She burns so brightly

Did I mention that I have this amazing kid? 

She is all energy and boldness.  Since she was born, we have told her stories of how she is the stuff of stars.  As she grows more into who she is becoming, I am starting to believe our bedtime myths.

She burns so brightly. 

Like a fierce fire.

Yes, she is a Sagittarius and her hair is orange and wild.  It is not just orange straight hair that falls in flimsy, limp lines over her head.  It is this sticky mass of unruly, copper strands pointing ever to the ceiling. 

Her whole little being breathes like a dragon’s mouth.  She hates to have on many clothes.  When I am reaching for a sweatshirt and skullcap to warm my frozen bones, she is tearing off her hoodie and running barefoot over the cold wood floors of our house.

She is willful and determined.  She is thoughtful and athletic beyond measure.  She loves to wrestle and dance and spin.  She also digs books with this kind of intensity that makes me glad and terrified all at once. 

I sit dreading the day when she will be too heavy to climb to the top of my feet and hang in her koala bear hugging way high in the air as far as I can extend my legs.

She is defiant.  I think her name might mean defiance.  Defiant like kid looks ma in the face when she tells you not to sit your raw bottom on the couch pillows, and, instead of listening, kid spreads her butt cheeks and grinds them into said couch pillows.  

But, maybe defiance and resistance are just regular elements of toddlerhood? 

And, if not, I know that someday her willful spirit will translate into useful power. Right now her willful ways drive me wild, but I dream of the day when she uses her stubborn heart and hardcore determination to rally for what she knows is right when faced with injustice and/or the conditions of human made suffering.  Her ferocity will be a kind and strong tool in her metallic and wide belt. 

She is made of stardust after all. 

She burns the orange of sun-star leaving scorch marks all over my chest.  One day the scars caused by her fire might fade to lovely tattoos—remnants of raw determination and the bold heart of childhood fashioned securely on my skin and over the soft tissue of my brain.  For now, I meet her willful heart in a spirit of peace.  And, mostly, I fail.  But, she is leaving me with desire to memorize her ways and maybe even use them in my own life.

Active stardust.  Like sparks.  Like deep embers.  Like knowing that my bright light righteousness will get me what I want now.   

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.

the wanted one

Spring is hanging like a fine spider web, fragile and translucent out the winter window. Sickness showered days of belly aches and fatigue throughout our house. Time slides by ten times faster than it did before our daughter gifted us with her presence.

She walks.
She laughs.
She moos and woof woofs.



She is a delight.
She is delightful.

She is most of our waking moments at least those moments when we are not consumed with our other work.

The journey to willa was so long and at times arduous. When i read back through some of this blog, I am often left with my mouth slagging a little. Months and months and months which turned into years of trying to get to her. She is one of the most wanted children living on this planet (i know, there are hundreds of thousands additional very wanted children). But I think about the hoops and planning and persistence and iron chested will it took to continue to pursue this being into existence, and I am driven to anger and sadness for those people who still espouse the rhetoric of hate about my family.

You know the sant..orum said a few months back that a child was better off having his father in prison than having two lesbian parents. Usually, i brush off his hate for ignorance, religious intolerance and drivel, but the fact that he has had the spotlight of the american media and is taken at all seriously as a potential leader for this country adds a layer of fury to my disdain for people who would try to take my child from me or who refuse to give me full legal rights of my child. I know I've blathered on about it here before, but I cannot adopt willa here in this ass-backwards and repressive state of michigan and comments from someone who sucks up minute upon minute of television, and radio, and interwebs, and newspaper airtime like the one mentioned above are serious.

Oh, and by the way, I work with people in prison and encourage the good fathers and the once deadbeat dads, alike, to parent their children from behind bars. So, santo..rum's insult was not that insulting on its face value. I think people can parent from prison, but not as well as I can parent day in and day out, face to face with my willa. See, the insult rests in the attempt to make me and kk invisible/non-existent. It is reprehensible that we isolate and ostracise whole groups of people in cages throughout america. It is also reprehensible that this other otherised group, queer folks, are threatened with extermination of full civil and human rights (or do not yet have full civil and human rights). there are intersections here. In many ways I am not so different from the man in prison, both in my position politically and socially.

