Back when I was in high school, I thought the coolest costume ever was the year I borrowed my chemistry teacher’s labcoat and went as a mad scientist.
So can you see why I was so pleased with my daughter’s choice of costume this year?
And here is GameBoy, looking smashing as a monk of the Argent Dawn:
Such adorable kids. It’s awesome to see the way their personalities emerge through their creative costumery! :)
Our Toby kitty is ill again. We are holding out hope that her latest med cocktail might help her feel normal again, but also know that her condition does seem to be worsening over time…
It’s hard to be far away while she’s so ill. It’s hurts to love so much.
As part of organizing my new office at Chapman University, I’m moving most of my academic books from the shelves in my living room over to campus. Every time I pull a history book off the shelf it brings back memories of the specific graduate school seminar where we studied that work. So in packing the bags of books I’m also re-living much of my graduate school experience. There are so many memories held in those pages! Most of all, it is sitting around the seminar table in the basement of Murray Krieger Hall and grappling with the ways we imagine the past and the best practices for doing our own writing about it. I remember failures. And moments where I really “got” an idea as brilliantly as a lightbulb turning on inside my head.
My journey through graduate school has not been easy–balancing my family’s needs with my own need to write and study has meant major sleep derivation, and sometimes half-baked scholarship. In those seven years since I started graduate school I’ve battled a life-threatening illness, I’ve left my Mormon community behind, and I’ve become a person that would be hardly-imaginable to my 32 year-old self. When I signed up to get a PhD I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t all that!
So many of those thoughts where swirling around in my mind when I came across a dusty copy of The History of Tooele County. It was a gift from Mike Davis, the historian-writer who strongly urged me to attend graduate school and was an ardent supporter of my creative nonfiction writing. I’d written about my Utah family and their problematic relationship to the land that’s poisoned by the Kennecott mines that loom so close nearby. Mike talked with me about the Iosepa cemetery, which is one of my all-favorite burial grounds (a close second to the Pleasant Green cemetery). He understood the tensions I felt between my bone-deep allegiance to the place of my family and to the utopian promise of the “West,” while also validating why I felt so betrayed by the Mormon naivete that “all is well” in Zion. One day we walked along the beach in San Diego as we talked about all of this, and he asked me how I could continue to believe in the Mormon church, knowing all I did about its failings. I looked at my kids who were running in the waves alongside us and thought of Davis’ own wife who was about ready to give birth to twins.
“I love them so much,” I said, pointing to my kids. “How could I ever live with the constant overwhelming fear of losing them if I didn’t believe in eternal families? I can’t not believe that they will always be with me.”
He replied to me on an equally deep level, expressing his love for his children, and his fears for their futures.
There was something about walking along the rocks and sand and waves that cemented that interaction in my mind long after it was over, and all of that returned as I held the old book in my hands yesterday. It’s been a few years since I chatted with Mike and since then I’ve faced down a lot of fear. I no longer feel the same sense of needing to believe in Mormon cosmology to assuage my concerns about losing my children, even though I do constantly worry about their safety.
It brings to mind some favorite lines from a Mary Oliver poem, “Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith”:
And therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine,
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in dirtswing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.
It feels so luxurious to have a long holiday weekend! I’m loving the time with family and friends–I even played a board game last night for the first time since April! Such indulgence! :)
However, this morning I actually got up extra early snuck back to work for a few hours to do some much-needed furniture rearranging. It felt so good to make the changes that I’d been planning for months. Now I just need a few good plants, some artful color on the bookshelf, and some pictures on the walls. It’s amazing how much it’s starting to feel as if my office is actually mine now.
I also am knee-deep in one new web-based project that I’ll be debuting soon–it’s the culmination of many months of thought and planning. I can’t wait to share it with you…
So tell me, what are you doing this holiday weekend?
As I mentioned a few blogposts ago, my #genderd experiment is tomorrow! What I didn’t know when I rather randomly chose Sept 1 as the date for this experiment, was that it would involve the celebration of my wedding anniversary.
September 2nd is official 18th anniversary of the day I agreed to tie my life to John’s, but we’ll be doing part of our celebrating on the 1st. Which means that my tweets might end a bit earlier in the day than I’d originally planned (ahem).
So as a bit of an advance on the actual #genderd, this evening I’m posting this picture of John from not-quite 18 years ago. It was taken the day we brought our son home from the hospital, and it shows an aspect of John that I’ve adored over the years: he is an excellent parent to our children. And while various gendered expectations for men in our society might prescribe a role of a passive or an authoritarian parent, he is neither of those.
