Cross Section 8.10.25

some more of the same? the same but more so?

I was a lonely, weird little kid, and for me poetry was eucharistic. The fact that another person felt the way I felt, as lonely, or sad, or scared, was so comforting to me, and I was so hungry for it. It was as if I could eat the poems, like they went into my body. That’s what I mean by eucharistic: somebody else’s passion, suffering, comes into your body and changes you. – Mary Karr, “A Conversation with Mary Karr” Image Magazine

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A friend I’ve known since I was born—whose parents were friends with my parents, close enough to try to have kids at the same time, to succeed at having said kids, to then give the baby girls the same name—that friend sends me a picture of the two of us at what looks like her fourth birthday party. I am in a red dress, hair a mess and I don’t care. I have my arm around her, smiling so big it spreads into a roar. I am fiercely happy and unashamed. I can tell you exactly what I want.

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Flash forward to today. My spirit requires the perfect conditions to rise:

• Yeast and sugar.

• Undisturbed process.

• A slow Friday night, phone off, full night’s sleep with no alarm to wake.

• 5 more hours of quiet.

• A good coffee.

• Steel cut oats.

• The sun not up yet and nowhere to go anytime soon.

• Incense ideally.

Then, finally—a mysterious rush of tears, ambient joy, pleasant numbness, flurry of vignettes rushing back from the days and weeks before. Consciousness of a newborn, seeing and yet not seeing, flailing. Loved and incredulous.

Coming up for air again! Hello!

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“It was just such a crazy effort, to keep doing one thing after another. Now she would have to warm the pot, she would have to measure the tea.”—Alice Munro, “Nettles”

More courtrooms filled with Latino men in beige jumpsuits. Each one repeating the words of the one before him: I apologize to this country and to you for trying to come here. I will not do it again. I just wanted to work. I miss my family. I am guilty, yo soy culpableyosoyculpableculpableculpable. During a plea colloquy, one judge says it out loud, says the words “cattle call” with a little giggle. Some people have never been slapped before and it shows.

At the Metropolitan Correctional Center, I laugh with a client who tells me there were fifteen ICE agents at his front door to arrest him. Guns out, blaring commands on a speaker phone: Come out with your hands in the air. You do not have the right to be in this country. Not fifteen, fifteen is crazy. No I swear, he says, eyes bright. And I didn’t even have a shirt on. Was watching Dr. Phil with my nephews.

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Thursday night I do not sleep. Just lie with my eyes closed, eyeballs jumpy, replaying a 2pm sentencing, thinking maybe if I’d said—then judge would’ve understood and done probation instead of fifteen months—or maybe he was going to do that no matter what I’d said, but—again and again until my alarm slowly crescendos good morning. At which point, I don’t have it in me to pack a bag and fly home for my best friend’s engagement party.

Another client is being hunted by the cartel. Every few days he sends me texts asking, any news? He leaves his house only in disguise, asks me whether I think it’s safe for him to go to the gym. He is nineteen, with a two-week-old newborn. I send him bodyweight workouts to do at home.

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At night, I hear, through my next door neighbor’s open window, a small boy’s voice viciously shouting “shut up! ShutUpShutUp!” in a way that portends homicide if not obeyed.

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I would like to be in love, but, you know.

The reason that I had nothing to say was not that I was rude or bored (or any more rude than I was naturally at that time, or any more bored than I had expected to be) but that I did not understand that I should ask questions—almost any questions at all, to draw a shy male into conversation, to shake him out of his abstraction and set him up as a man of a certain authority, therefore the man of the house.”—Alice Munro, “Family Furnishings”

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As frantic and inadequate as I feel much of the time, when I get quiet, I feel the smothering crush of God’s unbridled, gap toothed, parent-in-the-bleachers-shouting-way-too-loud, blessing. Simple phrases. I am with you. You have a hard job. You are doing a good job.

My sense of guidance of the Holy Spirit was often very small. It didn’t say, “Write a book. Make a lot of money. Buy a house.” It said, “Make yourself a sandwich.” It said, “Go to bed early. Read him a story. Don’t help him with that homework. You can finish these papers in the morning.” – Mary Karr, “A Conversation with Mary Karr” Image Magazine

I am thankful for my life, which is continually expanding. I am trying to stretch to hold all I’m tasked with holding in this moment.

My loves are increasingly scattered across this country. In most states, there is a spare room for me, someone to visit on a long weekend so we can stay up all night giving the state of the union of our lives.

I have time.

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

<3 LKM