a photo song from our basement

Well, I've been gone a long while.  KK says it is ridiculous that I have mostly stopped writing.  She is right.  But, being a full time activist and parenting the rest of the time is pretty darn tough and mostly time consuming.

This morning we woke up to a frigid house.

Willa said, "I cold."

This child is rarely cold.  She runs hot blooded.  She is a fire head through and through.
We should have realized that something was amiss.  In the end, we discovered the boiler had gone out.

It was hard to restart it.

We pulled an emergency parenting tactic and put the will in front of cookie monster and ernie, so the two of us could deal with the pilot light.  And, so willa could be orphaned at a young age should the boiler explode.  I have never let will watch anything by herself before.  She is allowed about 15 minutes of screen time a week.  But, both (or one) of her parents are always by her side.  The damn show came in handy.

After maneuvering around on our ancient basement floor for quite a long time, we finally finished the task.

I also had a lovely time of re-exploring some nooks and crannies of our 109 year old basement.  So the following are some shots of those corners and walls.  You get a peek of a gritty basement instead of my sweet kid.

hankering for willa;)

My little, constipated darling is nestled against my chest sleeping hard. She is experiencing her first bout of real constipation and I hurt for her little abdomen. I thought you might be hankering for some willa shots so find a quick photo narrative of the last many weeks. Oh, by the way, the willster is sitting on her own now. Yes, at 5.5 months her little abs are strong and she can hold herself up. She is a bit wobbly, but nonetheless, I am impressed.

For my b-day weekend at the end of April we went on a little trip. This is my sweet one and me all pooped out on a hotel bed. The wrench was a gift from an interwebs' awesome person.


Willa at the Growing Hope Plant Sale! Me all squinty in the back...


The chickens really, really want to make a snack out of will's toes. We have to chase them off when willa is in the yard.


Our first mother's day. I have so many reflections to share on what this all means or does not mean to me, but I won't. Though, I will, soon and very soon, reflect on how heterosexism has become so much more visible and real to me since becoming a parent to this amazing little chunk of star.


Willa's first Bike Ypsi Spring Ride and Festival. She is being held up by our really tall friend in a florescent wbreaker.


Besides working too much, gardening as much as I can, riding my bike as much as I can, and spending quality time with will and k, kk decided that we should dig up the back yard and replace the sewer fittings that come out of the house and about 8 feet out to the old clay pipe. So, I've been supervising and working on that project too. My co-worker and neighbor dug this daddy out in a few hours and then our friend t helped glue all the parts together and fit it up nicely. All of this was guided along by this really great water engineer ypsi guy (for free). We are lucky. So, this has also been taking up my time. I have worked on backfilling the hole. This means throwing heavy dirt/clay back down in a gaping 6 by 8 by 6ish feet deep hole in intervals and stomping the hell out of it.

Pic of us staring down...

a bath and her lovely belly with a bounty that is beyond, beyond

Trying times are met with brilliant moments.

We have been through death and sorrow (my gram went on, my too young uncle, also) in the last month. Work is full and good. Preparation for our dear one is in full swing as K is 35 weeks into this mystery. We are gathering supplies, writing down notes for our desires, and moving toward giving birth at home.

These walls have held the years of others' living like dark stories caught in sunlight. These walls are thick with horse hair plaster and layers of paint and old wall paper glue. These walls are witness to the stretched vocal chord sound of song, fury, love, heartache, winter frost, summer dew, the scent of sex, the idleness of waiting, the quiet of stillness, the hectic murmur of insomnia, the bewildered moments before knowing, the aches, the pitter patter of small animals and children (animals too), the last breaths of loved ones. So much has happened in these rooms in the last 107 years; so much we do not know; so much we do know.

And soon we will be adding to the memories of these walls and the ceilings and the floors. Soon, K will be wailing the cries of child birth; notes that have long vowels and crazy consonants carrying out the ends of her mouth. Soon, she will walk over worn wood in rhythms we are yet to understand. Soon, this thing we know so little about and have tried to learn too much about, will devour us with its mystery and we will make invisible etchings of experience all around us.

On Saturday, we took ourselves out for a fancy date (the last one till our world is turned upside down by the introduction of this new being into our lives). Beforehand, K bathed in our old, deep clawfoot tub. Dusk was on the fringe; gray cascaded through the windows in autumn clad slices, and I took pictures of this graceful beauty unfolding within and throughout this woman i love with every ounce of all of me. Below are a few:

belly ball in bath

angel

amazing

shimmer in the tub

gorgeous beyond, beyond

a weekend of bones and beer and books

Today, a rainy afternoon.

