Dear Mississippi, how should I begin?

Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

hands in flame

When I lost my mother in 1997, I felt I’d lost the well from whence I’d sprung. More and more, her friends tell me I remind them of her, how they see her face in mine, how my words hold her steel…

It’s enough to give someone a crisis of identity, or at least question nature versus nurture. I am no braggart here: she was extraordinary, and I am very much her daughter. It’s difficult to be the remaining glimmer of her work, to burn bright enough to fill that shadow for some who knew her. I was deeply connected to her when she took her last breath on an appallingly beautiful April Fool’s Day: she slid free, laughing. I think in that final moment, the dying discover something we cannot know. I’m in no hurry, but since I was 24 years old, I’ve wondered what was so &*^@*&*$^@* funny.

Knowing my mother as a person instead of an idealized SuperMom has been an important part of my work. Eudora Welty, Sly Matron Saint of Jackson, warned me to never miss the connotation of a thing because you love it. Over the years, I’ve learned amazing things about my mother. I’ve studied her work like a scholar. In a turn of miraculously nutty events, my cousin married into the family of my Mom’s high school friend. I have so many new stories of a naughty scamp of a woman who would one day become my mother. I am deeply grateful for these chances to see these glimpses of my mother before she joined the Mighty Dead.

Deep calls to Deep, Blood calls to Blood… this time of year speaks to ties forged in DNA, in the family we choose, and in the work that inspires, invigorates and influences our lives. Whose life, whose memory, whose influence wraps around you like a mantle in the darkening of the year? Whose heartbeat do you hear across the veil, echoed in the thrum of your veins?

When I was a kid, my dad’s parents would marvel over their nerdy granddaughter like a strange bug. They’d tell my mother how smart I was, like she was too blonde to know. They’d tell my parents I would be so rich, I could support them in their dotage. I hated it, because I felt less a girl, more of a redeemable asset. Just sit on it for 25 years, and you’ll be RICH!

I remember a time when they were arguing about whether I’d be a doctor or a lawyer. For the record, of the two Rich Professions my grandparents selected, I’d probably be a lawyer: I like to argue, and I like to win.

At the time, I wanted to be an astronaut, or an oceanographer. Someone eventually told me there was a lot of maths involved in aeronautics,  and that dream died. Oceanography lost its charm when I narrowly avoided a barracuda (WAY scarier than Sarah Palin, FYI). I almost piped up, but remembered I was eavesdropping. My silence rewarded me with one of my most vivid memories of my mom.

She  sighed. Evidently, she was as tired of these conversations as I was. She said, “I don’t care about any of that bullshit. I hope she grows up to be a humanitarian.”

My grandparents were skeptical. I took it to heart. The next year, I became a Girl Scout.

Nothing I do at my new job will ever be in the history books. I will be promoting the actions of ordinary people engaged in the extraordinary act of bettering their communities, and telling those stories will lead to bigger things. More funding, more visibility, and more recognition for their work. All of this is exciting, but none of it is more humbling than this: my new job revolves around engaging people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to live in service to their neighbors, their communities and the world.

When we were finishing my hugely long second interview, the director (MY NEW BOSS, GUYS!) told me they  hire individuals who not only have the drive to make the world a better place, but idealists with a track record to prove it. He said that it was obvious that I was one of those people. Afterward, I told Matthew that even if I lost out on the job, the experience was worth it for that precious moment.

My life has been far from perfect, but I learn from mistakes.  I have worked to align the Things I Do with the Things I Do For A Living. I know that’s a tricky line to walk; that money changes things, but I’m thrilled to put my Hanuman Heart to its purpose: conscious service.

I wish I could call my mom and let her know she was right. That she was right about everything.

(originally published in the Jackson Free Press, December, 2009)

My mother spoiled me with books, and my prized possession was a gilded copy of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” which I pored over with all the twisted earnestness of Wednesday Addams. The details never lost their punch between readings: the revelation of the wolf’s fearsome maw beneath granny’s spectacles, the quiver of schadenfreude at Cinderella’s feathered friends blinding her bullying step sisters, and the unfettered glee when wicked tricksters fall to their ruin.

