in eight years of work
none of her clients earned this
how lucky are we?
just one decision
to forever impact us
love in many forms
family
C & H
It was cruelty that put him here. The cruelties of poverty, of corruption, of one governmental thievery after another. Our government to theirs. Their government to their people.
It was cruelty that put him in a cage, that gave him no choice but to keep on keeping on, train after train, burnt house back home, left-behind baby sisters, parents unable or unwilling to give him what he really needed, really wanted in life.
It was cruelty that led him to my classroom and into the basement “bedroom” of our home.
But today, there was no cruelty. Only the miracle of another turn around the sun. And this eighteen-year milestone is so much more than the tres leches cake my youngest prepared, so much more savory than the two pot roasts we spent half the day cooking, more than the intricately-decorated banner, the piñata he never could hit as a kid.
Today, there was only humanity.
The humanity that bleeds through the cruelty even when you think it isn’t there. In programs established by past presidents that a team of social workers, caseworkers, and even a famous poet worked tirelessly to get him into before his eighteenth birthday, when suddenly, and for completely arbitrary reasons, our government labels young boys adults.
The humanity in lawyers working day and night, in the middle of Christmas and New Year’s while visiting family, who are willing to send emails and make phone calls and answer every stupefied gringo-I-don’t-know-the-law question.
PRO BONO.
The humanity in my friends who sent gift cards, cash, and prayers, to thank me for bringing this boy home.
Cruelty brought him here. But humanity has won.
If you combine C & H, you’ll have nothing but sugar. Pure sweetness.
And that is what I want you to taste as you read this post, as you click on these links. The sweetness of humanity. It may seem to be hiding behind the C, but without it, what would we have?
Certainly not a game of spoons. A party of smiling teenagers. An artist’s pencil.
Or a speck of hope.
Blow out these candles with us. Sing this song in broken Spanish. And relish these sweet dreams. They are yours. They are his. They are all of ours.
And they are sweeter than any cruelty you could imagine. Just taste them. Take a moment to taste how sweet our world could be.
Soak It Up
new year refinance
to close out our former life
as we take this step
Snow Max
skiing is a dream
found in powdery wide slopes
in Colorado
Thermal Haven
what really matters
is that he enjoys hot springs
to fit in with us
New Year’s Eve
in 2019
Bruce learned to ski from up high
into a new life
in 2019
a drain drained our resources
and worsened our debt
in 2019
my girls adjusted again
to life’s challenges
in 2019
we were given the rare chance
to make a difference
in 2019
we traveled through the country
searching for ourselves
in 2020
we’ll make a better life
everywhere we go
A Quick Email to End 2019
My creative writing teacher (I will always refer to her as such even though I graduated nearly twenty-five years ago) asked us (her forever students) to send her a quick email about an important gift we gave or received this holiday.
Maybe I could snap a quick pic from the tree on Christmas Eve, filled with makeup, watercolor markers, jeans, and long-sleeved blouses for my three teenage daughters. Or of Christmas morning with the magical Apple Watches, so coveted by my Apple-only family.
Or the earrings my mother made me or the gift card to Colorado Gives from my sister.
Maybe I could capture a quick pic of my 2019 accomplishments: Writing about, and participating in, a teachers’ strike that led to a life-changing raise.
My first paid-for post. My hundreds of hours of work wrapped up in a National Board Certification. My ever-intricately-planned summer road trip across seven states.
But none of these things could begin to compare with the gift that this year has given me. The gift of this man in my life who would do anything, anything to prove his love to me. Marry me when I was just a baby. Follow me to Spain. Learn how to ski nine months and one lesson after tearing his ACL. Read every post. Drive overnight through the midwest so the entire family could sleep.
Take into our house a boy who doesn’t belong to us and in every way belongs to us.
You have watched the news. You have seen the stories. You have donated money. You have screamed in frustration at the cruelties and injustices inflicted on others by our government. By ourselves.
But have you stood in front of fourteen Newcomers and come to understand how brightly they still see our country? Have you had a hallway conversation with a boy who informs you that, after five days of walking, twenty-five days of train-hopping and pigeon-killing, two days of washing windshields in Mexico City, five days waiting to cross the Rio Grande in the middle of the night on a raft, one week in a detention center and four months in a home for unaccompanied minors, and four months in a homeless youth shelter, he is still looking for a home?
And that, no matter what, he cannot, will not, return home?
What would you do? What might you ask your husband to do? Your three ever-spoiled, ever-adaptable, ever-loving teenage daughters?
Would you keep scrolling past the images of children under space blankets on concrete floors?
