{11•16 gratitudinous}

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November 16, 2023

10:26 am

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Part and Poetry, What We Do, Who We Are

It’s ridiculous to have a doctor six hours away, but, it’s …how things ended up. When you find a good specialist, you keep them, and so I used to drive to the other end of the state, make a whole weekend of it, see friends in SoCal and then the doctor Monday morning, and back home. Later I sometimes tried to do the drive in a day – possible, but physically sapping. I turned to flying – there and back on the Southwest Airlines cattle car still took four hours out of my day – and sometimes more, with Southwest’s penchant for overbooking everything and cancelling anything. It was actually a relief when the pandemic meant I couldn’t make time-and-expense consuming, draining journeys anymore. And now I haven’t “seen” my specialist in almost four years… yet I “see” him every month like clockwork, via telehealth. As others have said, isn’t it astounding what suddenly wasn’t too hard, ‘specialized’ or costly for disabled people to have when everyone else needed it? So, thanks for that – for a bridge between the world and the house for those who needed it.

equal=/fair
we wouldn’t do it
just for you –
‘it is not our policy’
too much. too expensive.

we couldn’t think it
we, majority
able, and eager
we didn’t need it.

we cannot consider only you.
we serve everyone, everyone:
collective consideration –
so, for accommodation?

all things being equal,
we have to be fair.

{11•15 gratitudinous}

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November 15, 2023

4:37 pm

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Part and Poetry, What We Do, Who We Are

When the pandemic began, I had already started poking around in languages. I took Dutch and French on the Memrise app in 2019, happy to get back in touch with a language I’d already studied, and one of a country dear to me. But I heard about Duolingo, and then the pandemic seemed a good excuse. Now a mere one thousand, eight hundred fourteen days later, I’m still going. Language isn’t easy for me – there are genders, grammar, and numerical systems which just wreck my mind. But, I like giving myself the opportunity to do a hard thing – and maybe fail? So, thanks, for this – the challenge of throwing myself into something I am not typically good at, and doing it anyway.

language

tell me:
a flash of eyes
a shift of the body –
so many ways that I hear you
speaking

{11•14 gratitudinous}

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November 14, 2023

9:54 am

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Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Ah, group texts. I generally loathe them, but the niece, nephews, and younger sibs only communicate that way – email is What The Olds Use. Heh. Because a third of our family is in their teens and twenties, this is how we’re trying making dinner plans for Thanksgiving. To me the tangents and interruptions in group texts make it wholly inefficient for planning anything – but it is hilarious. We cannot accomplish anything without trash talking, and once the poking and teasing begins, it never ends. So, thanks for that – for technology, which makes our collective weirdness just that much more accessible.

family group text
chiming
sweet tones belie
bickering. bluster. snark.
blessed be the ties that bind us
online.

{11•11 gratitudinous}

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November 11, 2023

4:08 pm

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Part and Poetry, What We Do, Who We Are

I love to wake slowly on the weekend, and listen to the neighborhood rise. One nice thing about this court is that, at least in the autumn and winter, it rises more slowly than in Spring or summertime, when it’s blower and mowers galore. Today there were only birds – and the hush before the symphony.

Today I learned the etymology of the word “Sabbath” comes from the Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew words for the number seven, the word ‘cease’ or rest, and the word Saturday.

šέḇaʽ, šòḇūa, šabbòṯ

Digging
for the root words
‘Sabbath’ holds within it
seven ways to be quiet.
Listen.

{11•10 gratitudinous}

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November 10, 2023

11:33 am

15 Comments on {11•10 gratitudinous}

Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, What We Do, Who We Are

Happy Friday, friends.

November’s cold, dark days have been lengthened and brightened by the uptick in rehearsals I have this time of year. Christmas Eve this year is on a Sunday, so my choral load has doubled, plus I somehow got roped into a performance in January (…how did that…happen?). It’s work – it’s a lot of work – to be a musician with dyscalculia. I memorize my part and everyone else’s, so I don’t have to rely on my ability to count. I count note signatures on my fingers. I forget the names of notes – routinely. It’s work. However, I love that music is work that I can do.

