On The Feminist Wire Today

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My piece wondering why, in this country, colleges and universities get to investigate sexual assaults on their own without involving the local police.

And while one of the first comments on it is by someone accusing me of wanting to strip extra layers of protection for college victims, I am most certainly not looking for that. I know our system of justice is woefully inadequate when it comes to rape, but I think it’s a good start to hold all perpetrators (and those accused) of sexual assault to the same standard, regardless of where they live or go to school.  Check it out if you’re interested.

And have a terrific Monday!

Musical Memories of Dad

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This banjo is sitting in the corner of my living room. For the first few weeks it was here, it sat inside its case because I wanted to make sure my head and heart were clear when I finally opened it up.  It belonged to my dad, and even though he died nearly six years ago, his wife only recently began packing up his things and figuring out what to do with them. She knew I wanted the banjo, but she couldn’t find it in any of the places she expected it to be and then one day, as she lie on her bedroom floor fishing underneath the bed for a roll of Christmas wrap, her fingers bumped up against the black faux-leather case.

I brought it home, having only unzipped the case once or twice to peek inside and marvel at its pristine condition (although I shouldn’t have, my dad was a Marine in every sense and took impeccable care of his things).  When I finally sat down in the living room to take it out all the way – Bubba off on a business trip and the girls away at school for the day, weak February sunshine filtering through the leaded glass windows – time stopped.  I don’t remember hearing anything from inside or outside the house; no dogs barking or airplanes soaring by, no hum of the refrigerator or the dryer. Of course, that is impossible, but I felt weighty and deliberate as I gently lifted it out by the neck and the body, careful not to smear fingerprints on the shiny chrome or twang one of the strings and break the spell.  Nestled beneath the banjo itself was a songbook and instructional manual by Pete Seeger and I nearly cried out when I saw it. Dad was a huge folk music fan. We grew up listening to the Kingston Trio and The Mamas and the Papas and Dad, while he couldn’t read a note of music, could hear a song once or twice and pick it out on the banjo or the guitar or the piano.  I don’t recall how often it happened, but I have fond memories of sitting cross-legged in the living room in a small circle with my sister and brothers while Dad taught us “Froggie Went-A-Courtin'” and “Greensleeves” and we had sing-a-longs.  I remember his long freckled fingers with the ridged nails and knobby knuckles picking and bending the strings in perfect time as our little troupe swayed back and forth singing with great gusto.

Laying the banjo across the couch cushions, I picked up the songbook and flipped through, hoping for some handwritten evidence of Dad somewhere within. His distinctive scrawl, always in pencil, shaped by the tremor in his hands, didn’t show up anywhere.  I was deflated.  I think I was looking for some message from beyond.

In the months since that day, I have walked by the banjo many times as it sits propped up in a box in the corner, neglected. I would love to learn how to play and have often thought about picking up that instruction book to give it a shot, but I’m both afraid and intrigued by what the music would do to me, what doors it might open if I do, indeed, figure out how to strum that banjo to play the folk songs of my childhood.  Occasionally as I walk past, I can smell the scent of cherry tobacco that came from Dad’s pipe and I am suddenly in the middle of that living room with the green shag carpet and the gold velour couch and swivel chair, Dad leaning back with the newspaper and the pipe smoke wafting gently to the flecked ceiling. My thoughts drift to the brother we lost during that time and I quickly shut the door of my mind.

Last Friday, Bubba and I took the girls out for dinner to a place in our neighborhood we’ve never been before. As we sat and waited to order, I became aware of the music playing and my heart swelled.  Throughout our fantastic meal, an entire Jim Croce album played, each song in the order I remember: Time in a Bottle, Operator (That’s Not the Way it Feels), Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy), Bad Bad Leroy Brown, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, One Less Set of Footsteps, I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song.  The girls kept getting annoyed with me, alternately because I was singing along with the songs and because I got lost in my reverie and dropped the thread of our conversation.  I know they don’t understand the pull of this music for me and the melancholy memories, but it was such a lovely warm feeling to be surrounded by Dad, laughing at the absurdity and playfulness of some of the lyrics as well as the innocence and sweetness.

Even though Dad was not a musician by trade, nor would he ever have considered that a possible career, one of his purest joys was music and it was often the one thing that we could all agree on.  The soundtrack to our summer road trips featured folk artists as well as popular music from The Doobie Brothers and The Little River Band (Dad was not a Beatles fan at all). More often than not, we would pop in an 8-track, roll all the windows down and sing together in what we thought was perfect harmony. And it turns out, it was.

