Fragile and quiet and still. Like crisp morning air. Like the grass after a frost. Like a full moon reflecting off the fresh fallen snow. It could all be perfect. It could all fall apart. It is perfect and falling apart and perfectly falling apart again even as we breathe, now.
This is hallowed ground, this space. This is peace wrought. This is something other than the chatter and the noise. It is empty but not hollow. It is full but it is not filled.
The beat of an angel’s wings stirs the air and and the world has started spinning again. But I hold you here.
Always.
No matter what.
My dear friend Jenni is going into surgery this week. It is surgery she has dreamed about. It is surgery that may help her. It is surgery that may take her. I do not know how it will turn out but both of us trust that it will happen as it should as it needs to happen. My heart is so full this week. It is leaking and dripping and making quite a mess but a lovely mess as I reflect on the love that I learned from Jen. Send prayers.
Leaving the New Year dinner tonight, Max had a meltdown. He was crouched in the back of the car, on the floor, sobbing, his big boy seven year old body shaking from the force of his sorrow. He was crushed, laid out and completely undone because he was unable to hug our friend Jeff goodbye tonight. Jeff was busy helping with the cleanup and helping our hostess get her own kids upstairs to bed and so Max was rushed out of the house without his customary hug.
On an ordinary day, this might have been fine but Max is suffering from a cold that won’t go away. And he was up way past his bedtime. And he is feeling a little like the world is spinning out of control. Our dear Odette has been holed up in her room now for over a month, recovering from surgery and has been unable to play with him. There are rotting vegetables in the kitchen, and dirty dishes piled up very high in the sink. And all around him the adults are murmuring things about bailouts and stock accounts and layoffs and while he doesn’t know exactly what any of that is he is sensing that it is probably not good.
It is in moments like these that we most need to hold on to the ones who give us security, the ones who make us feel safe. We deeply long to be seen, to be hugged, to know that in the end, at least we have each other. Not in an intellectual way, but in a physical, real and tactile way.
I know what Max was feeling. These days, I am feeling a kind of new fragility that comes from being somewhat new. While it is generally good, there are moments when life, the sights and colors and bright lights and intense emotions can be a bit overwhelming. There are days when I am acutely aware of how little I understand, how little I can really grasp. And I am aware of how, like a newborn child, I have no words to explain it all to those around me. In these moments all I want to do is to crawl up into the lap of my loved ones. I want to be passed from one lovin’ set of arms to another. I don’t want to have to be big or grownup or understand about commitments. I want to be seen, and have that seeing acknowledged with real, tangible physical assurance. I need to know in a way that is neither intellectual or abstract that they are there. And when they can’t be, I can find myself in a metaphorical ball on the floor of the car.
It was for all these reasons that I was able to stifle my sighs and turn off the car and go inside to get Jeff. While it was true that Max would see Jeff tomorrow, and Wednesday and Friday too, the truth is sometimes, when it comes to love, all we have is now and promises of tomorrow aren’t enough. And while I hesitated a second, thinking that this was really just attention getting behavior it occurred to me that sometimes attention is really what is needed.
In the dark, Max crawled off the floor and into Jeff’s lap and lay a weary head on his shoulder. His little boy/big boy body relaxed out of the tight tight ball into a mushy kind of puddle. He was able to go, knowing that he was seen, that that seeing was real and that love finds a way, even out to the dark car.
And this not only comforted him but lifted him and made him laugh.
It made me laugh too as I turned to wrap my own arms around Jeff and just for a second lay my own head on his shoulder and breathed in the tangible, the solid, the real love that is my friend.
My dearest Jackie, who breaks all the rules, brought me a birthday gift tonight. This rockin’ Celtic T-shirt fits me like a glove, and resonates at exactly the same frequency of my little Irish soul. I am never taking this shirt off!
The words around the heart say: Like all things that are precious to us, we tend to keep our emotions under lock and key. Love itself is far too beautiful a gift not to share with everyone.
After a dinner of perfectly grilled kebabs, kick butt fish stew and the best carrot salad this side of north Africa, after a homemade ice cream cake that beat any other I have ever tasted, we sat in a circle and they, my beloved tribe helped me to create my list. My list of things to do before I turn forty. What’s beautiful about this exercise is that in adding an item to my list they pledged to do something (big or small) to help me get it done, to be my a co-conspirator, an angel to assist me, to hold my hands and jump feet first with me into the wild and messy river of my life.
