Read things that other people wrote, and then if you want to you can read what I wrote too.

Below is an entirely personal reflection and processing that I've been doing over the past couple days. Its not edited or crafted to be a political statement or analysis, its my raw journaling that I'm making public for the sake of breaking isolation, and also trying to literally reach my friends and community - so many of whom are white and/or class privileged and/or straight - by using my personal story as an inroad for learning and understanding the bigger picture, a spark for learning more not about me, but the root causes of this awful massacre that is ripple-effecting me and them. So! Especially straight people, white folks, people with class privilege - please read the stories and framework of people of color, queer immigrants, poor and working class queer folks, before or alongside reading anything I write. Those are the voices that should be central right now. 

A few suggestions:

• How to talk to a queer person who is afraid of dying 
• Please Don't Stop the Music
• In Honor of Our Dead: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Muslim, Black — We Will Be Free
• The Pulse Nightclub Shooting Robbed The Queer Latinx Community Of A Sanctuary
• From Charleston to Orlando: Reflections on Massacre in a Time of Backlash

June 15th, 2016

Remembering, my first pride, in May 2000. I was 13, barely out to myself and certainly no one else. I had gotten as far as writing in my journal "I think I'm a lesbian" and then diligently doodling around it so no one else could see what was written unless they knew it was there. Pride in my hometown of Northampton was a family affair, a PG event, a place I went with my friends and their sets of two mommies (and my mommy, too). Dykes on bikes was always my favorite part.

Remembering, the following year how I started to wrap my mind around racism and classism, as my high school courses quickly atrophied down to mostly other white kids on the AP tracks, and my Latino buddy from 8th grade science was indefinitely suspended. Boys Don't Cry came out and like so many other sheltered white kids, I learned about violence, misogyny, trans and homophobia through a screen. Movies also taught me about queer relationships and hot sex as I watched If These Walls Could Talk 2 more times than I can count. Wrapping my mind around my obsession with that movie diverging from my besties' obsessions with, well, boys. Still never telling anyone.

Remembering, how excited I was that my UU youth group leader was a visible dyke. She introduced me to the Indigo Girls by way of playing their live version of "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee," and to recent history of Native oppression and resistance via a teach-in about Pine Ridge. I wanted to be just like her, though I never told her that.

Remembering, how I spent so much of my teenage years feeling profoundly alone in my queerness. I didn't, and still don't, have the language to describe feeling simultaneously surrounded by love and acceptance, role models and people who looked like what I wanted to grow up to be (I mean, I grew up in Northampton), and absolutely stop-in-your-tracks terrified to come out as queer. Culture is deep. No amount of privilege or rainbow flags or gay best friends of my parents could actually shield me from the reality of oppression in the world. Even if I was so sheltered I couldn't fully understand where that fear was coming from. Even if that oppression would probably never directly hit me. 

Remembering a few years later, 18 years old and summer in NYC. Landing a job that got me in - underage and for free - to pretty much any and every queer and dyke bar and party in the city. Remember Snapshot? My favorite dance party, every Tuesday night. Back when going out past midnight (or let's be real, past 10pm) was a totally reasonable and sustainble-feeling thing for me to do on a Tuesday. Back when it was in that dark and sweaty basement at the Boysroom on Avenue A; before it was moved to Bar 13 and rubbed up against suit-wearing post-corporate-job straight professionals. Late night, sitting down on the dirty F train platform because my feet were so weary from dancing, waiting endlessly for the subway with other sleepy queers. 

Remembering the New York City pride march that year, 2005 - for all its complications and cooptation, dancing on a DJ-ed float for 7+ hours straight (no pun intended) with thousands of people cheering along the streets is still one of the most exhilerating days of my life. How different NYC pride was than Northampton prides of my youth.

