Beneficial nematodes

I have drunk the kool-aid. Or rather, I have drunk the swamp goo. This is the second year in a row that my lovely squash plants have begun to grow insipid and die. It's all account of the squash vine bore - an evil greasy looking grub thing. Prior to discovering my new love, all of the books told me to get out there as the sun was rising, squat down and see if I can see those squatting bores chowing their way through my plant, then pull them off and kill them.

I'm not that kind of a gardener - organic, sure, but spending my morning pulling bores off my plants is just not going to happen. Enter the lovely beneficial nematode.

"Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic and live below the soil surface and like a moist environment. Looking like short non-segmented worms these voracious predators make their way through your lawn and garden looking for food. Nematodes do not harm worms, birds, plants or the environment, in fact they are part of the environment and are found the world over.

When the nematode comes incontact with a pest the attack by entering through body openings or simply by boring through the body wall, once inside the Nematode will release a bacteria that kills it's host within 48 hours. They will feed and reproduce before exiting in search of fresh prey."

Apparently, we fuck up the natural nematode order of things with our chemicals and construction and general damage to the ecocycle. But now we can reinsert them and let them microscopically munch their way through the big bad bores and other squishy cousins.

I will report back after I scatter my nemotode friends and watch to see my squash plants unfurl in companionable pride - their roots protected by their nematodies.

Twin Cities US Social Forum

I know, it's been four months since I last blogged. I am an incredibly part-time blogger. I am, however, pausing here to add a post about a new blog - the Twin Cities US Social Forum blog.

For those unaware of the US Social Forum, it took place in the last week of June and was a movement- building gathering in which 15,000 people from all over the country - mostly people of color with a significant queer and youth presence - gathered together to share workshops, strategies, lessons learned and visions for, literally, making another world possible. This was the US contingent of the World Social Forum - the WSF has the theme "Another World is Possible" and the US Social Forum carried the theme - "Another World is Possible, Another US is necessary".

A few months before the US Social Forum, a small group of us began to organize in the Twin Cities, seeking to help local activists get to Atlanta for the US Social Forum and working to begin building connections for an eventual focused and ongoing social justice movement building effort in the Twin Cities. There is extraordinary work happening here - particularly in immigrant justice/worker rights and green urban planning - but there is also a lot of work to be done. Our Twin Cities moment is, what we hope will be the start of a slow and thoughtful effort to make connections between communities and groups working in the Twin Cities for broad-based social justice, something that is, at its core, led by and envisioned by those whose lives and communities are most affected by the ravages of capitalism and US imperialism.

So, check out our new blogsite - it's mostly for communicating about activities and sharing resources, but it's a start!

http://tcussf.blogspot.com/

Caucawhatsit?

Twice this week - once on the radio and once in a magazine article - I've heard people refer to "Caucasian" as a race. Please please can we throw this term - and all attached to it like Negroid & Mongoloid - to the ground?

The term "Caucasian" originated in the 19th century when physical anthropologists (remember, anthropology at this time was a newish academic discipline born when the colonizers wanted to study the colonized - Europeans studying Africans, Asians, Indians, etc. - and needed something to differentiate them from us so while sociology could continue to be the study of ourselves (white on white) anthropology became the study of the other) tried to find a way to define different types of people/races based on the shape and size of their head. Yup, race as skull bumps, nose bends and chin juts. "Caucasian" comes from Mount Caucasus in what is now, I believe, Russia and was used because some British folks at that time thought the people who lived on Mount Caucasus were particularly beautiful - in a light-skinned, thin-nosed, small-lipped way. The same folks who brought us "Caucasian" to describe Europeans (and people from the Indian subcontinent due to the Sanskrit-Aryan connection) also cited Mount Caucasus as the origin of all human life on earth. They believed it started with all us light-skinned, thin-nosed, small-lipped white people. Poor folks, what would they have done with tiny dark Lucy, the mother of us all?

I'm not sure why some folks still use "Caucasian" to describe white folks, other than its what they learned. I've heard some people talk about white people as "Europeans" in a way to distinguish us without using the politicized idea of "white" but, since Europeans in 2007 are dark-skinned, olive-skinned, snow-skinned and so on down the line, that isn't accurate either.

