And we're back

Yea though we have passed through the valley of the shadow of pneumonia, we have somehow survived. C’s drippy cough means she’s up a few times a night, sometimes wired and unable to get back to sleep, so I’ve been enjoying life jammed in her very small bed with her. I tell myself we’ll laugh about at this when she’s 20.

Despite the illness, Nate and I did sneak away for a few rare nights out last week: once to celebrate my birthday and once to enjoy our annual outing with the judge and Julie, who invite us to attend a reading at a local college to which Julie is very connected. This year Marilyn Nelson read, and I was pleased with how enjoyable the reading was (very little of the poetry lilt which always drives me nuts by the third or fourth poem). I left all charged up and ready to face the page—hopefully it will stick. I love going to the event with the judge and Julie because she knows EVERYONE there, Detroit literati to all the big players, and he has the most amazing sense of humor. I spend a lot of the evening wishing he and I could communicate telepathically because I know he has a thousand stories (candid, funny and sometimes surprising stories) about everyone who walks by.

I was only a little familiar with Nelson’s work before the reading, but I had heard she writes poetry for young people as well as adults. “Poetry for young people” has such a pleasing ring to it that I immediately thought I’d be a very literary mama and snag a signed copy for Clementine, who is wearing me out on the heavy rotation books. When I got to the book table, I saw A Wreath for Emmett Till, one of her “young people” books and didn’t end up buying it. Till, you see, is a young boy who was lynched for once whistling at a white woman, and while I am really behind the notion of the book, I just couldn’t see tucking C in with a rhythmic crown of sonnets about lynching, no matter how beautiful or educational, touching or necessary they really are. What can I say? Even I have limits, though I hope I remember to buy it for her when she’s in sixth grade and so embarrassed I’m her mom she can hardly walk straight.

Spring has sprung in our neighborhood, which is always such a relief because we feel so trapped. It’s also horrible because for the first few weeks of the spring our neighborhood turns especially wild. Maybe it’s because NASCAR isn’t racing as much yet, or perhaps there’s nothing for our neighbors to watch on their ridiculous Rent-a-Center GIANT televisions (I can see nostril hairs on the picture from the street, I swear), or maybe even they get a whiff of the outdoor air and get giddy with all the possibilities. Every year Nate and I swear this is the year we’ll give up on the place after nights of drunken carousing around a fire pit on one side of us or hours of six unsupervised sibling screaming on the other side, but we remember that it always dies down eventually. I used to be good at loving this place, this salt-of-the-earth, trying-to-better-itself place, but I struggle. I long for gentrification. I case newly-bought homes for signs of…well…signs that they won’t move a couch on their front lawn or be involved in domestic disputes. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the people with the wrestling ring in their backyard—now that they’ve moved it’s just trampolines, broken down 4X4s and large, loud, untrained dogs purchased in lieu of security systems.