Or would you realize that this boy is standing in front of you, in your school, in your class, in your life, without a home? A family? And do something? Anything?
I cannot take a quick pic of the past two weeks, the entire time that has passed between my knowledge of his status and his soon-to-be permanent placement in our home. The phone calls, the emails to every last human I could think of who might help him. The two-hour meeting with the Department of Human Services, his Honduran father on the line, ready to relinquish all rights. The background checks, fingerprints, home visits, all within a day. His arrival to my home with three garbage bags filled with clothing and no coat. The shy first meal that he took to the basement to eat. Alone. His quick smile and ever-present hope that this place must be a better place. His immediate love of our three pets.
I cannot send Mrs. Clark a quick email about my gifts this year. There are too many to count, they are the uncountable nouns I teach my Newcomers: love, hope, future, desire.
They are all in this union that the caseworker asked about today: “Married for almost twenty-two years? Tell me, how do you do it?” “Patience and love. Patience and love.”
They are here, in this boy, unwrapped, ready to be our brother, our son, part of our world.
These are my gifts. I’m sorry this is such a long email, Mrs. Clark.
Beyond
our preparations
for this moment of our lives
go beyond torrejas
beyond this sweet sauce,
this Christmas stocking for you,
beyond this moment
our preparations
go beyond twenty-two years
when we were babies
when we were in love
as only the young can be
and he promised me
what promise, you ask?
to open our home with love
when it is needed
Migration
I tried to be an immigrant once. I failed miserably because I’m too damn American. A privileged white woman. And because it was so fucking easy just to come home after a year.
In the attempt, I cried for months. I wrote constantly about the struggle of it all. The relinquishment of our family home. The endless paperwork. The cancellation of a dream job for something that was meant to barely sustain a recent graduate, not a family of five. Saying goodbye to the colleagues and collegiality I had shared for seven years. Saying goodbye to my family, my friends.
But it was just a farce, really. I didn’t fully fulfill my lifelong dream of Spanish fluency because I spent the majority of my days teaching English and the remainder speaking to my English-speaking family. And the money? The dream? The travels across Europe?
Nothing, I learned in those magical ten months, compares to human relationships. The relationships we’d just begun to develop with my clients, my colleagues, my friends in Spain before we had to board a plane and return to our “life.”
I tried to be an immigrant once, to step into the shoes of someone who has to drive across the country for a visa. To find an apartment. A phone plan. A rental car. A school for their children. In their second language.
I failed.
I bought five plane tickets and flew us back to America before we could blink.
Wouldn’t that be nice? To determine, after a time, that it’s just not right? That you could more or less return to your life and be the better for it? That you could pick up right where you left off, master’s degree in hand, Skype-interview-secured position waiting, to the life that you thought you wanted to leave behind?
Well, my students don’t have that choice. They have witnessed everything you can imagine and everything you couldn’t begin to imagine. They have come here with a singular thought: I cannot, I will not, return. I have stepped on that plane, that train, that three thousand miles of pain, to make this dream a reality.
They come here to relinquish everything about what has shaped them as human beings. Their language, lisping and loving. Their food, aromatic and elegant. Their weather, pungent and tropical, arid and hot. Their religion, every day and every way. Their families. Their communities. Broken or torn, perfect or imperfect, but never enough.
And they know that they cannot look back. That, no matter the circumstance (murdered parents, no literacy, shadows of abuse, a $10,000 bail set on a cousin who came to rescue them from a detention center only to be placed in one himself), they are here. To stay.
They are the brown faces you see on every block building your garages. Hammering your roofs. Serving your dinner. Teaching your children Spanish. Driving your Uber. Replacing your sewer line. Packing your meat. Running your school district.
Their children are your children. Impatient. Anxious. Determined.
They have come here, across the border, across the sea, across their history, to be reborn. They are no longer Hondureños, Salvadorans, Congolese, Burmese, Asian, Mexican, Iraqis.
They are intertwined into the fabric of our country, building the bridges, picking the food, bringing us hope.
And they’re not in the market to give up. To buy a plane ticket home.
To be me.
How humbling that is, to think of staying, of giving up everything for a different life. Of never being able to return.
Of never wanting to return.
Can you imagine?
And this is why my daughter has made this card. 
Why I have spent my evening in Walmart searching for gifts that will never replace a loving family. And why I am so heartbroken and so grateful that my students will never be me.
Have you ever tried to be an immigrant? It is impossible to imagine. To describe. To understand.
All we can really do, as her smile suggests, is build a bigger table. Open our hearts. And welcome those who may never have the privilege to look back.
Seasonal Joy
semester’s endings:
our girls of many talents
fill our life with love
Step Write Up 