Last night too much beer.
Little sleep.
Too much beer in my blood makes my natural insomnia deeper. Heavy haze in my eyes and face but still no falling into those dark places where things right or wrong themselves more easily.

Last afternoon, i started dare, truth, or promise (a young adult le.sbian novel).Before falling asleep, finished it.

in the middle of the night woke hot and flustered from the previously mentioned too much beer, started the novel Patience and Sarah.
Finished it in the steel gray of coming morning.

Finally slept.

Drank coffee.
lazed around.

devoured the soft skin of the love of my life.
held her close in our new bed. Yes, she built me a bed yesterday. And now we are like real adults--no more mattress on the floor.

We loved for hours this lazy, chilled, early spring afternoon.

I found her softness incredible.
The beating of her heart wishing me to never stray from the bone scaffold of her.
It is like that. this love. it is like rushing and slowing and falling over and over again. it is like never knowing and knowing everything.

we try too hard to make too many decisions. we try too hard to think about the future and what she holds for us. all the jumbled mess of desiring or not desiring children. all the complications that fall heavy like lead bullets scraping past our earlobes and leaving drips of nothing on the tiny lines of cartilage that amplify the sounds we want to hear: the voice of direction; the clarity of a prophet; the knowing that we will be alright no matter what.

Leaving that behind in the sweet and sharp bite of beer and novels about "forbidden" love and women forging ahead amidst the struggle of pure adversity and no clear path, well that is what this weekend held. Better than any other; not so different than all the rest.

And in the end our bodies found comfort today--bone to bone, hip to hip, breast to breast.

we will go on along. each day we will build our bed and love stronger and tighter. we will weave our hands together until the traces of each of our fingertips are left always on the fingerprints of her and of me. it is no more spiritual than this; it is no more fantastical or real than everyday breathing in the dusty air of our house and then the crisp air of outside, once we depart to the world around us.

it is this loving of her that makes sense; it is more than religion; it is everything.

dirty hands in 2010

every day slips by a little faster. the sun falling and then rising and the moon cracking white lines over blue black sky so many nights. then all darkness--sometimes. pink lines bend through the eastern horizon in mornings when the sun peeks out to reach us.

and by noon the ball of fire beams sends volts of light beyond measure into the trees and soil and over the tails of animals.

and we just keep going around and around on this ball of life and decay.

last year at this time i was sick with a life inside of me. this year at this time i look back on that time and think it was only a minute ago or it was so long ago or did that really happen at all?

it is like a vivid blur. too real to be hazy for always; too surreal to be entirely clear.

my body for 10 weeks was held captive by a brief curious sort of experience. many cells congregated in my womb and grew all liquidy and blood-filled and then the growing stopped and the cells busted through that supple place between my legs. i was flabbergasted throughout the life growing, then dying, then birthing the death, then bleeding a lot to eradicate the fleshy parts that had built up in my womb, and then this grieving surrounded by a cloud of panic and depression and questions.

and through all of it what i have learned is that the calling i have felt since i was fifteen needs to be gradually more realized in my life. while i do farm on my little urban plot, one day i want nothing more than to grow vegetables, nuts, fruits, animals, and bees and to do it well and do it surrounded by good community--good created family--good friends.

2009 started off with a miscarriage. it was a swooping bang of a wake up call; a kind of startling alarm orchestra blazing like a string section on speed. it told me that my body is very female. it is also very fertile and very connected to the rhythms of the moon and tides; the pulses of the seasons. I knew this already, but it raised it to a new level of realness in my heart. it made me ready to return to the soil and the roots and rhizomes that weave through her darkness. it made me more aware of the cycle of life and the deepness of decay and death connected to that life.