For me, "white" is what we have, however inadequate that is. But then, that's the problem with race. It doesn't exist. There is no real difference between individuals based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, or body type. It's the systems we've created that exist - racism, white supremacy, etc. And to try and talk about us individual bodies impacted by and propping up these systems, we have to use this largely ineffectual language.

But please, not "Caucasian" anymore.

As exotic as housepaint

This morning, walking down Lake Street towards the bus stop, I was reminded by how subjective the experience of "exotic" is. There I am, meandering down a street that is two blocks from my house, peeking in the store windows, trying not slide on the ice, when I noticed a family standing on a nearby corner. A white middle-class-seeming family - mom, dad, two adolescent children in warm nonstandoutish clothes. They are holding hands and looking around them with very big eyes. As I approach them, I hear this: "Yeah, I know, it's amazing isn't it," said the dad. "And it's not even 9:00 yet but look at all the people." The daughter was peering into the window of the Latin American grocery store on the corner and she turned to her mom, "I'd be afraid to go in there. I wouldn't know what anything is." "Aw honey," said her mom, "It' s just exotic. You don't have to be afraid of exotic things."

At that instant, I felt a part of their "exotic" urban tableau and wondered if I was an addition to their movie or a disappointment. Was I too white to fit into their exotic white frame or was my fake fur coat and Tibetan scarf "urban" enough in that earthy crunchy PC way?

This reminded me of something that happened when I was 18. Accepted into a private liberal arts college that was about 20 minutes from my high school but which none of us had heard of before, I was sitting in the coffee shop, reading and people-watching. I idly noticed a group of students at the next table over talking about this service project they had completed the weekend before. The group had gone into "the city" - Cleveland, in this case - and had helped kids do some gardening or build a playground. All of these years later, I can't remember WHAT they were doing, only that there were kids and they were helping them. I wasn't paying super close attention to what they were saying until I heard, "God, I couldn't believe how poor they were. Those poor kids, I mean, I don't know what their life must be like everyday. Doing this made me really realize how much I want to help people." Now, the youthful enthusiasm and raw feeling aside, there really isn't that much to examine in that statement beyond unpacking the notion of "help". But that isn't what I did at the time. It was the next statement that caught me. The group began to describe in detail a Virgin Mary grotto up on the side of a hill, talking about how "cool" it was and how amazing and admirable it was that poor folks still hold on to folk traditions instead of just watching TV or something like that. What caught me was that, with their description of the grotto and the rest of their words, I realized that they were talking about MY neighborhood, the one where my grandparents lived, where I had gone to elementary school. My emotional or political or personal development at age 18, combined with how much I was struggling at this college anyhow, meant that I felt embarrassed by their comments, as though they could see through the cafe divider and know that I was one of "those people." I felt like I was part of their tableau and the conclusions they were drawing made me deeply uncomfortable, even alienated.

It's hard to look at anything with compassion, curiosity and zero judgement. The tapes play in our heads: "papers blowing around a streetlight, must be poor here, oh is that tagging, what annoying hoodlums they are" or "white nuclear family looking out of place on Lake Street and somewhat afraid, probably Republicans from the suburbs."

I'm trying, really trying, to just listen and look without defining and judgement. It's one of those life lessons I'm feeling all embroiled with. It's also astonishingly difficult, particularly when I realize just how much of my history is based on gaining recognition and even a kind of strength through the articulate nature of my judgements. In some ways, and my friends will laugh, these days I am feeling quite mute.

What did you say?

I told you I was an inconsistent blogger. Here it's been a timespan again since last writing - and so much has happened, too. I could have blogged about the day that Luca and Raquel came home from Brazil, about putting Luca to bed after not being home for three weeks, about how cute she looked nestled into her bunk, and how startled we both were when Raquel, following her nose, came in to Luca's room to see what smelled funky, picked up the duvet covering Luca's innocent little body, and then gasped as a cascade of dried cat shit flew through the air, bouncing off our heads, the bed, and the walls. I could have written about that and asserted that my nose was stuffed and smelling no wrong, that I hadn't been in Luca's room since they left for Brazil, but I did not.

