To Parody or Not To Parody?

So many of you do such fantastic posts when it comes to documenting your travels–Millicent at Different Dirt and walternatives come immediately to mind–that I hesitate to post about my WOEFUL trip to the east coast last week. I fear some of you may assume it to be an attempt at parody…which, unfortunately, it is not.

It was All Too Real.

I was set to do a poetry reading at a local university on Long Island as one of the writers in their Visiting Writers Series. I actually signed the contract to do this well over a year ago, like in November of 2005 or something, when I was really pretty excited about it.

Times change. People change. Sometimes, in the meantime, people might even decide to adopt a Waiting Child from China who is almost 19-months-old and has a nickname like The Bee, and can I just say that the desire to read from a stack of year-old poems to an audience of college students who only half care what you might be talking about decreases in direct proportion to how badly you want to meet that daughter and how close you might be to getting to doing so? Er, yeah.

But obligations are obligations. And, in general, I enjoy readings. I was just really hoping I wasn’t socked in to either JFK or O’Hare (had to come down in Chicago on the return leg) in the midst of some blinding blizzard, which y’all seem to be picking up in rapid succession in the latter days of the winter this year.

One of the last things that R. says to me as he drops me off curbside at the airport is “take lots of pictures…I want to see what the east looks like these days.”

Well, okay. But here’s the thing: I was on the ground on Long Island a grand total of 16 hours, and nine of those I spent in bed. I actually don’t often sleep nine hours, and this trip was no exception. But I wound up with a hotel room without heat, and so I spent an inordinate amount of time curled up under the covers, trying to stay warm. And, no, I didn’t demand to switch rooms, as inconceivable as that sounds. When I arrived in my room, I just figured that the frigid temps were the result of it being unoccupied, so I ratcheted up the thermostat to 85 degrees, unpacked all my stuff–even hung the next day’s clothes neatly in the closet and laid out all the toiletries I would need in the morning, when nerves might get the best of me–and went down to the lobby to have dinner before the kitchen closed.

When I came back up to the room, it was stubbornly consistent in its deep freeze. In fact, COLD air was pouring out of the vent, so I just shut the “heat” off completely. It was 11 o’clock at night, I was totally unpacked, and I needed to be up early on east coast time (two hours ahead of where my body was). So, I decided to make the best of it. I put on a turtleneck underneath the jammies and then my overcoat on over that and wore those, plus my gloves, to bed. It felt a little like winter camping, except that the mattress was quite nice.

In the morning, I remembered what R. had asked me to do, and I managed to snap a few shots out the windows. Here are my travel photographs to share with you all:

Now, I realize these aren’t the sort of thing you’ve come to expect from other travelblogs. No gargoyles, Georgian architecture, statuary, or even a cornice to behold. Nary a single sheep in a pastoral landscape to feast your eyes on, although I must admit to just missing the little flock of Canada geese that winged by as I opened the curtains. Hope that suffices, cause that’s all I got.

I had breakfast with the faculty committee at 9:00 AM, my reading was at 11:00 AM, and by 12:05 PM, I was in a limo on my way back to JFK for the long haul home.

Oh, except for this:

When I stumbled exhausted through my front door at midnight that night, my big dog Spot thought it necessary to show me how much I was missed. I was bending over, greeting the other little dogs, and his skullcap met my cheekbone, and I literally dropped to the floor it was so painful. This is the next morning’s fallout. Shiner, doggie-style.

Shrine Shrine Post #2: Spider Woman and Tagore Shrines

First, I just want to apologize for being hugely behind on my blog reading/commenting this past week or so. I promise to do my best in catching up with everyone in the next few days…

Second, one of my fellow ALTs–Di–asked that I post some more photos of the shrines on the ranch, and so here is my Shrine Post #2. She had recounted the fabulous Weaving Ceremony she took part in to mark her wedding, and so I thought immediately of posting about the Spider Woman Shrine here at the ranch (”weaving” originates in the spider, and this is one of the Native American sites here) in her honor, and the Spider Woman shrine has its counterpart in the Rabindrinath Tagore shrine, which is my personal favorite site on the entire ranch. So, you’re getting two shrines for the price of one today…

The Spider Woman Shrine is on the western side of the hill at the top of our property. It has great morning light because the sun obviously shines on it then from the east, and its backdrop is the ancient volcano (appropriately named, Black Mountain) that looms above our property on state land. As you’re walking along the back loop of the hill trail (we call it the “Rim Trail”), you arrive at a fairly nondescript entrance, marked by three small rock steps up:

The shrine immediately opens up into a fairly flat, circular area, backed by a large monolith, which is the actual shrine:

When we first toured the ranch with the former owners, the woman yogi who lived here took us up to this rock and explained that it anatomically represented The Feminine. I’ll let your imaginations be the judge of that:

There is a Native American bowl at the altar site, its opening meant to represent The Center of the Earth, as Spider Woman represents she who creates from a central source. In northern Arizona, there is a magnificent space called Canyon de Chelly, believed to be the source of creation for the Navajos. The tallest free-standing rock spire in the world rises from the canyon floor, and it is known as Spider Rock, and the legend stands that Spider Woman, who brought the gift of weaving to the people, lives on the top of the rock. She is credited with weaving all of creation together, and thus is also known as

Someday, R. and I hope to renew our wedding vows at our Spider Woman shrine. We were originally a courthouse couple, so at some point, we’d like to do it up proper-like, and this particular spot would be perfect, I think, for a morning ceremony. Plus, it’s large enough to seat a dozen people or so. There is also a sundial at the opposite side of the shrine from the monolith, which doesn’t have a particular currency with Native American culture, but here it is:

“Fugit hora, ora” is Latin that means “The hour flies, pray.” It was made specifically for the ranch itself, its spire coordinated to the latitude and longitude of the property.

The other shrine I am profiling in this post is a natural counterpart–our counterpoint–to the Spider Woman Shrine because they share the feature of anatomical rock formations. The Tagore Shrine contains a boulder that for all intents and purposes resembles the male anatomy…but I digress. First, let me introduce you to the shrine itself…

The Tagore Shrine, named for Nobel-Prize-winning poet (1913) Radindranath Tagore, is my favorite spot on the entire ranch. I often come here, just to hang out. Here is the entrance to the Tagore shrine, which is the most hidden of any shrine on the entire property…we found it by accident. It is marked by a stone, but it is still hard to see:

You can see that it is positioned off the corner of the hill, the canyon is below us and the mountain is beyond. The little path loops around a boulder, and then you arrive at what is essentially a gate. How the 80-year-old Swami who built this place managed to build this gate of three immense stones is anybody’s guess:

Here is the gate from the other side, after you’ve crossed through it into the shrine…I guess that’s what you’d also call the exit!:

This shrine site has several different “rooms” or areas to it–you’re now standing in the first such “room” and the first “altar” (for lack of a better word) is in front of you:

The Swami left a very odd looking branch–with an intricate ‘knot’ in it–leaning up against the opening of this altar (you can barely make it out in this photo).

If you continue down a few stone steps, you arrive in the second “room,” which has a huge, flat boulder sitting in front of you:

This is my favorite place in the world to sit. I can spend hours sitting on top of this rock. It overlooks the canyon that is far below, although it is possible to hear the water falling over the dam from up here. I know it’s a cliche to say such things, but if I had an hour’s notice that the world was ending, this is where any survivors would find me. I would take the dogs and go and sit here, and that might be just enough. (Of course, I’d like to spend the end of the world with R., but I don’t presume to know whether he’d like it to end for him on this particular rock, so he’s only provisionally accounted for in my vision….) Here’s the cool thing about this rock…once you’re up on top of it, here is the view:

And now you can see why this shrine contains the counterpoint to the Spider Woman shrine–this is the ranch’s Phallic Rock. Here it is from down below, looking up:

(This second view is actually at another shrine–the one we named after the architect of this whole place, Swami Ramananda, the 80-year-old we bought the property from.) These photographs also give you a good sense of how the color of the boulders changes pretty dramatically, depending on the light.

Besides the sound of the running water far below, the other sound that it’s possible to hear at this shrine are the wind chimes hanging from the oak tree next to my favorite boulder:

The dogs love to come to this spot with me too–I think because it has such a great view, and they can survey their domain:

But that isn’t all there is to this shrine! Long after we discovered these main areas of the shrine, we one day noticed that a small path led on farther, beyond my favorite boulder:

There were even well-placed stone steps leading up to yet another “room” that is hidden behind a wall of boulders from the main area:

One you climb this short path, you reach a third altar-type place, with a beautiful blue “eye”:

Near this big blue marble, under the overhang of the rock, is a wooden box with a copper lining (I think it must have been an old cigar box?) that contains two volumes of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry. So, it is possible to lollygag about, reading verse here all day long! He was the first Indian (Bengali) to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

One of the two books is Fireflies, which is Tagore’s volume of ephemeral (like lightening bugs!) verse. I like to play a game with myself when I visit this place by opening the book once to any random page, and concentrating on that particular verse for the rest of the day. Here is a sampling of stuff from Fireflies:

“The fireflies, twinkling among leaves, make the stars wonder.”

“When I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.”

“What is Art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.”

“We live in the world when we love it”

“I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door - or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”

“Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.”