My desire to always be grounded to place and to establish deep roots seems to have multiplied tenfold since the miscarriage. Now, the question is where should these roots be put down. for so long i thought it would be here in ypsi. but now i keep questioning where we should be and k does too. we want to grow things together and growing on an urban lot in a city where people all too readily toss bloody bandages and burger k.ing cups and fry containers and homemade crack pipes and used condoms on the ground is a bit tougher than leasing or buying land somewhere more open and not as touched by the grimy, ill-intentioned/ignorant hands of humans.

cities need green spaces too and we have been doing it well here. chickens, bees, vegetables, trees, bicycling groups, friends--we've been growing it--many questions. few answers. we will see what 2010 brings.

i know i want my hands in the soil more hours of the day than not.

i know i want dirty hands in 2010.

coop, insects, photos

soon chickens will be living in here

Right now my body is hurting with some deep muscle pain from hours of scraping and prepping our front porch for a new coat of paint, priming the clothesline poles and the porch rail, and helping to carry an enormous chicken coop over our fence and then screwing it together (at one point k and I almost literally appeared to be screwing the chicken ramp cause it landed between our legs while drilling up under the house).



Besides house improvements and mini-urban farming, I've also been riding plenty of mileage on my bicycle. I am up to 4,400 miles.

Lately, I have this obsession with insects and eugene o'neill. Below are some pictures I took on one of my bike rides down by the river i love.


ladybug


many at work


grapes


alone at work


sumac

to die in our house

I'm back; kind of.

The last few weeks have been full up of life-changing experiences and incredible volumes of prismatic glimpses into the cycles of living and dying and living some more going on all around us.



After my last post, k's grandma got really sick. She had been starving herself for quite a few weeks and then her small, 83 pound body started to crash out. On July 28 she was rushed to the hospital from the skank-ass nursing home she was living (if you can call it that) in. She had suffered multiple heart-attacks (ya, those heart attacks somehow slipped past the nursing home staff) and was not able to talk very well any longer.

The short of it is that we brought her home on Friday, July 31 to die at our house. And her final hours in our living room were a gift that will linger long on our hearts. Hospice is an amazing organization. They got a bed delivered to our house asap and oxygen and then grandma sterling was brought via ambulance. When they took her off fluids at the hospital her blood pressure dropped to almost nil and R (an amazing friend of the family who waited with grandma at the hospital while we went home to prepare a dying space in the house for her) did not think she would make the ambulance ride. But she did.

And then we moved her into our front window and the late afternoon light shone over her dwindling body. Her skin was so translucent we could see her bones and her beautiful blue veins--straight skeleton lines and undulating blue rivers trapped beneath her soon to go back to the earth flesh.



R came over to our house to be with us and grandma until other people could be there. I cannot express the gratitude that surfaces in my heart when I think about R and her kindness. 7 years ago when K's mama was dying, R was there by her side and by K's family's side. She is a bulwark--she brings strength and compassion in her shining shadow--she is good and sets for me the example of ideal friendship and loyalty.

We knew at this time that grandma did not have many hours left, so we rallied K's dad to come down from up north, where he runs the resort in the summer and is busy beyond belief, to say his goodbye. He had planned to come on sunday, but we knew she would be gone by then, so he jumped in the car and started driving on Friday evening.

All of this is still so fresh with me. It is hard for me to write about it. I've tried getting it out on paper, but without real results. So bare with me.

We stared at grandma as she lay dying in our living room. It all felt so right and okay. Her life had been long and full. I could not help thinking how the miscarriage happened for a reason. Instead of carrying a new life into this world in the month of August, we were able to help shepherd this old life out of this world. If I had been pregnant, this would not have happened. I would have been about to burst with child. In contrast, we were able to open our home and hearts to a woman who had been the catalyst for the life k and I live together. Without grandma sterling there would never have been a KK.

I watched as the sun dappled brightness over grandma's gaunt and wrinkled yet smooth and beautiful all at once cheeks. I thought about the last of the vitamin D that she soaked into her still moving and living cells. I thought about how one day I will no longer see or soak up the sun. I marveled at the kindness of friends. A cooked for us and sat with us and stayed by our sides. T and R came over and kept vigil for a time. T sang the loveliest of songs to our dear grandma and grandma raised her eyebrows to let us know she heard the melodies and the words of love and assurance.

K's dad arrived at midnight and he watched over grandma with us throughout the night. The mother of his dear, loving, and no-longer-with-us wife now lay before him passing from this world and I could not help but think about all of the sadness that must have crept gently into his gut as he rocked in the rocking chair of his brother who also had left this world while still so young.

We stayed up through the night, sleeping an hour here and then there. We waited for grandma to take her last breath. Her breathing was so inconsistent and shallow; we wondered when it might cease and if we would notice.