I could have blogged on Monday about how lovely the snow was this past weekend, how we spent Sunday morning as a pod of kids and parents, breaking the new snow with our sleds on the hill in front of our house. I could have told you how funny it was to see the kids, tired from climbing up and down the hill, all sitting at the bottom and playing in the snow while their aging parents whooped and hollered on the sleds.

But none of that got me to blog. Instead, I'll write about what happened this morning - with a preface first.

Raquel and I will have been together for 12 years this September. That qualifies as a "long time." Over many of those 12 years, Raquel has frustratingly asked me to get my hearing checked. This, of course, in response to my vacant looks, my request that she repeat herself (usually expressed as "huh?" or "what?"), and my lack of response to her repeated questions.

Because I love my girlfriend, I went this morning at 7:30am for a hearing test. First, those booths are kind of cool. I mean, you're in this little gray womb, all hushed and dead air, and then you put on little headphones. The sounds that come through each earpiece - one ear at a time - is specific and sent straight into your head. There is something strangely intimate about the whole thing.

So we did the bup-bup-bup sounds and the high pitched squeals and the low heartbeat throbs. Sometimes the sound was so quiet that it felt like a slight vibration, like the ghost of sound itching just on the precipice of your hearing. After the assorted timbres and tones, we went into word repetition: "Say the word: throat." "Throat." And so on.

Having told the hearing technician that I was getting a hearing test to see if I was losing my hearing or losing my mind, and then having explained that this was a gift for my girlfriend, the technician, named Mike, came in at the end, took off my earpieces and whispered, "You have freakishly excellent hearing."

"Freakishly excellent." Shit.

Time to pay better attention.

Internet magic

It's Valentine's Day and my love is far from me. (Guitar music picks up, something "olde english," like Greensleeves only different.) She is gone to lands across the sea. With her silvered hair and shotput wit, she carries my heart with a catcher's mitt. Oh my lo-o-o-o-ve, on Valentine's Day, I sit here at home, alone and gay. (Music slowly winds down into something evoking longing, ocean storms, dykes wandering alone atop widow's walks on old Cape Cod houses, the sound of seagulls....)

Yeah, well, I sent the olde luv and the young daughter some roses via the internet. Funky that it's cheaper to send a dozen roses to Rio from Minneapolis than it is to send them to Minneapolis from Minneapolis.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm baaack part two

Here's the other thing that happened upon getting back: I had four different phone and email messages from friends telling me they missed me, were glad that I was home, and would like to see me. I hadn't checked messages when I last wrote.

I feel very loved.

I'm baaack

Thanks to the wonders of the red eye flight, I am back in Minneapolis, staring blearily at my first television in two and a half weeks: the Today Show. My partner, Raquel, and daughter, Luca, are still in Brazil. I called them right after I arrived home to let them know I was safely here. Luca was in the process of throwing her first snit fit since being in Rio. She cried and grieved, Rocki was impatient with her while trying to stay connected to her poor lonely lover on the other end of the phone line.

I miss them.

So now I have to take all of this stuff from the last two weeks - that hands on the skin kind of quiet - and find a way to build it into my life here. I'm sure the Today Show is not part of the strategy.

I talked on the phone with my mother a few days ago and she reflected on how scary it is to face a total life change - meaning I am currently "career" successful and have plenty of work as a fundraiser/nonprofit organizational type. I now want to shift this, move the focus away from this work as my primary and build my craniosacral therapy training to eventually move into the lead. It isn't scary to imagine that outcome, it's more overwhelming to think about how to build a daily practice, the new lifestyle that supports craniosacral therapy.

I don't think this makes for terribly interesting blogging - nothing pithy about navel gazing and life change.

Let me get my hands on ya.

It's a great big planet

I'm here in Berkeley, California and it's raining. Not thunderstorm-raining but that all day damp drizzle that reminds me of England. It's also warm enough to walk around with a light jacket that remains unbottoned.

At home in Minneapolis, people that I love have not ventured outdoors for more than ten minutes at a time. It's dangerous-cold where the sky is so frozen and absent of water than your skin slow cracks along every joint.