The man in prison (or the woman) is very vulnerable to having his or her parental rights stripped by the state. I have no (legal) parental rights from the state. People in prison are either made to be invisible by the media or portrayed as scary, evil folks who we must lock up in order to be safe in our beds. Queer people are often feared and/or otherised to the point of being draped in a cloak of invisibility or to the point of becoming the demonized, evil deviant who we should shield our children from ( i know this is changing, but not in enough spheres. example: i cannot be out in the work i do in the state capitol. whole pieces of me are invisible there. though, i out myself through appearance:)).

Similarities? yes.

Willa paints. She hugs. She blows kisses and showers our cheeks with love.
She was wanted beyond wanting.
We work to clothe her and feed her and bathe her and catch her vomit and soothe her tears.

Spring seems early. But winter never came this year, not really. The wind is howling and trying to carry the current of growing season on her back.

Life is wanted and we are working toward delight.

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...

she is like spring in winter

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the planet, but I've had a head full of everything but the desire to write.

We have been through so many life changing, life affirming, life-as-we-knew-it disturbances over the last many weeks--I should have plenty to ruminate about. But my mind has simply sunk into a hibernation mode when it comes to the ability to fruitfully process the change and mystery unfolding all around us.

I have this gorgeous little being all tied to my chest right now and my heart is more breakable than it has ever been before.

She is like spring in winter. She is wide-eye captivating, fragile, wiry strong and dainty: Her heart like thunder in a small, ribs-like-swift-to-crack-sticks cavity ricocheting aliveness all around us. She reminds me of the green to come and the wakening of trees and garlic shoots. She tells stories in her silence and expresses stillness in her wakefulness. She is reiterating the song of learning how to just be. She is grounding. Her presence fastens the animal in me closer to my skin. sleeping, eating, peeing, shitting, sleeping, eating again. Her scent and her softness plenty to swallow amidst the coming return to the chaos of our working lives. She is pure wild. She has us by our hearts--clenching my alive parts with her scaly fingernails, scratching my vital organs and lifting many veils from around my eyes.
She will now be my best teacher. She is thawing the frozen ground beneath our feet. She is like spring in winter.

and then we were three--my version of willa's birth, in a little too much detail but minus her head coming out between k's legs pics

Oh, what a day (actually more than a day) it was.

On, Monday, November 29, kk woke at 3:56 a.m. calmly announcing that her water was breaking. She gushed and gushed some more. We texted our midwife and doula just to let them know it had begun.

We laid down layers of towels on the bed to catch the waterfall seepage of amniotic fluid and tried our best to sleep while k mildly contracted. At 7:00 a.m. I got up and watched the sun rise. Pink slashes on the sky. Orange lines rising over the downtown cityscape of Ypsilanti.

I took a shower and put on some cords and a t-shirt. Good thing I wore a toughly built belt (it came into play later). Then around 7:30 k got up with her contractions increasing all along and coming every 5 minutes. She showered and put on some leg warmers, one of her grandmother’s slips and a sweater. I gave her some breakfast and her contractions got more painful.


The beginning

Around 10:30 our doula (also, good friend) [I’ll call her Steadfast doula for the duration of this story], arrived. And, shortly thereafter, kk experienced puke fest 2010 in our bedroom. She puked in a bag; she puked in a bowl; I emptied the bowl; she puked some more…Did I mention I have a huge aversion to vomit? But that deep inner-survival spirit went all hot and got activated; plus our doula stroked k’s back, stayed near her mouth and handed off the full bowl. Then, I emptied the bowl again and again and rinsed it, etc.

My mom came around the time that our doula arrived.

From then on out, kk’s contractions were wicked and coming every 3-6 minutes. From then on, means for hours and hours.

Around noon our midwife, SP of trillium birth services who I will dub Awesome One for the purposes of this telling, arrived (at least I think it was around noon, but time started getting flaky for me).

K ended up testing positive for strep group B, so Awesome One brought the hardcore cleaning fluid, and I sprayed it all over k's birthing parts every four hours.

My darling labored on her side in bed, she labored on the floor of the baby’s room with Steadfast in front of her and me behind, she labored on the toilet—where my thick belt proved to be an awesome handle/anchor, she labored on the ball, she labored with me in the shower, she labored and labored.


laboring in bed


laboring on the floor of baby's room. check out my belt it was a magnificent handle when cradle by my massive hips throughout the labor.

Later in the afternoon, S, Awesome One’s assistant arrived (I will call her Trigger Finger for this story cause she took photographs for us all night long with our new fancy camera, and I am ever thankful for her gift to us).

All of the laboring described thus far took place in the upstairs of our house. Please note we only have one bathroom and it is upstairs. During this afternoon and into the evening of my beloved contracted and tranced and breathed deeply and moaned and avoided the sound owwwww which was ever-present on her bone dry lips.

