Now Appearing at a Blog Near You--a Poem!

Lately I've been free-writing prose poems at night in my journal.  It's a fun exercise and a way to capture and crystalize a thought.  I was happy-ish with the way this one came together.

Thank you, I said to the orchid

When the last blossom folded its mottled white wings

And floated gently down to the counter.

I release you now, I said.

I’d bought the orchid one day soon after my father died.

Looking at it gave me soft comfort,

Made me think of my father the gardener,

Who told me I needed to discipline myself,

To resist the temptation to plant things too close together

So that each plant would have the space it needs to grow.

Like people.

The orchid bloomed and bloomed.  

Then stopped.  

Then bloomed and bloomed.

Then stopped.

Then bloomed again.

And I believed my father somehow had a hand 

in all that wild unexpected blooming from a grocery store orchid

And I also believed that when the blooming stopped for good

My heart would break all over again.

Until recently.

The blooms were gone from the green stick-insect stems, 

had been gone for a while this time and I felt . . . fine.

So I said I release you now. 

You’ve done your job.

I can manage from here.

I lifted my orchid from the counter to take it outside

And give it back whole to the ground

Because from dust to dust

But noticed that another tiny half-hidden bud

Was willing itself to be.

Thank you, I said to my father.

What I Love About TRQ

She called right now to ask if it's snowing in SLC.

ME:  Yes.

HER:  Are your snowflakes fat?

ME:  I'll look.

HER:  Well, I looked and the snowflakes here are fat.  Some of them are little and dainty though, but Doodle [one of TRQ's poodle-types] likes to bark at the fat ones.

And at this point TRQ sighed happily.  "Isn't Nature amazing?"

Yes.  Yes, it is.  And it's equally amazing to have people in one's life who notice and who take delight.

Thank you, Mary Oliver

. . . for this poem, "The Journey."  And for all the others, too.  RIP.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,  though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble  and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save.

When a Butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world . . .

. . . it causes a hurricane in another part of the world.

I've been thinking a lot lately (because I'm old now) about the long-range unintended consequences of certain actions.  Take the Writers' Guild strike in 2007-2008, an action I completely supported because when you looked at the puny percentage writers were being paid for successful  projects (the guy who wrote the screenplay for Forrest Gump, for example, hardly made anything) you  said UNFAIR!  Or at least I did.

Anyway, the strike gave rise to reality TV, which was a way for networks to keep producing content.  And what they discovered was that reality TV is cheaper to produce AND also there's an appetite for it.  Enter Donald Trump and The Apprentice.  David Frum, George W. Bush's speechwriter, had interesting things to say in this article about how Trump's image as a titan of industry and business was actually crafted and burnished by the producers.  And yeah.  That's the Trump that the American public saw and that't the Trump they elected.

So there you have it.  Writer's strike.  Reality TV.  The Apprentice.  And now this moment in America where our president is refusing to sit down at the high school lunchroom table with our allies and having keggers up the canyon with a former KGB agent instead.

White Teeth

I'm watching FBI right now, a new show which I actually like.  BUT.  I am so distracted by how WHITE everybody's teeth are.  The characters don't often smile given the fact they're busy busting drug kingpins and so forth, but when they do . . . WHOA!  I AM BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! (Also, I'm revved up like a deuce.) (Also, I'm another runner in the night.)

I definitely like white teeth.  Some days I do nothing all day long but sit on the front porch and think about how much I like white teeth.  I want whiter teeth myself, in fact.  But I'm trying to decide if so much white-ness is actually a good look. #firstworldgrooming

Dylan

Dear Dylan,

This time 35 years ago I was holding you in my arms at LDS hospital, rejoicing in the perfection of you.  It was snowing outside, the flakes wide and soft landing against my dark window pane.  I'd had a few visitors earlier, of course.  Your dad.  Your two older brothers.  Grandma.  Aunt Becky, who was working at the hospital at the time.  Also some people from the ward I didn't know very well who came and stayed FOREVER which taught me that short visits to people in the hospital are the best.

After I was alone I held you close and said a silent thank you to the all the stars in the universe for sending me another boy.  And I have been so grateful for you ever since.  For your loyalty, your sense of humor, your absolute tenacity, your kindness.  It hasn't always been an easy go for you.  But I can truthfully say you always have and you always will make me proud.

Happy birthday.

Mom

The More Things Change . . .

The more they remain the same.

So last night at the store I shelved baby board books with these titles.

Feminist Babies
A is for Activist
(And my personal favorite) Baby Loves Green Energy 

When I first started writing for kids a million years ago, the mantra was DON'T PREACH! Because of course that's what kids books often did.  Preached.  They had morals, don't you know, like Aesop's fables.  And the sentiment when I started up was that you shouldn't preach--that a story should be a story and if there was a takeaway from the story, fine.  But an agenda shouldn't be the reason for writing the story in the first place.

This is a principle I have taught my own students and, frankly, it's a principle I still subscribe to.

HOWEVER!  First World America, which has honorable and admirable intentions, clearly didn't get the memo.

Different agenda.  Same religious fervor.