiing, and damnit, I was. I missed my alarm, crammed into the traffic, and by the end of the day was soaked down to my skin from so much snow. My legs ached. My fingers were numb. I was wholly alone and wholly together with strangers all in the course of a day.

I learned that groups who were smart split themselves to make a long singles line. That way they could get through lift lines faster.

That people don’t care who they ride with or what they say on the lift as long as there’s fresh powder to carve down on the other side.

That I can be free and happy even if I’m alone. And in fact, because of it. I could choose every run I wanted, when I wanted lunch, I could skip back and forth between Mary Jane and Winter Park, I could stop at the gas station and fill up on tea, I could listen to an audiobook instead of moaning over a traffic jam.

I could survive, at least for a day, in the singles line.

To Laugh Until I Cry. To Live Until I Die.

January 7, 2017January 7, 2017 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

In the crook of early January, three weeks since seeing my students, on a cold wintry Saturday morning I shlep across town to make lesson plans with three other colleagues.

Later I will heat water for hot tea and curl in my recliner with a book, wishing I could write a novel as lyrically beautiful as Caramelo as my children wander in and out of rooms, in and out of our house and the neighbor’s, in and out of wanting to be near their dear old mom.

This after two attempts to jumpstart the old Hyundai whose lights I left on in our trek to the grandparents’ house last night.

This after listening to dating tales and math updates and wondering what it would really be like to be a single woman in modern America.

This after coloring intricate books with the girls in the brief time between our latest tech argument and the neighbor’s reemergence.

So is our Saturday, chicken defrosting in the sink, chores done and Echo playing my Pandora playlist to suit the color of my mood.

No dog to walk, no true purpose to the day other than making plans for a class no one really wants to teach.

What sits in the back of my mind is how easily I want to be able to relax. To have a deep and thought-provoking conversation that is justifiably, blood-burningly exciting. To laugh until I cry. To live until I die.

To take these lonely household moments and flip them over or back or somewhere else, when my children were small and my Chihuahua never left the warmth of my leg, when my marriage was young and everything we thought and did was about each other, not some game or book or phone or faraway friend.

In the crook of early January, holidays left out on the curb waiting for a second chance at life (mulch me till I can be reborn!), the cold of winter settles into my bones. The winter of this year, of my children’s childhood, of my marriage, nineteen years in the making.

Even with the beauty of the flakes that fall, their demise lies in slushy streets and icy black pavement, ready to trick any masterful driver, so used to winter but not its ugly, dry-grassed truth that lies beneath the surface.

In the crook of early January, I wait for the sun to rise high in the sky. For the snow to melt. For the tree to be taken. For the hollowness that hides inside this nook to break open in me a new way of looking at the world. For the bend of this season to straighten out into a road I can see, wide and clear and as questionless as a summer’s day.

But in the crook of January, there are no summer days. There are only questions.

Ground Transportation Parent

December 27, 2016 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

In eight months, my youngest daughter will start middle school. What should be an easy transition for our family, being the youngest of three girls, has instead led to the same levels of anxiety brought on when we made this decision three years ago with our oldest.

Why should we have anxiety about choosing a middle school, you might ask?

It’s everything and nothing all in one. The ratings, of course. Should there be any other choice outside of the number-one rated school (three years running) that both of her sisters attend? The middle child didn’t even blink, but set her heart and mind to go there, following in her sister’s footsteps. Even though she’s nothing like her sister. She’s introverted. Imaginative. Responsible. Impossibly sassy. Gets things done, quickly, in order to have more time to enter her otherworldly land of play which has no end in sight.

And yet the decision was easy for her. She didn’t want a surprise. She wanted to go with the option of familiarity after hearing two years of tales from sis.

But the youngest? She’s cut from a different bouquet. She hates reading. Doing homework. Being anything remotely likened to a responsible fifth grader. She won’t brush her hair. She won’t speak up in class. She remains fiercely loyal to her friends, even one who moved away over a year ago to Thailand. She wants to be the baby forever, to delve herself into art and play and being a kid.

So why is this so hard? Because at school the other teachers, all union like me, get their feathers ruffled when they find out my kids go to a charter school (how dare I?), and pester me with questions. Do they have special ed? Do they have ELLs? Do they hand-pick their kids? Aren’t your kids geniuses anyway? What are their attrition rates? What happens when they don’t want a kid–can they say no? Where does the money come from? Why did you put them there?

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. All but one of them are not parents, of course, yet experts on parenting.

I wish I was an expert on parenting. I wish I could figure out the formula for raising three daughters in the twenty-first century that is plagued with sexting and social media and ambiguous court approvals of date rape, no suspect ever really sentenced fairly.

These are the things I think about late at night, when I know my daughters will be in a school where a kid would never, ever think about having a cell phone out in class. Where the militaristic, cult-like chants that carry them from class to class grow on them to the extent that they sing their praises in the hallways of our home. Where they will be sheltered, engaged in academics, protected from bullying, for at least the next three years.

Not many people can remember the details of their middle school years, but I remember mine. New to a city with forced-integration busing, I was small for my age and constantly tormented. Once they took the loose sleeves of my sweatshirt as we stood outside the building on a cold morning (we weren’t allowed inside the school until five minutes before the first class) and tied me to the flagpole. When I couldn’t find a place in the schoolyard after lunch, not being into sports or raucous gossip, I sat up on a small slope next to the building reading out of the literature book from English class every day, only to have small groups of girls meander by taunting, “Loner, loner,” in singsong voices. On a semi-daily basis, vicious fights broke out in the hallways–girls, usually–screaming and ripping each other’s hair out. When all the other girls were spraying their bangs into masterpieces of early-nineties art, I sometimes didn’t take a shower for a week or more, not having the energy or the desire to try to fit in.

