Settling In Gently

The tempation to reflect as the calendar year flips over is too great for me to resist. I've ordered my 2021 calendar ( a pinup calendar, yes. Of Norse goddesses. Yep. I'm an adult, I can do what I want.) So I think that means I can, gingerly, gently, with much deference and genuflection, put this cluster of a year to rest.  But it eludes examination. It slithers out of my awarenss. What was this year, even? I have to consult outside sources. My memory is just a gray haze of heat, cold, panic, and immobility.  So I go to instagram. This is why I have it, by the way. It is a net to catch memories that my sieve-brain just lets dissolve.  Last January 1st, 2020, we got up before dawn, parked at the closed gate of the parking lot on Spencer's Butte, and scrambled up the bitter cold stairs. I had just pulled the kids out of bed, as is, so they were draped in blankets instead of coats, with thick fuzzy socks stuffed into slippers (aka flipflops). We looked around for the rising s

My GOD, we will be in this quarantine for a year, won't we. Will we be the same people on the other side?  Last year, last Christmas, 2019, 1000 years ago, I was tired. The kids were tired. They had been running at full tilt in new schools, new middle school, new Japanese immersion school-- and the 2 hours of daily commute was killing us all. So when school got out for the winter break, I didn't plan a trip.  Usually, traveling is our family culture. Since Matt died, we've criss-crossed the country, gone up and down the West Coast, gone to Scotland, Denmark, Mexico, and to the Big Island.  But we were just tired. I had finished up my masters in instructional design, writing a hundred pages of curriculum and analysis. I was sick, but didn't know it yet. RJ was sick too, and I didn't know it yet, although I suspected. But I knew we needed a break. I figured we'd hole up for the holidays, gather our strength for the year to come. Who cares if it would be lazy, a co

Jeff Peterson, the slack key musician from Maui, a tall white dude, led a ukulele workshop here in Eugene last year. We were on a back porch, rows of folding chairs nested us elbow to elbow, smiling at each other, ukuleles nudging each other. He has an easy teaching style, encouraging and flexible. He passed out simple sheet music with the tabulation for a well known Hawaiian song. He played the simple version of the song a few times, and then taught it to us piece by piece, with the tab. I hadn't read tab before, but I caught on pretty quickly, and Jeff explained things clearly. He was encouraging to the audience of middle aged, mostly white Oregonians, gradually added new and challenging chords, while telling us about his slack key teachers-- famous Hawaiian names and beloved Hawaiian musicians, like George Kahumoku Jr., and Keola Beamer.  I took home a new tune, pretty well mastered, three new jazzy chords, a stack of sheet music, and puzzled over how different this workshop was