K was in this incredible tranced out place. Now I must digress from the major theme of this telling—the birth story of our daughter—to explain how K’s trance-like state so resembled the death trances of dying people. I have sat vigil with people in the process of leaving this world. And, from my perspective, there are direct parallels between the death vigils I have witnessed and this birth vigil.

Throughout the sunlit afternoon time of k’s labor, when I would gently cup K’s chin and ask her to open her eyes and look in to my eyes, there were times when that not-of-this-world edge was so present in her stare that my heart skipped beats and salt water welled in my eyes. My breath would get caught up in the distance that was enunciated in K’s stare. She was elsewhere—landed tightly on an otherworldly precipice; a place I could not touch. This place left my chest echoing with the hollowness of what it would mean if k were to fade from this time, from our life together. Of course, I quickly slapped my flushed face back from this chatter of loss and into the moments at hand—the hard work that was the birthing of our daughter. But these strange like-death moments will live for always on my heart. These coming and leaving edges are so close. I think they may blur at times.

Around 7:00 in the evening Steadfast decided K needed a change of scenery and also, on the dl to me, she confided that K really needed to know that she could do this and while we were all there to help her through it, in the end, she was going to have to do it alone with all of her strength. So…we made her walk down the stairs. The plan was to make her walk back up the stairs after making it to the foyer, but by this time Steadfast, Awesome One, and Trigger Finger had concocted a new plan.


getting ready to walk downstairs

K had not planned to use a birthing tub at all. Even though my darling is a water person through and through (the kind of carefree swimmer who will swim a mile out from the pontoon with no flotation devices leaving me perturbed at what I deem to be unsafe practices), she did not have a desire to birth in a pool. However, after 12 hours of laboring, Awesome One thought the pool seemed like a good idea. So, she drove home to collect a birthing pool. By a little after 8:00 in the evening, the pool was full and K was laboring hard in it.

Around 9:00 our good friend and chosen family member, Auntie A, arrived. Her resilience and strength proved invaluable through the next many hours. The pool time was the party part of the labor. K was still in pain and eventually started having the urge to push in the pool, but I played a mix I had made in consultation with K and we sang (even kk sang at times) and thumped around and A and I even drank a beer.

Below: A slew of birthing pool laboring pics













The mix was 4 hours and 22 minutes and then we killed the music and K labored in silence and when it was not silence she labored to our conversations, my crass jokes, and the ticking away of the minutes.

This is the mix (there is nothing like assisting your beloved in birth as she twitch dances while contracting to the Cramps and/or Bikini Kill):




Around 11ish k started having a serious urge to push. Awesome One performed her first check on k, at this time, and realized that k’s cervical lip was hanging out and that was causing no progress to occur. Also, Willa was turned all whack, so AO worked to turn Willa and overcome the cervical lip. We learned that as long as the damn lip persisted pushing would continue to amount to nill.

Through all of this our whole team stroked and held and talked with kk. My mom would hold k’s head and Auntie A poured countless pitchers of water over K’s back. Steadfast held her hands on k’s low back for what must have totaled hours and I bent over and kissed her and whispered to her and hoped for relief.

Little did we know relief was a long way off.

Eventually, our wise midwife and team decided it was time for a change of scenery and they also determined that k was dehydrated. Her contractions had been slowing. Around 2:00 a.m. we headed back upstairs and the hunkering down/rest and re-hydration period began. Awesome One administered some homeopathic to help Willa turn and everyone in the house went to rest. Auntie A and Steadfast pulled out the thermarests and sleeping bags and slumbered on the art room floor, my ma stuffed blankets around her body and slept upright in the chair in the nursery, Awesome One and Trigger Finger took naps on the couch and chair downstairs, and K and I tried to rest in our bed.

I pumped fluids into k every 8 minutes. And for about an hour K sucked inward instead of pushed through her contractions in order to try to help turn Willa. Toward the end of this period the urge to push returned with a vengeance and k pushed and pushed as we tried to get some shut eye. No sleep came to either of us. And, during this rest period, when it seemed as thought there was no end in sight, I wept heavily. K heard me and I apologized to her, but she said it was okay.

Around 3:30 in the morning, Awesome One checked K and decided the cervical lip had receded. We determined that K would move to the toilet and push for one half hour, if after that time there had been no progress we would begin to get things in order for transport to the hospital. Our midwife was concerned that if k pushed for two more hours at home with no progress, upon arrival at the hospital unwanted medical interventions would be more likely to happen due to k’s intense exhaustion. So, AO wanted her to limit her exhaustion (ha).