Work that we can do is… more important than we might understand. Especially for those of us with learning differences, who have so often had work set before us which we can make neither heads nor tails of, it makes a difference to be able to put our hands to something and see it through – to complete it, using the best of our abilities. To achieve. To succeed.

So, thanks, for that. For accomplishments that perhaps seem small and routine when viewed from outside, but which feed the soul of the hive.

legs laden

what sweeter music
than hum of satisfaction
as bee flies hiveward

Poetry Friday is brought to you by the letter K, and our hostess, Mrs. E, whose blog has a shockingly clever title. Be well and fly strongly, little bees.

{11•9 gratitudinous}

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November 9, 2023

8:52 am

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Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

I was a late and uncertain bloomer in many things, and when I finally got crushes, they were… intense. Yeeeeears later, I still remember that today is the birthday of a boy whom I thought was wonderful and perfect. Looking back, he was obviously …not. College junior to my high school, patriarchal and condescending, and probably six kinds of narcissistic. But I worked with him, and was sure he was the pinnacle of personhood. I remember spending forty bucks on a classic SWATCH for him – in the nineties, so considering inflation, that’s $90 now, which is a chunk of change for a kid. I was serious in my admiration for this boy — who wasn’t at all serious about me, and who honestly shouldn’t have accepted such an expensive gift, but what do teens, even older teens, really know, until they make mistakes?

So, thanks for that – for the mistakes that are only monetarily costly. For the course corrections that don’t require stitches and scars. For big, dumb mammals, and for youth, which bumbles its way through life like a bluebottle fly, to make its ramshackle way into adulthood.

the fuel of youth

burning
bright, the future
beckons in firelight,
illuminated by burning
bridges

{11•8 gratitudinous}

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November 8, 2023

10:51 am

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Mental Health, Part and Poetry, What We Do, Who We Are

Gratitude isn’t always “nice,” we know. Gratitude is sometimes survival. So, onward.

The ways in which autoimmune disorders attack our bodies are many and various, and while eczema itself isn’t an autoimmune disorder, it, and other skin issues, are certainly related. The ONLY nice thing I have to say about my sudden bouts of full body painful itchy is that it shows itself unequal to one of the most awesome natural remedies in the world…so, thanks for that, I guess. Not a cure, but a surcease; not the end of war, but a temporary ceasefire. In the long war called ‘autoimmune disorders,’ we take what victories we can.

spicata

toothy
ridges, rigid
spikes hold succulence. A crown
to sheath its inner balm in toughness:
aloe

{11•7 gratitudinous}

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November 7, 2023

11:49 am

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Happenings, Mental Health, Part and Poetry

On Friday I have an interview with Laura Jackson the author of a book on dyscalculia who found me through my book, FIGURE IT OUT, HENRI WELDON. This book has opened up rather different opportunities than the usual ones, and I’m meeting a lot of new folks whom I don’t think would have otherwise picked up a book of middle grade fiction.

I do a lot of research writing every book – and read accounts of math disabilities from educational psychologists, teachers, parents, and the occasional student. Afraid to misrepresent anything, I felt compelled to keep researching, obsessed with digging, even though the most clear and obvious information repository I had was… myself.

It’s hard to shed the bone-deep reflex to hide what we feel doesn’t ‘match’ about ourselves. Shame, when it’s been practically foundational to the way I’ve seen myself, and my mathematical efforts, was the hardest thing to step away from, and convinced me that even my own experiences weren’t… good… enough to use for a book about what I struggle with.

How shame disempowers us, through keeping us silent. And yet, the opportunities and responses I’ve gained from stepping out of the shadows and saying, “Yes, it’s me,” continue to multiply.

So, thanks, for that. For the gifts won from stepping forward with our whole selves, regardless of how unsafe that sometimes feels.

all ye, all ye outs in

come out:
duck-and-cover
doesn’t stop disaster.
what if, outside the shadow’s grays
we shine?