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.

for spirit week: twins
flower girls for surf’s up day
(glad to relish her)

in my backyard garden,
i grow zucchinis and beans
and lemon drop tomatoes
that pop with sweetness like a peach
when you pop them into your mouth.

i grow sugar snap peas and bright cornflowers
and peonies that sing for spring,
lilies that light up June,
and raspberries that show their blush
intermittently through three seasons.

i grow mint that makes mojitos
to cool the stress of a late summer evening,
and adds a spicy freshness to cold black iced tea,
a mum that has grown to twice its size
since last autumn’s dark planting,
yellow squash, misshapen and smooth,
to quickly toss into a rushed weeknight meal.

in my backyard garden, i grow children
who learn to clip the peonies to their knees,
who mow the lawn in erratic circles,
who search for the best recipes
for zucchini bread, lemon-drop salsa,
and cookies that make mouths water,
who cut and pull and cook and clean,
who grow into young women,
bright as a garden on a late summer day,
worth all the watering… the wait… the work.

i found my haiku:
 it hid under the bushes
 waiting for my words
 
 (sometimes i lose them
 at parties or fits of sleep
 but they wait with jest)
 
 tomorrow we’ll laugh
 at haikus we could have found
 if only we’d looked
 
 
 

catch me a moon, earthburned as bright as smoky suN
all from my street view

Whatever happened to marriage and kids? Is it a disappearing act? I hear young people (I’m not one of them anymore) telling me that kids are such a burden, that marriage is too traditional, that life is only worth living if you’re free. Maybe it’s true, because the weight of children, the responsibility of them, can be one of the heaviest weights in the world. No matter what we do, we feel we’re failing. And marriage can be weighty, too–full of twists and turns, loyalties and lies, stress and annoyances (it’s not romantic–it’s work, the work of making a relationship the most important part of your life, of prioritizing your spouse over everyone even when that’s hard to imagine doing when he says he wants to get rid of the meowing cats or when I buy too many things from Amazon without telling him).

Whatever happened to it, though? The thought of sticking to someone, to US, to our families? Instead of flippantly ending relationships for mundane reasons such as, “We don’t have anything in common.” Isn’t your love for each other something in common? Can’t you find things that you both enjoy? Can’t you commit to one person for life?

Whatever happened to the joy that children bring, sitting on top of that weight you carry after spending two hours on six problems of long division, tears dry now, reaching up and giving you her red-rimmed-eyes-wide, grateful hug? After dinner conversations where your teen, just a freshman, still opens up about the truth behind her teachers, her crushes, her plans with friends? About your middle child, oh, your middle child, who adapts to every situation, the school she doesn’t like but gets nearly perfect grades in, the troop she’s smack in the middle of and finds friends on either edge of the age spectrum, whose know-it-all attitude and dry humor is sometimes all one needs to laugh off the pain of the day?

Whatever happened to marriage? Both sets of my grandparents were married for more than fifty years, my in-laws as well, and today my parents celebrate the great forty-two. Forty-two years of trials and tribulations, failures and successes, raising two daughters to be both defiant and reserved, working through marital problems, money problems, commonality problems, and finding the answers in each other’s hobbies and habits and smiles.

My mother texted last week to tell me that the husband of what I would consider my third set of grandparents, who had celebrated seventy-two years of marriage and raised three children, had passed away early in August. He was ninety-two. He always had a white beard and dressed like Santa at Christmas. He hugged with his whole body, his arms up under your armpits as if he were going to lift you to the sky. He and his wife drove through every state at least twice and lived through open heart surgery, the death of two of their children, and every one of their friends.

But they had each other. They had their marriage, and it carried them through a long and beautiful life. Their marriage and their commitment to finding commonalities (he liked to drive and she liked to read, so she read aloud to him while he drove).

Is this a lost cause? Will there be no families in our future?

Whatever happened to the idea, the very idea, of truly being committed to something, someone, other than ourselves?

I hope our families, the very idea of families, aren’t lost between tweets and streaks and posts. Between the balancing act of too much and not enough. Between travel and “freedom” and climbing career ladders.

Because without the love and support and commitment of all of my grandparents and in-laws and parents, I wouldn’t know how to function as a human. Without his love, without their small smiles, without my marriage and my family, I would hardly be myself. And what would ever happen to me?

