I think that's your plane?

Today is Monday. There are boxes and hot pink discount bins all over my room. I have gathered about a pound of blond hair from various corners of the room and realized once again that I have a book hoarding problem. I am packing, or clearing out, of my bedroom in Austin. Thursday I will get on a plane to Colorado, then Friday I will get back on a plane with sister, toddler, and bun (-in oven) to make our way to the West Coast. I will be gone two months. Eight weeks. Sixty days. I think about the days, as though each were dangling above me on a clothespin, and wonder which to pluck off first. I think many things, on my duvet-cover now stained with pizza sauce; it's just been one of those weekends.

Where to begin? Just thinking about this time last year, when I arrived sweating and enthralled by the downtown city lights of Austin and was just a little disappointed not to hear accents, I find myself getting that strange feeling of time lost. Has it been a year? Have I really taught as a middle school teacher and created a family with a bunch of smelly but darling twelve-year-old adolescents? The answer is, but of course, a resounding yes (especially the smelly part, as I learned this year the Spanish word for fart is 'pedo' and I have learned to move away quickly upon hearing it). I took so many pictures of my babies during our UT field trip that I almost scratched the lens with my clucking.

Now, a new TTF person is coming to live in my room for the summer. She keeps asking me all of these adorably naive questions and I don't have the heart to tell her just how ruthless it is out there to be a teacher. I want her to keep her faith, to think that she is different, because everyone deserves that. I just can't help but think of how much has changed since I did summer institute last year. I hadn't met Heather, my dearest Austin love, who has turned so many of my tears into bouncy bowls of laughter that I don't know what I would have done without her. She is like a fellow potato, that happened to grow up on a distant island, but we have the same tough kind of roots. We have gushed and bitched about all the parts of work or life that are possible with verbal communication, and beyond that, we've done a ridiculous number of hand gestures.
I also met a lovely man, who I had a movie-sized goodbye with on my porch when it was still sticky at 3am. I watched him, half ready to cry and half ready to be alone, get in his truck and drive away. He will be in China all summer while I gallivant the U.S. with no real agenda except letting myself be surprised over and over again.

I also have a new house. There is the cutest dwelling waiting for me August 1st, and I am giddy with anticipation to scoop and shlep all of my shit into it and nest like the feathery and particular bird that I am. The trees make this canopy above the roof and....sigh.....see how I lose focus so quickly? OK, so, I have made great friends and have a job that fulfills me in all those scary little pockets of soul that you were afraid may grow over with cobwebs but now, instead, the light pours into it and you think it may be a nice spot to paint after all. I like to think back to last May, about how nervous I was, how my hands shook when I threw those dice in California, betting that a life in Texas would maybe, just maybe, be that thing that my newly mid-twenty self was secretly trying to grab hold of. And, I think I may be bruised, but I still hold it, in my balmy hands.

This summer will not be a break, not in the truest sense. Though I can and will devour books like female teachers with free cupcakes, I vow that I will finish MY book. I mean, here I have been given over two months of undisturbed, child-free existence and if I were to throw it away on wheat beer and floating devices what kind of human would I be? Well, a chubby and well-tanned one, certainly, but I want to be more. Besides, didn't that seven months in Thailand remind me it is actually impossible for me to get any real kind of color? So, I will go to coffee shops and spend time in the bedroom I grew up in so as to restore that hidden well-water within me that sometimes, my arms don't have the strength to draw from. I want to go back to them, drink from them, baptize myself in each drop and remember that the whole point of my book is to make people feel like there is more to this world, more to themselves, than what they have ever dreamed.

Simple, right?? Well, we will see. I will still be blogging about all the mini-trips I go on and attempting to document the tornado of emotions that I usually smack into when returning to Chico. Hopefully people have developed some kind shelter for my arrivals, as I tend to not know I destroy as much as I do.

But it is a good thing to leave a place. It is a good thing to miss and be missed. It is good to look upon a time and know it is gone but still pointing your little feet toward the road because, at least you know you're going somewhere. So, here's to the brave souls who have picked my hitchhiking butt up throughout my life, loaded in me in their cars and helped me get somewhere amazing. I know there will be more to meet, and I love to stick my legs up on the dash and hear the world sing.

The City

You said the structures
were built around you
that the streets came from
slender parts of arm
you wrapped around downtown
all those times
'round me
That the freeways
were all the twirled truths
the mind played with you
taking you up and over
then spitting you out into I-35
This place was once home
your joyful bones
that you've compacted with scaled hands
peeling, you rose like ivy
a silent smothered skyscraper
that once pointed to Michigan
it now brings me here
the smell of soaked pavement
and a weak river
you were wise to build upon

This is Seventh Street
where I watch the city cry

And I
I hold the gavel
I grasp the heart
neatly zipped in my heart
of your waning metropolis

In the Eyes

I read somewhere that eyes never grow from birth to death. That, when you gaze upon that pinkness of newborn perfection, you see the same eyes that will decades later cry over a failed marriage, or mist at the sight of the Great Wall of China. It is true that when you see a baby, their eyes are the dominant force on their pudgy little faces, even my sky blues, that were once held up by the wall of chub that were my soft cheeks.

It makes one wonder, about the greatness of change we experience in ourselves. That we can be given these little round circles, placed neatly in sockets and protected by a skin-curtain, and while the rest of our body sprouts and stretches our way of seeing the world does not. Is this an argument for nature? Perhaps. Perhaps there is some meaning in the fact that the objects that flip the world upside down and view it remain unchanging no matter our years or experiences.

Sometimes, I look at pictures of myself. When I was young, and my smile nearly reached my temples and my ringlets were loose. My eyelashes were never caked with mascara and my lips were just as pleased with an otter pop as they are now with passion. I try to connect myself to the little girl, the one my parents say was so sweet and would lose entire afternoons playing Dollhouse. I find that the only real thing that brings me to her, are those eyes, for I know them, recognize them as though they are an ancestor from long ago that has returned to a dusty village, and I gravitate toward them. For in those eyes, those unabashed eyes, I can find who I once was. Some days this makes me weep. I must admit that I am much changed, and though I still ache over people's pain and try desperately to shine with any kind of incandescence, I fear I am no longer selfless.

But this is how it goes, is it not? The change is as constant as the ebb and flow of hope and darkness. But I do love looking at my nephew, my darling Carter, and thinking that one day he will stare back at me as a man. He probably will be taller than me, and I will have one of those short mom haircuts and a homemade macaroni necklace that my twins made me (gasp!), but I will forever recognize his angelic eyes.

Perhaps this is why parents can never let go of those precious early years. You will always be puffed with childhood delight to your parents. Like a lovely pastry, you will always be sweet and protected on a china dish. We should rejoice in it. There are so few people that will ever remember you so well.

As I leave for work, I gaze once more in the mirror, and my battle continues. Perhaps I will never connect Krissy, (my childhood name), and the woman I am now, but I may have many afternoons trying. I think the point is, all these little parts are me, and that is something I have to believe in.