Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

In January 2010, my daughter and I left my father’s apartment for the last time in his 1994 Buick Century. We had packed boxes of his belongings into the trunk and the back seat, as well as a gold box that contained photos of each of the flower arrangements that had been delivered to the funeral home, as well as copies of the program at his funeral, his obituary, and his death certificate. By the time we arrived, we had been away from Minnesota for several weeks on a study abroad trip to the island where my father was born. He died on our way back to the states. Although I can recount many details of the days following our arrival in Ohio, I don’t remember returning home. I remember only that my supervisor called me the next day to check in and see when I was coming back to work, and I told her I would be back in on Monday. Monday came, and our lives went on as usual; I reviewed the notes the substitute had prepared for me and went on teaching my class; I rescheduled all the servi...

I've been without a computer at home since early summer, when the cat knocked over a beautiful vase of flowers onto the keyboard, which I'd left open on the kitchen table. So much has happened since I had regular access to this blog that I can't even begin to step back and make sense of it all. But, I'm back at the page, attempting now to do my best not only to summarize the last four and 1/2 months of my life, but also to see them as one of my creative writing professors told me I ought to, stepping not just a few feet, but at least a mile backwards, but also in a new direction. I like that image, of walking backwards away from your life in a direction you've never traveled before, of seeing everything from a new perspective, and knowing you are nowhere you've been before, in unfamiliar territory--but also facing in the same direction from which you came, with the path back always in your sight. There were a few times over the last few months that I've...

It is hard to believe how much the prairie can change in just a week and a half. The golden Alexanders and beardtongue litter the bike path with yellow and purple. Monarchs settle onto the tight buds of milkweeds, impatient. Birds of all kinds squawk and sing loudly enough that I can barely hear my own thoughts--which is a relief. At five a.m., and, after an hour of trying my best to overcome my panic with meditation and prayer, I finally get up and start walking, half-dazed, toward the bike path that will take me on a seven mile hike through prairie. The fog is thick enough in places to make the path feel most intimately familiar and completely unclear--much like the path I'm walking at the moment. For the last four years and two months of my life I have been battling my daughter's school practically daily just to ensure that she get a good education. I take that back. I had expected a good education, fought for it for two full years at the beginning. Then I gave in, took...

For the last two weeks, the fog has descended on and off, seemingly unexpectedly, lying down near the ground, thick as snow. Stepping out into it, I always half believe the snow is deeper than it actually is--as it should be this time of year--almost expect to hear a crunch when stepping even into well-worn paths. After awhile it will begin to rise like a veil between things, as if it were trying to remind us of how little we pay attention to our own neighborhoods, how easily we would walk into a tree or a hole in the ground if we didn't have our sight. I'm looking out the window, watching it rise slowly from thick blanket to veil right now, as I type. T sends me regular texts about the weather; maybe because she lives in a place where people aren't nearly as obsessed with it as they are here, and, being a Minnesotan at heart, she needs to have this conversation, even with someone who isn't just a gas station attendant or server at a restaurant. And it has been unseason...

It has been so long since I have written here, and so much has happened, that I hardly know where to begin. So instead, I feel compelled to list what I am most thankful for, right now, at this very moment in my life. I am thankful for T, who really listens to me, who is willing to sit on the phone while I tell her the details of my day and is more patient and calm about whatever I'm saying, more able to be a witness and not a fixer, than anyone I've ever met. I needed this more than I even realized. I am grateful for my friend J, who is always honest with me. I am thankful that I have learned to be a witness, to sit at the edge of a person's pain and hold it without becoming it. Even, when I am most centered, to sit at the edge of my own pain and hold it without becoming it. I am grateful for my daughter's opportunity to volunteer at the Humane Society, for the board that welcomed her, for the college student H who goes with her. She belongs again in a way that she hasn...

On Gratitude “What do you think would have happened to me if you hadn’t adopted me?” S wanted to know one afternoon, as we were making the long trec from our hometown to where my aunt, whom S calls “yiayia,” or grandma in Greece, lives in Detroit. “I don’t know,” I said honestly, because I don’t. “I don’t think it would have been good,” S said. I let that statement hang in the air as we passed some horses grazing in the distance along the highway. I didn’t know what to say. The truth is, we still don’t know what will happen, exactly—and that has been a major stressor all summer. “I’m so glad you adopted me,” she added, “and that you love me so much.” We both took a deep breath. “I’m so glad you love me so much, too,” I said. She put the seat back and tried to nap. The dog in his backseat kennel stirred, looked over at her, and lay back down. --- On Grief This summer has been a time of major growth for both of us. Thanks to two good friends—one a long-time, old fr...

The night I learned Thea Angeliki had died, I was on an annual retreat I take, and I had briefly interrupted the silence to spend a couple hours in a writing workshop about belonging. The facilitator asked us to list the people and places to whom we belonged, and then to choose two of them and write about them. For reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time, I wrote Thea Angeliki’s name down—and then decided to write about her. This is what I wrote. Two hours later, in my room, I was weeping because I had a message on my cell phone telling me Thea was gone. I’m sorry she never got to read this, but I wanted to post it here and to pass it on to others who loved her. ----- In my first memory of Thea Angeliki, she is standing at her kitchen counter talking to her cat, and my sister and I are looking at each other across the table and smiling. My mother was with us, as was my aunt Katina, and because my mother was well, I know I must have been younger than 10 (unless this trip happened i...

"Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always looking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsura (the vicious cycle of suffering during our life journey). As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. 'Nothing to hold onto' is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies." --Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun So many things right now are in transition, uncertain. I am in financial crisis again--the adoption assistance check didn't come on time (which happens every July, but this year, I forgot about this and didn't plan for it), the state government has shut down which will mean I am paying for more of Lisa's services (therapy...

Sometimes, when things were very serious—like during my mother’s long illness—my Nono would find a way to make everybody laugh. I distinctly remember a time when we were all gathered in the family room in the house where I grew up. We were talking about ordinary things (I think I was answering a question my Nona had asked me about how school was going), but the mood was dreary. Although I can’t say for sure when this happened, but I know my mother was still alive but not in the room, so she was likely in the hospital, which means I was between 9 and 13 years of age. In any case, quite suddenly and totally out of the blue, my Nono did a summersault off the couch. It seems impossible that this is a real memory, but I swear it happened. My sister and I burst out laughing. Nona was shocked and said, “Taki, what are you doing?” but then she started laughing too. He had a way of lightening things when they were too heavy. He had the best sense of humor of anyone I ever knew. He was almost ...

So, let me get this straight: S cannot stay by herself without getting on the internet and spending $100 she does not have or taking money out of my wallet and going to the store and getting, then eating, an entire box of Oreos. She can't get her homework done without someone sitting next to her. She has no idea how to function in most social situations. She would spend hours twirling around on pointe if she could. She's making progress in all of these areas--lots of progress, actually--but, bottom line, she's not going to be able to be on her own when she turns 18 in a month. Still, she needs a diagnosis other than her current diagnoses--math disability, PTSD and ADHD--to get any resources post-age-18. All right, not a problem. The school is going to do an evaluation, required every two years for any student receiving special education services. Only the "evaluation" includes two tests and an "interview" (questionnaire) that I fill out. Also, her specia...