only my youngest
would agree to overalls
shared with her Mama
our shared high school life
is about to come to terms
with empty nest blues
Paint By Heart
truth
Silver Anniversary Trip, Day Seventeen
we’re the post office:
through wind, rain, sleet, clouds… weather
we weather the storm
just another day
in the life we’ve created
in sickness and health
Silver Anniversary Trip, Day Thirteen
this Funchal art walk
makes me miss my young artists
at home without us
yet we must adjust
with the empty nest so close
i can feel its grip
this trip is a test
to see what “just us” feels like—
we’re on sold ground
Silver Anniversary Trip, Day Twelve
ten thousand stone steps
slippery at dawn, at noon
as mist never stops
ten thousand reasons
to be afraid of this hike,
yet we keep trekking
ten thousand peak views
all in different shades of light
just like our marriage
ten thousand questions
when we married at twenty
look how far we’ve come
Ten to One
ten gallons of paint
in two shades of first-place blue
nine sets of hands working
on their shared day off
eight sets of curtains
washed and re-hung
seven stairs on each level
to paint between the cracks
six day deadline to
start a vacation, a new life
five day miracles happen
with many hands making light work
four levels to scrub grime
from walls, baseboards, and floors
three gallons of cleaner
to rub our hands raw
two levels of pet-pee-stained carpet
replaced at an affordable rate
one hell of a victory
for the life we work so hard to achieve
Second Baby, First Home
Notice to Quit
Form JDF-97. That is what I researched and printed, ready to post on the door today. The door of the house my husband and I bought at the ripe old age of 23, thank you Air Force and VA loan. Thank you for giving us this house that somehow sits under a dark cloud since we bought it, with every fixer-upper problem that ever existed, from an ever-flooding main drain to an ever-flooding basement to hail damage as thick and broken as my heart right now.
The house my second child was born in. The only house my children knew until we packed up everything and moved to Spain eleven years ago.
The house with the huge and expensive yard.
The house with the lilac bushes and the playground clubhouse.
The house with the two-car garage, the covered patio, the jetted tub.
The house Bruce thought we’d live in till we died, his Tennesseean tendencies so hard to break down.
It’s so hard to break down, this life, this shattered siding we “invested” in, this roof we’ve replaced once, this dumpster full of junk that isn’t ours, this tire swing that’s still there.
In my Subaru, sitting across the street with my youngest daughter and her forever friend, I had the “Notice to Quit” form next to me in the passenger seat; she had the tape; I had their phone numbers.
Instead, I took this picture. I saw them throwing things into the dumpster and loading things into the truck and never noticing us. I saw my life walk in and out, in and out of the empty garage, the giant spruce next door, the giant ash still growing in our backyard.
And I couldn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t confront the man with the arsenal of guns, the daughter and her girlfriend who’d lived there for years though she wasn’t on the lease, the broken siding, the unanswered insurance calls, the probably-leaking roof, the definitely-flooding basement we scraped everything together to finish… the loss.
The loss that is so profound when you quit. When someone gives you a Notice to Quit, the first step in the eviction process. The Life Eviction that is my second child moving out, barely 18, still that baby born in this room of THIS HOUSE, and wanting to live there now instead of living with us.
Look how proud we were, holding that baby in that tiny garden-level bedroom, Izzy just a bit apprehensive about her loss of “I’m the center-of-the-world status”, us in our twenties, in our home, our home, our home…
Her home.
There was no Notice to Quit. I didn’t get out of the car. Made a phone call instead. Quietly pleaded for the keys, the vacancy, the lease to end.
If you didn’t notice, I almost never quit.
And neither will she.
Scene Five from a Marriage
scene five from a marriage:
a broken spring equals a broken toaster
but not just any toaster
my bake-everything toaster
my savior to a shitty oven
my air fryer
my baker of brownies and pies
my upper-class kitchen in my middle-class house
i asked if he *thought*
it could be opened up and fixed
and before i’d moved the laundry
from the washer to the dryer,
he had the drill out.
you’ll never find this
i want to tell the world
my daughters
my soul at age nineteen when he walked
so uncertainly
into Pete’s Kitchen
but i did.
i found the man who’d drill a toaster
on a hellish Thursday
a Thursday dripping with tears and self-doubt
just another scene
from a marriage that works.
Shoot Photos
Bites and Pieces
There isn’t a photo today, unless my mantra-cup, “Bless This Hot Mess” can be my actual mantra. There is a meal, a beautiful meal that New York Times Cooking thinks a regular person can make in forty-five minutes. A meal that involves chopping then roasting cashews, skinning then mincing fresh ginger, garlic, chopping a bell pepper into bits, washing rice, slicing two-inch sections of green onions, and preparing cilantro. Also cutting and cooking chicken before the oven part. I don’t have a photo of my youngest and my husband and me, making a mess of this kitchen before I cleaned it, trying to make this meal in forty-five minutes between the three of us.
I just have this. This meal to eat while we listen to and argue about Bruce Springsteen (The BOSS) and discuss our days.
Oh, our days. Bruce was under pressure to change a card (a card as big as a board game and twice as heavy), Rio was under pressure to meet her social and familial weekend obligations, me under the pressure of society to not tell a student’s caseworkers that her foster mother isn’t good enough because.
Because there are no more foster mothers available. Because it isn’t horrible enough that her mother was murdered by the Taliban, and that she’s living in a home that doesn’t recognize or celebrate her culture or speak her language, because she may never see her brothers and father and baby sister again.
It isn’t enough. It is never enough. The crying, the screaming, the desire to be perfect, the accusations, the pain that seeps through every word, the trauma that breathes through every breath.
I wish I could just change a too-heavy card, or balance my sleepover with my obligation to my grandparents, or just be a kid or just be a human who doesn’t have to carry the weight of all these humans.
But I can’t. I can’t cook this meal in forty-five minutes, NYT Cooking, and you should stop lying to people. You can’t bring your mother back, and you should stop lying to people. You shouldn’t make false accusations, and you should stop lying to people.
People who could lose their jobs, their lives, and all the love they’ve given in twenty years of carrying the weight of these kids. People who put on a musical rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast just so my poor kids could see it. People who spend half of their summer taking your kids to every place they could ever imagine because they couldn’t see those places otherwise. People who love your kids as fiercely as you do and for some reason you can’t see it,
You can’t see me.
What does it mean to be a teacher in the twenty-first century? It carries a weight that you can’t imagine carrying because nothing, nothing is more enticing than a 24/7 entertainment device that every kid carries in their pocket. Nothing is more enduring than teenage love or parental defense. Nothing matters more than a grade. Nothing compares to the TikTok video or Instagram caption–not a cultural connection, a passion for language, or a pile of free clothes.
It is like this meal. Sticky rice coconut chicken. It has everything: cilantro, ginger, coconut milk, basmati rice, a yellow bell pepper, garlic minced to perfection, chicken broth, scallions, hot sauce, a dutch oven pan that fits into the best-ever toaster oven, a bubbling bite with perfect spice… Everything.
But it’s a lie. It’s not a Wednesday night meal. It does not take forty-five minutes to prepare.
It takes years, twenty years of patience and a pinch of forgiveness to make this possible.
And you can taste it in every bite. Every bite that you put in your mouth and every bite that bites you back.
Taste it. The creamy coconut, the sriracha, the beauty of the world swirling in the rice.
And bite back.
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