Correspondence

Dear stretch marks
on my thighs,
Why? I give you
my belly, rightly so.
Please don't take my
right to wear shorts.

Dear appetite, I can't
remember what it's like to crave
fajitas or pizza or queso, to say
I want or know what I want
of food. But let's keep this up
post-baby so I can lose
the weight and continue to live
on cereal.

Dear baby, I'm okay
with you kicking, sticking
an elbow into my rib, because
it means you're trying out joints,
learning how to dance, stretching
those limbs that might be long
like your father's or asserting your
own right to motion like me. I'll take
the proof of your heartbeat, the quake
of your meaning, your good morning
and good night, even when I need
to sleep.

Lessons

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest ... shapes it, renders it, loves it.” – Joan Didion

"The art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood." – Eudora Welty

"You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others — why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion ... but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose." - Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“Stories teach us how to be human. As I understand it, becoming fully human means learning to savor the world, to share in community, to see through the eyes of other people, to take responsibility for our actions, to educate our desires, to dwell knowingly in time and place, to cope with suffering and death. … We need one another. Yet our souls and communities are divided by fear and ignorance and strife. We walk in beauty, yet much of what we do is ugly. We inhabit a magnificent planet, yet we devour our home. Stories are not instruction manuals; they do not teach us in any simple way how to lead our lives. By inviting us to participate in imaginary lives, however, they deepen our understanding and enlarge our sympathies for other people, for other creatures, for the places and purposes that human beings share, and for the earth. That is a good beginning." – Scott Russell Sanders, “The Power of Stories”

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015

On life, on loss

Baby is squirming now, sometimes nudging. I felt the first true jolt the afternoon after our sonogram and then all that weekend. It was like the baby knew we had been looking at her/him and wanted us to know she/he had something to say, that her/his arms were meant for moving. But we're largely still coexisting quietly. Almost 24 weeks already. 16 more to grow. Except for a few days when it has felt like I'm stretching, being pushed from the inside out (which I am), I still can't complain.

I miss Snickers. I'm mad that Snickers was taken so suddenly, that she was alive one second and dead the next. I'm mad at the neighbor cats who still lurk for her and her food in the morning when I back out of the driveway, mad at the car that hit her, mad that I didn't bring her inside that night. But she had a good life, a happy life, a much-loved life. I gave her eight years of mine, adopted her on clearance from the back bottom cage at the PetSmart in Topeka, stuck with her through peeing-on-my-bed spells and packed her up with me wherever I moved. I loved her, and I will always love her, and I will keep expecting her face on the back step when I open the door.

But I can't complain. Last night nine people were murdered during a prayer group at a church in Charleston, shot by a young man who they had welcomed in. The fact that some people can carry so much hate with them that they would hurt people in their most vulnerable and trusting state is unfathomable.

The fact that some people think more guns is the solution to gun violence is unfathomable.

The fact that our governor can boast that allowing concealed carry without a permit is a win for our state because it protects the second amendment, that you can buy a gun and carry it into a zoo, a daycare, a grocery store at your whim, is unfathomable.

The fact that our governor can claim a .5 percent sales tax hike statewide is not a tax increase, while 330,000 small businesses pay no income tax, is unfathomable.

The fact that people are "trading in" their aging pets for young ones at shelters, and that people are posting photos of these dogs as they watch their owners abandon them, is unfathomable.

I am sensitive to injustices, feel it in my gut the people and animals that are sacrificed just so a select few can feel powerful. This is what I am bringing my child into: a delusional world where fear begets fear. Can I raise my child to combat this? To be the change in the world I wish to see? I believe I can, but it scares me. It scares me because I can't control the decisions other people make. I can't stop the car in the night from hitting my cat. I can't prevent a hateful man from entering a church. I can't shake leaders out of the grip of money and power. I can't make you love your dog until death.

But that is part of making yourself vulnerable, of living with wholeheartedness. If you shut out the bad, you also shut out the good. If you turn off your trust, you turn away everyone. If you don't walk into life expecting good, you will only experience the bad. And who wants a life filled with fear?

Trust, my child, but be aware. Love, my child, but know that hurt may come. Sing, my child, but listen to all of the other voices. We are all in this together.

Snickers, my sweet

We lost this precious girl today. Snickers, nearly ten, was my companion when I had no other in grad school. She moved with me across the country and kept me company in the South until we got Scooter, and she moved with me across the country again to be part of our family in Kansas. 

She loved love, and she loved. She purred loud, continuous, like she couldn't help it. She drooled when she was happy to see you. She pawed you so you'd kiss her head. 

In these last two years in Hutchinson, she's been the happiest of her life. She got to go outside at last, now that we're settled, and she kept to the house and yard for the most part. She climbed trees. She followed Scooter and me on walks. She jumped on the back step the moment I opened the door in the morning for breakfast. She greeted the car in the driveway when I got home. She let Jack hold her, stretched, and carry her around the house. She welcomed Scooter's sniffs when she walked in the door. 

I wanted her to know the baby, and I wanted the baby to know her. She never hurt anyone, except for her claws that dug into you when she was happy and kneading. They would have loved each other. She would have welcomed the baby into the family. 

But a car in the night took her too soon. I had a bad feeling today, a feeling that something wasn't right. She wasn't at the door this morning. She didn't walk up the driveway when I was cleaning out the car. Something felt off. So when a neighbor walked up and asked if we had a tabby cat with white paws and a white chest, I knew it was because she'd found her. I could tell by her tail sticking out of the plastic bag that it was her, and all I could do was think but she's been so happy, but she's been outside for two years, but she'd just gotten her shots, but she's the healthiest she's ever been, but she got her weight down to her pre-adoption weight, but how will I tell Jack, but I just saw her last night, but she's too sweet to be hit by a car and die with noone see her and noone to know.

Phillip and I buried her in the backyard. How do you say goodbye? You look at photos of the girl in her favorite spots. You look at photos of her and Scooter, friends across species, a lesson for us all. My favorite thing was the two of them together. My favorite thing was Jack saying "Snickers, Snickers. Can I hold her?" My favorite thing was seeing her stretched out in the sun, rolling back and forth when I came up to her, and rubbing her sweet, soft belly while she drooled with happiness. Goodbye for now, Snick Snack/Lady Bear/Snicks/Snickerdoodle/Snickerlove, but we're keeping you with us for always. 

Last Sunday, the last photo of Snickers. In the arms of Jack, who loved her.