In the spirit of love for them, in the spirit of my love for this life, I embrace this to do list, this plan. I hearby pledge to wrap my heart around these items and sink into the joyfulness of them.
- Take a kayak lesson on the Potomac
- Learn to throw a pot
- Perform at an open mic night
- Sing a duet with sweet Andy McD
- Learn to Irish step dance
- Go see Step Afrika
- Take Max to see Sweet Honey in the Rock
- Start to build my Goddess garden I have been dreaming of
- Paint my living room and hallway
- Create (and dare I say perfect) a gluten-free pizza dough recipe. (Homemade pizza and Eric’s homemade bread are the only two things that will tempt me off my healthy gluten free path. This gets me 50% of the way there! )
- Explore acupuncture and my calling as a healer
- Start that girls’ (age 8-11) knitting club I have been talking about
- Ride a roller coaster
- Stay a night at the Purple Fiddle
- Learn to swim
- Run a 10K
- Learn to count to ten in three African languages
- Finally master the f’in F chord
- Teach Max to knit (my sweet boy added this to my list, saying he would help by doing the learning!)
- Go out to hear live music at least ten times (this is an easy one which just makes me feel productive!)
- Figure out how to live migraine free
Wanna jump in with me? What do you think I might do in this crazy wild messy year before I turn 40? Lets do it together.
Maxidoodle hugging Stephen: Because he is brilliant, because he is my friend, because he would be flattered for me to post a photo of him on my blog, because he gave me inspiration for my perfect birthday present…
My 39th birthday is just a week away. Thirty-nine feels big and heavy, more so than even 40. Perhaps because it is a “last”–the last year I will be in my thirties. I relish being in my thirties. Thirty-something felt like the perfect age–young enough but still perfectly grown-up. The lesson of the last years have been poignant and real and messy and wonderful. This last decade has been an amazing adventure. It was like nothing I expected and yet I landed exactly where I needed to be. I love being thirty-something–I admit it and truth be told, I am mourning letting this decade go. And while I am still 12 months away from that inevitable moment, I find myself sighing and imagining how it will be to have a year of lasts. Just like I faced my senior year of college wistfully, knowing it would be my last as a full-time relatively irresponsible student, I feel I am embarking on the last year of a decade so sweet. I know that there is nothing to be gained by holding onto this past, but I am still feeling strangely well…wistful.
I think that this wistfulness is highlighted because I feel like I am standing on sort of threshold, in some sort of transition, as though I am on the verge of some big kind of shift in my life and it just happens to be happening at the end of this decade. Perhaps that’s why 39 feels so big and heavy to me. My age has become a symbol for me–of being at the end of something and at the start of something else. It feels like that last leg of this journey before a new one will start. And maybe I am feeling a little afraid. And a little bit as though I want to cling to something comfortable, even something as crazily comfortable as my age.
Yesterday, on our way out to get lunch I shared this with my friend and brother Stephen. We were talking about the little dinner party that my friend Cathy is throwing for me next week. Stephen can’t keep secrets and has shared with me every bit of news he gets about the affair. I told him about how this birthday feels so pivotal to me. I shared with him why. I told him that it feels like one last dance of being thirty-something (for whatever that means). Stephen is well past thirty-something so he rolled his eyes at me but one of the reasons I love him so is that he gets me so deeply and fundamentally. He recognized my need for ritual not ridicule.
I expected him to make fun of my youthful silliness and to tell me to get over myself. But instead he was thoughtful. “Since you feel this way,” he remarked, “you need to honor it and celebrate it…go with it–don’t fight it” And then he got excited.
We had been talking about how I didn’t want presents for my birthday but about how Cathy had mistakenly emailed them all that I did want presents which he thought was bold and brave and refreshing–so much so that when she corrected the email and told them that I DIDN’T want presents, he was terribly disappointed. He has been on the quest to get me to ask for a present ever since.
“Aha,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “I KNOW what we can do for you. Its a perfect non-present present you can ask for AND it will help mark this pivotal year.”
“You need to task us all with coming up with coming up with 40 things we are going to commit to help you do/experience/see or live before you turn 40. We need to be your conspirators during this year of transition. That can be our present to you. “ What a lovely idea for the keeper of lists… I wear my dreams on my sleeve. I keep my list of 100 things to do before I die pinned to my desk. Every year I make my Mondo Beyondo list and share it shamelessly with anyone who is interested.