Remembering that year and for years after, countless nights at Cattyshack. The upstairs was my favorite; I always preferred the DJ up there and the second-floor deck out back where I smoked the occasional cigarette (sorry mom). So many dramatic unfoldings as my friend group dated and broke up and made out and were "just friends" again. Like queers do; like queers do in spaces that are created and held and maintained and explored for such things to blossom.
Remembering not as long ago, when Hey Queen was a monthly staple in my life. When it started at Sugarland, with the tiny crowded dance floor and makeshift stage. 

Boysroom is now closed. Cattyshack is now closed. Sugarland is now closed. 

I don't "go out" very much anymore, but these recordings of that decade of my life - when I was unfolding my understanding of my own sexuality, living into it and living so OUT about it - have been playing like a home video in my mind for the past several days. They're just mine; my memories and my process in the sea of thousands and millions of other peoples' memories and processes -- they're not the important ones in this moment. But since they're mine, they're what I've got.

Two Odes to the Clothesline. With love, from my sabbatical.

Two Odes to the Clothesline. With love, from my sabbatical.

I. Hold on

The sundried clothing is starched, almost as if the cloth will crack
like the cliff-clay figurines left to dry on oceanside rocks.

The sun is not soft, per se, and
neither is the ray-kissed fabric.
There is no such thing as dryer sheets for a clothesline.

No matter how long, now, the towels stay folded, the bras in a drawer, the dresses hung
they seem to hold the light like photosynthetic plants
Hundreds of years could pass, I believe, and still the clean sheets would taste like summer,
would infuse you in Vitamin D as I wrapped you up in them,
would whisper precious wonders of the everyday world, not to be forgotten.

II. A Haiku 

spiders spin so swiftly
on wet clothes hung on the line
to dry in the sun.

Dear white people

This is not a polished or highly-edited article. It is my raw writing and thoughts; prioritizing imperfect sharing and sparking dialogue over prolonged crafting [end caveat].

To myself and my fellow dear, beloved white people,

We need to look at our own anti-black racism. How it lives in each of us. We need to also look at the impact it has on the world.


We need to look at what's holding us back from 100% committing to the idea and growing movement that black lives matter. We need to push through the walls that are keeping us silent amongst white family and friends. White supremacy depends on white people being taught not to think or ask questions about race and racism. That needs to end with us.

This isn't just about cops killing people, or gun violence, or black men. This is about state violence. State violence includes being complicit in regular citizens turning violent against each other - for walking down the street as a black trans woman or for being houseless and sleeping on the street. State violence includes letting one in three black children live below the poverty line in a country with plenty of shelter and food. State violence includes locking millions of black people up in cages (almost half of the prison population, at six times the rate of white people) instead of supporting them to lead safe lives. State violence includes insufficient funding and support for people living with HIV/AIDS. This is about so much more than cops killing people with guns.

As many others have said, this is not about Darren Wilson in particular. He is not a "bad apple." He is a white person in a system of white supremacy. Part of me doesn't doubt he felt his life was threatened. And - does that make justify shooting? Killing?

The racism that made Wilson "feel 5 years old" and see Mike Brown as "the Incredible Hulk" is a racism that was trained into him. Systematically. A racism that was and continues to be trained into all white (and nonwhite, though distinctly differently) people in the US. Trained into me, into the most "down" anti-racist white people that exist. We all have racism within us.

And yet - anything that is trained and learned can be un-trained and un-learned. Its like a Magic Eye - you can teach yourself to see the layers. You can teach yourself to see the system of white supremacy that is separate from your own humanness, your own rational thoughts about sacredness of human life and dignity. I am on a life-long journey and have a long way to go. And yet, I can tell I am changing, I am unlearning, I am re-learning ways of being distinct from white supremacy. I see other people changing and unlearning and re-learning around me all the time. It is not hopeless.

So, we act. Those of us who have been showing up, we need to keep showing up. Those of us who haven't shown up, spoken up, engaged in some way -- I'm asking you to engage with me.

I'm saying this to myself as much as anyone else. A personal mantra. Putting it out to my community will help keep me accountable.

Keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. Proudly carry that sign that reads "Black Lives Matter."

Keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up in the name of black lives mattering. Mattering to me, to me, to me.

Not in a "my best friend is black" kind of way.

In a "our histories and lives and futures are intertwined as humans" kind of way. In a "until the world is safe for black folks it will not be safe for me" kind of way. In a "I cannot sit idly by when black parents' kids are being shot" kind of way.

I've spoken to white family and friends - progressive, liberal, social justice-oriented family and friends - who are so immersed in their own shame of having racist thoughts that they are silent during this time of uprising. "This one time I had a racist thought so I must not be ready to show up to a protest for racial justice." Or, "I don't know what to say, or what my sign should say, or what if it feels awkward to be there as a white person?" Or, or, or.

I have spoken to white family and friends who have fixated on the details - "what if Mike Brown *did* steal?" "What if he did punch Wilson?" "What if Wilson really did feel like his life was threatened?" "I don't totally get what these protests are for." They are unable to look at the bigger picture.

Perfectionism keeps us from acting. There is never a perfect time or place; a perfect instance. That is not the point.

I grew up with a framed posted hanging in our family bathroom that read "the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. - Dante."

There are movements happening all over the country and Earth; crisis is not new. We are in a time, however, of being called upon to respond to moral crisis, to sustain our response, and to push for long-term change. To remain neutral is to support the status quo. To support the status quo is to be complicit in the continued killing of black people.

This country is one that is literally built on the backs of exploited native, black, and brown people. To stay "neutral," as in, not to act in some way, is to stay neutral on the issue of white supremacy, racialized economic exploitation, and more.

We need to remember that anti-black racism is fundamental to this country's existence. We need to remember that by liberating black folks from this oppressive society, we liberate everyone else - white people included.

We must act in the name of this collective liberation.

"Acting" looks all sorts of ways.

If you have the time and the able body, turn out. Physically. Feel what it feels like to be part of a movement - literally.

Donate money. Sign petitions.

Write. Share your thoughts. Ask questions that feel scary to ask.


Turn to community support that can be helpful. Engage community that is being unhelpful (please don't just un-friend them! Lets engage our white folks, not shut them out. They are our responsibility - nay, opportunity - to organize).

One of the things that helps me get in touch with my personal anger about anti-black racism is how it has affected me. How it has numbed me and my people (who historically were slave-owners) to the suffering of black people. How this country - the policies, the history I was taught in school, the messages the media gave me about beauty, who I was taught to fear, who I was taught to love - on every level I was taught I could look away from black suffering. My parents and others in my life have done their best to teach me otherwise, but it is not enough in the face of a whole society that is built on making sure I and other non-black people look away from black suffering.

So, I call on us white people to look. To watch the videos and the histories and the violence and the outrage and the devastation. And the resilience and creativity and hope and love. I am not calling for some exercise in making ourselves feel terrible just so we can try to "know what it's like." We will never know what it's like to be Black in America. What we will do is flex our muscle of empathy. Get in touch with our shared humanity.

White people, we need to get our people. Showing Up for Racial Justice, Catalyst Project, Chris Crass, Paul Kivel are great places to start.

I am not even sure posting this so publicly was the "right" thing to do but I didn't want to hide behind my own fears and silence my own thoughts....so here I am.

Racism is white people's issue too

I feel compelled to keep speaking and writing and acting, as a white person -- reminding myself and my white community that the truth is that racism is our issue, the killing of black and brown people of all genders is a community issue for white people too. Simple, fundamental, and yet - so often and easily forgotten. 

 I am trying to combat the urge to use perfectionism to be silent - to endlessly edit and re-edit anything I write; to use time passing or “being too busy” to stall on saying something, no matter how incomplete or imperfect.

