beer can be glory
in an Oregon winter
as soothing as warmth
seasons
This Is Why I Will Strike
I just want to think about how hard-won this moment is. This day. This five of us skiing down a mountain together. This money we didn’t have before that we have now.
This fresh powder.
This view. Could you beat that view if you went anywhere else in the world? Well, could you?
I don’t want to think about the five years we, a family of five, lived on a frozen, constituents-unwilling-to-vote-on-a-mill-levy teacher’s salary of $48,000. The $10,000 out-of-pocket expenses we paid to give birth to our third child. The penny-pinching. The laying-out-$400-every-three-months to earn those goddamn fifteen credits so I could get a raise if I … changed school districts.
I don’t want to think about how Spain screwed me out of a decent salary and we came home afterward with $19,000 in debt, more than any we’ve had as a married couple.
I don’t want to think about the TWO 1998 cars we have outside our house right now, car-payment free.
I don’t want to think about a teacher’s strike. I don’t want to think about my refugees trekking across town on two buses and being huddled into the auditorium to wait, without teachers, the long seven hours until they trek back, because if they don’t wait, they might not have a meal that day.
About the hundreds of hours I, and every teacher I know, has put into grading, planning, meeting, educating (ourselves and them), in the ten months between August and June. Hundreds of hours outside our contract day listening to students tell us their traumas that are greater than any soul could bear, listening to our admin and school district rate us as failures when we wake before dawn and go home after dusk to bring our best selves into that classroom every day, listening to our coworkers decide between renting a slumlord shithole or buying a house an hour away…
Listening.
I don’t want to think about the thousands of union workers who died for this day. For this choice. For a society where corporate greed is not the only answer.
I just want to see my husband and my three girls gliding down this Colorado slope, this Colorado hope.
I want to ski. To smile. To rejoice.
I don’t want to go on strike.
But I will.
Just like I walked in and out of Manual High School in 1994 when my teachers asked me to support them.
Just like I lived on pittance pay for the early part of my children’s lives.
Just like every other union member everywhere who’s looking to find empathy in the eyes of the corporate monsters that rule our society.
I will strike.
And I will ski.
And we will win ourselves a bluebird day.
Resolution
second chance new year
we win with packed powder runs
and hope to move on
Almost Invisible
I wish I could say I am a set of skis, but this is not the case. If I were a set of skis, I’d be flying down the mountain right now, powder billowing up around me in glittery fury. I’d be turning over moguls and clapping flakes off from the lift and racing my daughter’s skis down.
I’d be free.
But I am not a set of skis. I am a louse.
I am the louse found at the nape of my oldest’s neck, as pale brown as her hair, almost, almost invisible.
I am the louse that enters your classroom and tries for twenty minutes to think of positivity and negativity and mix it all together with nits for words in an online documentation that we all try to wash away with Nix.
I am the louse that enters your friendship, trying so hard to show you how genuinely I love you, laying my eggs in every place you thought you’d never find in hopes that with one, with just one minuscule combing, you’d choose to keep me there, tenacious and prolific and ever-loyal to the warmth of your scalp.
I am the louse that enters my classroom, sneaking between desks, reaching out with my frail antennae in the somewhat-silent attempt to encourage students to reach up, scratch, and move their eyes away from their phones and onto the idea, just the idea, that a good comb-through could bring them an education.
I am the louse hiding at the base of the bristle on the brush, in the stitches of the winter hood, in the soft cotton bedding bought from the bargain store. Waiting. Breathing in my twenty-four hours of life one solitary pull of oxygen at a time, hoping for a single strand to clasp, to scurry up, to hold on to until I reach the warmth of humanity, until I can rejuvenate my weakened heart with the blood of someone else’s life.
I am the louse of motherhood, the constant irritation of teen angst wishing to be rid of me, my frail footprints finding no real response to my desperate attempts to make a home on these humans’ hearts.
If I were a set of skis, I’d be flying across a Colorado bluebird day. Over mountain passes. Into a bowl so deep with powder you couldn’t find your tips.
But I am a louse. And lice don’t ski.
They breed.
Red Riding Frame
no one can beat this:
even in winter, red rocks
perfectly frame us
A Bright Spot
no matter how cold
this tainted world can be
he’s here to hold me
Union Station
that blue sky beauty
that draws the world to us
through transportation
bleeds through their smiles
their too-cold impatiences
their want for fire
Denver can bring it
can bring them all to glory
to what we could be
Still Holds Them
my teen girls cherish
our holiday traditions
cookies. candies. love.
never a year missed
as friends and family take turns
giving all colors.
Boxes
It’s not like when they were little. When getting the Christmas tree brought all the joy and excitement of the season. When they would clamor over each other, fighting for their chance to be the one to put the angel on the advent calendar on Christmas day. When nothing mattered more than preparing for the joys of the season.
Now, lethargically, with little effort and a few forced smiles, they give up on decorating the tree halfway through the ornaments.
“It looks good enough,” they whine. “Can we be done?”
I see that all the large paper and playdough ornaments still sit in the box, their imperfect candy-can cut-outs laying on top of the crumbling Christmas-tree dough.
“But what about these? Your preschool ornaments that you made?”
“They’re too big. They’re not as nice as the other ornaments. They don’t matter.”
“They don’t matter? But you made them for us when you were…”
But I can’t finish. Mythili cuts me off. “We’re not getting rid of them, Mama. Don’t freak out. We’re just keeping them in the box.”
We’re just keeping them in the box. We’re just pretending to smile. We’re just going through the motions of the “magic.”
I don’t even like this holiday. How could I? I wasn’t exactly raised a Christian. I’ve just gone through the motions myself all these years. The lights, the tree, the advent calendar (homemade), the decorating of cookies, the baking of zucchini bread, the holiday cards, the portraits with matching outfits, the pies, the hours waiting in line to waste money on Santa pics, the presents.
Trying to build traditions. Memories. A family.
But now, not even grown, not even gone, they are boxing up their childhoods, their simple joys, their everything I’ve tried to build for them.
No one will ever tell you how hard parenting is because it is impossible to describe. From the midnight collicky cries to the ambivalent teen and everything in between, it is a constant struggle to raise a well-balanced, sentimental, sweet, and loving set of small human beings.
Yet, we keep trying. We keep putting up trees and stringing lights and playing Christmas music and baking cookies and trying to take every ornament out of the box.
We keep hoping that they’ll remember this. These small moments, these annual events, these attempts to win their love.
We keep hoping that they won’t leave us in a box as they grow.
But it is only a small hope. 
Christmas Cards
snail mail still brings joy
with a holiday handful
stamped for those we love
Step Write Up 