We both stood in the September sunshine for a second and basked in the brilliance of his idea about the perfect birthday present.
“For instance…you want to skydive–who is going to volunteer to go with you?” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes at him. Stephen is sometimes as insane as he is brilliant. I am going no where near an open door of any plane. “OK, OK…maybe not skydiving. But you get my point. And we can help you. We can suggest amazing adventures or things you might not even think of…And you don’t have to do it all if you don’t want…you can CHOOSE what to do but the point is it can be a year of no excuses because you will have help in getting it done.”
I love this idea. The idea of making this last year of my thirties about choosing how live lusciously, full and bravely with the help of my friends and community. I love it so much I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I wonder what kind of good habits will it spawn and support–a habit of choosing adventure, a habit of asking for help, a habit of not waiting until a better time, a habit of living in the present instead of the future, a habit of saying WHY NOT NOW?
And so I told Cathy to correct her email once again and to hint about the present I wanted most.
And I throw this open to you my friends, those who stop by here and who have listened to the whispers of my heart…Can you contribute to this present? Do you have a suggestion for me and are you willing to be my conspirator if I wish to follow through on your idea? If you want to help…leave a comment here or email me at meg (at) megcasey (dot) com. Next week on my birthday (or maybe the day after) I will share my list (created by Stephen and our gang along with all of you) here. I can’t wait to unwrap this one!
When I was just 6 or 7, we would spend long frozen days during winter school breaks on
Now I am here again with my dear cousins and as dusk becomes inky night we are dancing with flashlights as mics, belting out the words to other 70s tunes. We are rising before the sun to all of us float our kayaks out to the middle of the lake to watch the sun rise. We are eating each other’s food and scolding each other’s children and sitting silently in the sun, our eyes on a book, relishing being simply there together.
From the minute the sun rises they are off, catching frogs and minnows, playing imaginary games, and board games, and hide and seek, fishing and sneaking treats when they think we aren’t looking. 
Each night, Max whispers the same thing to me as he drifts off to sleep. I wish we lived here Mama he says. I know what he is craving—the long lazy days filled with people who love you…no matter.
51 weeks will go by between this week and the next. We will leave with the best of intentions—to keep in touch, to trade emails, to visit. We will have plans of weekend trips we will take together—of meeting halfway between. But the hustle and bustle of our lives will overtake us all. We won’t hear from each other at all but then before we know it I will be on the road to
“Meg…Its Kevin. We are at on the highway, crossing over into
And my heart will relax into a way of being that is only possibly in the presence of one’s cousins. And I will say, under my breath…I am there Kev…I am always there. My heart is just a beat away from this.
For Kevin, Christine, Maureen, Eileen, Shawn and Rich…and Lisa too. I love you, I love you, I love you
Last summer, on one steamy August night I sat on the couch. I was having another late night talk with Jackie. She lives just down the way. I wanted to sit with her on her porch and drink a glass of wine and tell stories. But Max was sleeping and it was late and I am, after all a single mom. “What you need”, she said, “is a roommate.” It was a leap for me to agree with her since I had come to value my solitude in the years since Juan had left but I leapt and I had to agree with her.
****
My roommate Odette and I were sitting hunched over the kitchen counter, counting cash and making plans for what to do to deal with her daughter Grace’s diagnosis with TB, the fact that her younger child Lillian too had been exposed, that her entire family back home in Africa was at risk for developing the disease. “Do you think everyone in the family should be tested?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, claiming her power as a matriarch. “Yes, I do.” Max looked at me with wide eyes, “Mom–will a TB test hurt?” I looked at him shocked. “We’re not getting tested baby,”. “But why not,” he said, his eyes still wide with fear, “We are her are family.”
Yes, we are. I think about the crazy path that took us from that moment in August to this moment now–this recognition that we are more than friends, more than housemates. That we are family. And I think, I never ever would have ended up here had it not been for a wild crazy leap.
****
Back in August, Jackie and I walked the dogs and plotted about how I would find a roommate. Someone who would accept our terms but who would be nevertheless a good fit for us. But I needed someone who would trade heavily reduced rent for the regular babysitting and for agreeing to stay home so I could run over to Jackie’s for a glass of wine after Max had gone to sleep. Where would I find someone like that? The thought of finding anyone who fit the bill seemed downright impossible.
