We are the change we've been waiting for.

A little "art" I created in a Naropa class last week:  Anna
Dickinson, the 19th century Quaker abolitionist and
orator (and lesbian) observing 9-year-old (lesbian) me.

While Facebook friends and my classmates and professors at Naropa's Summer Writing Program celebrated the SCOTUS marriage-equality decision last Friday, I struggled with anger.  What were we celebrating, really?  The Supreme Court's decision that my fiancé and I deserve basic human rights?  I thought about the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision, and wondered if African American families felt celebratory or exhausted and angry when it was announced.  Of course my child should get to attend school with your child.  It's about time.  Or the 1919 passing of the 19th Amendment, which enfranchised women in the United States 143 years after Abigail Adams pleaded with her husband John to "remember the ladies" as he helped write the text of the U.S. Constitution.  I've seen the photographs of women celebrating the amendment, victoriously holding their placards aloft.  But surely they felt anger, too.  One hundred and forty-three years?   The fight was painful, vitriolic.  Opponents hurled insults at the suffragettes:  she's really a man, she neglects her children, she's a Sapphist. Many suffragettes did not live to see their dream of the vote realized.  When justice takes so long, how can we forgive the time frame and just celebrate?

I carried these brooding thoughts with me to a table at the Naropa Café, where my poet-friend Val was gesturing for me to join her.  Val is much older than I am:  short gray hair, life-worn, a poet shaman who wears bright scarves, believes her dreams, and talks openly of a difficult past she barely survived.  We're connected because we're both writers and we're both lesbians.

"I can't shake this anger I'm feeling today," I told her.  My bones felt heavy.  I told Val what I'd been thinking about Brown and Abigail and celebrations, and she nodded, agreeing, but I caught the glint of loving amusement in her eyes.  And suddenly, I heard how young I sounded.  I came out as a lesbian at age 28, in 2005, after famous people like Ellen had begun to come out (1997), after the last sodomy law was overturned in Texas (2003), after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage (2004).  I was born eight years after the Stonewall Riots (1969).  And I didn't feel like celebrating?  In the middle of my own sentence, I burst out laughing.

Val grinned.  "The world is changing," she said.  "It's our work to be midwives to all this change.  We've got to celebrate.  It's our work."

It's our work.  I celebrated the rest of the day without hesitation, cheering with all the rest when Anne Waldeman introduced our Friday colloquium with a joyful fist in the air and a "How about that Supreme Court decision?" I checked Facebook more often than usual, and felt only glad to see all the rainbows.  Meredith texted from the World Series of Poker in Vegas:  "Because of the Supreme Court decision today, I've already won!"  Determined to be a midwife for all this change, whenever it arrives, a friend and I toasted Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer at dinner that night.  What does anger accomplish?  The change is happening.  People who struggled with police at Stonewall never thought they'd see this day.

This morning, I sit outside on the front porch with my coffee, the sprinklers nourishing the new plants in our garden, and contemplate change in my own life.  In four years, Mitike and I have moved three times:  Juneau to Fort Collins, Fort Collins to Boulder, and now to Denver. Four years ago, Ali died.  Only two years ago, I emerged from living all the time inside grief.  And now, in this past year and a half, as if something in me was finally prepared to midwife good, life-giving change:  I met Meredith, I got a few pieces published, I earned an MFA, I found a good high school English job, and I got engaged.  When the assistant principal at South High asked me why I was moving to Denver, I told her I was moving in with my fiancé, and that she lives just a few miles from the school.  It wasn't long ago that it was dangerous for a teacher to come out to an administrator.  The assistant principal just smiled and said, "Congratulations!  Will the kids have to get used to you having a new last name next year, then?"

This morning, I feel only joy.  Yes, these changes that seem obvious take too long.  Yes, we have a long way to go in this country to craft a safe and equal world for people of all races, backgrounds, sexual orientation, etc.  But this morning, I'm watching the sun glint off the droplets of water on my new yarrow and coneflower plants.  In a year, I'm hoping these plants fill this garden, but they're still new.  They're waiting for the soil to be right for their roots, for the sun and rain to nourish them just enough.  Then they'll grow tall and full.  For now, I'll stand nearby and write, a midwife for all this good change.

Overwhelmed

After my sister Katie and her book club read and studied Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, by Brigid Schulte, the group of women attended Schulte's April 23 talk in Fort Collins. In the Q&A session after the talk, Katie raised her hand and asked where an overwhelmed working mother of two small children could even begin.  Schulte's response:  "Throw away your to-do lists."