Hard Lessons About Compassion

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I consider myself to be a pretty compassionate person. I try hard to not react too strongly to anything without giving myself time to let intense emotions pass, and I work hard to put myself in the shoes of other people.  If I hear myself making some judgment about another human being, I can often stop myself in my tracks and try to identify what it is that I’m feeling, what might be driving that need to distance myself or put someone in a box.

Unfortunately, my compassion sometimes has limits and what I’ve recently discovered is that they lie pretty close to home.  There are a few people in my life that I tend to treat much differently than others and that realization stings.  For years, my dad was one of those people, but somehow I was able to move past that and develop a bottomless sense of understanding and love for him. (I wrote a little about the beginning of this process here.)

What I came to understand this morning, as I thought about the folks I have trouble having compassion for, is that they all have something pretty profound in common.  They are all people for whom I have felt responsible at one time or another, very, very responsible.  It occurred to me (well, actually, hit me in the chest like a punching bag) that my inability to have a pure sense of compassion for them was more likely the result of me not being able to have compassion for myself. Because on some level, I feel as though many of the things they have done that I have trouble with came about because of me, that I am somehow to blame for the way they are, and by distancing myself from these aspects of them, I am really distancing myself from the things I don’t like about what I may have done to them (or prevented them from becoming).

You see, for me, not being able to relate to another person enough to have empathy for them is a direct result of my walling off in order to protect myself.  If I can look at someone and judge that they are “Wrong” or that they “deserve” what is happening to them, I am basically telling myself that what they are going through is nothing I will ever have to deal with. I am using my intellect to craft some imaginary world in which I get to be in control of all circumstances and contingencies and determining that this Other Person’s life is so different from my own that I will never have diabetes or a child in prison or a husband who leaves me for another woman.  I am not that person.

But in this case, my ultimate fear is that I may have created “that person,” perhaps by not saying enough or by saying too much, by not saying the right things or doing the right things or simply by not being who I Ought To Have Been at some pivotal moment.  And of course, none of this means that I don’t dearly, deeply love each of these individuals because they are some of the most beloved people in my life. And, it turns out, I am not actually struggling with having compassion for them at all. I am simply struggling with the idea that they are individuals that don’t belong to me in any way, shape, or form. Once I can begin to see them as human beings whose actions and beliefs are their own, whose lives do not reflect on my self-worth, I will be free to offer them as much compassion as I do anyone else. And then the work can begin wherein I turn it back on to myself.

Finding My Way Through Fear

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Eleven wine glasses. Stained with lipstick prints and puddles of dark red wine in the bottom, too tall for the dishwasher, sitting in a cluster next to the sink waiting for me to wash them. Remnants of last night’s book club meeting where we sat and talked about Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Invention of Wings,” our conversation straying to the challenging history of race in the United States and the recent rash of car burglaries and home invasions in our community. We agreed that we all sit in a place of privilege, but that we are not separate or immune, that awareness of and compassion for the lives of others is vital. We talked about our children and the ways in which their world is so different from the days of slavery in the South and how many strides we have made, not discounting the distance we have yet to go.