Around 9 in the morning K's dad left to go get rest and K and I stayed beside grandma. K had a powerful and lovely morning with her grandma. She called on her ancestors who we could feel hovering in the room. I burned sweet grass around the outside of the house (we did not want to blow up the oxygen tanks so I stayed outside). The tender smell of the grass lifted with the gentle breeze through the windows. Around noon K's aunt came back to the house. And then around 1:00 grandma took her last breath.

We stayed with her body for two more hours. The hospice nurse came to pronounce her dead and get everything wrapped up (like disposal of morphine into cat litter, etc) She told us that we could roll a towel and push it under grandma's chin to keep her mouth closed, so I did this. We did not wash her body and I regret this, but I do not think K's aunt could have handled it. And then the cremation men came in a big, blue, unmarked van. The one man was tall and wide with a white, bushy handlebar mustache. He was gentle and his sidekick was a nondescript man with a small smile and kind hands. Their short-sleeved collar shirts were worn thin and I wondered what their armpits might smell like. K and I stood side by side--K's aunt went into the backyard and they lifted grandma from the bed onto the removal gurney. They covered her face with a sheet and then with the maroon, terrycloth-like gurney cover (the same color was used when a different set of collar shirted men took K's mom's body from the house). And then they took her 96 year old body from the house and set her in the back of the van.

K wept then. We stood on the porch and I held her and she wept. And I held her more.
And then we went inside and K asked me to get the empty bed out of the window. But I could only move the mattress and pillows, so I did.

The last two weeks I have been processing all of this and dreaming of grandma sterling often. There is so much more, but for now I will close.

normal house--part II

So the history of this house is made up of the factual, more objective bits I’ve been able to piece together. Of course, objectivity goes out the window when those factual bits get processed through my brain, but still I tried.

Here are a few stories of this house and that people that lived here and the life that still grows here that dance under my eyelids and on the projector that runs on the back of the inside of my skull.

When I mow the lawn that surrounds this old house, I almost always have this strange déjà vu; this action that I’ve seen before plays hazy but vivid in my mind and almost in my actual vision. I picture an older, pale-skinned man walking the length of the house and the backyard and the side yard in greasy, green work pants and a thinly worn
from-so-much-washing white t-shirt. He has on the best of workboots—lovely fatigued, brown leather—the kind of leather that looks like it has caressed in loving tenderness the feet and hands of the owner and scuffed against a thousand sidewalks, stones, and dirt trails only to be gently wiped down and polished up on weekly basis.

This ghost man tends to the yard and the gardens and the chickens that live in the back with steadfast attention and care. Everything grows in great abundance and the house and yard are clean and tidy.

I see him in my peripheral vision. I catch his sinewy, strong body striding confidently around the corners of the house and then he is gone out of view. I feel his presence while I work in the yard and tend to my gardens and mow the lawn. He is everywhere. Their presences--the people who have lived here before—are scratched out into raised surface scars that bump me in the night and during the day.

In the photos that I dug up in the Ypsilanti Archives, our house boasts white clapboard siding on the bottom half of the house and what I think was black painted cedar-shake on the top. The residue of black (I am sure full up of lead) paint is still on parts of the windowpanes.

There is this picture of Mary Magdelan Blum in her lovely white dress, carrying this mega-bouquet of roses or maybe peonies or maybe both. I like to think that at one time rose bushes flourished on this property, but really there is no evidence of such a garden. And still in my mind, I conjure the clustered thorny bushes and see them—hazy yet hard brilliant billows of flowers on the grassy edges of our yard.



There is no doubt that the oldness of this place is set into the very ground on which this house was built. There is movement of another time weaving through the air and the trees that surround our space. The Oak in the backyard is so huge: I cannot even begin to know or count the years it has hovered kindly over the grass and ivy that makes up the yard. I think of the storms it has weathered and the bitter cold that has bit its bark and stymied its roots, only to awaken to the shaking warm wind of Michigan Spring.

Today, the cold ran over my skin like icy sandpaper. Really, my hands are so dry they keep splitting open. This winter has been long and hard. These memories and histories are keeping me readied for spring.

Ode to our south normal house--part I

I’ve never really written here much about this great old house that k and I live in. This summer will mark our 6th year here. And now I think it is time to write about this place that holds us and keeps the rain off our heads and keeps our toes warm (well sort of warm) in the winter and catches our sweat in the summer, because this house has heard so much of the joy and pain of our lives in these last years.