On Katie's recommendation, I've bought this book, and. . . I've stacked it on the top of a pile of other books on my desk that I plan to read soon, when I have time.  When I'm not so overwhelmed.  One stack is my stack of esoteric "to-read" books; another is inspirational "to-read" books; the final one is "I've read this recently but haven't bothered to put it away yet" books.  On my bedside table in my room, I have the stack of "fiction I've started but haven't gotten around to continuing" books, the stack of "poetry I'd like to say I've read but it never holds my attention at midnight when I go to bed" books, the stack of "biographies I mean to read but stop reading because people's lives aren't as interesting as they could be at midnight when I've finished writing and grading papers and planning lessons" books, and the stack of "bad lesbian romances I buy because I want to support other lesbian writers but just can't bear to read them" books.

Schulte's book, Overwhelmed perches on the prestigious stack, the first stack I see when I come in the door after a long day of teaching, the stack I see when I grab my laptop to write my 1500 words for the night, no matter how tired I am.

To-Do:
*Read all those books.
*Stay as well-read as possible.
*Do everything on my to-do list, every night.

If I didn't have a to-do list, I'd never get anything done.  Throw it away?  I'm too overwhelmed to think about doing that.

Tonight, for example, I decided I would not let myself start anything else until I'd crossed off two important items from the long to-do list on my desk:  buy a dress for the San Francisco wedding in June, and buy shoes for that wedding.  Simple enough, except that I detest shopping, even online.  Styles, colors, reviews, comparisons.  I tried to shop in person earlier tonight, but one walk through Macy's made me shudder.  I'll take my chances online.  Two hours later, I clicked "purchase" on Amazon, then immediately regretted I'd chosen a lavender dress instead of something safer, like brown.  Already 11:30 pm.  Instead of picking up one of those books, I played three games of Words With Friends on my phone, then felt frustrated that I'd frittered away the time when I could have been enriching my brain.

To-Do:
*Get a dress for San Fran
*Stop frittering away the hours.
*Quote Thoreau more often.
*Read Thoreau more often.
*Do more yoga?
*Stay off Facebook!
*Check in with friends and family (Facebook for five minutes.)
*Stay up later, to do more things from my To-Do list

I know these are first-world problems.  White, privileged problems.  The anxiety that rises in me when I think about the full laundry hamper, the empty refrigerator (when TK needs food for her lunch tomorrow), and my current job search is the anxiety of someone who lives in a safe and secure house and neighborhood, who has a stable and well-paying job, who is relatively healthy and is surrounded by supportive, loving family and friends.  I don't need to worry.

To-Do:
*WORRY.

My chest aches, my arms go numb, my breath is too shallow.  My lower back hurts.  I sit on my couch and try to distract myself with The New Yorker, and end up reading about forest elephants which poachers are evidently killing at a rate of one every fifteen minutes.  American researcher Andrea Turkalo has camped out in the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic for twenty years.  She spends her time observing the elephants and reading voraciously.  She told The New Yorker:  "That's why I like being here.  You have time to focus on things."  Her life is in danger because the Sudanese poachers carry automatic weapons, and her work is in danger because the elephants are disappearing and the Chinese are blazing roads so they can log the forest.  I shouldn't feel jealous of Andrea Turkalo.

To-Do:
*Start a campaign against the buying of ivory.
*Discover a way to make my Boulder apartment feel like a tent in the Dzanga-Ndoki

I'm not overwhelmed the way I was when I lived in the middle of grief.  The smallest tasks overwhelmed me then.  I'd run out of milk and lean against the counter to cry about it.  I'd lie in bed in the morning and dread the complicated task of getting dressed and then brushing my teeth.  The dentist bill made me panic, and so did the price of ground beef, and of soccer lessons for TK.  Now I'm mostly overwhelmed by happiness:  moving, job searches, future plans.  And I'm a mother of a small child, which makes me overwhelmed anyway.  I don't get to come home from work and just lounge on the couch with my peanut butter tortilla in one hand and a book in the other.  I have to cook a healthy dinner and then encourage TK to pack her lunch and then push her to put her pajamas on and brush her teeth, and somewhere in there we practice math (tonight, we practiced fractions), and somewhere in there we read another chapter of Harry Potter, and then I tuck her into bed.  I could flop onto the couch after that, and read, or watch TV.  But I make myself write.

To-Do:
*Sleep more.
*Write three more novels before August 30.
*Find out why I'm so compelled to write.
*Find something bigger and more important to write about.
*Ask myself:  if I never relax and only write, about what will I write?
*Ask myself:  what will happen if I order out for dinner more often?

