it may have taken two years
of counting and miscounting
of piling up paperwork
and learning to manage
twenty five-then-six-now-seven-year-olds,
of arguing parents
and camping trip disasters
and never forgetting how to forget,
but here i am,
Girl Scout troop leader,
just for a moment feeling like
I’ve got this down,
I can do this,
I can count and organize,
I can be just what I need to be
in the eyes of
my daughters
their daughters
the daughters of the world
(or world, the one we want to give them).
investments
Everything Included
we could walk
but we prefer to ride
they hop in
with three pennies,
jubilant voices,
and a mission.
we arrive at the
perfectly painted plastic horse
covered in vinyl saddle
where they climb up and down
riding like pro cowgirls
when five minutes have passed
they head for the cookie aisle
where disappointment sits
plainly on the empty tray.
instead, we pack on our helmets
to continue our weekday adventure,
the wind blowing allergen-ridden dust,
remnants of summer’s sun
beating down on our backs.
i follow the oldest, who
weaves like a drunk driver
through the sidewalk,
into the street,
everywhere her heart takes her.
a giant, loud-mouthed dog
greets our arrival. we reach
with skinny arms into
the abundantly fat-with-fruit trees,
pulling down ripe green pears,
apples with red dimples.
the dog continues to carry on,
and just as i wonder if he’s here
as a warning for us to leave,
a woman’s voice calls over the fence,
“Take as many as you can.”
And we do, the tangy juice
of tiny homegrown fruits
sliding down the girls’ chins,
dripping into the pile at the bottom
of the trailer, sweetening
our end-of-summer afternoon,
sweetening our time here, now.
everything included:
the bikes,
the horse,
the absent cookie,
the fruit,
for three pennies,
jubilant children,
and a mission.
Home at Last
for a thousand miles
we see the reach of
the Mighty Mississippi,
the river we bought
for pennies on the dollar,
the river of dreams
(sometimes nightmares),
the river that feeds us all
and doesn’t feed us.
after cornfield gives way
to soybean field and
amber waves of wheat,
all i can think about are the bison
who ate and fertilized
this prairie, feeding
ten thousand generations
and yet
we destroy it
with unnecessary crops
feeding cattle that could
(and would) do the same as the bison.
as night gives in to day
we cross the border
and see cows in pasture
(home at last)
a truck with a Kentucky plate
(home at last)
and hope that one day
we will release
the native grasses
and allow the prairie
to be home at last.
Little
I have opened my wallet one too many times
but I just can’t help but pry it open once more.
it is for their eyes, sparkling and expectant,
and the polite smiles of the women who run
this little shop in this little town
that I will be leaving a little too soon.
with little brushes
little fingers
little hands
they paint.
an alligator as brightly decorated as a carousel horse
a miniature hat box with scribbled-out brown
a snake with dots and stripes and red eyes
they thank me
(all of them, the girls, the proprietors)
and the money,
it can’t capture their happiness,
so I’ll just tuck it here into this poem.
Recipe for Risk
1 bike
1 narrow bridge
1 mile-wide lake
1 dose of fear for your life
2 speeding cars (instead of 20)
3 shots of adrenaline
4 cups of determination
1. Take a picture beforehand so you’ll have documentation.
2. Wait for your moment. The shoulder of the road before the bridge will help you build up your fear.
3. Mix the determination and adrenaline in a hot-as-blood concoction and hit the pavement with your tires.
4. Forget about the forty miles behind you. Focus on the beautiful lake, the white line, and the bout-to-burst heart to get you to the center of the bridge.
5. Let the cars zoom past and try to ignore the semi coming from the other direction. If you pedal with the risk of your life in your heart, you’ll make it before he does.
6. Take a picture from the other side for documentation. You might need it to remember this moment. Or, you might not. Either way, it’s a beautiful bridge.
Stuff (or, Ode to Consumption)
flashing before me is the feed
that calls my name as if I need
the crap that comes across the screen
but I know what they really mean
the story of stuff is a frightening tale
that bends and breaks without fail
our morals, our love, our time on earth
are deteriorating with every thing’s birth
how can we stop this sick disease
that they tell us is all we need to please
ourselves on a planet being destroyed
swallowed by corporations’ void?
stop, stop, stop, at every door
of every store that sells you more
of every item you really don’t need
so that our future will take heed
your families, your faith, are on the line
you can make a difference with this design
hug your kids, buy things used, go to the park
but never say that I left you in the dark
Invest This!
Sometimes I wonder if financial planners are out of touch with reality. Because I have read so many articles in magazines, online, heard it on the news—the best ways to invest, to save money, to cut back. Now I know they’re educated, I know they’ve been trained in what to say, and most of them have a good deal of experience, but I’m sick of reading the same old things.
The one that bothers me the most is: put money into savings first, and then pay off debts. That makes no sense to me. Why should we let debts add up, along with their ugly interest rates, and not eliminate them as quickly as possible? The same thing applies to their advice about mortgages (the biggest debt of all, right?). They always say to save money in Roth IRAs, 401Ks, or other retirement accounts, and then save six months’ salary, before paying extra on the mortgage.
I get the retirement thing, I do. I realize how important that savings is, and how quickly it will disappear having seen many of my grandparents’ generation foot the exorbitant bills in assisted living homes. What I don’t understand is how the average family has enough money to sock away six months’ worth of living expenses. Really?
For us, that’s $3100 a month. We can barely pay our bills after I have money set aside for retirement, let alone SAVE money. And I mean it. We don’t have many debts other than our mortgage. Every year at this time we’ve piled up some debt on our credit card that we must use the tax return to pay off. The rest of our tax return goes into savings, but it quickly depletes in the ensuing months. Can we live a little, just a little, please?
I have figured this out time and again. It would take us, saving every remaining penny from our tax return, more than six years to save six months’ worth of living expenses. That is absurd. Are we supposed to stay locked at home, never take our kids swimming or roller-skating or on the inexpensive family-visit road trips our family takes, just to have this little safety net?
What makes more sense to me, and what I have seen both sets of grandparents and my parents do, is to pay extra on the mortgage. We may not be able to pay that much (only $50 for us right now), but I bet it will add up. The previous generations of my family may not have been highly educated financial planners, but they all paid their mortgages off early and reaped exemplary rewards from this: early retirement for one set, selling one house and paying cash for another for the other two sets. Doesn’t that make more sense than socking all your money away? Your home is the most accessible investment of all.
It’s not that I spend all my time reading financial advice from people I usually don’t agree with. But as a one-income family in a world of doubles, I’m a “frugalista” who’s always looking for another way to pinch pennies. The way I see it, I’ll stick with what I know we can afford, and what I have seen firsthand success with, rather than “investing” in the advice of strangers who seem to have no idea how anyone could actually live on what we live on. (Side note: the one time a financial planner did come to our house, he about shit his pants, after driving up in his Mercedes, when we told him we had no car payments. Is this really the person I need to be listening to?)
Step Write Up 