This morning I was grateful for those glasses and the opportunity to stand quietly and wash them one by one. I let the warm water run over my hands and imagined it melting the tension in my chest, the fear I brought home with me from driving this morning’s carpool.  As I soaped first the outside and then the inside, swiped the rim of each glass and then the stem, I reveled in the methodical work.  Last weekend there was a gang shooting a few blocks from the girls’ school and the park where they hang out at lunch was quickly host to a growing memorial for the 24-year old who was killed. The side of the school building became a display of sadness and love for the young man and school officials decided to leave it up until after his funeral to honor the community’s grief.
Last night I praised the school’s handling of the issue, the way they talked openly in community meeting with the students about the incident and let them ask as many questions as they wanted. The staff were sure to use the victim’s name and the girls repeated it often throughout the week. Eve shook her head as she told me he had two young children. Some of the girls were upset that their school had been defaced by the graffiti, and others were angry that they can’t go outside at lunch any more for a while. 
“Even though we may not be able to understand why someone would post graffiti on the school, we have to honor their process so long as it doesn’t harm us. Like it or not, our school is part of that community and it’s important to acknowledge that,” I told the women in our group.  
In the middle of the night, there were two more shootings within blocks of the school and I woke up to an urgent email detailing the increased police presence that would be at school today.  All outdoor activities were postponed, including the bike ride Lola’s entire class was to go on today.  When Lola found out, she buried her head under the covers and burrowed down to the bottom of her bed.
“I don’t ever want to go to the park again.” 
I wondered what it must be like for her to have a constant reminder of the young man’s death every time we drive by and see the memorial site, black and white balloons floating from the street sign above a collection of candles and stuffed animals and a bottle of whiskey. That park where she and her friends play tag and shoot baskets and swing as high as they can go. Will it be forever marred in her mind? 
I was thrilled to be the parent driving carpool this morning, if only so that I could see my girls safely from door to door.  After they were inside, I stopped to talk with other parents clustered around on the sidewalk in the shadow of a huge police officer who kept a watchful eye up and down the block.  Overnight, the graffiti in the neighborhood had bloomed, anarchy signs tagged in red on every block and a few posters pasted on signs declaring “The only good cop is a dead one.” My sternum was locked up tight.  The first victim’s funeral service is to be held on Monday and I am afraid of what will happen over the weekend. 
One by one, I washed the stains from the glasses and turned them upside-down to dry on a kitchen towel. Thoughts flitted through my mind, dissolving as quickly as they formed like so many soap bubbles.  In the suburbs, I worried less about random street violence. Is this the beginning of an uptick in gang warfare? Is there something substantive I can do to make a difference? As a white, middle class woman, would my showing up to try and do something be more offensive than not? None of my musings had any weight or substance and I washed them down the drain.  
I am driving carpool this afternoon, too. Until then, I will sit with this fear and examine it. I will do my best not to act from it and honor my own process. I have compassion for the families involved, who have lost sons and fathers and brothers, but today I think of my children. Today, I will think about how to shine a light on what is good and hopeful and promising in our lives so that I can show up for Eve and Lola feeling grounded in love instead of rooted in fear. It may take all day, but that is my task.

A Healthcare Rant

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I’ve had occasion to think a lot about our system of health care lately. Bubba is doing a big project at work for a new client that revolves around prevention and healthcare education and I love kicking around ideas with him on our evening walks, especially because I love that this giant organization is thinking in this way. The questions are huge and the obstacles seem enormous, but so do the implications if they can find a way to pull it off.

With 8 million people and counting signed up for the Affordable Healthcare Act, as a country we need to get it together with respect to the way we deliver (and even think about) healthcare.  In Washington state, the number of folks eligible for the Medicaid expansion has outpaced their wildest imaginations and it is increasingly becoming obvious that we need a new game plan in order to serve these people. Many providers refuse to take Medicaid and even Medicare because the reimbursements are so paltry compared to private insurers and there is a big question looming about whether or not we’ll be able to find enough qualified practitioners to treat these new patients.

While we may utter the word “prevention” a lot with regards to health, the simple fact is that the vast majority of people don’t truly understand what that means or how to put it in play in their own lives.  Yes, we all pretty much know that our lives will be better if we get enough sleep, manage our stress, eat healthy, exercise and don’t smoke or do drugs, but actually knowing how to implement those things regularly and effectively is tremendously difficult.  When so many people, especially those newly eligible for health insurance, are struggling to pay the rent every month, finding the time to locate honest resources where they can educate themselves about what healthy food is or learning effective stress-management techniques is pretty far down on the list of priorities.

So where do most people get their information about health care? Not from their physician, it turns out, because as a system, our health care priorities lie in treatment of symptoms and deployment of technology, not conversation.  Doctors get paid to write prescriptions and schedule surgeries or diagnostic tests, not to sit with their patients for an hour at a time and help them understand how to read a food label or coach them in relaxation techniques or set up a viable exercise plan.  And while there are some physicians who take the time to really listen to their patients and explain things in depth, it isn’t always easy to remember exactly what they said once you leave the office.  Yes, it is possible to find people who will teach us about nutrition and stress management and exercise, but they are rarely paid by insurance companies and most people can’t afford their services.  Why don’t we make it part of our health education to offer those services in the doctor’s office as part of the care? The first real nutrition education my mother got from her healthcare provider was a class on how to eat after being diagnosed with diabetes. Helpful, but maybe classes on how to avoid diabetes in the first place would have been better, given that now Medicare pays hundreds of dollars for prescriptions every month that might have been unnecessary.