My middle school students are all researching nonviolent action in the world right now.  That's the best gift I can offer a privileged, predominately white population of students, to show them that 1) violence is not an answer to the world's problems and 2) they have some power to enact change.  But as I circulate in my classroom, helping with sentence construction and image layout, advising about the credibility of online sources, I only feel overwhelmed.  Yes, people are marching in Myanmar against the jailing of journalists, and holding up signs in Russia against homophobia, and projecting holographic images of themselves illegally protesting in Spain.  But North Korea continues to abuse its people, and Uganda's corrupt regime is still in power, and Guantanamo Bay is still open.  Is it working? I ask each group of students about the nonviolent actions they're researching.  They shrug.  It's still not fixed, if that's what you mean.  No.  It won't be.  All we can do is keep marching.

To-Do:
*Overcome the Powers That Be.
*Keep marching.
*Don't give up!

I'm tired.  I think I'll grab this Overwhelmed book and crawl into bed, open it, read a few pages before I fall asleep.  Tomorrow, I'm taking the day off so I can hike all morning in Chautauqua State Park, where I plan to think about nothing except what I see.  I won't bring any to-do lists.  I won't even make any in my mind.  I'll just walk, and breathe.  Maybe that's the most important action I can take in the world right now, before I can accomplish anything else.

Light

Today feels heavy.  Dark clouds hang in the eastern sky, and the prediction is for rain and snow in Boulder over the next two days.  My students have been restless, edgy.  Spring break gave them a taste of freedom, and now they're back in these plastic chairs, trapped for hours in these square rooms, told to open their notebooks, get out their pencils, pay attention, engage now.  I stand in front of them and conduct a fun economics game that most of them seem to enjoy, but I keep drifting to the hours M. and TK and I spent driving through the red dust of the southwest, all that open space in my mind.

Today is heavy because eleven educators were convicted of racketeering in Atlanta and sent to prison.  They look familiar to me:  the stooped shoulders of people who work for too many hours for too little pay.  They've stood in classrooms in front of too many students.  What they did was wrong, of course.  But I recognize them as my colleagues.  And as victims of an enormous system that coerced at least 178 people into cheating.  The science fiction I'm writing doesn't seem too distant, if the testing culture is pushing entire school districts to these extremes.  Educators as criminals.  What's next?  Educators as superfluous?  I thought to look up a piece of satire I published as a 28-year-old grad student ten years ago -- "A Modest Proposal for Our Schools" -- and was shocked to find it's even more relevant today.

Today is heavy because Arkansas wants to pass similar "religious freedom" laws to the ones recently passed in Indiana.  In how many states will I -- and my family -- be declared unwelcome?

Today is heavy because I got the fifth rejection letter I've received in two days.  Yesterday, Room magazine wrote that they "regret to inform me" that they did not want my fiction or my creative non-fiction pieces.  And today, The Orlando Prize emailed that there was too much greatness in the submissions for spring; my essay and my flash fiction were "just not for them".  Fence thanked me for patiently waiting a year for their decision about their 2014 book prize, but I had not been chosen.

Sigh.  M. teases me when I write out "sigh", or when I say the word aloud to accompany the sound.  Thinking about that, and the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she teases me, makes me smile.  And TK's excitement today about April Fool's made me smile.  And a few future possibilities I'm leaning toward.  And the way it felt to write all day yesterday at a coffee shop, acoustic guitar music in my ears.  And the plain M&Ms my friend Dede thinks to send me every single holiday because she knows they make me happy.  And the memory of Arches, that red-brown rock, the secret silences.  And the fact that it's Thursday tomorrow, and I know my students will love comparing Russian and American Cold War propaganda.  And the fact that I just beat M. at Scrabble.  And my niece and her round cheeks and the way she says "I don' know!", and my baby nephew with his voluminous wild hair and his fascination with his fingers. And my sister's laugh.  And the way TK murmurs in her sleep sometimes, like she did just now.  And my dad's happiness to be out on the trails again, stopping on a bridge to search for an American Dipper.  And the letters my mom and I write each other on Sundays now, like she and Gram used to do. And June, which I've always loved for its possibilities.

Days aren't heavy like they used to be.  I spent almost two years in the darkness, and now it's Easter, all deep plant roots and first crocus blooms and light breaking in, all the pagan fertility and whispered joy.  A light shines in the darkness.  NPR is playing the news about Israel and Palestine, and TK says, "Could you turn that off so we can be happy together?" and I do, because she's right.  I want to be responsible and learn as much as I can about the Iran nuclear negotiations and the ongoing search for fairness in Ferguson, but I also I want to make sure I keep a view of the light.

