a scary moment
can instantly change to love
if you choose your words
On Tiptoes
a scary moment
can instantly change to love
if you choose your words
working mother
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.
Seasonal Joy
semester’s endings:
our girls of many talents
fill our life with love
Pennies on the Pound
was this small reward
worth 200 work hours?
yes, yes, yes, fuck yes.
A Bluebird Afternoon
so simple, really:
the teens play cabin boardgames
while we ski for love
Birthday Painting
a new coat of paint
and rearranged furniture
can change your outlook
Middle Childhood
to celebrate love:
she’s fifteen on the fifteenth
surrounded by stars
The Rush. The Run. The Race.
My daughter’s face perfectly encapsulates my day, my motherhood, my career. Straining to run through the burning sun of a late summer day, pushing the limits of what she’s run before, and wishing for a closer finish line.
Disgruntlement at a too-hard, too-narrow concrete runway, making it nearly impossible, impassable.
Fear that her time will be worse than before, that the heat will beat her, that the world will beat her.
A sliver of hope for that final push, that final lap, that is just around the corner yet feels like twenty thousand steps too far.
In the background, teens cheer. “You got this!” “Just one more mile!” “Keep it up!”
Parents chase the runners, crossing the park’s midsection while they wrap their legs around its exterior shaded walkways. Parents trying to get the next best vantage point to capture that pic, that glimpse of angst that is in every athlete’s face.
Coaches stand on the sidelines, their own cheers tight with passion, with expectation and longing. “Lift your legs!” “Raise up those arms!” “Just like at practice!”
Her expression, their words, the globally-warmed, never-ending sun, beat down on the tumble of meetings that began and ended my day. The constant admonishments from my administration. The constantly shifting expectations and placement of people in power at my school district. The constant lack of a curriculum for the students who need it most and don’t have the right words, the right expression, to beg for that finish line. The constant task of preparing three hours of sometimes-failing lesson plans I must place in front of my Newcomers.
The rush–my god, the rush. Three weeks back, adding item number one thousand and seventy-three to our Google family calendar, Bruce rearranging his ever-strict hours to be able to make this meet, the shuffle of only-two cars, three girls in three activities with varying times, my after-work meeting, my cycle down the bike path, my fifteen-minute window to cross a park three times to gather this glimpse, my Torchy’s Tacos stop, bike locked and unlocked, bathroom locked and unlocked but only with a code, taco bag ripped on the rush up the elevator, only to find a buffet of snacks waiting in the final meeting room. My race to beat the moon home because it would never be light enough, our car in the shop for nearly six weeks, and I don’t even have time to fix the chain on my bike, let alone buy a decent headlamp.
All of this is in my daughter’s face. All the angst, the cheers, the backtalk, the doubts.
And just like her, I am racing to the finish line. It is never close enough, but both of us, somehow, have made it today. We have made one more race, one more step, towards what we hope will be better on the other side.
And that is enough. For today, it is enough. 
Bleed Purple
first Newcomer year
brings the joy of teaching back
at career’s midpoint
Step Write Up 