I predict that, thanks to the ACA, many healthcare providers will find themselves overwhelmed by a glut of new patients with complicated health histories. There are some who are relatively young and healthy who have signed up for coverage and may choose to establish a relationship with a physician, but there will be many more who have suffered with chronic conditions for years because they couldn’t afford to have someone treat them.  It is here where the rubber meets the road and, I think, the issue that will prove to be the stickiest for this much-needed leap forward in our healthcare system.  A doctor who sees a middle-aged person with multiple complaints that have been ongoing for years will be hard-pressed to find enough time for a comprehensive introductory examination that can unravel years of health issues. Most of these patients will end up leaving their first doctor’s appointment in years with a fist-full of prescriptions that may or may not make a significant difference in their long-term health, and will more likely treat symptoms instead of causes. Additionally, if the fee schedules don’t change, the folks who have to pay for some portion of their prescriptions may find themselves unable to afford the treatments they’ve been offered.  Without some effort to integrate these individuals into a system that educates them and offers them someone to collaborate with when it comes to preserving their health or reversing chronic conditions, we are destined to continue to have the most inefficient, expensive healthcare system in the nation, albeit one that is covering more folks than ever before.  Until we revamp our priorities by paying more for consultations and less for quick-fix deployment of technologies like surgery or prescriptions, we can never hope to turn the tide from treatment to prevention. We will always be playing catch-up and we will never catch up to our national obsession with fast food and sugar and vapor cigarettes as a viable alternative to regular cigarettes, because we haven’t been educated by people who have credibility, with whom we have an ongoing relationship. We have to enlist our healthcare providers as educators and partners and pay them to work with patients to keep them healthy and help them make good choices instead of giving them incentives to do expensive surgeries and prescribe drugs that treat symptoms. Until we are willing to turn our attentions from quick-fix ideas to long-term prevention strategies, we are doomed to continue down this path of being one of the unhealthiest countries in the world. With some of the most educated healthcare workers in the world, it is an absolute tragedy that this is the situation we find ourselves in, but if we choose to use doctors and nurses as collaborators instead of auto mechanics, we can make a difference.

Spring Break’s Gifts and Challenges

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Spring Break. That’s why it’s been a while since I wrote anything.  It is this particular week that both strikes fear in to my heart for the coming summer (and having the girls around all day every day) and thrills me because I get to hang out with my girls and do things like walk the dog and read books in the sunshine and bake cookies.  This week has been a perfect window in to just that. And now that it’s Thursday, I’m ready for them to go back to school. And I have no idea how I’m going to survive summer.  None.  I will certainly have to be more diligent about carving out time to write (and read) if I am to preserve what little portion of sanity I have left.

One incredibly bright beacon this week came thanks to Kris Prochaska and her talents.  Kris is a counselor by training who has built a practice around helping people decipher what she calls their “human design,” in an effort to optimize the way they work and live in the world.  I wrote about one session with her last November where I had a multitude of “a-ha” moments and, following that, I became interested in seeing if she could help my girls navigate the treacherous waters of adolescence.  I pulled up our Human Design Charts (a mixture of information based on chakras and the zodiac and the I-Ching, among other things) and asked Kris to work with Lola first.  On Tuesday, she spent a little more than two hours with us helping Lola understand what Kris calls the blueprint of her personality in order to better understand how she can most effectively make good decisions that are in alignment with her design.  Kris explains it better on her site:

“In every case, when I am talking with my clients about miscommunication with their family, stress around money and marketing, and feeling overwhelmed around their calendar it boils down to the initial decision and commitment they made.  Invariably they say something like “how did I get in this AGAIN?” And we look at the energy and emotion behind the decision and realize they were making the decision and commitment from their little voices of fear, doubt, shame and lots of guilt.  Ugh.  No wonder stress and overwhelm is there.

Sometimes it’s not so much the little voices that are pulling us this way or that, but rather living out of alignment with how we are uniquely designed as individuals to manage our energy, communicate our message, or commit to the next business venture.All of your results stem from the moment you choose a course of action and how you approach that choice emotionally and energetically.  Wouldn’t it be prudent (and totally freakin’ powerful!) to know exactly what voices are making those choices, and how you best listen to the only voice that you need ever heed: your Inner Voice?”

We all have different ways of listening to (and finding) our inner authority and after talking with Kris, Lola has a much better shot at honoring hers. I am convinced that, armed with this information, she will be able to make her way through the challenges of teenagerhood with more clarity.  Eve is already bugging me to schedule her session with Kris, but my brain is so full from Lola’s I feel like I need to go sit in a dark cave for a week to process it all.