 I can’t figure out a nice way to say this, because its not a nice thing: white people must not forget or minimize that it was our people - specifically wealthy white people - who created and maintained these systems of brutalization in order to gain and maintain power. 
Those of us living today, this history is not our personal faults. It bears repeating: this history is not our personal faults. I truly believe that we ourselves would not create this. I don’t believe that as white babies we were born racist, or imperialist, or money-hoarding capitalists. 

As Chris Crass put it, “This is a time for white people to recognize that our irrational fears of Blackness are the result of the logics of white supremacy, which are intended to concentrate power into the hands of the few by creating and maintaining structural violence and inequality.” 

 So its not our fault. And - not “but,” and - it IS the reality. And it IS our responsibility. Now, in the horrific repression in the wake of Mike Brown’s murder, and for the long haul. It is our responsibility. In the wake of 500 years of horrific repression of (particularly poor) black and brown folks in the United States and around the world - ending racism, racist systems, racist ideologies, racist murders (and murders of all kinds)...our people created this shit. My people created this shit. Now I get to be part of changing it. 

We need to proactively connect the dots between Mike Brown’s murder, with the murder of dozens of trans people of color every year, with the bombing currently in Palestine, with the fact that the US government has armed and trained Israel in most of what they know and do, with the fact that the US and other (white-led) imperial governments have armed and trained (one example of 1973 Chilean coup here) most Terrible Violent Things that humans are doing to other humans in the past few centuries. 

 It is not the responsibility of communities that are directly affected by oppression to connect the dots for us or be our educators. We need to be part of diligently and actively understanding and organizing around the interconnections. 

 I bet I have close to 1,000 white Facebook friends. What if we each made sure our 5 closest white people deeply understood and took up the mantle of building an anti-racist world? That would be 5,000 more white people committed to ending racism and violence. And seriously, seriously, we need all of us. Our lives will be better, and the lives of communities of color will be better, when we speak out and act, consistently and boldly, to end racism and violence toward the majority of humanity (which is people of color). What a great world that is going to be.

 More links and analysis about Mike Brown’s murder, and what white people can do in solidarity:

- Ferguson Solidarity: Ways to Support the Fight - Ten Things White People Can Do About Ferguson Besides Tweet - Holocaust Survivor Hedy Epstein, Arrested in Ferguson Protest, Says Racism Is Alive in America - 5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year - Black Women Are Killed by Police, Too - For Michael Brown and Ferguson: Facing White Fears of Blackness and Taking Action to End White Supremacy - Urban Ecology: A Request From Organizers in Ferguson - Why Jews Should Care About Ferguson - Young People with Wealth Call on Philanthropic Community to Stand with Ferguson, Mo. - Jewish Voice for Peace Stands in Solidarity with the Community of Ferguson, Missouri - Black Kids Don’t Have to be College-Bound for Their Deaths to Be Tragic

three poems, about three places i feel like home.

with all the devastation in the world hitting me rather hard these days, i've had the urge to write about the things in my life & history that bring me the most comfort and safety. here are the three poems that have come from that:

7/17/14 - Untitled

I think it was Judy

who started the tradition of not looking back.

It's too hard, the story goes. When you’re walking off, just walk off. You’ll be back next year.

I cried as I drove Middle Road to Beetlebung

my mind and muscles steeped with memories

stronger than my mom’s morning tea.

The home-i-ness of a home that isn’t enclosed by walls

that’s more permanent than any man-made structure 

that’s about the way the hills roll, or the signs are painted

not just the house we happen to be renting.

I don't mind the obvious changes - irksome as the now-bad pizza is - it's the ones that are slow over time that get me. 

Like a snail you can't tell is moving

until you see a small trail of slime along the ground.

The rock that was once our endless playground has been eroded so much so

it finally looks like the moated castle I often believed it could be.

The waves seem small now, and surf rough

I can't tell if the tide has actually shifted 

or if my memories of afternoon-long body surfing fests

are just a 9-year-old's interpretation of a couple full-mooned ocean swells.