We moved to the toilet and k gripped my belt like a true champ. Her strength abounded from some primal depths that I have never accessed (and never plan to access unless I am stuck in a cold cavern trying to survive and waiting for the rescue party to arrive). Up until this time, the baby’s heart was beating normally and strong. During toilet pushing, her little heart rate plummeted a little (it went from the strong 130s to 110ish). AO assured us it was still okay and so k pushed and pushed.

AO kept asking K if she felt progress. The answer was no for the first many toilet minutes. A half hour slipped by quicker than flick of a light switch. Around 45 minutes into this pushing AO asked about progress again, and K said I think poop is coming out. AO said this was good, but really there was no poop.

About an hour into the toilet pushing, we decided to begin prep for transport to the hospital. K came off the toilet and went back to our bed to labor there. I knew K was dreading going to the hospital and so was I. While we live in a progressive bubble and the University of Michigan hospital has always been ultra-respectful of our relationship, I was having a hard time swallowing the idea of bright lights and over-zealous residents poking and prodding my beloved.

After being back in the bedroom for a few minutes, our midwife looked me in the eye and I recognized this otherworldly intuition in her stare. She said, “let’s do one more check for progress, before we leave for the hospital.” By this time K had been in labor for 24 hours, and any progress would have been like a cool rain on a steamy summer afternoon.

AO checked K on our bed through a push and she said, “there is progress; let’s stay here!”

We all agreed and new energy fell on our small camp of strong women.

Auntie A and Steadfast took on the job of human stirrups. My mom and I held k’s hands and I helped k curl through each push into a human C. A and Steadfast pushed k’s legs in a crazy pose back by her ears and Awesome One turned and checked and reported progress down on the home front. Trigger Finger took pictures throughout.


We are almost to the end of it--the final pushing time



We all yelled and screamed with K through this whole last part of pushing. The verbage flying around consisted of:
“dig in deep”
“get her out. Just get her out!”
“you can do it. You are doing it”
“She’s coming, she’s almost here, her head is peeking out.”
“reach down and feel her k; she really is there.”
“Dig in, dig in, dig in.”
“Deeper k; deeper; push deeper!”

Our faces together, through this part of Willa being born, tell a story of grand perseverance and strength. I am forever thankful to have been a part of a group of women with deep calm and entrenched fierceness who beckoned the birth of our daughter through physical and verbal encouragement for my beloved.



After a couple of hours on the bed (at least I think it was a couple of hours), our daughter’s sweet, cone head came busting through what for those moments in time was the most beautiful place on earth—the soft, swollen, stretched and fleshy parts between the legs of my beloved. A place full of the power of giving life.

And then her shoulders. And then her body. Awesome One placed her directly on k’s chest. She had muscle tone and open eyes, but she had not taken her first breath; she was not breathing. AO called for the life-starter kit (oxygen pumper thing) and after a couple of doses of that, she went right to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This is the only time, during this long, hard labor, that I lost it. I jumped from the bed beside k and paced and fidgeted. Trigger finger calmed me by placing her hands on me and telling me this had happened to her two girls also and that it was normal and that many infants need a jumpstart. All of this took place over a few seconds, but it seemed long and endless. AO flicked Willa’s feet and then she took a breath.

Her little breathing body was still on kk and I laid hands on them both—my two great loves. My kk and my Willa.

The cord pulsed for a bit. K was still laboring out the placenta. AO had given her a shot of pitocin to help expel it because AO did not want my kk to push any more after such a long time of pushing.

I cut the cord.

And then we were three.

kid at heart

I rode home in humidity that seems to be breaking toward fall--My chin dripping, my arms coated in a nice sheen of wet, my pants splotted with sweat. I walked in the door to find my lovely lady in her panties and bra on the floor doing pregnancy pilates.

She is 7 months and 1 week pregnant and her belly is bulging--beautiful, round, and bountiful.


I can't believe she is growing us a baby, but that is what she is up to.

So, I walked in the screen door (totally unlocked) rolled my bicycle by my nearly naked lover and stood over her to drip some summer sweat onto her big belly.