I was looking forward to a few hours free today while the girls head to school for an exciting opportunity, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay away.  Their school was one of four in the nation chosen by The Clinton Foundation to engage in a Skype discussion about empowering girls to change the world.  I am fairly certain that neither Eve nor Lola truly understands the significance (I know I wouldn’t have when I was their age – hang out with a former Secretary of State on video? Who cares?), but I’m happy that the sun has gone away for today so they won’t be resenting me for intruding upon their Spring Break by making them participate. Of course, because I understand the significance of it, I will likely be sitting on my hands in the back of the room, clamping my lips together to force myself to stay quiet and let the girls speak, so my “few hours free” won’t be.

It will all definitely give me more to write about, although that isn’t a challenge right now. I have so many half-begun essays and poems, so many pieces sent out for submission to different publications (some hanging out there for weeks, waiting, and others simply rejected), that I hardly know how to tell them apart anymore. It would take the entire summer of writing in a vacuum to complete them all, and that’s only if nothing else occurred to me while I was writing.  There is a constant buzzing in my head from all the ideas and thoughts, both disparate and connected, and it’s all I can do to remember what Kris told me about my particular cycles of activity and how this happens every Spring.  I will wait for the bees to settle in and be still so that I can take the time I need with each one and it will all get done – or at least the stuff that needs to get done will get done. The rest can just buzz on away like so much background noise.

How do you survive Spring Break?

Shut Up and Cook

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While I was working on a new essay for Demeter Press, I took a quick break and found this. It’s long, but worth the time it takes to read it. I found myself nodding my head over and over again as the author lamented the new “culture of shut up” that has permeated social media.  A bit of a twist on my “sea of unknowing,” but more pop-culture friendly for certain.

The essay I’m working on is for an upcoming anthology on Mothers and Food and as I sat down to take my first stab at it in the unseasonable sunshine in the backyard, I was on fire.  Chronicling my years as a child of the PopTart Generation (my name for the 1970s era of “better living through chemistry”) to my early years as a mother trying to do right by my babies when it came to food, and through our gluten allergy diagnoses, I am writing about the challenges of raising healthy children when you don’t know what information is real.  So many of the things I thought I knew about food have been proven wrong – processed foods aren’t healthy, fertilizers do more harm than good, GMOs are horrifically frightening, rice isn’t a healthy alternative to wheat if you’re gluten intolerant thanks to the arsenic levels, alternative grains aren’t always the best, and on and on….  The whole essay now weighs in at 2500 words and it is decidedly defeatist, so I’ll have to work on finding a way to lighten it up and find the silver lining somewhere.  That said, I do often feel a little undone by the latest food news as it comes my way because it seems to create more work for me as I plan meals and shop and cook for my family.  I come from a Ukrainian great-grandmother who loved nothing more than cooking for friends and family and I inherited her inability to cook for anything less than an army.  I absolutely feel like cooking for others is a way to show them I love them and at our dinner table, the more, the merrier. But I struggle with the fact that eating is hard work these days. And don’t tell me to plant a garden in my backyard because I most certainly did NOT inherit that ability from my Gram.  I’ll go out and support the farmer’s markets, thankyouverymuch, but only if they grow organic produce.

Happy Birthday, Maya Angelou!

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I have been lucky to see Maya Angelou speak a few times in my life. Three times, I have written about her on this blog. I truly believe her life is a precious gift for so many people and I wish her a very, very happy birthday.

Here are links to my previous posts about this amazing woman.

Of Storms and Rainbows

Thank You, Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is My Mother

This Watercolor Life

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I don’t compartmentalize. Anything. Ever. I’ve heard it said that women don’t, or at least that men do it better and more often. I don’t know if that’s true or not.  In my personal experience, I have observed that Bubba seems to be very adept at putting aside certain things that may be difficult emotionally so that he can go on with his work day and revisit them later.  I don’t know if that means he simply doesn’t think about those things at work, or if it’s easier to think about them later when his emotions have died down or if he’s even self-aware enough to ask those questions and answer them. He has told me that when he’s at work, he isn’t worried about the house or the dog’s cancer or the kids or me. He trusts that we are all just fine – he has to, or he wouldn’t be able to function.

A friend told me once that she believes that the reason fathers have an easier time shutting off their “father” persona at work than mothers is because they were never physically attached to their children via an umbilical cord.  I remember thinking at the time that I hoped one day someone would do a study of adoptive mothers to see if there was any truth in that supposition.  It is certainly true for me that I am never not a mother, that at any given time no matter what I am doing I am aware of my children somewhere making their way in the world, that I am always ready to answer a phone call from the school or a friend’s mother in case one of my girls needs me.