Cherries and chips, pretzels and dried mango, warm tap water with an occasional treat of cooler-ed seltzer from friends far more prepared than I – the snacks to sustain any good beach afternoon.

I’m not sure what “the witching hour” means

(apologies if its racist or otherwise offensively derived)

but I swear the phrase was created to describe Lucy Vincent at dusk

like Hocus Pocus, our favorite movie one year --

touted as spooky craft, but really just the suspense

of finding one’s place

the magic of knowing you’ve got people.

Anyways,

at LVB its hardly just the sky, the sun still glaring but dulling in its heat

it’s the atmosphere of a deserted desert

prideful as the ones who persevered, patiently waiting for this coveted time,

who have too much fun with each other to care that the gate might lock us in.

By the time we leave, the once-full parking lot is a dusty ghost town,

our few remaining cars awkwardly peppered up the slope.

We wave arms out open windows as we peel off towards our own homes.

We have chance meetings on the sandy wooden porch of our favorite overpriced store,

drop by unannounced to borrow sunscreen,

coordinate dinners and consult on medical advice

like we were cousins in some big extended family busting the seams of a small town.

The difference is, for many years we didn’t have a picture of each other's lives outside of this tiny island – 50 weeks would spin by with nary a phone call.

And yet somehow year after year we’d settle back in without skipping a beat, as if a colorful autumn, harsh winter, or rainy spring hadn’t intervened along the way.

I’m thankful to say the passing of time has brought so many threads of our lives together, even the bad ones –

weddings, birthdays, cancers,

bat mitzvahs, interstate moves, career changes,

couch-crashing, midyear texts, impromptu invites to broadway plays --

our crew has broken the seal of summer lovin’; at some point when I wasn’t looking we crossed over from pals to kin.

Even Barrel now shows up on my gchat list.

I see the age on us all

the older adults 

- I call them that because I am an adult too, though still relatively so -

have settled into themselves 

are easier, somehow.

Grudges have ebbed and wounds been stitched (though scars remain). They've seen a lot of life and survived.

What's left is more giggles, 

softened skin alongside softened hearts

small bellies where tautness once held stiff

eyes melted into crows feet

like branding from the sunshine of so many beach days.

We have grown older, too

more and more of the seed of the people we each always have been

remarkably parallel though such distinct characters.

It was our un-diapered bottoms we all have to thank for this.

Some parents become grandparents

more generations distinguishing the passing of time  

napping new babes under the same umbrellaed shade. 

Some parents become more like friends: 

what’s 30 years when you’ve lived almost that long or longer?

We rub elbows like peers, though I take comfort in knowing that

somewhere in each of us

you’re always still mommas and papas and I’m always still the kid.

I just peeked out my airplane window

one of a dozen passengers patiently awaiting a stalled takeoff

and the sunset takes my breath away.

I’ve seen hundreds on this island - can conjure the smell of Menemsha in a snap, the view from the Gay Head cliffs

the sound of applause for the cycle of another day’s completion.

************************
where the house once stood

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

that's where the porch swing outlived the cat

rocking countless secrets shared, 

coffees sipped, 

flirtations exchanged, 

wines poured,

phone conversations whispered. 

where the front yard never went more than a season

without a cheaply-made laminated sign hammered into the edge of the street

commanding that passers-by "say no on 2" or "vote for deval" or simply to "go slow, children playing."