My daughter, Luca, and partner, Rocki, are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is what life looks like for Luca:

Islamic University opens in Minneapolis

I find this awesome and fascinating. The first traditional Islamic University has opened in Minneapolis - traditional meaning how Islam is taught but not conservative traditional in that women make up 35% of the student body.

I found the news in an article in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, an online compilation of mainstream and alternative media related to, appropriately enough, the Twin Cities.

Apparently, the Twin Cities are twelfth in the nation in terms of the size of the Muslim population. The university is set up to both teach Muslim students multiple subjects but with an academic Islamic approach and to provide community education on Islam to the non-Islamic world.

I love that this is here and I will visit it when I'm home. One of the professors interviewed described the focus of the university as "radical-averse", meaning they are academic and humanistic-political rather than fundamentalists.

Very seriously, I send out all kinds of light and good energy that no assholes decide to firebomb the university out of some warped idea of patriotism.

And how do you say, "dog"?

Yesterday morning, en route to my class, I stopped at the Whole Foods to stock up on goodies. As I left the building, I noticed this man standing on the sidewalk with a very interesting dog. Now, as is not surprising to many, I am not a dog person. Wait, let me say that more directly, for the most part, I don't like dogs. They're too eager to be my friend, take up too much space, have too many needs. It's a quality I often find attractive in people but on dogs, well, I wish they were more cat-like.

This dog, however, sat there on the street with his ears perked up and this great big smile on his face. There was something about that dog. So I walked over to say hello, first making eye contact with the man holding his leash. "What kind of dog is that?" I asked. The man started and looked at me, frightened and wary. (Forgive my bad phonetics here): "Eh um Frensh not spik Inglish." I smiled and racked my brain for any French words I might have (croissant? cafe late? voulez vou couchez avec moi cest sois or some spelling). I thought I might try Portuguese with that silly American idea that since he speaks a Latin language, maybe he would better understand my Latin language. Instead, I smiled and said, "ciao" and he looked happy.

As I walked away, not more than a minute passed and I turned back because I heard something. "What a lovely dog! What's his name?" asked the big burly white man with arms full of grocery bags. At the same time, a woman came up from a different direction, dropped to her feet next to the dog and began to pet him, looking up at the French man and saying, "oh, my aunt has a dog like this, I can't remember what kind it is, what is it called?"

I turned away and got into my car as I saw this man's face grow redder. I sure hope whoever was in the Whole Foods came back soon.

Sitting on the floor on a Sunday morning

The alarm went off at 7am and I reached for it, bleary and still asleep but also realizing that if I were home with Luca, I'd be up already.

This is the last day of the first proper craniosacral training. I feel compelled to write but I'm not sure what to say. I have moved between being so very happy and clear and then being scared. I already know that this is different from anything I've ever done. Sometimes when I'm in the room, seeing someone winding their body off the massage table, feeling the strange mystical clarity of a cranial wave, hearing a voice inside me telling me things about the person I'm touching and then acting from that voice and finding it is right, during these times I can hear a whole realm of my friends popping their fingers up in the evil eye symbol and hissing, "oohh, witchy-whoo-whoo." I can hear it because sometimes I get overly conscious and nervous and want to put my fingers in the protective horn as well.

But mostly as a defense against my own changes. It isn't that I don't believe. I actually believe very deeply. This feels like some of the truest deepest learning I have done for quite some time. My defense is over how much I have to change to do this well. And the changes are changes I hunger for - stillness, deep listening, privileging time for meditation and connection - but they frighten me. It's like a whole lifetime of defenses and identities and preferences and shortcuts is sitting there and many of them have to unwind and drift away.

And a lot of the time I don't even know what I'm afraid of. But I am. Afraid.

And also very certain that this is the direction where I want to move.

California

I'm sitting in my room, looking outside at a redwood tree. Perched on top of a mountain, there is a tumble of houses below me, intermingled with so much greenery I forget that my friends in Minneapolis are freezing.

I'm here to study craniosacral therapy and let me tell you, my chi is all gone rooted in the ground and I am one centered motherfucker.