“Do not say, ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.”

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

“The worm thinks it strange and foolish that man does not eat his books.”

“Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection.”

“My offerings are not for the temple at the end of the road, but for the wayside shrines that surprise me at every bend.”

I often wonder whether the Swami who built all these shrines had that last verse in mind when he did so. It turns out that he actually KNEW Tagore, in India, back in the early 40s, when they were both hanging out with Gandhi. And the Swami took the name of his religious group from another of Tagore’s books, Sadhana, The Realization of Life. That’s also in the box.

This ranch has taught me a number of lessons (so far)–one of which is that I don’t really own it. For the first time in my life, I’m overwhelmed with the sense that I am NOT the owner despite what the papers might say, but rather a sort of steward. It’s too big (and I don’t mean in terms of acreage) and too old for me to claim it. That’s weird because every other place I’ve ever lived, I’ve felt–I’ve even revelled in the knowledge–that I owned that space. But this place has made me think differently. I know that I am only passing through, and that it will be there long after–LONG after–I am gone, still sitting under the same mountain, in the same sun’s light, visited by people that I can’t ever know.

Okay, so this is going to sound weird, I’m sure, but that sense of not-owning, not-possessing, has come together for me with my adoption. That I’m being given this gift of a child, who will be with me for a while–who will learn from me as I will learn from her–but whom I do not possess. It’s really alleviated that desperate thought I had for a time, ‘what if I never have a child.’ Well, yes, I am going to have a child, and I will attach to her, and I will love her as if the sun and moon rise and set on her, but she’s a gift, rather than a given. It’s hard to explain (without sounding mildly artificial or super religious) other than to say something like that. I think it’s the unexpected quality of adoption–the unlikelihood of it, the fact that it’s not primary in our culture–that makes me think of it as a gift not a given. This is also the message I sometimes wish I could convey to parents of bio children–that bio kids too really aren’t a given, even though they may have seemed to arrive that way to you.

The other unlikely lessons that this place has taught me don’t have to do with the usual suspects, like beauty or awesomeness or scenic wonder. It is all that, too, of course, but so is the Grand Canyon. And this place feels categorically different to me than the Grand Canyon, in all likelihood because I am allowed to live here. And so the lessons are more intimate. Lessons like generosity and hospitality and kindness. I know it sounds funny to equate generosity or kindness to a physical landscape, but that’s the only way I can explain it. Living here has made me value kindness (more than respect or trust or loyalty or any of the qualities I used to hold dearer than the rest), appreciate generosity (the little sister of kindness), more than I used to.

Because it isn’t just a space of natural beauty–it also has a human-made part, a human creator behind it. It is not just “What Is,” but it is also what was created out of what Is, it is also all about change, about possibility. The trails and the shrines and the steps are all a changed landscape, created out of natural material. I live in a transformed place that regularly reminds me of the possibilities for a transformed life.

Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.

It’s Like a Virtual Shower…!

Shower of Goodness, that is!

Take a look at what showed up in the post office box on Saturday:

The lovely, lovely woman formerly known as The Atomic Mama sent this to my dear Emme Lu. It is gobsmackingly beauteous…all the way from its lucious pink skulls and lace fabric to its downy black (WORD!) fleece on the reverse to its sweet little “E” monogram. It is just what the SBird would have chosen for Emerson. It is NOT just what the SBird would have made for E. since I am no where near as multi-talented as the community I have found myself in the midst of. I knew Atomic Mama had wit, brains, and oodles of integrity (trust me on this one…she is an amazing source of right-on righteousness), and I had heard tell of her crafty creations before, but this blanket is really a wonderful work of art. Thank you, thank you!

As for her wit, here is an example of it:

Also stuffed into the package along with ‘The Singing Bird’ loteria card were two Mexican candy treats: spicy watermelon worms with tamarind sauce to douse them with. GET IT? Worms for the bird. HAHA. I am gearing myself up for being the early bird soon…

Y’all are just too good to me. It’s amazing the community I’ve found online, and I can’t sing your praises often enough (*you know who you are*). Thank you for making this adoption experience even more important and special to me.

Care Package #2

Today I’m mailing out Emerson’s second care package. The first one I mailed in December, and it arrived to her orphanage on Christmas day (I hadn’t planned on that, but it took a lot less time than I expected it to–about six days to get there). I forgot to take pics of the first one.

Here is what I’m sending this time, and I hope it arrives just before the Lunar New Year on the 18th:

They say that one of the traditional gifts for the new year there is new clothes, so I’m sending a jacket and a shirt–pretty stuff, not practical stuff. After all, she’s a Rooster, and I hear that Roosters are style mavens.