  

for years we had a record player (do you know what that is?) 

and more afternoons than i can possibly recall

were spent choreographing dances to Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 

double-pirouettes more achievable on the hardwood living room floors.

where em and i were always burning the midnight oil, sprawled on the wraparound couch, 

and she taught me how to take off my own bra with one hand.

the same couch waiting, years later, to cushion mom as she slept off the codine and the migraines. 

that's where we had a front door 

that we didn't know how to lock til last year

thank god

because it meant kathy could burst through, unannounced

one christmas when her family came back from the movies

to find a gunman in their home across the street. 

we now spend every christmas night with them. 

where dad won his first election,

where i got my acceptance to wesleyan,

where 20 rugby teammates had an impromptu slumber party, 

where we played "cards against humanity" with our neighbors, and the under-30 crowd had to explain to our dads what a glory hole was.

that's where the room above 

housed iterations of adolescence.

the closet walls still markered-up from a third grader's baby-sitters club meetings

our graffiti a reminder of when imagination was lived into reality. 

the lofted nook, now crowded with storage

was once the only safe place to hide from the world

(to try and hide from myself). 

i'd listen to my favorite indigo girls cd on repeat, by just leaning over the edge to the mounted shelf

and pressing play on my new boom box.

and the roof - oh, that roof!

where stages of transgressions plodded along with the times:

initially crawling out there to sit was radical enough, sunning our pre-pubescent bodies and pointing fingers at boys biking by.

then it was first cigarettes and bowls - objectively stupider to do outside than in

but we felt so much more hip getting to be under the stars. 

then there was margot. margot on the roof. 

that's where we had a magic room. a sunroom.

smelling of incense (or "incense"), stocked with ram daas, plush with yoga pillows.

where as children abby and i would beg to stay together, instead of our own separate beds,

so every tuesday night when dad was gone

mom would snuggle between us and sing us sleepward.

where in that same bed, in later years, i made sarah make me come out to her.

for one year we had a back patio

that i discovered with our backyard neighbor - a 10 x 10 patch of concrete where a garage once stood.

putting our younger siblings to work, my new friend and i cleaned that back patio so hard! 

that was the summer of our moms perfecting their frozen margaritas,

the summer i learned about divorce,

the summer i had a best friend

leave.

this house is where high school drama 

led all sorts of girlfriends (not that kind) to come crying at my front stoop, 

in the days when we had our drivers licenses but not a cell phone.

the house where mom and dad have taken in any young person in need of a home

tiki sarah emily emily cori emily izzy hannah sarah kali olivia marli harper kate

evermore 20 and 30 somethings staying for dinner or unforeseen nights 

hammering chinks in the walls of nuclear family isolation.

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

***************

Iland [sic] 

On the inevitable rainy afternoon
we sit on musty couches
and leaf through old gold-plated guest books.
Year, after year, after year
searching for our own signatures
as if anything would be changed -
recognizing childhood scrawls
piecing together anecdotal notes
to re-craft full blown memories of summers past.

The year we wove endless friendship bracelets,
the year I was allowed to drink my own gin & tonic,
the year of competitive card-playing.

The year you could tell would be Grandpa's last, when the paths got steeper for no one but him
the year we all knew was Al's final visit,
the year Lee died and we came just in time to haul in docks and sunset summer.

It really is timeless.
The 7 years olds still eagerly gong the bell that calls us to meals
that 20 years ago i too, eagerly rang
a bell that to me will forever signal "quick, dive into the food!" --
an impolite and notorious family trait that sweetly contradicts
the elite mannerisms of the origin story of this place.

As the world burns
on every other square mile of earth, it seems
except ours --
my baby nieces squat on the deck, busily crafting a fairy house
of uprooted moss and found birch bark.
Adorned in their found treasure -
tarnished rings, thick gold chains, a tattered black flag worn as a doo-rag, with a strip of lace trailing down the back of a Peter Pan aged boy.
What was a nightmare at bedtime turned to adventure by daylight.

Oh to live in a land of magic,
Of pirate maps and shooting stars,
Of bedtime river dips,
stifled high-pitched squeals as
white bodies shimmered like silkies in the Super Moon
surrendering into the blackness of open water.

Loons, ducks, a rumored porpoise (perhaps sent by the Whale) -
reincarnation here lives like the legends that will outlast us all,
gives us purpose for returning indefinitely - mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles
who went ashes to ashes, dust to dust
not to be abandoned or forgotten in the hemlock trees and stone ledges.