I'm pretty geeked to be a parent and also nervous. I think we will be fun and ultra attentive. I mean I like being a goof and I do not even have a kid yet. See below for goofiness:


Yes, I dressed in a bee outfit and rode my bicycle in a parade. I love riding my bicycle in parades. It's even better in a bee costume; you should see how excited the kids watching on the sidelines get when a giant adult human bee comes peddling by.

And I love to hang out and watch animals.
See below:

a gold finch eating in the sunshine


my bees coasting home and coasting out to forage


lazing,sunning chicken lady

So, all in all, I got some pro-kid interests going on:) Some more things that make me a kid-at-heart:
drawing and making art
talking about bodily functions
watching interesting movies
listening to interesting music
riding my bike--a lot
riding my bike in parades
dripping sweat onto other people
swimming in lakes
digging holes in my backyard
swinging on swing sets (even though it makes me feel like i might puke)
laughing
chewing inappropriately (only in front of the right people)
walking in the woods
sticking my hands in my compost on a daily basis to test the heat levels
watching all of the various life-forms in the compost heap for hours and hours
splitting wood
chasing chickens
playing fetch with my dog
reading young adult novels and kid books (little house-series, anne of green gables--series, and bunnicula, just to name a few)
and much more...
see a kid just fits naturally into this little world of ours.

displaced, but ok

my darling is 5 months and 1 day pregnant today. and, lately, i've been submerged in the in between space of that which is to come. of course, i am thrilled beyond measure about the insanely huge change that is looming like an enormous convergence of clouds on the heavy set fields of some horizon, but I am also feeling a little displaced.

everything as we know it is going to change.
all of you out there with kids know this and tell this to us and we shake our heads and say, "we know, we know."

But really, I do not know shit.

K and I have been together nearly eleven years. We have forged through the good times and hard times like two pieces of granite or two stalks of corn. We love our time together: alone and with others. But we are so use to being alone, just the two of us.

And so this is where displacement starts to come in. Soon and very soon, we will never (or rarely) be alone.

And the other piece of the displacement is connected to the idea of what each of us will be like as a parent. This is all new territory. We are talking about it and soon will be writing down our ideas about how to parent together with our very different backgrounds when it comes to involvement with infants, kids, and teens.

I desire to fall even more deeply in love with k as we both take on this new cloak of parenting.

I grew up heavily involved in church life--in the evangelic.al pres..byterian church to be exact. two of the best things about this otherwise mostly repressive church was the community of caring people and the responsibility for child care that was taught to young folks growing up in the church.

As a preteen and teen, I worked in the nursery with infants, the toddler room with little ones, and the preschoolers. I know how to change diapers very well and keep rambunctious wee ones occupied. As a young adult (age 19- to almost 21), I worked with junior high girls at a sister church in detroit and then with the high schoolers and also with the kindergarten kids. Quite a few of the kids i worked with in detroit had not had much parenting at all and some of them had witnessed atrocious stuff. A 10 year old named S had seen her mama shot in the head when she was five, ya, she was a handful with a good heart buried beneath her steely, complicated exterior.

But, I learned how important boundary setting was for these kids and I learned a bit how to set those boundaries and how to enforce the boundaries in gentleness. Example: 5 year old throwing fit, striking other kids, lashing out swearing; me holding kid as he thrashes about until finally he calms down and then is just held in my arms--quieted, calmed and well-loved.

K on the other hand has very little experience with kids and babies. I think her most involved interactions with kids have been with my sister's three children over the last ten years. and she has enjoyed it.

Here i am an anarchist politically and at heart, but who on a whole believes in the legitimacy of boundaries for children, teens, and adults, alike. KK is much more laid back than me about all kinds of things. I do not intend to be a fascist parent. I do intend to develop rules (not necessarily etched in stone or chalk or anything else) and parameters together for all of us to follow.

K is so calm and stable and i cannot wait to see this all unfold in our endeavor together as parents, but damn am I nervous.

Sometimes, I find myself standing in random places and a song or a slice of life around me will startle me to stillness and my throat will seize up with a tightness and my eyes well up with tears and all I can think about is the cataclysmic event hanging on the precipice of december. I am willing it to be wonderful but every now and again the wonderful also has a hint of doom shadowing the W and L of the word.

I guess this is where big change often leaves me, scurrying about wanting answers and plans when that is not the way of life and i know it. Sometimes i wish i could gut the calvinism (the theology of predeterminism) that is imprinted on the lining of my veins, even though i have rejected every bit of the theology of my youth in my mind, from under my skin.

in the meantime k and i will keep on loving as fiercely as we can and plan where plans need made and dream in the in-between places.