Perhaps I am jaded and worried about what my youngest will face in a non-charter middle school. Because at the end of the day, after dealing with a hundred needy teenagers and meeting with teachers over data instead of planning lessons, after driving in circles with a carpool, after trying to come up with a meal plan that is healthy, cost-efficient, and acceptable to all, after running up and down stairs with loads of washed and unwashed laundry, after pestering the girls about chores and homework and reading and piano practice, I… I just can’t keep up. I can’t log in to Class Dojo to monitor Riona’s behavior in fifth grade. I can’t log in to Parent Portal to make sure everyone has perfect attendance, no tardies, all As and Bs. I can’t check Zearn to make sure Rio has been keeping up with her math.

I can barely come up with a menu, fold two loads, have everything ready before Bruce comes home at seven o’clock. I can barely grade the stack of papers on the dining room table, carve out an hour for my semi-second job (more grading), and read with Rio, who rarely will read on her own.

I am not an expert on parenting. In fact, most of the time, I feel like I’m a failure at it. I give them what they want (phones) and spend the rest of my waking hours arguing with them about them. I spend MOST of my time arguing with them. What will they wear to The Nutcracker? Why won’t they brush their teeth? Why can’t they practice piano before Daddy comes home? Why are candy wrappers all over the floor? When was the last time they cleaned out their closets? WHERE ARE THE SCISSORS?

I don’t have the energy to monitor every moment of every day. I am no good at being a Helicopter Parent. I can barely keep up with being a Ground Transportation Parent. (Shuffle you to school? Shuffle you to piano? Shuffle you to Tae Kwon Do? I’ve managed to cut all of these tasks to almost no driving with a carpool, an in-home piano teacher, a Tae Kwon Do center within walking distance).

When I made this choice of charters for my oldest, I wanted to protect her. After a year in Spain and a year in a horrific, gossipy fifth-grade class, I wanted her to be in a place that would ensure her mental and emotional stability, not a middle school plagued with social awkwardness and bullying. And so we dealt with the militarism and the constancy of calls to stay after school for one absurd detention after another, for forgetting a heading, a belt, a pencil.

And while my middle child (the responsible one) has had few encounters with after school “retentions,” I know this will not be the case for the youngest. She will forget her pencil, her homework, her charger. She will miss assignments and lose points for not having enough curiosity or courage. She will be intimidated by the chants and irritated by the homework load. And she knows all of these things about herself, and has begged me to consider another option for her.

And just like when I broke the news to my oldest that she “got in” to this great school, she cried. She cried because she loves art and she hates homework and she doesn’t want anyone to push her too much because she’s the baby.

She cried because she’s so much like her oldest sister. She’s afraid to see the potential that she has, the ability to blossom under the Helicopter School.

So now I have my answer for the belligerent teachers. Why, why, why?

Because I’m no expert. I’m no Helicopter Parent. I choose this school because I’m not very good at micro-managing their success, and this school does it for me. I choose this school because it will protect my fragile daughters from a harsh world, if only for a few more years. I choose this school because I’m a Ground Transportation Parent, and at the very least, I can drive them there and pick them up an hour late. I can’t keep up with the homework load, the grade checks, the Class Dojo, but I can hope that after a year my shy eleven-year-old will emerge from its doors with more confidence, more responsibility, more courage and curiosity.

I can at least recognize, as their driver, the similarities between my soul sisters. Whether they wanted it or not, they need this school, just like they need each other to balance out their somewhat-tumultuous relationship with the middle child. They are the two who love ice skating, skiing, Tae Kwon Do. Who forget belts and homework and live in an artistic resemblance of life. Whose fragility connects them.

I am a Ground Transportation parent. All I can hope is that my wheels, my turns, my steering, guide them in the right direction, because there sure as hell isn’t a map anywhere in sight.

And we’re just starting middle school!

Getaway. Get. Away.

November 6, 2016November 7, 2016 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

as we leave, she tells us goodbye till Thanksgiving,
and as always i can’t tell if it’s a guilt trip or a plea.

soon there will be no Thanksgivings.
it will be just us, moved across continents and back,
moved across town and back,
only to remain while they go.

and i pile it on my weekend,
probably our last getaway without grandparents in town,
so perfectly shaped by a Colorado sky,
so tainted by the loss in every flip
as social media stings me again.

before i walk down the steps,
i remind her of Mythili’s birthday,
our dinner reservations before Thanksgiving.

but it’s another night of tears for me knowing that they’re leaving,
they’re really leaving,
and soon all the birthdays and holidays will be just us,
just us,
and i feel the vacancy already,
the gaps once filled by friends
who’ve left us one by one,
and the greatest gap of all
lying in wait,
a storm fit to burst,
a cat poised to pounce,
a weekend ready to be ruined.

and i stopped drinking this year
and lost eight pounds
and didn’t write a single mean post
about my sister, mother, or anyone,
and it’s been ten months,
so why why why
am i surrounded by sadness?

i drive home and can’t dry the tears long enough to read with my youngest,

have only enough in me to enforce showers and teeth brushing

and folding one load of laundry,

and i want so badly to be more than the world only to him,

and i think how fiercely i latched onto him at age nineteen, knowing
even then,
even then that no one would love me that much the whole world over,

and to this day, even with that love in every step of my soul,

rejection. still. hurts.

and this is how our getaway ends:
with the waterfall that never stops.
and the road that never ends.

Case of the Mondays

October 10, 2016 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

because it’s Monday
the alarm sucks, kids are bored,
and fall won’t happen–

the classroom burns hot
from a boiler turned on
two weeks too early

and everyone thinks
it’s a holiday today,
so here i sit. wait

at the Jiffy Lube
with the rest of the world
panning for oil.

this is white privilege.
this is American life.
black gold that burns all.