****
Tonight, Odette and sat at the table eating ice cream. We looked at each other and exclaimed, “What would I do with out you?” “NO…what would I have done without YOU?” “No what WOULD I HAVE DONE WITHOUT YOU?” Neither of us can get over the miracle of how we stumbled into finding each other when we needed exactly what the other had to offer.
The story of how she came into our life was magical, a story which will need to be told another day. I never needed to post an ad, I never needed to interview candidates. I found her and she needed a place to stay. We made the decision in a half hour sitting in the living room of a mutual friend. Cheap rent in exchange for cheap babysitting seemed like a really good deal. But what I never really understood was that when she walked into our house and settled in that I had found a long lost sister. That when she moved in she would bring sisterhood with her in her suitcase.
When Odette walked into our house back in September we both took a leap of faith. We had no idea what this experiment would have in store for us, how much we would each gain from this arrangement. We were two strangers who would have to deal with each other in pretty extreme and unusual circumstances.
She came to our house searching for her freedom and in coming gave me mine too. She came searching for a safe spot but ended up providing a safe space for Max. She came looking for a place to rest her head, but she instead has offered a shoulder where I rest on the nights when I feel weary or sad.
I am rambling here, not quite sure what or how I want to say. I think it something about leaping–about listening to your heart when it tells you to jump. I think it is about recognizing doors that open intentionally, answering prayers–about realizing that life unfolds in patterns that may not make sense at the time but with hindsight open with perfectly timed synchronicity.
The blogosphere is full this week of stories of leaping into sacred, scary places. Of feeling the fear and doing it anyhow. Of trusting and relaxing into what seems absolutely the right place to go. Of saying, “I got the life that I needed.”
I am not always sure why I got this crazy life instead of the one I had always imagined I would have. But one thing is abundantly clear to me as I get myself ready for sleep this night.
I am grateful for the leaping.
A year ago today I was sitting with my dear friend Jen Lemen at a neighborhood potluck in the park. We were talking about my fruitless efforts to get Max’s dad to be more active in his life. I was frantic about what would come of him without a strong male role model. I was interrupted when suddenly, chaos broke out at the picnic table. Being a curious girl, I stopped my anxious rant and I wandered over to see what all the fuss was. A bunch of neighbors I barely knew were singing Happy Birthday to some guy.
In an attempt to determine whether the cake was chocolate (an important fact that would determine whether I would stick around) I looked toward the birthday boy. I was stunned by what happened next.
It was one of those moments where the past, present and future all seem to exist in exactly the same moment. One of those moments where time stands still–where the world stops spinning for a second or a lifetime.
This may sound weird but it happened just like this: I laid eyes on him and instantly knew that I would love him. Not in a swooning, romantic way. But with love weighty and substantial like a boulder. I had a flash of recognition–I knew him from somewhere in my long ago past or my far ahead future and I knew, the way I know my own name, that I would love him–or to be more accurate–that I already did.
And then a breeze blew or someone called out to me and the world started spinning again. I shook it off. He was just a guy I didn’t know. The cake was (regrettably) not chocolate. So I slipped away unnoticed leaving him with his family and friends, returning to talk to Jen about blogging. I chalked up the experience to two too many glasses of rum punch on a warm afternoon and the blissful way I feel about my community. These things happen.
The months tumbled on. Summer events and parties filled our schedule. I bumped into this neighbor of mine from time to time and we exchanged pleasantries. I learned that he is a steadfast friend to some of my dear ones. I made note of the fact that he seems to give with a wide open heart. That he really knows how to pack a moving van. That he throws a kick-ass party.
But I never again thought twice about the picnic table and the cake and the rush of warmth I felt for him that day. I had forgotten it already. The summer was big and ripe and full and there was so much to think about and May felt so far away.
One night in August, Max slept over at the house of neighborhood friends. I stayed awake reading, waiting for Jackie to call me to let me know her kids were sound asleep. We had plans to sneak away to her porch and have a glass of wine. But I was sleepy and my book was very good and so when the phone rang, I almost told Jackie that I was done for the night.
But I didn’t. I met her on her porch and then walked with her to a dinner party that was winding down. I didn’t know these people and didn’t feel the slightest bit social but felt somehow that going there was what I needed to do.
