I don’t “journal.” I keep diaries. Locks. Gilded pages. Unicorns. All. Of. It.

I am partial to Moleskine, not the gilded-and-locked variety these days. I just get sick of people shitting on “diaries” because it’s associated with girls and women. Yeah, I keep a diary, jerks. What are you gonna do about it?

As a girl, I had something very akin to this.

Yesterday, a family gathering for the first time in two years.
My in-laws’ side. Multiple cars in the driveway. We stood
in a family line to eat food my mother-in-law cooked.
Masks indoors, despite being vaccinated.
“Best to be cautious,”we all agreed.

I still don’t know how to talk about yesterday without
reeling. I mean, pulling up to Sarah’s parents’ house and seeing
cars — plural — in the driveway. I felt positively slapped, as if out of
a waking nightmare. I felt overjoyed. I felt ill-at-ease. I felt utterly
at home. Made me feel like a kid. I loved large family gatherings.
Sometimes simply because I loved spending time with my cousins and
sometimes because, as a precocious kid, I preferred the company
of adults to my child peers. I mean, adults were infinitely more interesting
to observe than other children. I did not understand other children
when I was a child because as a child I was incapable of such complex
self awareness.

Abe met children for the first time yesterday.
At first, he wasn’t sure what to make of them.
Small, unpredictable humans.
But before long, the girls had made best friends with Abe
and he basically had the best day of his entire life —
following two kids around who would play with him,
hold him, kiss him, give him their headbands to play with,
and sneak feed him chips.

This afternoon, after a brief side trip for coffee and tea,
I went to see two Favorite Formers: Nadia and Sunday.
Both young women have these beautiful names that so
perfectly suit the kind of adults they are becoming.
I am always amazed when this happens. There are
some people I meet and think, “Hmm. Your name
just doesn’t suit you.” Such is not true for Nadia
and Sunday.

Problematique album, I realize, but . . . is it art? (I think yes.)

Advice to new educators:
if your grown ass former students want to spend time
with your fool self long after high school, you did
at least a few things
right. Also, if your former students
are leaving you with their middle fingers
up, you are doing something terribly wrong.
The goal of high school should NOT be to
make Americans hate education and educators
more than they already do.

** Crazy sidenote: I was telling Sunday and Nadia
about my good friend Lynn, whom I’ve known since I was
eighteen. Lynn was my professor in undergrad. In fact,
she was the first professor of the first class I ever took
in undergrad. Sunday’s eyes widened when I mentioned
Lynn and how she and I met.
Sunday said, “I have a Lynn, too!”
And indeed, Sunday has a special connection
with her very first undergrad professor, who is also
named Lynn.

One of the most amazing things about the family gathering, yesterday,
and the visit with Sunday and Nadia today was the fact that no one
touched their phone, but when we showed Nadia
“Boomers Got The Vax.”
When I wanted to put down an idea/thought,
I grabbed a pen and paper. I no longer want computers
in every moment of my life. Computers = work.

AA, therapy, better sleep, friends, family, and Tucson
have made it easier for me, these days, to “step away”
from my phone, from the computer. Both are so often
sources of utterly avoidable anxiety. Like, I’m not a doctor
on call. It is okay and totally within my rights to ignore
my phone for three to four hours (yes, this was about how long
Sunday, Nadia, and I visited — and even then we weren’t
completely done talking and were doing a “Midwest goodbye”
which is when the guest puts the car keys in their hand
and says, “Welp, I better get going.” And then starts a whole new
conversation as everyone slowly makes their way to the door.
The journey of about twelve feet ends up taking
an hour.

I don’t even want to take pictures when I’m around people now.
No selfies.
No group pics.
I just want to soak in personalities, laugh, tell stories,
play around with ideas both silly and dead serious.

My diary (I’m reclaiming the word DIARY) is where
I put remarkable thoughts, moments, experiences.
In today’s diary entry:

Nadia to my right. Sunday across the table.
Bright Gerber daisies humblebragging
between us. Behind Sunday, a window from which
we watch,
when a gray cloud passes,
yellow petals flurry
from a palo verde:
Tucson snow.