I love this work, this learning. Yesterday, I sat with a 1,000 year old skull in my hands and noticed how, while smaller than most 1 year old skulls, it's still the same. The same sutures, the same holes where the cranial nerves go through, the same small bulges where the brain lobes rest, the same bones. All we've been doing for the last three days is anatomy: bones, nerves, blood, soft tissue of the brain/spine organ. Today is a day off and then tomorrow- Thursday - we start with the major hands on work. We've done a small amount already -hence being the centered motherfucker - but I swear, after eight more days of this, I'm going to be some new kind of Susan.

It's interesting to be in California. I haven't spent significant time here, aside from at conferences where you're surrounded by folks who aren't Californians either, since 1987. My focus is always East rather than West - East is where my friends and family are, it's where I lean when I have some free time, it's where I understand the streets and how people move.

California is different. Yeah, I know, thousands of late night bad California comedy jokes. Everyone knows California is different - but I've never quite felt it before.

The best way I can describe it is that there's a woman in the class who's from New York. The first time she opened her mouth and made a cheesy joke, the ground felt more solid under my feet and I knew where I was in the room. If you believe in things like earth/air/fire/water energies, then the East is way more earth and California is way more air. And so I'm floating around in it, not always sure of where I am in conversations with people, not used to the number of silences and the way responses are made, not quite sure.

I feel very midwestern here tinged with some East coast. Blunt, direct answers. I'm used to being the witchy-whoo-whoo one in my home community. Ha. Here, I feel like a four square barn, which is hysterical because I'm a city girl.

Invisible love lines

It's about 6am. Rocki and Luca are still asleep. I waver between wanting to stay cuddled up in bed with them and wanting to sit up, drink coffee and start getting ready to go. Today I am heading out of town and on Monday they leave for Brazil. This means we won't see each other for three weeks. That is far and above the longest we have been apart since Luca was born and, in the case of me and Rocki, it might be the longest we've been apart as well. In almost twelve years.

It's a funny thing about separating like this - I am excited by my adventure but there is also that physical ache. Part of it is for Rocki but way more of it is for Luca. What is that thing? Since having Luca, I've asked my mom about it. It's all been said before, but yeah, the invisible umbilical, the lines of energy connecting our bodies, the slow tear away to get distance.

I'm not someone who generally has disaster dreams. I leave that to Rocki. She's the one whose days consist of a whole side narrative that covers things like the car coming around the corner that loses control and smashes into our family walking down the street. The airplane that falls out of the sky. The piece of bread that lodges in Luca's throat and smothers her while we're upstairs cleaning the bedroom. Those sorts of maybes never occur to me - except when we're about to separate from each other.

Now, I can't keep my brain away from their plane that will crash, their car that will fall off a mountain, the gun going off in her mother's neighborhood. When I live in Brazil, I get annoyed by all of the US popculture about violence in Rio. I don't experience it. I don't see it. It's just a city. But now, the upcoming distance makes every newspaper article loom, italicized and bolded, in my brain.

It's the distance. When I physically imagine the geography between Berkeley and Rio, I ache. There's no rushing to touch them because I need to - or because they need me.

Love is a funny thing. It can be a downright pain in the ass.

My brother is so cool

Yep. This is an article by him about labor organizing - IN GERMAN. I mean, I speak Portuguese and all but that means that I'm comfortable ordering dinner and talking about basic things. I can even talk about more complex things if the person I'm chatting with is willing to follow my odd grammar and sentence structure. But my brother, Jeffrey, well he has been living in Germany for at least nine years now, maybe even ten, with his lovely wife Silke and their son - ahem, that's my nephew - Leo. Anyhow, I googled him on a lark and found all of these articles from him - IN GERMAN. Oh, here's something from him about an action in Frankfurt but it's in English.

Yeah, I know. My mother's asked the same thing. How come we both hooked up with foreigners?

I'm in love

I just found out that Alison Bechdel of Dykes to Watch out for has her own blog in which she also posts a sketch diary, kind of like scenes from a regular life ala Alison Bechdel.

Leaving town

I leave on Sunday morning for two weeks in Berkeley, California where I'll be studying craniosacral therapy at the fabulous Milne Institute. I'm excited, afraid, curious, hungry, and stunned to think that my "work" for the next two weeks is going to be staying present, listening, having people put their hands on me, putting my hands on other people, getting good rest, eating well, and then doing the whole thing all over again.