I shyly sat at a table where a neighbor, none other than the birthday boy who didn’t have a chocolate cake, reigned as a king of the stories. Drawn in by the storytelling, I found myself laughing harder than I had in months. One by one people peeled off and then it was just four of us in the yard under the stars with one last glass of wine and it dawned on me–I really wish I had a good guy friend. I miss this.
I wish I could really say how it happened that we became friends as summer gave way to fall. But there really is no story to it. It happened so gradually and naturally I barely knew it was happening. I didn’t try to make him my friend. He didn’t try to make me his either. In simple acts of neighborliness he eased into our lives.
For the last 8 months or so he has taught me to play guitar. We camp together and hang out with Jackie on her front porch. He has becomes my conspirator–the one I know I can drag out to go listen to live music. He will crack open a beer with me on a school night. He will stay up late around a campfire and chat.
We can spend hours talking about guitar, hockey, food, parenting and music. We are a built in audience for each other’s stories. He is the only person in my life (other than Jenni Ballantyne) who can sing with me the entire score of Jesus Christ Superstar from opening note to closing curtain. As an added bonus he can play the guitar parts.
He is my accidental zen teacher. He will casually say something while working with me on music that will resonate at a deeper level. I will turn over what he said like a koan, a little zen puzzle that leaves me thinking for days. Like Superman with x-ray vision, he can see right through my carefully constructed pretenses and nail my insecurities. He calls me on them in a way that makes me laugh.
He helps me pick out the outfits I wear on first dates. He helps himself to beer in my fridge.
But what really turns my heart inside out is the friendship he has built with my son. He gets Max. And he gives to him from a seemingly bottomless well.
Sometime this fall he realized that Max was a guys’ guy stuck in an all-girl house. Even more importantly, Max who is all yang energy, all boy, had no mirror to look into to imagine himself all grown up, a healthy, strong, compassionate man. Little by little he has adopted Max. Or maybe Max has adopted him. They have adopted each other.
When we went ice skating he took Max by the hand and Max looked up at him with eyes that sparkled. He brought him to his son’s hockey games and sat with him in the scorebooth explaining each play. He is becoming a regular fixture at pick up at Max’s school and he takes Max swimming almost every week. He comes by the house early on guitar lesson nights so that they have some “guy” time before Max needs to settle in. Sometimes they wrestle, sometimes they talk, sometimes they play killer attack duck vs playmobile guys. But then always Max snuggles into his lap, wraps his arms around him and never wants to let go. At bedtime I literally need to peel Max away from him. Sometimes I just want to let Max stay there, cuddled up against his chest. I want to kiss them both on the forehead, turn out the light and be warmed by the glow of their affection for each other.
He has filled a wide expansive gap in Max’s life. When Max and he are together I see deep wounds healing right before my eyes. Our whole tribe has all noticed it–how Max is knitting himself back together in some of the places where he hurts most–the parts having to do with trust and consistency and men. And I know that a major part of it is the friendship he has found with this neighbor.
So yes–it is a year later and I find that sure enough I have come to love him with a boulder-like love: plain and ordinary, unmovable and solid . I love him for all that he has given Max, for the everyday ways he gives to us both. I love him for the blues he plays and the way that he sings for me. I love him for packing the van when we go camping and for cooking soups when we are hungry. I love him for dozens of small kindness he extends our tribe, the hundreds of ways he cherishes his family, for the thousands of ways he teaches his children to care. I love him for his stupid jokes and his strong opinions but mostly I love him just because he is good.
People ask, “How long have you known him?” When I measure the time in months people are always shocked. And I am too. Even as the words exit my lips I realize that I want to say “I have known him always. He has been my friend ever since I can remember. ”
One night, a few months ago, he got ready to leave my house after our weekly guitar lesson. I reached up to casually hug him as is my habit now, it is an act that feels as natural as breathing. And suddenly out of nowhere the birthday cake, the singing and the lighting strike of recognition came to me. In fact it almost knocked me over.
And I realized that that afternoon flash forward in May was not about the rum. It was a call to pay attention. As he walked out the door, I stood rooted in the belief that yes some things just unfold exactly as they should without us having to do a thing. We find the people we need without searching. We go looking for chocolate cake and we don’t know what other sweet gifts we will find.