Also, a funny blanket that was stitched using an actual child’s image of a bug (a woodlouse, I think) and has all sorts of soft flaps to chew on. We’re sending another book of photos, this time with just pictures of R. and I, and a toy cell phone that we recorded our voices into, saying “This is your mama,” “This is your baba,” “We love you, Fu Lu”–but all in Mandarin. Heh. I have no idea if we even made the rises and falls in our voices correctly, but there you go. We did this for the last care package, too, except the recording was inside a stuffed rabbit. I’m also sending socks (practical mom!), and a soft-sided book with lots of pictures of arctic animals–a polar bear, a seal, a penguin, and so forth. She can just look at the fun pictures and squish the weird materials that they used to make it, until we get there to read it to her. And, of course, the obligatory camera for the orphanage staff to take pictures for Emme Lu to have in the future, and some candy made from cactus fruit (well, I am in the southwest!) and chocolate for the nannies.

The pink stuffed rabbit in the photo couldn’t fit in the box, so it’s not going. I’m thinking I may send it instead to the little girl I’m sponsoring at the New Day Foster Home, since I just found out I can send her care packages. She had her heart surgery and is doing well.

If you look really closely at the bottom of the last picture, you’ll see Gus’s head sticking in and looking intently at what’s going on. He either wants all the fuss to be about him (and it isn’t), or he wants to help with all the fuss (and he can’t). I fear he smells his future, and it might not be what he expected.

Protected: Buzzing with Good News! Update on The Bee…

Scramble.

Yesterday, I had a doctor’s appointment at 8:15 AM. It takes half-an-hour to get to town. At 7:47 I emerged from the house and almost slipped down the front steps, it was so icy. The car was covered in a sheet of it, back and front windshields. My heart sank. I was already late to an appointment that had been cancelled and rescheduled so many times it made the date book scary-black with ink. And now there was ice.

When I lived in Michigan and the car was covered with ice in the mornings, it would take me boiling two pots of water on the stove to pour over the windshield to get it to thaw up enough to scrape off. I was still in Michigan Mind, despite having lived in Arizona for seven years now. I had never encountered ice on the windshields before (frost yes, ice no) here. So I ran my hand along the rear window, and–voila!–it just peeled away. Ahhhh. Arizona is not like the upper midwest. Good to know.

I made it to the appointment, where I requested all the prescription meds I might need for Emme Lu in China. R.’s doctor gave him a real fight about it–especially the antibiotics, which he refused to prescribe even though I had sent R. into his doctor with all the information on ‘orphandoctor.com’ printouts. I don’t have many nice things to say about R.’s doc. He was also the one who questioned why in the world R. would ever want to have more kids, now that his two bios are grown. We have some choice words for him around The SBird Nest. My doctor just cooed appropriately over The Bee’s photos and wrote out the scripts. I wonder whether it’s a woman thing.

My doctor also recommended a pediatrician to me, and I called and have an appointment set up for Emme on March 29th. I bascially realize that there is no way in hell we will be back from China in time to make that appointment, but they weren’t taking April appointments yet, and I wanted to get in the system. So, sometime in March I will call and reschedule the appointment for mid-April, when I think we will safely be back. It was so much fun to answer the woman’s questions about my daughter’s name and my daughter’s birthdate…to actually HAVE answers to these questions is so mindblowing to me…yep, as crazy as it may sound, this is the sort of mindless detail that I just don’t take for granted. For me, mindless details represent that coveted status of parenthood I have been after for so long now.

Speaking of schedules, someone on my SN board who has a LID of 11-14-06 announced today that she just received the LOA (the Letter Seeking Confirmation of Adopter), which is the very last step before TA. It basically signals that your TA is ready and only about two weeks away. This is significant for us because our (new) LID is 11-21-06, which MIGHT mean that we are only a week away from the LOA, and thus only three weeks away from TA. I am SOOO hoping we get this LOA thing before CNY.

It’s still not clear, though, when we might travel…optimistically thinking, it could be a mid-March to late-March trip. But probably more like late-March to early-April. Now that a couple of my fave bloggers Jacquie and Johnny received their referrals, I am wondering whether I will get to meet them around Shamian. Cool if it works out.

Happy Groundhog’s Day, by the way. Does Phil ever see his shadow? I can’t remember that ever happening…the sun’s not ever exactly blazing high in the sky at 7:00 AM or whenever they do the ceremony. Which reminds me. Here is an odd fact about me: I hate sunglasses. I almost never wear them, although I do own several drugstore-variety pairs. I always feel like there is some veil in front of my eyes, and I can’t see when I wear sunglasses. Especially when I’m driving. You might as well throw a bag over my head. Except a bag wouldn’t look nearly as cool. Um, yeah.