I've written a bit before about this - studying massage and bodywork. A friend asked me the other day if I was nervous about the training. With her question I realized that it isn't the training I'm nervous about. Instead, it's what happens after I get home. How do I make sure that I integrate this into my life - remembering to practice, to set up my table and lay a few people's bodies down on its fake leather surface? This is what frightens me. My day to day work life is so left-brained, so strategic and analytical. It always startles me how frightening it can be to set the analytical aside and just take space, just breathe.

I will probably blog while I am there in California, away from family. Rocki and Luca will be in Brazil, being in Portuguese, hot sun, Carnaval, and family. We've not done this before, this distance like this. When we had a kid, we said to ourselves, there will be times when our work and travels will take us in different directions. We said this would happen and honoring it would be a good thing. But three weeks away from them? I'm excited and scared.

Writing white

Last night I went to a reading and discussion surrounding the book Outsiders Within, an anthology written by transracial adoptees. There were about 25 folks who attended the event, most of them white and many of them with children they had adopted from outside the US or children of color adopted from within the US. In other words, many of them were the parents of transracially adopted children. A few were in the process of adopting. Most who had children already still had very young children.

Transracial adoption is such a complex subject and it's one that I have big emotions around. I know many many adult adoptees who are very articulate about their struggles, identity conflicts and confusions inherited from being adopted by white adults without the skills to teach them about racism, their birth country, or their specific identities. For the most part, I fall in the same camp as the anthology contributors: I believe we should work hard to make sure that parents all over the world have access to their basic economic needs and human rights and that no parent should ever have to give up a child in order to guarantee their own survival. I look at Luca and she is the same age as some of the adoptees were when they were adopted. She already has such a full life, full of so many relationships, I can't imagine her needing to uproot that completely and "become" someone else just like I can't imagine the emotional struggle involved in having to give her up.

But that isn't the point of this blog. During the discussion, a lot of questions were asked. A LOT of questions. It's clear that many of the white parents were hungry for suggestions from adult adoptees on how they can raise their children with compassion and integrity. It was clear that some of the questioners were used to talking about race and racism and some were a bit more awkward in their language. It is also clear that people were there because of how much they wanted to learn, to be good parents, to do the right thing.

At various points during the discussion, I got angry or frustrated or cynical. I was frustrated with what I felt was the ignorance of some of the white folks, the reluctance to look at racism as a system or to look at our collusion with white privilege and the way that this collusion continually props up racism. I wanted more direct conversation about our responsibility and accountability as white folks. I quoted a Cheri Register piece I read ages ago in which, in discussing her adoption of an African American child, she talked about realizing that while, on the one hand, she had "saved" her child from poverty and the foster care system, on the other hand she had burdened this child with her ignorance, put this child into a vulnerable position by not being able to give her (I don't remember if it was a son or daughter) the life and survival instruction and support for living in a profoundly racist nation. I was so moved by Cheri's willingness to sit within that place of contradiction, refusing to consider "giving up" her child, this piece of her life, yet also refusing to deny that her parenting would by definition bring some harm as well as some good.

This is what I wanted, practical direct conversation that starts with an assumption that white privilege exists and it informs our every action.

And so I got annoyed and then, yes, fell into the "better white than you" trap of white privilege. Meaning, I felt for awhile like I "got" it and "they" didn't and I wanted so desperately to talk with other white folks who "got" it and not with these people.

Breath.

This morning I did the first group of a Mindfulness Politics course. And halfway through, I sat there cross legged on the floor and wept. This is not who I want to be, hard hearted, angry, self-righteous. Race, white privilege, this core of injustice, these things have been on my front burner for most of my adult life. This is the work I want to do. Last night, I forgot HOW I want to do this work. I forgot that sometimes, when sitting in the midst of that conversation, being brave means having compassion.

I am so hungry for conversations about all of this, not just the talking analytical conversations or the mental masturbation as Vikki called it last night, but the scary practical conversations and strategies that help me think about how to parent and how to be as a white person.