But that could be because I don’t compartmentalize.  My life is like a watercolor painting on some coarse, linen-like canvas, where any stroke of color you put down is likely to bleed in several directions to blend with what is already there.  Every conversation I have with a close friend is held up to the light and examined within the context of what I already know. Every time I have a fight with one of the kids or discover someone’s massive screw-up, I question my entire parenting philosophy and make Bubba crazy with my self-investigation.

It wasn’t always like this.  As a kid, I was an expert at keeping things separate.  What happened at home stayed at home. I didn’t talk to anyone at school about the things that went on behind the front door of our house and, frankly, I didn’t think about it at school, either.  Upon walking out the door into the world, I simply became someone else, someone confident and competent, someone who didn’t have a personal life beyond school and sports and my job waiting tables.  I didn’t allow myself to think about anything but what I was doing in that skin and even when I got home, I tried desperately to inhabit that other person’s body.  Needless to say, my worlds eventually collided. I cracked the compartment wide open and began letting light in and the things stuffed inside all tumbled out and left footprints all over everything else in their haste.  Somehow, after years of talking and writing and thinking and figuring out who I am, I have managed to integrate all of my selves: daughter, mother, wife, sister, friend, writer. I don’t know how to go back and, frankly, I don’t want to, but it does mean that when something painful happens, I am likely to ruminate on it for a while as it slowly spreads out into places I can’t predict, changing the landscape of me. That also means that when I’m feeling particularly happy and optimistic, I have a different perspective on everything. Occasionally, I am able to step back and take a look at this multilayered, crazy textured work of art and see how rich and amazing it is with the overlapping bits of dark and light and feel a deep gratitude for this life.  Occasionally, I am prompted to reach out and stroke a particularly awful piece of memory to see if it has maintained its power to sting after many many years even as I marvel at the way it mingles with its beautiful surroundings.  Honestly, I think it is this knowledge that keeps me moving forward when I am skewered through with pain, the belief that it will thin out and become part of something wonderful in the end.

Spring in the Northwest

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Maybe it’s that I have a lifetime of memories that involve rain, having spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, but I truly don’t mind the grey, wet days.

“I hate the rain,” Bubba grumbled as he pulled on his sneakers this morning and grabbed the umbrella on his way out the door for his morning walk.

“I know.”  There was nothing else to say. He knows the rain doesn’t bother me, even when I have to walk in it. Especially on a day like today, when yesterday afternoon brought brilliant sunshine and I was lucky to walk under a canopy of cherry blossoms with the dog, a pink carpet of tissue-thin petals lining the sidewalk.  Everywhere I went, I could smell the sweet perfume of daphne and I watched with a keen eye for the season’s first tulips in someone’s yard.

To wake up this morning to the sound of the water gurgling in the gutters conjured images of fat, shiny worms making their way across the pavement. I could hear the birds in the magnolia tree right outside my bedroom window and I always imagine they are celebrating the rain, anticipating puddles to splash in and the droves of worms coming out for an easy breakfast.

I sit at the kitchen table, the house silent except for the gentle swoosh of the dishwasher and there is something about hearing the movement of water as I watch the rain fall outside that feels cozy and comforting.  The dog, still damp from our morning walk, lies breathing heavily at my feet and out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of a huge crow descending into the yard.  My first instinct is revulsion.

Ugh, crow. I think. Why couldn’t it be a robin or that sapsucker I see every once in a while? But I catch myself. Why not a crow? Because they eat garbage instead of worms and bugs or seed?  Because they are big? Because their cries do not sound like songs to me? In that instant, I feel a softening and turn to watch the crow more closely.  A smile spreads across my face as I watch it hop with a little jaunt across the stones toward the planter. He has every right to be here, too.

My pants are speckled with raindrops, the bottom cuffs soaked from puddles we walked through this morning.  The cherry blossoms were raining down on us and are stuck to the sleeves of my jacket like translucent pink polka dots.  The flagstones are shiny wet and I can’t resist stepping hard into the puddle that forms right inside the gate, although I do look around to make sure none of the neighbors was watching.

When Bubba comes back from his walk and leans in for a kiss, I love the way his cheeks feel cold and damp against mine.  He smells fresh from the outdoors and I close my eyes and inhale deeply. This is the scent of Spring.