This self-portrait by my daughter is so gorgeous to me. Because it’s such a perfect rendering of her, and because of the skill used in making it so.
That it won a Silver Medal in a prestigious art competition is just icing on the cake. :)
We’re still enjoying our England tour, moving madly from one site/event to the next after having a few leisurely days in the Lake District.
I especially enjoyed our long train(!) tour up the Cumbrian coast to Carlisle and then back through the center of England. So many rolling hills, small plots of lands dotted with rock walls, sheep, and so so so much green. And trains. Did I mention trains?
As always, the kids are excellent travelers. They’ve survived some bad food, some awkward sleeping situations, and several long marches wearing heavy backpacks. But they aren’t complaining one whit! Their enthusiasm for this adventure is keeping me going–even when I’m exhausted and a wee bit grumpy (especially those times when I think I can hardly stand one more moment without a wireless connection)…
A few days ago, our Toby became very ill. Though we don’t yet know the mystery of why or how this happened, it appears that she suffered some neurological damage.
Every day since then she’s made leaps in recovery, and while she might never be the ladder-climbing mouthy kitty that she once was, we are hopeful she will recover many of her former abilities and her quirky personality.
Our friends who are caring for Toby sent this video of her eating–a remarkable moment considering how difficult it’s been to entice her to food.
Joy, indeed.
Some highlights from today include a walk-that-took-forever from the train station to our B&B, a ramble down a random footpath that led precisely to the place that we wanted to be, meeting an emo cow who insisted on sitting in the shade to write poetry, and wandering a ruined Abbey that inspired Wordsworth. Gameboy tried vinegar on his chips (did not like), Catgirl is eating salad everywhere because of so few vegetarian options, and we opted out of scones & cream this afternoon because we were too tired to really appreciate it. Oh, and did I mention trains? A gorgeous train ride through central England and into the southern Lake District.
We are on the top floor of a charming inn, and our view looks across a row of backyards. A clothesline with sheets flapping in the wind is so utterly charming. It’s just like Catgirl said when she ordered some tap water with her lunch…she took a sip and then smiled ear to ear. I asked her if the water was particularly good an she replied, “It doesn’t matter how it tastes…it’s England water!”
Waking up this morning in my own bed and the exact time (even w/o an alarm clock) that I usually do each morning…just felt so right! Irvine’s humidity is so delicious. the familiar birds chirping outside are my birds,” and so forth.
So…
We came home to something so important I’m not even sure that I can write about it cogently (and if this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, you can chalk it up to jetlagged delusion). Two weeks ago, just as we were preparing to leave on our trip, our beloved kitty TobyJoy had a severe neurological incident. So severe that she needed round the clock care. And as our lives were completely derailed by concern for her, we knew that we were also about to leave the country on this trip to England that was so super-important to my kids–both of whom are Anglophiles, and one whose biggest wild dream is to start boarding school in Wales next year. We were faced with this horrible catch-22 situation. TobyJoy needed to be brought to a quiet controlled environment if there was any chance of her healing, because over-stimulation was causing more seizures of the kind that initially caused her brain damage, but she was in such a state that she could hardly be cared for by anyone other than a family member. Boarding in her in a kennel simply wasn’t a good option. It was super hard for us to see Toby so ill (if you’ve never met her–it’s hard to imagine a cat with a more whimsical quirky character), and we were just aching with seeing her hooked up to tubes and so deeply drugged that she wasn’t aware of her surroundings. We wondered if it woudn’t be more humane to put her to sleep than to continue her medical trauma (and at that point it wasn’t even clear that she would ever eat or drink on her own again).
So..as all of these ideas were on the table and I was trying to make decisions, a dear friend who is studying neurology, whose research is specifically on small mammals, stepped in and offered to care for Toby so we could go to England.
She (along with her partner and some other friends), developed a round-the-clock schedule for caring for Toby once she was released from the ER. She ferried Toby to vet appointments, cleaned up after numerous toileting problems, prepared a specialized diet, and administered a dizzying amount of meds every day. All while we were traipsing the British countryside. Our friend wrote daily updates, sent videos, and worked with our vet to troubleshoot problems.
When we came home last night and met Toby, we found a kitty that’s still suffering from occasional seizures, but recognized Catgirl, held her tail high as she explored, vocalized pleasure at being around our family again, and now remembers how to use the litterbox. In short, she seems happy. Certainly a bit different than before, but happy.
As I tried (and failed) to express to our friend just how much it meant to us to have her care for Toby, she simply replied, “Your family had this summer planned where you were all out pursuing your dreams…I wanted you to be able to do that…”
Anything I try to write now, can’t even touch the goodness of that gift.