I'm here.  In Gram's green chair, with a view of the bright yellow happy wooden star that used to hang in a doorway at Gram's house.  My apartment is quiet; I've spent the evening reading The New Yorker; I'm about to write another chapter of my novel.  A sweet, smart, beautiful little girl is sleeping just down the hall.  Tomorrow, M. says, she'll be here after school, and she'll take care of dinner and hug me when I come home.  It might rain all day tomorrow, but we can have warm brownies and ice cream and watch Bette Midler's Hocus Pocus, and Fable the dog will stretch out beside us and close his eyes because his pack is all accounted for.

The message emerging in the science fiction novel I'm writing is this:  connect to humans. Turn off the devices; hold someone's hand; watch the clouds change in the sky. It won't fix everything, but it will make everything a little easier.  A little lighter.

Keep Writing

Photo by Richard H. Hahn, Jan. 15, 2015

Ever since I stopped steeping myself in grief all the time, I've lost some of my direction as a writer.  What is there to say, when there is everything to say, suddenly?  When my eyes are open to all of life again?  My smile isn't forced anymore; I walk into my apartment at the end of a day and feel only happy gratitude for the orange tulips M. has left on my table to greet me.  When I sit down at my computer each night, the world seems so open to endless possibility that I feel stumped.  What should I write?  Do I have anything to write, other than grief?

Doubt whispers in my ear.  Were you ever any good, or were you just writing about topics so extreme that people wanted to read them?  If you're happy, how can you possibly have anything to say?

Then tonight, I attended the annual Boulder Writers' Workshop Member Showcase and Recognition event, and remembered that I am not just a writer alone in a dark apartment at midnight, but a member of a community of writers.  The keynote speaker, Gail Storey, reminded us all that our work as writers is to "bear witness" to others, to create an offering of love to the world.  Storey warned us that it is fear that stops us, preventing us from mustering up the courage to transform with our art.

I listened, and remembered:  I was a writer long before grief.  Maybe, for a time, I needed to pour all of my art into sadness, but now I'm ready to write about parenting, teaching, hiking, Colorado, marriage, being gay, adoption, travel, technology, violence, aging, writing, love.  I'm ready to create characters in fiction again.  I'm ready to explore the world's problems through science fiction, to suggest happy endings in romances, to experiment in literary fiction.  I'm ready, like I've been in a white-hot fire and emerged pure.  I'm edgier, wiser, a little more anxious, but ready.

At the showcase tonight, I read my Long's Peak essay, which the BWW was kind enough to award the annual "Editors' Choice" award for essays published in the Flatirons Literary Review.  It was strange, to read an essay that did not flay open sadness, or only consider death.  "A Woman on Long's Peak" is ultimately about the joy of being alive in a majestic, wild, and dangerous place.  It's also about being part of a community of women who summited the mountain once, too.  I'm not alone.  As a hiker, as a writer, as a person: I'm not alone.

Some morose Germanic part of me wants to insist that great literature can't arise from joy.  But maybe it should.  I think I'll silence Doubt, whose other name is Fear, and just write.  Charley Parkhurst needs me to write him a lesbian version of his story, and I've got a scared girl character trapped in a future in which everyone texts and no one talks face-to-face.  I need to reveal some truths about education, and I need to record the experience of parenting Mitike right now.  I need to espouse my opinions about the death penalty and about gay marriage, and I need to write some good essays about love and relationships.  Ah, it feels good to make such a list!  Every night, I write, but every night lately, I've begun with Doubt.  No more.  I'll read and re-read this blog post instead, as my opening ritual.

Lately, in the midst of quite a bit of happiness blooming in my life, I've caught myself playing the saboteur, searching for reasons to worry or to be a little sad.  I start worrying about finding a college job (which I'd love), or about whether I should move to Denver, or about what I'll do for my parents when they become elderly (they're all in their 60s and are currently fine), or about whether I'm parenting my child well enough that I'll prevent her from becoming a dysfunctional adult (she's currently 8).  It's all fear.  It's that I'm afraid the happiness won't stay.  But tonight, I'm considering this:  I was so intent on detailing every aspect of my experience of sadness; I was so certain my journey required me to hold grief up and examine it closely from all angles.  Why should I not do the same with happiness?  Maybe a good writer's responsibility is to seek to witness the entire range of human experience.

I love to look at this photograph I've posted with this text, a photograph my dad, a professional photographer, took a couple of weeks ago.  The immensity of the universe -- all those stars! -- reminds me I haven't even begun.

Time to keep writing.