Most importantly, bad children might be rescued in some versions, but they were always punished. While Disney weather was in full effect in my childhood home in Miami, the treacherous forests of German fairy tales served as cautionary tales to a curious child tempted to stray from her path.

Hansel and Gretel is not my favorite fairy tale, but once upon a time, I was a hungry child lost in a gingerbread forest. My grandparents took me to a Christmas event at Walt Disney World, filled with extravagant Christmas decorations, parades, caroling and gorgeous exhibitions, including a wealth of gingerbread architecture covered in candies and delicately piped icing.

These houses and storybook castles were the epitome of my Grimm-fueled fantasies. Consequences were forgotten, and my hand shot forward and claimed a piece of siding. As my dismayed grandparents turned in horror, I jammed the contraband into my mouth. Bad children are always punished. The disappointment at the flavorless pressboard confection was far worse than my grandfather’s spanking.

Despite my initial letdown, I remained enchanted with gingerbread throughout my childhood. I chomped the heads of ginger men with gusto, leaving hundreds of little ginger widows in my wake. When I was deemed fit to partake in civilized functions again, my grandmother took me to high tea, where I had my first fat square of ginger tea bread. With the first bite, I finally understood why Hansel and Gretel were so sorely tempted. Chewy, dense and chocolate colored, this was closer to the fabled gingerbread of my imagination. As I began to bake for myself, I tried many gingerbread recipes, but none satisfied. No longer afraid of wolves and conniving fairies, I stepped off the path.

Beware, reader: There are always consequences, and this time, they’re delightful. This is no mild-mannered, blond ginger spice cake; this is dangerous, original Grimm’s gingerbread—fragrant, dark and fudgy. This is the sort of inescapable temptation that lures Hansel and his sister into harm’s way, the sort of treacle confection Monsieur Wolf scents as he lopes through a deeply greening wood. Do not be afraid of the half cup of spices involved in this recipe, because all wonderful adventures take a feat of daring.

GINGERBREAD FOR GRETEL

1 cup vegetable oil, plus extra for the pan
1 cup cane sugar
1 cup robust or blackstrap molasses
2-4 tablespoons crystallized ginger, minced
2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten with a fork
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 tablespoon fresh ginger root, peeled and grated
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 greedy pinch of freshly ground black pepper
1 cup water
1 tablespoon baking soda
Several handfuls of blanched almond slivers
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Even if you’re using silicone bakeware, generously oil your favorite bundt mold, muffin tins or brownie tin. This is perilously sticky batter. Sprinkle almonds into the bottom of the pan. You want a goodly amount, but not full coverage. Imagine fallen logs littering the Black Forest’s floor.

Set your water to boil in a small saucepan, so it’s ready to use when you need it.

Combine the oil, sugar, molasses and crystallized ginger. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.

Sift together the flour, spices and salt. Add wet mixture to the dry ingredients slowly until evenly combined.

Remove boiling water from heat and add baking soda. Brace for the foam. Rapidly incorporate this solution to the batter, and pour into pans.

Bake in the center of the oven until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean; a full pan will bake for 30-40 minutes, while muffins will run you anywhere from 15-20 minutes. Almonds will be perfectly toasted inside your batter.

Some people choose to top their gingerbread with whipped cream, ice cream, more candied ginger, lemon curd or even marmalade, but this fairy tale gingerbread requires no embellishment.

My writing habit lies crumpled in the corner.  I need to find my way back to the place where I’m writing for craft, not writing to clean a wound.

There’s a creative non-fiction class beginning January 8th. It’s called Shut Up and Write! Classroom hours miraculously fit into our frenzied schedule, and I’m hoping to be able to make it happen.