From that day forward, I have found myself completely relaxing into faith, letting go of old tired habits of worry. I may fret now and again for dramatic effect, but that horrible anxious stuff that used to fill my brain, the voice that used to tell me it was all going to hell in a handbasket-its now gone. Somehow, the whole experience of this friendship which unfolded so effortlessly, this friendship which has answered my most fervent prayers for Max, has changed me at a cellular level. I now believe that whoever, whatever we need will arrive at exactly the right moment if we are just open enough to welcome it/them in. It may not be what we expected or even what we imagined but it is what we need.
Love is going to carry us, like a river, home.
I recently realized that for all the stories I have told my friend I have never told him this one–the story of the cake and the singing and the rum and the deep knowledge that bubbled up from nowhere. I never told him of how he, simply through his regular old work-a-day effortless presence, restored my sense of faith to the place it was before I was born. How simply by being he taught me to trust–not others but myself and my crazy gut.
He doesn’t read this blog. It’s not his thing. And besides he hears most of my stories, spun out in the oral storyteller tradition of my ancestors. But maybe just maybe the next time he grabs a beer from the fridge I will start a story that says, “On your last birthday, the strangest thing happened…” In the meantime, I will whisper this wish out to wind, and tuck it in a card we will slip under his door.
Happy Birthday darlin’…Here’s to you, the love you bring to so many and your big ol’ heart. May your year be full of the kind of magic that you bring whenever you walk through our door. You are plainly extraordinary.
My friend Maya needs our help. The other day when wandering through the office she told me a story that made me weep. I need to tell it here and ask you all to help us.
Last Wednesday, two of her family’s oldest and dearest friends, Waheed and Nusrat Hashmi, an elderly Pakistani couple, were ripped from their homeby Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Hashmis were placed in detention near Cleveland, where they remain, clothed in orange jumpsuits, unable to see each other. They are likely to be deported this week.
The Hashmi’s story is a story of the system failing. Plain and simple, it is a story of it all going wrong. Dr. Waheed Hashmi legally entered the United States in 1973 as a Fulbright Scholar. Since then, he has worked with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with immigration attorneys to ensure that he and his family have a chance to attain permanent residency in the United States. He followed the rules every step of the way.
Over a period of approximately 35 years Dr. Hashmi, a scientist, and Ms. Nusrat Hashmi, a floral designer, have lovingly raised their children, held jobs, paid taxes, contributed towards social security, and invested their time and talents to build a better Toledo community.Due to a series of circumstances and occurrences beyond their control, including oversights on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, some of which were revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, the Hashmis have faced several obstacles to attaining permanent residency but they never gave up hope of achieving what all immigrants want–a decent life for themselves and their children. However, as law abiding people, when they recently realized that their dream of staying here could not be realized, they voluntarily made plans to leave and return home to a country they had not been home for more than three decades. But those plans were interrupted last week when ICE showed up at their door and arrested them.
If the authorities had taken the time to explore the details of the Hashmis’ case, they would have learned that after Dr. Hashmi retired from the University of Toledo, the couple began the process of selling their home and leaving for Pakistan where a job was waiting for Dr. Hashmi. They were never given the chance to prove that they were in the process of returning to Pakistan. Instead, public resources were used to lock up this elderly couple who posed absolutely no threat or risk of flight.
At the Maple Heights City Jail, Dr. and Ms. Hashmi are being held in separate quarters, are unable to see each other, and their interaction with their children has been severely restricted–they have been allowed only 20-minute visitations during which they can only speak with their children via a telephone and across a glass screen. The trauma of the detention threatens the health of Dr. and Ms. Hashmi–both of whom have serious health problems.
As it stands now, they will never again see their home in Toledo. They won’t be able to say their goodbyes–to their home, their community of 35 years, not even to their children, who won’t even be allowed to hug their parents before they leave.
It is simply inhumane to hold two elderly people in custody for no good reason, especially when they were voluntarily planning to depart the U.S. The Hashmi detention is a colossal waste of precious tax dollars and does not make us any safer. ICE should lock up those who would do us harm, not senior citizens whose misfortune has brought them into the grip of a dysfunctional immigration system. ICE needs to do the right thing and release Dr. and Ms. Hashmi.
Please read more about the case and consider signing on to a letter to Julie Myers, the head of ICE. Maya and her family , are hoping that if enough of us speak up together the Hashmi’s can be released from detention and allowed to close up their house, say their goodbyes and start their new life with dignity. The unjust detention of the Hashmis is not at all an unusual case. The Hashmi family hopes that bringing attention to their case will help the push for immigration reform.
