jitterbug

Saying I'm slowly becoming totally freaked out is probably an understatement. I've never done anything so untraditional before, this move that makes most people go wide eyed is almost here. We are jumping off into something and as with any major change I've ever experienced in my life I'm settling into panic. How the hell will we do this?

There are so many things to do and most of them are unknown. I remind myself to breathe, that I am choosing this, but the 2am jitters have settled in.

I'm not writing much because I don't know what to say. Leaving my job, moving, resettling in a foreign place, all while the world seems to be crashing down around us and everyone else is hunkering down. We are either wildly courageous or ridiculously naive. Or both.

I think I need a hug.

sliding doors

I was at the grocery store last night and noticed a woman sitting outside panhandling. She asked me for some change so I stopped to talk to her and to give her a few bucks. She didn't have a place to sleep and was obviously struggling with some mental health issues. I asked her if she knew about our program and she did but didn't think she could stay there because she'd lost her ID. I assured her that wouldn't be a problem but she persisted, a long rambling dialogue about district attorneys and some other things I didn't really understand.

I asked her if she would be willing to go if I promised she'd get a bed and she said yes so I pulled out a card and wrote please give N__ a bed tonight on it and handed it to her. I realized that a better thing to have done would have been to drive her there myself but I didn't offer that, because I felt nervous for what was probably no good reason. While I was sitting on the curb with her a man stopped and handed me a couple of bucks. This isn't the first time I've been mistaken for a homeless person and yet I felt the urge to say Hey dude, I'm not homeless but instead I thanked him and handed her the money because it felt insulting to define myself so separately from her. She thanked me for passing on the cash and I got up and left her there sitting in the cold.

I felt like an asshole the whole way home for leaving her there and when I came in the house I told J about it and he said what do you want me to do, drive back and pick her up and take her to the shelter? Well yes, actually. I replied. But he wasn't going for it and I couldn't blame him because I wasn't comfortable doing it either. Sometimes the fear keeps me silent, keeps me from doing what is right. I think of M in those moments and my ultimate responsibility to her but it doesn't really assuage the fact that a woman was still out in the cold, her destination several miles from where I left her.

home of the brave

Our second baseball excursion was much less eventful. The Sox lost (blah) and we didn't see a single fight. I did see the churro man though, and I smiled at him broadly and thought of all of you.

I always struggle with the American national anthem. It's a strange feeling because I feel all resistant as it starts and then I get all choked up during. I've never been a huge fan of red rockets glaring and the like. And I am always confused at the end by the land of the free and the home of the brave....everyone goes nuts during that part and I always wonder what identification with this bravery means. In the historical context there have been many instances of incredible bravery, but bravery costs, if not us, them. Or us and them. We. And it feels sullied with wicked wars and capitalism, fear and greed. Individuals are brave, we endure, we stand up. But we as a nation seem rather afraid of a lot of things. What does it really mean to be brave in the west today? How do we demonstrate our bravery in the midst of so much fear?


Check out these apples. I don't know if it's brave, but it sure as heck is beautiful and generous and kind and just. If you haven't had a chance to get in on our Just Post Fundraising Project then be sure to check it out becauase we've got a few more days to raise the roof. We plan on featuring the grand total next week right after the Just Post Roundtable. Makes me feel all warm inside, just thinking about it.

scaredy cat

my parents are in town this weekend, a blessing overall and yet sometimes not. our house is incredibly small, adding two more people inside it's walls reduces the space, air quality seems forced at a time when i need to be taking great giant gulps of air. on top of that j is sick, has been sick, sick all week.

i've retreated at the predawn hours on a sunday to a local coffee shop, stepping over sleeping people on my way out the door. work is filling my lungs from within, projects yet to be finished and sweeping changes in the process of being made.

and yet as i sit in this still small morning instead of using the time wisely my mind drifts to my child, this child of my heart and all the ways we teach them to fear.

we have some rules already; no talking about monsters unless in response to M's questioning, no joking about dark places. but fear is everywhere, used sometimes as a game while grandma pretends to be afraid when M puts on lion mask and chases her around the room. scary! she says. so scary! to which M says me scared too, gramma! mom, i say, the downer at the party, it isn't scary. it's funny, it's adorable, but it's not scary. i realize you are kidding, but she listens to your words and somewhere deep inside must wonder why this earns the label of scared.

you are right, she said, you are right. and stops. a small victory.

be careful, we holler, as M climbs down steps or rides her bike. you could fall, echoes in her ears as she races past.

there were monsters at school today, M screeches on our way home last week. monsters? I would have liked to meet them. I love monsters. in fact, they are my favorite. No mommie, they are scary! i scared! Scared? I say, did one of the monsters scare you? yes! she exclaims. How, baby? and there is nothing to say, a process in her head still to complicated to put into words, but yet it's there, the fear.