Lately, I’ve realized that stuff means far less to me than experience. A writing seminar would rattle my cage and ruffle this bird’s feathers. If you were considering sending me a Holiday card, or any sort of Yuletide gesture, please consider placing a drop in my bucket instead. Folks who donate have the option of giving me a (non-fiction) writing prompt, which I will fulfill, even if I hate it.

How many times do you get to tell a hothead like me to shut up (and write!)?

Both of these kids’ll come home with us on my birthday, officially Best Caturday in History.

Jack came home with me in the summer of 1992. I fell in love with the little guy when my aunt showed us her cat’s new kittens. He was stubbular, round-eyed and looked like his belly might burst from glutting himself on milk. Even as a kitten, his paws were ENORMOUS. He looked like he was wearing fuzzy slippers. I smuggled him home tucked inside my sports bra, thinking it was far better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Jack would follow you like a dog all over the house, but was afraid of strangers. As soon as the doorbell rang, he would hide under my parents’ bed until the coast was clear, sometimes staying for hours after guests had left. My grandmother never laid eyes on Jack except for pictures.

Jack lived to bite string and wire. He also enjoyed asparagus and fresh herbs. He was a mean drunk when it came to catnip. He liked escaping the house and going on adventures, much to my chagrin. Jack loved being petted: he’d demand attention by body-checking your shins and love-biting any dangling or convenient part of your body. Until his older years, he particularly liked being pet like a dog. He’d dig his claws into the back of the couch for stability, and purr with his mouth open as you aggressively raked your hands from the scruff of his neck to his tail. When Matthew and I got married, we marveled at how similar Jack’s body language was to that of the great cats we saw in Vegas. He was just as regal, slinky, playful and tough as any tiger.

When Mom died, Jack came to live with me full time. He spent two months under the bed, eating and using the litterbox only when I brought them to him. One day, he emerged from his hiding place to rejoin the world, and has been an incredibly personable, even boisterously friendly cat.  He soon discovered he loved crowds, and especially women. He particularly liked it when women would drape his cookie-sized paws over their shoulder and allow him to stand on their cleavage. I like to think that was his favorite way to ride around because that’s how he came into my life.

Jack had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. From the time he woke up in the morning until he settled into the crow’s nest on the cat tree, he was treated like a prince. He dined on turkey, asparagus, cheese, fresh cream and tuna. We bustled through the kitchen more carefully, allowing him to ankleshark as we worked. I even “dropped” a few morsels for him to greedily “steal,” so he would feel like his careful plots to trip us worked to his advantage.

His breathing became rapid Thursday night, which meant fluid was building up around his heart, hindering his breathing. When I woke up to check on him early Friday morning, his breathing was so shallow, we knew the time had come. I’d hoped to avoid the vet, but he had to take one last car trip. He didn’t flirt with the vet techs, which is a big sign of how poorly he was feeling.  When we were ready, I draped Jack over my shoulder and let him stand on my cleavage for the last time.

Jack was such a “big” cat, personality-wise. The whole house feels colder and a little empty without him. It’s likely I’ll never have another asparagus-eating, ass-biting, dog-chasing cat. It’s a certainty there’ll never be another cat quite like Jack. He was a fierce defender, a sexy beast, an adept nad-stomper, a gracious host, a devoted omnivore, a jewelry thief, and a mildly sadistic lover of humans. Jack taught me that you get what you give out of a relationship with an animal, and how earning a cat’s trust and respect is a humbling and prideful matter.

Writing this makes me even more aware that I haven’t written about Mau. It’s still difficult to talk about, but I need to do it. Royalty deserve good eulogies.

June 15, 2008
Shortest Hobby Ever
Filed under: parkour — mglover @ 6:52 pm

Yesterday morning a bunch of us planned to get together and make our first real foray into parkour training.  While sitting around waiting for the others to show up, I jokingly posted to twitter: Waiting around for the other wannabe traceurs. On the menu: rolls, speed vaults, turn vaults, kongs, precision jumps, and emergency rooms.