This is something I am going to write about a lot more here - and on the antiracist white parent blog. I am also trying to drag the other adults and parents that I love into this conversation, asking them to do their own writing. And more than that, I'm going to use my daughter as a guinea pig. Meaning, I have never parented before. I haven't yet found any practical parenting books about raising white children and yes, I know there are books out there about taking your kids to multicultural events so they know that a diverse world exists, but I am talking about something very different from that. I am looking for help.

A call to white anti-racist parents

I've been skimming and browsing a website at www.antiracistparent.com for awhile. It's a good website in that it's one of the few out there that seems to be overtly for parents talking about raising their children within the lens of antiracism. It took me awhile to realize that the majority of the children were children of color and that the parents were a mix of parents of color and white parents (some with adopted children of color some with bioborn children of color). I'm not sure why it took me awhile - except that I think I was just so happy to see a space with an overt discussion of race, racism and parenting.

Anyhow, out of this space and out of some of the conversations on the website has grown a new blog called http://whiteantiracistparent.blogspot.com Literally just started - there is an introductory post and then I wrote something in the comments - it intends to be a discussion point for white parents raising white children who are thinking hard about race, racism and white privilege. A linked discussion to one that is taking place on antiracistparent.com but slightly separate as, hopefully, a pile of white folks roll up their shirtsleeves and try to think - together - about what it means to raise the children we love, with their joys and innocence, and who are already benefiting daily from their whiteness.

So join the discussion! Post something!!

Super stretchy differences

So, it's been three days in a row that I've done power yoga first thing in the morning. I have a new schedule. I set the alarm for six am, go downstairs and make coffee and Luca's breakfast, put the breakfast on the table, then start to streeeeeeeeeeeeetch and sweat. At one point, Luca comes down and gets her ready made breakfast, sits on the couch and watches me streeeeeeeeeeeetch and sweat.

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend. A friend who doesn't have kids. She was explaining how incredibly busy she is, how she doesn't have any time at all. I listened and then at one point, I had to do it, rather than just listen, I had to assert a comparison. I said, "You know, I know you are really busy, but when I had a kid - and I only have one, mind you - I realized that what I used to think of as busy wasn't really about having no time. It was about being very scheduled, but there was still such a great amount of space. It's amazing how different it is to have your own head to yourself in between times - even if it's only for ten minutes. There are some days when that can feel like a mountain of time. And I only have one kid." My friend insisted on her busy-ness, that I didn't understand, that you couldn't be more busy than she currently is, couldn't hear that there is context, that there is subtlety, and that being childless affords you a different kind of restfulness that you lose with small children. Sure, you gain lots of other things, but that wasn't the point.

The connection between these things is that my friend talked about how busy she was and that last week she only worked out three times. I was thinking about this while I was doing yoga this morning - something that is supposed to be meditative, focused on breathing - while Luca went between doing the poses with me (foot in the face, falling on my legs, asking for help) and sitting on the couch asking me questions about who knows what. Streeeetch. sweat. I remember when working out could feel like one of the things I had to do in a very busy day but how it was also time to connect alone with my body, with my strength, with my sweat.

Whenever I have a childless friend who is not open to hearing that there is a context, a comparison between a parenting life and a childless life, I wonder about what contexts I am closed to. I assume there must be some. It's the hardest thing about difference - it is almost impossible to imagine or understand those things which are really fundamentally different from yourself. It is hard to not try and sit with my own experience and then try to make comparisons when sometimes, there is just no comparison to be made.

Cowboys and farmers and growing things

A friend of ours, Marquis, just came over to have dinner and hang out while his adult went off with Rocki to a meeting. Marquis came in full cowboy regalia and Luca met him at the door, also with a red cowboy hat perched on her head.

What is it about being a cowboy/girl, a farmer, a rancher? Luca is clear that she wants to grow things, take care of animals and have a big old horse perched between her legs. Marquis has told me he wants to be a cowboy or a rancher, he doesn't want to ride in the rodeo but he wants to ride ride ride over huge great fields and make the cattle run the right way.

Today on the way home from school, Luca was frustrated about forgetting to bring a drawing home. In her frustration, she said that she was planning on throwing a tantrum. When I told her that wasn't a good idea, she said that the problem was, she wanted to hit something or someone. "I don't want to hit a pillow, mama, I want to hit something that would break." she explained.