I want her to be fearless, to laugh in the face of monsters, to know she has all the resources in the world to keep herself safe, and yet i am achingly aware of her vulnerability. On the surface I can be diligent, aware, careful. I can screen out books that reference being afraid of the dark or fear of monsters. And there are practical things to fear in this world, the balance of that staggers me regularly, I can't pretend that isn't true.

But what about the fear I carry around with me every single day? The fear of failure, of insecurity, of vulnerability. Of making the wrong decision and falling short? Of not being a good mother, partner, daughter, human? How do I wear my fear and what bigger lesson do I teach M by it's presence?

And worse is the hypocrisy, because monsters scare me too, but it's the unknown ones around the corner rather than the ones under the bed.

fear, her cold fingers around my neck

I was afraid on our trip. And I feel somewhat ashamed in admitting that fear. I go to these places to be fearless, and yet, I feared.

That we'd be ambushed on a dirt road in the car, held hostage. Shot. It may or may not have been the guns. It may or may not have been the stories of not going out after dark, of the particularly high murder rate, of the gangs.

It held me back. J wanted to explore and I would hold back. Hold backing with the banner i am a mother now, i can't go around being careless and creating an irreversible situation that M will be stuck with. But truth be told, I hid behind that. The fear, see, was more irrational than rational. And if anything, it made me feel old.

Because the reality was that amidst all the stories of danger, the warnings, the words of advice, we saw not one thing to make me fearful. Never once were we in a situation that was dangerous. Not even when we were pulled over by the police. In my mind, for those few minutes, I thought, this is it. This. is. it. But it was exactly the opposite. Friendly words exchanged, allowances for the idiocies of the gringos, and directions offered.

Fear. It's a major obstacle and motivator in my life. One that has wasted time and space and living. One I hate to admit to.

Fear, see. She gripped me on this trip, out of my element. Not all the time, but enough of the time that it felt like the old wooden yokes I saw around the necks of the oxen the farmers drove down the highways. Like the bars on the doors and windows. Like the helplessness I felt when seeing the dirt floors inside the corrugated shacks where some women raise their children, unimaginable, restricting, shameful that any child must be raised sleeping next to pigs and on a dirt floor.

It's humbling, fear. It reminds me of my vulnerability and of my responsibility.

The question is how to harness it, to use it for light instead of dark. To make it fluid rather than dusty and welded to my ribs. Because in retrospect, I missed some things. And the whole point, see, was to not miss a thing.

where the park gets a bit dodgy

Sometimes I ponder my own courageousness. I babble on and on about social issues and how we all need to remember the humanity of it all and on and on and so forth and repeat.

And then I am at the park yesterday, M and I are kicking it, doing slide tricks and squirrel chasing and other mack-daddy park stuff, and we'd (I'd) had enough and were heading back through the non-playground park area when a man whom I will assume is homeless by his carrying of his belongings and his rather tattery clothing (if you were just a dude on the way to the laundry mat, apologies) all of a sudden lunged at M and started yelling. Aggressive, the dingo ate my baby sort of yelling. Norman's mother in the shower yelling.

I am about 5 or so feet away from M at the time, who is now frozen in her wee tracks, and I grab her, and decide I am seriously freaked out. And my mind is colliding with thoughts: 1. stay calm, dude is ill, it's ok, just stay calm. 2. get the fuck away from my kid 3. just plain scared.

So instead of using my power voice I mumbled something like she's a baby, man, please, and took off. Scared get us out of here taking off. And as I did he said something about fucking off uptight white bitch.

Oh, the indignity. Part of me wanted to go back and say lookee here dingo baby eater, I am not an uptight white bitch, in fact, bastard fuck, I could probably HELP you, but you scared my kid, you shithead, and you scared me, and so I can't. I can't, and I AM NOT .

And I've been bothered since. Bothered because I deal with this sort of stuff from time to time at work and I am almost never afraid. But with M, I was fearful and protective, and yes, rightfully so. But on some level I suppose I thought I am still the person I am at work outside of work. And perhaps if M wasn't there I might have reacted differently, but perhaps I would have been just as scared. Perhaps it was just a scary thing. But then I wonder why I am still feeling bad about it.

And a little bothered (how wildly irrational is this?) by the label he gave me, the label representing, maybe, people who walk around and avoid him. But I wouldn't have done that if he wouldn't have scared us.

Or at least I sincerely hope that to be true. All I know is I want to model courage for M. She sees in me what I show her, and I showed her fear and disdain and a lack of compassion, even if he was a scary baby eating dingo. Because maybe he was just having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day instead.