bid for connection
[ JUNE ]
As the sun set on an off-grid paradise, we ate s'mores and conversation swung wildly between impassioned rants about motherhood under patriarchal capitalism and x-rated 'would you rathers.' Suddenly, one of my dear friends lifted her head and said:
Oh man. Lane's gonna write a poem about this...like friends in the sunset, the beautiful light on the lake...and stuff like that.
And we all laughed because of the accent she used while mimicking poetry (vaguely British) and because of the accuracy of what she said (quite) and because of her prophecy and because of my propensity I'm here to tell you in the least poetic way possible:
Let people know you. Trust platonic love. Take a day off. Spread your dinner across the entire kitchen and over several hours. Say yes to hot sauna don't fear cold water. Don't let mean girls of your past and petty women of your present take the joy from the friendships of your future. You've got this. We've got you.
My child plays saxophone now, which in and of itself is a bid for connection between music and self. And it's a reminder to me to continue to make bids on my own behalf.
A reminder to follow your threads. To learn new things. To let other things go. To follow joy more than mastery. To introduce woodwind instruments to our household and bring more music to our lives.
Plus, Lisa Simpson is an icon.
More music. More instruments. More bids on our own behalf.
The handmade pillow that used to hold my baby teeth before I dubiously handed them over to the tooth fairy for cash now holds all the baby teeth of my youngest child, who has always abstained from engaging in tooth fairy lore in keeping with her personality type.
The question of why we are saving them is unanswerable, something to do with a deep sentimentality that I struggle with, but when the kitten I adopted to comfort us knocked the pillow down and scattered the teeth, I can tell you that I cried.
Because I'm a poet encased in a skeptic and that miniature mess suddenly seemed like a massive metaphor, though I was too busy salvaging tiny teeth to tell you exactly what for.
Something to do with time passing, memory making, artifact handling, and a specific approach to whimsy.
I collected as many as I could.
I assume the tooth fairy came for the rest.
It's impossible to describe the way deep concern combined with utter unsurprise when I discovered that lilacs are non-native (dang it) but also non-invasive (phew) where I live. Because lilac season here is a spectacle that people build their personality around for a few shorts weeks each year. The most picturesque and aromatic moment of spring that follows the wet, cold months before, is actually something that was brought here and doesn't (technically) belong here. A reminder that how and where we feel at home evolves over time, time before we were even noticing and when we didn't know why we'd need home so badly.
