election night

It's election night and I'm all weird and could stay glued to that little red and blue map.  Eliana kept chanting, "Go blue, go blue!"  She was worried that if Obama lost we'd have to move.  Perhaps she's overheard too many political diatribes from her Drunkel Matt.  I reassured her we'd be right here in our, "rainbow house" (her term...perhaps I did get a bit too crazy with the paint colors...).  What better activity than this bloggy to pass a bit of this knuckle cracky time.

When I was pregnant with Solomon, my girl Kay gave me a beautiful book about Barack Obama.  She wrote a note to, "Little Man Kessler" in the front cover.  He didn't even have a name yet.  I read it to my classes today and each time was so moved by his story.  That President Obama, too, was once just a little man who was taking in his world. And, later, this smart, kind, hard-working, driven man who, in trying to find his place in the world, found the path of helping others.  The kids wrote about the changes they would make if they were president.  They were so pure.  So passionate.  So thoughtful.  They were all, from age seven to age fourteen, totally into the assignment.  It filled me with the hope that themes the book, that themes what this man has tried to do.  Hope is good.

I gave a similar writing prompt four years ago.  My, my how time moves quickly!  Only one of my kiddos, now in middles school, commented, "Didn't we do this before?"  Most of them had me when they were younger as well. It felt so good to remind her of how much she's changed in four years and that her hopes and dreams may have shifted as well.  And, if they haven't, it never hurts to actualize your dreams more than once and know that the powerful ones live in us forever.

I'm having lots of old dreams come my way these days.  I think life is circling back.  Maybe it's some cosmic thing.  I remember everyone telling me about my Saturn Returns when I hit the end of my twenties.  In the blink of an eye here I am, hitting the end of my thirties.  I feel some super shifting, some super circles.  I have to set up a date with a friend who knows about this sort of thing.  I'm totally intrigued.

I wrote about it a bit the other morning, after my Dia de los Muertos early morning hike for Brandon. I find myself thinking about my early twenties a ton.  Wanting to listen to Tori Amos again and feel her feminist passion, her dreamy, freaky soul.  I want to light candles and stretch and create sacred space for myself.  I'm reading a ton of poetry, books I haven't pulled from the shelf in over a decade.  So much of the past few years has been about navigating my space with two new little souls.  I think I'm integrating (thanks, Melis, for that term).  It feels awesome and very, very right.

This weekend I'm going to San Francisco with two of my best girlfriends.  Alone on a plane not for work, or family, but for me.  I'm all dreamy just thinking about it.  My girl Melis will pick us up from the airport, my girl who was a key player in the me of my twenties and keeps hearing me talk about what I've termed my, Boho Revolution.  I'm ready to meander into a bookstore and lurk and linger without a thought of the time, of what comes next.  I'll walk and walk and walk and check out whatever looks fabulous or fascinating and then walk some more.  And don't get me thinking about the food.  I literally got up out of bed last night and read menus for Mexican, for Spanish tapas, for Burmese, for dim sum, in the freaking dark.  Then I got so hungry I had to make toast and pretend it was flan or a samosa. 

So yay for San Francisco. 

Another funny thing about the Boho Revolution is the people that I've been reconnecting with, a few who I hope to see this weekend.  An old boyfriend who I haven't seen or heard from in forever called me the other night.  It was so out-of-the-blue. But it didn't feel weird at all.  Because Vince was a key figure in my earlier revolution.  When I was super in touch with my creativity, with my demons, with theatre and words, listening to music to hear each and every lyric, exploring and theorizing and writing.  I started talking about how I've been seeing my life as a timeline.  And how certain people would get their names written in bright bold colors for how they influenced me.  Brandon's death is what started the timeline theory.  But all sorts of signs seem to pointing me back lately.  The circling. 

I feel the circling in my marriage.  That Jeff and I are in love like we used to be.  When I look at him I see the kind, amber of his eyes, I see how well we fit.  I look around our rainbow house and see how each artifact, each piece of art, each photograph or child made craft, represents part of our history.  Our living timeline.  It's so vibrant and rich and alive.  I need to remember to think of it that way tomorrow when I come in from work, exhausted, and my children have unearthed every last piece of crap out of every last drawer and corner.  And the sink is full of dishes.  And Jeff's boxers are on the bathroom floor.  Remember the soul of the rainbow house, Gil.  Remember.  Everyone will like me better this way.  Especially me.

Like, when I was twenty, I don't remember really caring if the house was a disaster.  I don't remember fretting about getting laundry done or what I'd cook for dinner.  If there wasn't bread, I didn't have to go to the store right away.  I certainly didn't wipe down the counters a whole lot or vacuum during my lunch break (yes, I did this just yesterday).  What the heck?  I mean, I do need to feed my children, but nobody but me gives a hoot if the rug is covered in little fall leaf bits, blown in from my crunchy leaf jumping children. I don't want to go too into housekeeping but, really, I need to chillax on this one a bit.  Boho Revolution, baby. 

Speaking of the revolution, this Halloween, I wanted to just hunker with my homies.  My job is so beautifully social that at the end of the day, I don't always feel like being around a whole lot of people beyond my little freaks and their hot daddy.  So after a visit to see Poppy (who was all decked for the occasion and eating dinner in his boxers), and much needed burritos, we hit our little rainbow hood. 

The kids are at supremely cute trick-or-treat age.  They would literally run from house to house, hand in hand, and stand, expectantly on doorstops, knocking and eager.  What an amazingly cool holiday for kids.  I think dress up is the A, number one, favorite activity for them followed, or perhaps preceded, by eating candy.  Little person perfection. 

So we walked up and down Jackson Street until it was time to stumble home.  They dumped their buckets on the kitchen floor like I so clearly remember doing when I was a kiddo. They aren't exactly candy experts yet, so they didn't really know what was what but I think just the sheer display of wrappers, of colors, of shapes and sizes, was wholly satisfying for my two little sugar hounds. 

We made it through the night without any major meltdowns and Jeff and I happily closed the door on that big day with a satisfied sigh of relief. 

And then I stopped on Halloween to check the election results.  And now I'm crying.  Because we can stay with hope.  We can stay with revolution.  We can continue to move forward.  Yes we can.