Wind whistles through the attic windows
as cousins crawl into sleighbeds (or sometimes cozy into single ones)
to gossip about new crushes,
giggle at uncle's dinnertime conversation,
let tears flow freely on recent heartbreaks.
Whispers of new school anticipation or autumnal moves
as August backs up into September.

The only place in the world I'd cry to lose the scent of mothballs,
the incessant creak of all floorboards,
the swing and slam of screen doors,
the curtains of spiderwebs made daily afresh in every doorway.

The sun sets over the rocks
another day come and gone.
If we're lucky,
if we remember to not forget,
another will come again.

where the house once stood

with all the devastation in the world hitting me rather hard these days, i've had the urge to write about the things in my life & history that bring me the most comfort and safety. here's the next installment:

where the house once stood

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

that's where the porch swing outlived the cat

rocking countless secrets shared, 

coffees sipped, 

flirtations exchanged, 

wines poured,

phone conversations whispered. 

where the front yard never went more than a season

without a cheaply-made laminated sign hammered into the edge of the street

commanding that passers-by "say no on 2" or "vote for deval" or simply to "go slow, children playing."

  

for years we had a record player (do you know what that is?) 

and more afternoons than i can possibly recall

were spent choreographing dances to Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 

double-pirouettes more achievable on the hardwood living room floors.

where em and i were always burning the midnight oil, sprawled on the wraparound couch, 

and she taught me how to take off my own bra with one hand.

the same couch waiting, years later, to cushion mom as she slept off the codine and the migraines. 

that's where we had a front door 

that we didn't know how to lock til last year

thank god

because it meant kathy could burst through, unannounced

one christmas when her family came back from the movies

to find a gunman in their home across the street. 

we now spend every christmas night with them. 

where dad won his first election,

where i got my acceptance to wesleyan,

where 20 rugby teammates had an impromptu slumber party, 

where we played "cards against humanity" with our neighbors, and the under-30 crowd had to explain to our dads what a glory hole was.

that's where the room above 

housed iterations of adolescence.

the closet walls still markered-up from a third grader's baby-sitters club meetings

our graffiti a reminder of when imagination was lived into reality. 

the lofted nook, now crowded with storage

was once the only safe place to hide from the world

(to try and hide from myself). 

i'd listen to my favorite indigo girls cd on repeat, by just leaning over the edge to the mounted shelf

and pressing play on my new boom box.

and the roof - oh, that roof!

where stages of transgressions plodded along with the times:

initially crawling out there to sit was radical enough, sunning our pre-pubescent bodies and pointing fingers at boys biking by.

then it was first cigarettes and bowls - objectively stupider to do outside than in

but we felt so much more hip getting to be under the stars. 

then there was margot. margot on the roof. 

that's where we had a magic room. a sunroom.

smelling of incense (or "incense"), stocked with ram daas, plush with yoga pillows.

where as children abby and i would beg to stay together, instead of our own separate beds,

so every tuesday night when dad was gone

mom would snuggle between us and sing us sleepward.

where in that same bed, in later years, i made sarah make me come out to her.

for one year we had a back patio

that i discovered with our backyard neighbor - a 10 x 10 patch of concrete where a garage once stood.

putting our younger siblings to work, my new friend and i cleaned that back patio so hard! 

that was the summer of our moms perfecting their frozen margaritas,

the summer i learned about divorce,

the summer i had a best friend

leave.

this house is where high school drama 

led all sorts of girlfriends (not that kind) to come crying at my front stoop, 

in the days when we had our drivers licenses but not a cell phone.

the house where mom and dad have taken in any young person in need of a home

tiki sarah emily emily cori emily izzy hannah sarah kali olivia marli harper kate

evermore 20 and 30 somethings staying for dinner or unforeseen nights 

hammering chinks in the walls of nuclear family isolation.

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

The Vineyard, to me

7/17/14

I think it was Judy

who started the tradition of not looking back.

