Another Way Home

Sometimes I take another way home
Down twisting, winding roads
Past homes with fences
Long driveways
And landscapers cleaning up the leaves
Sometimes I catch the smell from fireplaces
As I drive by
And I imagine that the bathtubs inside
Are surrounded by heated tiles
And could fit these long legs
In a way my own tub
never could.
Our floors and doors need to be replaced
And our deck has definitely seen better days
The roots of our trees have
cracked our driveway


And our branches don't hold up too well
In the wind
I grew up where there were more bricks
Than trees
Flowers were more plentiful at the
Botanical Gardens
Than in the neighborhood
So don't get me wrong.
I am grateful for what we have.
Sometimes, though,
I take another way home
And I wonder
What it would be like
To truly
Live
The American
Dream

What I've Learned from Game of Thrones

SPOILER ALERT!!! You've been warned.

***
 I don't like gore. I also don't like seeing explicit sex scenes, sexual violence, or excessive crude language. I'm a tender person, and harsh things stick with me for far too long, so I'm VERY careful with what I allow my eyes to see and my ears to hear. That's why I hadn't been watching Game of Thrones. I was intrigued, though, because I have enjoyed reading The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Harry Potter series seeing those movies. Actually, to say I enjoyed them is an understatement, and I couldn't help but wonder, What will happen when winter comes?

 I was visiting my family in New York City a few weeks ago when the final episode aired, and they seemed to have been pretty deeply impacted by the previous episode - something about how Daeneyrs reacted to a surprising beheading and what happened after she said Dracarys (had to look that up) to Drogon. I watched the final episode with them, fully prepared to have my hands in front of my eyes pretty much the whole time. That last episode wasn't too bad, though, so I was further intrigued by what came before all of that. Arya seemed pretty dope. I had seen folks posting about her on Twitter previously. Something about, "Not today," and since she was in the final episode, I figured she must have made some kind of impressive boss move and survived. I wondered how Bran ended up in that wheelchair, and where the dragons came from.

Thankfully, I discovered VidAngel - a tool that allows you to filter out what you don't want to see/hear in shows/movies. After just about a week of watching, I'm already on season 5, episode 4 (not because I've been aggressively bingeing [I think I'd rank my binge level as medium], but because my filters make the episodes a lot shorter). Here's what I've learned so far:

1. There's a such thing as siblings being too close.
2. Be careful climbing around and looking through windows. What you see can change your life.
3. Rats don't like being in a heated bucket.
4. If you promise to marry person X, and then you marry person Y, the father of person X may take it personally. If someone shows you who they are, believe them. If someone shows you how upset they are, believe that, too. #RedWedding
5. Serena and Cairo both brought back obsidian when they went to Western Canada with People to People as Student Ambassadors years ago. I just thought the stones were interesting, but it turns out that they can come in really handy.
6. Don't let creepy, glowy blue-eyed creatures from the woods hold your baby. 
7. I knew Rose Leslie as Gwen Dawson on Downton Abbey and Maia Rindell on The Good Fight. Turns out she was a really a wildling.
8. If you volunteer to be someone's champion, don't get all caught up trying to get your opponent to make a confession when you've already won. It could go really wrong.
9. Be careful near moon doors.
10. If you mistreat one of your children, you should be sure to lock the bathroom door when you're in there. That child might come in and find you when you're vulnerable and bad things can happen.

For those of you who have watched the whole series, winter has come and gone, but Winter is still coming for me!

Dreaming of Reparations

Sometimes I think about reparations . . . like if the United States was to finally say, "For enslaving and brutalizing your ancestors, for stealing their labor and launching a continual assault against the Black family, for denying land, home ownership, for violating the promise of 40 Acres and a mule, for denying college admissions and employment, for lynchings, for church bombings, attack dogs, water hoses, for assassinations of leaders, for COINTELPRO, for police brutality, for the myriad injustices . . . we offer you reparations, and you get to decide what would be fair. What would that be like?

It would feel like relief. It would be like paying off our school loan debt and credit card debt that came from trying to make sure our children could enjoy a Montessori education, and so our cars (and now car) could keep running.

It would look like buying clothes, shoes and outerwear whenever we need them, not when we could afford them, or had room on credit cards.

It would be like affording to clean up the wooded lot we "own," paying for a fence, landscaping, a new deck, new doors, new floors, renovated bathrooms, another car . . .

It would look like simply paying our cell phone bills without trying to figure out which least maxed out credit card we'll put the payment on.

It would be like paying for driving school for our teens without having to try to figure out how. 

It would be like taking our children around the world, flying first class. Not having to worry about how to pay for passport fees, new luggage, nice hotels or fancy restaurants.

It would be like having them choose the colleges of their choice without worrying about how to pay their tuition, room and board or meal plan.

It would be getting Hamilton tickets for the four of us. Really good seats.

It would be our children coming home with the brochures about upcoming school trips to Spain and a musical tour of Europe - looking at our beautiful, brilliant, hard-working, focused, talented, deserving of every good thing in this world children and just saying yes.  

I wouldn't need to put medical payments on a payment plan, be scared of how to pay the high co-pay if this kidney stone doesn't stop growing and I end up needing another surgery, and I wouldn't have to be so concerned about the speed of work related travel reimbursements.

It would feel like freedom.