You can get to the online petition that Maya set up by clicking here. Please take a moment to go there and read their story. This should not be. It should not be. It should not be.
UPDATE:
The Hashmis have been released! Our joint efforts on many fronts—grassroots, legal, and political—sent a powerful message to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It was late. A band was still playing but I was the only one on the dance floor. In between songs I would ran about the room, collecting cups and plates, throwing away trash. Almost everyone who was still there was actually on stage, except maybe Odette who was fast asleep on the couch. It was a good evening.
And yet it was a complex evening for me too. As it wound down I felt myself grow grouchier. Sure I was touched by the magic but I was tired, my body ached from two days of cooking and a full night of dancing. The refreshments had left me a little fuzzy too and I found myself being impatient, snappy and downright grumpy.
But there was another reason too. Even in the swirl, as I packed off Max with neighbors and sent him off to a sleepover, even as I danced with one friend and then another, a feeling bubbled up from a place deep inside. I couldn’t name it then–I didn’t have the perspective to be able to do it. It felt so dissonant compared to the rest of the evening. But now, as it lingers I can call it by name. Loneliness.
It is such an odd thing to feel lonely in the midst of my beautiful community. But it happens from time to time. It is the moment when I realize that I am raising my child alone–without the one person who loves him as much as I do. It happens sometimes when I am dropping him off at school, or when I am wrapping Christmas presents. It is the moment when I so desperately need to be seen for who I am and I find that no one quite gets it (at least the way Juan would try). It is the moment when I am dancing and realize I have no partner. On most days my community stands in so well–loving Max, helping me keep it all together, being a place where we can laugh, and chat and share–but there are just some roles that they cannot fill. But still it is so strange and uncomfortable to be in a room the people who love you best and to feel so damn alone.
Odette and I talk a lot about this feeling. These days 95% of the time we can hold it together, but sometimes, the smallest thing–a snide comment from a friend, a misunderstanding, a disappointment can open up the whole damn pandora’s box of emotion and suddenly everything seems so utterly complicated and sad. Suddenly there is only one factor that matters. I am alone. And I don’t know how I am going to keep doing it by myself. But I do…and I will.
Tomorrow I will wake up and the feeling will have dissipated. The sun will rise, sweet sweet sleep will cradle me. I will realize that I am only alone in a few things and yes, we all feel alone from time to time–even in the midst of a near perfect marriage. I will wander to the mirror, look with love upon a woman, strong–if not entirely always secure and then turn and do what needs to happen next. And love will carry us after all. It usually does.
About two months ago, my friend Jeff and I were sitting on the couch after a guitar lesson. “Hey,” he said. “There is something I want to talk to you about.”
“What?” I asked him intrigued. Our chats, usually about things like guitar and our kids rarely start this way.
“I have a brilliant idea. Let’s throw a party for Odette. To help raise money to support her daughters. “ Odette has worked her way into everyone’s heart in this community. She is light, a gentle peaceful presence whose kindness is felt by all of us.
And so the planning began. The planning that resulted in a musical benefit. Jeff’s photo studio became transformed into a magical space with funky lights and a retro couch, a full stage. African food was spread out over a table and potluck desserts came in by the tray-ful. A band was up on stage, playing their heart out all night from 6pm-well after 2:30. We raised over $3750 in one night.
As each guest walked through the door my heart leapt. It was a parade of many of my favorite people–people who are kind, supportive, loving and gentle to Max and I on a daily basis. People from my work, from our neighborhood, from Jackie’s and Jeff’s wide circles
I am sure there are amazing pictures of the evening. The lovely shutter sister Jen Lemen wandered about all night with her magical camera, while I held down the dance floor with Odette, the beautiful Madeline and other children and friends. But we will need to wait to get the photos (I promise I will post a link when Jen gets them up) but in the meantime I can simply say the evening shimmered.
Now its all back to almost normal. Our kitchen is still trashed from our marathon cooking but the photo studio is back to looking like an industrial studio. The leftover wine has been stored. The keg has been returned. We have sent out thank yous and are now in that exhausted, hung-over, spacey space. There are some post-party blues to contend with (aren’t there always?) but for now I keep repeating the word “grateful” over again and again. It is a word that sums up how I feel about the place I live, the people I share the park with, a community so wide and open.