We live in a cruel world with an inhumane president. I was reminded this weekend, while camping in the wilderness, of how precious life can be. Also, that there are good people everywhere… Hiding in homes in the woods and taking in wandering Scouts, defending students from racist bigots on buses, teaching kids who so want to be here and have literally risked everything for an opportunity to call themselves American.
Let’s find the good people, band together, and make our world a better place.

Until then… Zucchini bread. Zucchini cookies. Because there are too many damn zucchinis and not enough sweetness. Or, as Kingsolver would say, “Zucchini Larceny.” (You’ll have to read the book, but I promise she’s one of the good people I’m talking about.)

I wake with the moonlight shining on the tent and a silence that steals the wind. In my mind I count: How many girls? How many fires? How many times did I tell them to listen?

I pull my sneakers on and face the moon, almost full, on my walk to the bathroom, five hundred yards up the mountain. I carry a small battery-operated lantern that just makes the shadows scarier, so I change my light to moonlight only. My ghost-white guide carries my soul, my remorse, up the slope and into the bright fluorescence.

This could have been a much darker night. There could have been clouds, or rainfall, or hovering smoke from California fires. There could have been searchlights, and fear, and loss.

Now, at 2 a.m., the quiet peace of a mountain moon mocks me. My hands still shake, my stomach still rumbles, and I wonder if I will be capable of settling in to sleep.

We are brave, the girls and us. We light fires and jump off cliffs into questionable swimming holes; we explore mountainsides at dusk and flippantly toss our worry to the wind.

We have raised them this way: free range parenting. It’s a catchphrase tossed around too often, and today it got tossed around too sharply in my mind, in my hurried steps up and down a trail into the wilderness, the sun chasing the moon across the peaks in a silvery pink dance of beauty that could never be captured in the same moment of terror.

Yet, I captured it anyway. I took out my phone, snapped the pic, and hoped with everything inside of me that we were just on a hike. That it wasn’t almost dark. That they were safe.

Because sometimes a sunset is what we need to stay rational. Sometimes we need a midnight awakening in the pale light of the moon, a phone call at twilight, a faith in ourselves and our ability to forgive.

As I make my way back to the camp under the silvery shadows of the moon, I sneak down to their tent. All seven of them are in balls of sleeping bag exhaustion, the weight of our adventure heavy enough to allow them a deep sleep well into the morning. They are not chattering away on the picnic table as they did last night, stuffy noses from colds keeping them awake, their midnight jubilance keeping the rest of us up. They are as soundly asleep as I have ever seen, the terror of just hours before incomprehensible to their subconscious.

They are ours. Hers and mine, theirs and… ours. Safe, under the lilting light of an almost-full moon, ready for the sun to rise again. Ready for another sunset over these mountains, for another adventure, for a gap that next time we will fill with songs and shouts and working phones and paths that lead to… somewhere.

I follow the light of the moon back to my tent. And just like I tried to when I was sixteen, I almost catch it.

But, like their footsteps too far forward on the trail, its shifting light cannot be captured. Its translucent beauty can only guide my footsteps, one at a time, until the light of day can let us all begin again.

for the man at Grease Monkey
 who opened the pit door
 and shouted at the employees,
 “Hey! Don’t touch the tires!!”
 and made a real estate phone call
 and brushed away the employees
 who came to consult,
 who then belligerently insulted
 the client who turned down your services,
 who waved your hand at the employee
 trying to speak to you as if
 he were a petulant fly,
 who pretended that your male.
 macho.
 White.
 Asshole.
 Privilege was the ruler of this Thursday?
 
 I see you.
 I hear that voice.
 And my combat-boot-wearing,
 balding, tattooed companion looked straight into my knowing eyes when you left,
 because
 We.
 See.
 You.
 
 And your voice is dying.
 Your uptight,
 world-is-my-oyster reign
 is coming to its bitter end,
 just as your former client
 informed you.
 
 
 
 

in my honors class
(first i’ve taught in my career)
the students try hard

in my other class?
they’re in a class by themselves
flailing for a chance

if i could flip it
my honors kids could help them
changing all classists

but we’re classified:
trapped within our chosen class
with no way to pass