While we talked about why breaking car windows was not a good idea, she shifted her thinking and said she just wanted to get out of the car and run run run run without telling any grownups where she was going or without having to come home at any special time. "I just want to have all of the space for myself, mama, I don't want anyone else to live in Minneapolis, or to be on the street or to be in the houses. I want it just for us."

Ok, so this didn't seem like a conversation about privilege (all mine mine mine said the white middle class girl) so much as a conversation about longing and expansion and the individual. Yeah, the very things that leads and has led to colonialism but probably started just like this, as a feeling. Grown ups always telling you what to do, wanting to just kick and push and own all of the space. And so, god damned it, I'll just take all of this and make it mine and keep on making more and more of it mine. Without end.

I thought about this while Marquis and Luca were giggling madly about riding horses for days and then going to their farm and picking their food and milking their cows and then getting back on their horses. A dream of power. A dream of control. Of life without all of those annoying boundaries and limits. The two of them in their cowboy hats, Luca maybe still wanting to break things but instead, breaking open space into something that is limitless in imagination.

Proud mama

Last summer, Luca had the idea of raising dollars to help endangered animals (a word she still sometimes mispronounces as ingendered). A combination of factors - a fundraising mama, two parents who are slightly obsessed about what it means to responsibly raise a privileged child, reading the book Alex's lemonade stand, and multiple trips to the zoo led Luca to consider raising bucks for animals. In this case, the Hyacinth Macaw - an endangered bird living in the Brazilian Amazon.

So, rather than explain it all here, the zoo did a story on it. Go here to Zoo Tracks, download it, and read page three. http://www.mnzoo.com/zootracks/

And yeah, we're so very proud and it is embarrassing to be this proud. I haven't felt something like this before - I mean, I'm proud of Luca, but this kind of public "look at my kid" pride. I always feel a little bit squeamish, a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable when people say too many nice things about Luca. Because I certainly don't get that from my mother and because I am certainly far more transcended and child-separated than to assume that kind words about Luca are kind words about me (snort), I usually just assume it's some ancient Sicilian ancestor, drawing a grimace and holding her fingers up in the horn, croaking "mal occhio, mal occhio." You know, bad luck to draw attention to a child because then someone will zap her with the evil eye.

But here I am, doing it. So if you're going to send the evil eye somewhere, send it at me.

Seven months later and survival

Some people call blogging an addiction. I don't think it's an addiction for me, it's more like a vacation. I love reading my friend's blogs. I love having people comment when I'm blogging but for the last six months, I haven't missed blogging. And the fact that I am writing today doesn't mean I will write tomorrow.

Very honestly, a friend told me about a friend of hers who had just read all of my blogs. And because I forget that the internet knows no secrets, I also forget that while I'm not writing currently, I still exist with who I was all of those months ago. A wee bit of pride made me reconnect for a minute.

My work these days is writing. I am working as one of those paid consultant types who does fundraising, organizational development, etc. I am making more money than I've ever made before. In a few weeks I go to California to study craniosacral therapy and you know what I spend my time thinking about? How if global warming comes tomorrow, or if someone continues to respond to our out of control imperialism with their own brand of rage on an even bigger scale, or if our inflated economy crashes, I can't help but wonder how I would care for our family. I mean, let's get real, my work isn't "real work," it's a way to help organizations exist within capitalism, to help these grassroots struggling places to get their piece of the pie so that they can continue to do their good and righteous work which often means empowering individuals and communities who have been victimized by capitalism. Phew. Mindfuck.

To me, "real" work means practical skills that in some way support the basic needs of people's lives: building things, growing food, taking care of children, providing health care. So I was thrilled when Rocki, my partner, started carpentry and, while understanding why she stopped doing it, sad that she couldn't rebuild our house if a plane fell on it. I used to work as a gardener and have some of those skills. I like studying craniosacral therapy so that I have a "real skill" and Rocki keeps reminding me, we can ALWAYS take care of children.

Still, I want more. The older I get, I discover this little survivalist residing right behind my chestbone.