The house we live and love in was built in 1903.

The horse hair plaster walls have soaked up our memories like the sun-dried earth soaks in a good rain. There are families who have lived here before us and contributed the oils of their feet and the grime and stickiness of their hands to the floors and walls. Their words rest in the still vibrant—never been painted over—wood trim and their idiosyncrasies stain the ceilings and closets.



The living room wall.

I love this old house. The floors are a light oak and the walls are trimmed in a gorgeously orange, brown stained wood. The living room and Dining room run into one another and the original wood rods that held heavy drapes to keep in the warmth are still in place.

The mantel and coal-burning fireplace are older than the house and stand as a solid, gorgeous welcome to anyone entering. The ceilings are tall and spacious. And the radiators that bring us steam heat sputter and squeak and spit all winter.



The floor, a radiator, the lead -glass windows...





The mantel.

When I wash the floorboards, I smell the scents of the people who lived here before us. I always wash the floors and the window-sills and the wood trim by hand with a mixture of murphy’s oil soap and vinegar or meyer’s cleanser and vinegar. And the hotness of old wood wafts into the rooms as the warm water seeps into the hundreds-of-times-humanly hand-caressed-with-wet-rags floors and trim and sills.



More wood...

I am a lover of history—of all that has come before us and the various perceptions connected to all of that living and loving and wallowing and warring and mystifying and dying. I got As in Social Studies and History classes all through school. Even in 9th and 10th grade when I was a total slacker (before I realized that I was so good at school and that my braininess mattered), I aced my Social Studies classes. While I tend to not believe in ghosts, I do believe in the leftover energy of people who have gone on from a place. Our house has always had a good energy. And the energy that lingers here the most is, I believe, from the people who lived here the longest.



This old stairway.

I did a slew of research at the Ypsilanti Historical Archives back when we first bought this house (we bought her from friends who had lived here for five years; before them a family had lived here for 12 years; before them a family had lived here 51 years—the family with the whispers hanging loudest on the staircase and in the clawfoot tub—the Blum family).

The Blum family ate and drank and slept and gardened and got sick and fought and talked and breathed and did things I will never know what here in this house where k and I drink and eat and sleep and fuck and laugh and cry and throw things at the sun and cook and smile and dream. Back in the day before google, white pages, or fancy sophisticated search software, Ypsilanti published this address book thing that actually listed all of the residents living at a certain address and their professions and relationship status. After quite a while of research, I learned that the Blum family lived here from 1935 to 1986 in some way shape or form. It seems as though Oliver, Mary Magdalen, and Leo were all children to Mary Louise Blum and that Mary Magdalen and Oliver lived here unmarried, together until 1978 when Mary died. Oliver went on to live here until 1986 when he died.

Oliver’s Obituary was kept in the Ypsilanti Archives, but Mary Magdelan’s living relatives either did not have an obit written up or the Archives just didn’t have one. However, there was a Catholic, prayer card—you know the kind with a picture of a saint and a person’s name, birth date, and death date, in the archives for Mary. I assume it was in Oliver’s possessions. So, Oliver’s obituary listed no living relatives; it seems as though he was the last of his line and therefore it is really hard to find out any information on the family other than what I was able to find at the archives and of course the amazing little remnants of their living left in the built in workbench in our basement and the rafters of our garage.

Then the other day, I came upon this magnificent list from the electronic version of Ypsilanti Gleanings

Oliver Blum’s estate was acquired by the Ypsilanti Historical Society. So, my one glimpse into the worldly things other than the basement and garage gifts that might have been kept in this house or in the house’s garage are a waterfall of words that describe objects that once were here in my space and are laid out in the estate acquisition list below.

Oliver Blum Estate
Small Wash Board
Old Dominoes
Nutmeg Scraper
Level-Auto Parts, Inc.
Can Opener
Bone Handled Pocket Knife
Razor Strop
Pens & Pencils-Local
Advertising
Mouth Organ “The Sportsman”
Items from World War II.
Box-Cherbourg
Canteen Cover
Duffle Bag
Belt Buckle
Auto Hydrometer
Multi Colored Shawl
Lace Tablecloth
2 Dresses
Man's Suit-Hart, Schafner
and Marx
Man's Coat