the last blue iris

 Today, my boy moved into the dorms for his freshman year of college. It has been a long and hard week, of unbloggable things, and I have been worried beyond my skin for him. He has had to carry so much in his 18 years without a lot of opportunities to be himself. I have held him like I held him as a baby, let him sob in my arms, promised him I'm not going anywhere, we  aren't going anywhere. This is always home until he chooses it not to be. He is six miles away, at a dream school, the kind of school I went to. We walked through the art studios today, the music practice room. Met his roommates.  I know. I am not special in this, nor unique. Kids grow up, grow away. This child has been the project of my life, the through line that has kept us both afloat, my love for him, my fierce determination to build a better life for us. I did not know myself until I had him; I did not know how to say no , or even how to say yes.  I knew how to be something for other people, som...

(August 10) A month ago, I cut off all my hair. Or most of it. I plan on cutting the rest of it in another month, before things start up and the churn of academia begins again. In a week and a half, J. leaves for college. I am not sure I can talk about this yet. I am not sure I can think about this yet. Today, at my annual pap smear, my midwife (whose youngest is also heading off to college in a few weeks) fist bumped me and said, Girl, we did it. On our walk today, J. and I saw a leucistic heron or a great egret floating above the neighborhood. The olden dog snuffled through dry weeds, the dog we adopted when J. was barely two, in my little apartment in Kalamazoo. Then, my hair was short too: a friend had cut it on their porch after a particularly ridiculous breakup, when I'd run to E. and K.'s because I knew it was safe, because I knew they--my queerest of queer friends--were my people in a way other folks weren't.  I didn't feel safe enough to grow my hair out until ...

It is a beautiful summer night, in this first summer in 9 years that my boy has been home. He leaves exactly a month from yesterday for his freshman year in college, his stepbrother a month after that. I have a hard time thinking about what comes next, what it means to be a sort-of empty nester, though I have had some practice each summer for the last 9 years. I cut all my hair off last week. I applied for a literary grant, am getting my materials together for a moon-shot teaching gig which I am absolutely not famous enough to even be considered for. Academia is--I'd say weird, but really, it is likely normal--but because I was a single mother, because I have had to support my family and work as an administrator and have not had the opportunities to take on visiting professorships, go to writing retreats and conferences and network and put my resources fully toward publishing and establishing myself in the poetry world (three books notwithstanding), I am a fringe candidate at best....

It is hot. The neighbor is in her small garden, hair swept up on her head, the sky a haze. Behind us, a group of lithe young women have spread a lacy tablecloth over an ancient wood table, cleared their yard of weeds, are barbecuing and drinking out of red cups. Each of them in a shirt that barely skims their ribs, their taut bellies golden in the evening light. I wonder if I was ever that lithe; certainly, not that free at twenty four or five, or thirty, or ever. By their age, I was married, and if I am estimating them younger than they are, then a single mother. I am feeling uncertain about my body, about aging, these days. Some nights, I'm thrown awake by a hot flash soaking through my pajamas. When I was checking out a gardening book from the library on Monday, the clerk looked at the book and said "I should probably get into this eventually. That's what older people do." She then said she was turning forty soon, but clearly saw some chasm between her and me. I am...

Friday before Memorial Day I left work early; even now, there is guilt. A small lingering fear I might be caught out. And yet, while I was there, campus empty but for a few staff, a few dedicated math students in our lobby, I could barely focus. Department meeting, discussion of AI, walk to the pond to see if the heron was eating the newly stocked steelhead, watching clouds skiff over Mt. Hood. This is the first summer I do not have to fly my boy to Michigan for 10 weeks, that I don't have to spend a weekend in an airport Doubletree Inn. I never have to do that again: rent a house by Lake Michigan, spend a few days, a week, something --running and walking and writing and drinking wine--while my boy stays with his father. Will I ever see Lake Michigan again, from the Michigan shores? Suddenly, I am bereft. Suddenly, I am free. In two weeks, my boy and my stepson graduate from high school. My mom and sister and brother in law and in-laws and maybe my boy's father will be here. Th...

Monday, March 27th  This post is nine and a half years in the making. It is almost impossible to write, my mind skitters off, as it has much of this great year of change, from saying anything. Perhaps out of superstition. Perhaps out of terror. Perhaps because I can hardly believe we have arrived here, in this place where my boy is almost a man, where we get to become in charge, fully, of our own lives. For nine years, J. and I have traveled across the country so he could see his father. I imagine I am supposed to see this as punishment. Punishment for leaving at 29, moving into my own apartment. Punishment for leaving again at 36. I have known punishment for almost 25 years--for existing, for having an opinion, for desiring anything at all. But this has also been a kind of punishment for my boy.  I cannot bring myself to calculate how many trips, how many miles, how many thousands of dollars. Maybe someday I will, but tonight, in that liminal space between dropping J off and ...

Thanksgiving Week, 2022 I have been writing this post in my head for days now--three days walking and running and hiking through the beech-maple dunewoods, the small herd of white tailed deer meeting me at every turn in the trail, chickadees and titmice and bluejays, downy woodpeckers scrambling up from each high branch. How do you say goodbye to a place that formed you, that has been my place of exile for nine years while my boy sits silently at his father's house? How do you say goodbye to the woman I was when I first came to Michigan--eighteen, so desperate to matter I could barely see straight--at forty-five, the checker at Meijer hitting the I acknowledge over 50  button without even blinking when I scan my bottle of wine? When J. and I started to do this, I could barely stare down nine years--for nine years we would have to haul ourselves cross country multiple times a year, be hauled into family court, spend tens upon tens of thousands of dollars (we've probably spent up...