Let me tell you, as I lay in the emergency room, the bone in my shin exposed to open air, that joke was hilarious.

I’m fine.  It was a stupid fluke accident.  I encountered a wall about waist high, put my hands on it, vaulted over it, and as I landed on the other side, the top tier of concrete blocks came free and landed on my left shin and foot.  It looked and felt really, really bad.  Luckily I was running with Billy.  He sprinted back to where we’d left the cars, rushed me to the emergency room, saw to it that I got admitted right away, and called everybody who needed calling.  He also waited throughout the day to make sure I was okay, then gave Deirdra a ride to get the things we needed for an overnight hospital stay.  He was a real hero.

It turned out that it badly lacerated the flesh of my shin, did some minor damage to a tendon, but no harm to the bone.  At the hospital they gave me a tetanus shot, antibiotics, painkillers, x-rays, and eventually put me under so they could clean out the wound and piece me back together.  I spent the night and got released this morning with a keen pair of crutches and a nifty mug.  I go back in a week so the doc can see how I’m healing and what needs doing next.  It looks like I’ll be okay, in time.  The doctors were very reassuring.  I’ll probably be taking a few days off work to recuperate, but I’ll be online here and there.

I wanna thank Billy, Marg, John, Ashley, Michael, Sifu, Katie, and all the countless people who called, wrote, and offered to help.  You guys are awesome.  Most of all, I want to thank my wife.  She made sure the doctors and nurses did their jobs, went to get me food when I was starving, sat up with me when I couldn’t sleep and needed painkillers, and generally made herself sick with worry and caregiving.  She puts up with my stubbornness and without her, I’d be…well, I’d really rather not contemplate it.  She hasn’t yet beat me up for getting myself hurt.  I think that says it all.

My wish for each and every one of you: May you never have to see the bones of someone you love.

To make a long story short, I noticed his breathing was rapid and shallow and erratic, and we took him to the vet immediately, which was a very good thing. They immediately put him on oxygen, drew a shitload of fluid from his lungs, and generally are trying to stabilize him.

It could be congestive heart failure. It could be fluid buildup from lymphoma or something at least as terrible. They had him in the swanky brushed steel and glass oxygen suite, so we couldn’t even pet him goodnight. That might’ve been a good thing, though, because he was surly and stink-eyed despite all infirmity.

All in all, it’s 90% pretty awful, and there’s not a great deal of hope of doing anything more than making him comfortable for long enough for him to forgive us.

He’s been with me since 1992, when I smuggled him out of my relatives’ house in my cleavage. He transformed from a fraidy-cat to a pimpin’ party-cat when he came to permanently live with me. He follows people like a dog, eats asparagus and wheatgrass and loves to bitebitebite string. He sometimes likes to walk on the dogs like they’re furniture, just to show them who’s boss. He’s a milk stealing, love/hate-biting, nad-stomping, hairball-horking, skirt-snagging, food-begging, cabinet-ruining, dog-tormenting very stylish babooshka hat prancing pony Houdini Cat, and he’s been with me the entirety of my adult life. I can’t contemplate a world without my Jack.

We go to see him at 8 a.m.

I know he’s sixteen and grumpy, and really miserable right now. I hope he has more good times left in him, but if he doesn’t make it, I hope he knows how many people love him, even though he’s a cantankerous, eight-toothed, quack-meowing, cookie-pawed coot.

I went in last night for two hours so Erica could start the color on the flowers. The iris was first, and it’s stunning. It looks like it could rustle with the slightest breeze. The iris is for my grandmother, and I can’t wait to send the photos to her. The lotus was much less time-intensive, but it is no less lovely. I love the pinks and the lovely veining.

Dudes, I am all YARDCORE and stuff.

I’m so very excited. There’s still signficant work to be done, but I’m hoping to get as much done as possible in the spaces between the long weekends of teacher training.

Birthday is May 2nd!

ETA: The Toasterstrumpet informs me the Paypal button has been broken since my WordPress migration. Here’s a link instead.