It's too hard, the story goes. When you’re walking off, just walk off. You’ll be back next year.

I cried as I drove Middle Road to Beetlebung

my mind and muscles steeped with memories

stronger than my mom’s morning tea.

The home-i-ness of a home that isn’t enclosed by walls

that’s more permanent than any man-made structure 

that’s about the way the hills roll, or the signs are painted

not just the house we happen to be renting.

I don't mind the obvious changes - irksome as the now-bad pizza is - it's the ones that are slow over time that get me. 

Like a snail you can't tell is moving

until you see a small trail of slime along the ground.

The rock that was once our endless playground has been eroded so much so

it finally looks like the moated castle I often believed it could be.

The waves seem small now, and surf rough

I can't tell if the tide has actually shifted 

or if my memories of afternoon-long body surfing fests

are just a 9-year-old's interpretation of a couple full-mooned ocean swells.

Cherries and chips, pretzels and dried mango, warm tap water with an occasional treat of cooler-ed seltzer from friends far more prepared than I – the snacks to sustain any good beach afternoon.

I’m not sure what “the witching hour” means

(apologies if its racist or otherwise offensively derived)

but I swear the phrase was created to describe Lucy Vincent at dusk

like Hocus Pocus, our favorite movie one year --

touted as spooky craft, but really just the suspense

of finding one’s place

the magic of knowing you’ve got people.

Anyways,

at LVB its hardly just the sky, the sun still glaring but dulling in its heat

it’s the atmosphere of a deserted desert

prideful as the ones who persevered, patiently waiting for this coveted time,

who have too much fun with each other to care that the gate might lock us in.

By the time we leave, the once-full parking lot is a dusty ghost town,

our few remaining cars awkwardly peppered up the slope.

We wave arms out open windows as we peel off towards our own homes.

We have chance meetings on the sandy wooden porch of our favorite overpriced store,

drop by unannounced to borrow sunscreen,

coordinate dinners and consult on medical advice

like we were cousins in some big extended family busting the seams of a small town.

The difference is, for many years we didn’t have a picture of each other's lives outside of this tiny island – 50 weeks would spin by with nary a phone call.

And yet somehow year after year we’d settle back in without skipping a beat, as if a colorful autumn, harsh winter, or rainy spring hadn’t intervened along the way.

I’m thankful to say the passing of time has brought so many threads of our lives together, even the bad ones –

weddings, birthdays, cancers,

bat mitzvahs, interstate moves, career changes,

couch-crashing, midyear texts, impromptu invites to broadway plays --

our crew has broken the seal of summer lovin’; at some point when I wasn’t looking we crossed over from pals to kin.

Even Barrel now shows up on my gchat list.

I see the age on us all

the older adults 

- I call them that because I am an adult too, though still relatively so -

have settled into themselves 

are easier, somehow.

Grudges have ebbed and wounds been stitched (though scars remain). They've seen a lot of life and survived.

What's left is more giggles, 

softened skin alongside softened hearts

small bellies where tautness once held stiff

eyes melted into crows feet

like branding from the sunshine of so many beach days.

We have grown older, too

more and more of the seed of the people we each always have been

remarkably parallel though such distinct characters.

It was our un-diapered bottoms we all have to thank for this.

Some parents become grandparents

more generations distinguishing the passing of time  

napping new babes under the same umbrellaed shade. 

Some parents become more like friends: 

what’s 30 years when you’ve lived almost that long or longer?

We rub elbows like peers, though I take comfort in knowing that

somewhere in each of us

you’re always still mommas and papas and I’m always still the kid.

I just peeked out my airplane window

one of a dozen passengers patiently awaiting a stalled takeoff

and the sunset takes my breath away.

I’ve seen hundreds on this island - can conjure the smell of Menemsha in a snap, the view from the Gay Head cliffs

the sound of applause for the cycle of another day’s completion.