Gang Of Five. I spent so much time with these kids that it's difficult to grasp that I barely know them at all now.

from left: Edith, me, Shannon, Larry, Misie. 1982?

I called mom this morning.  I'm going home.

Figuratively speaking, I ran away from home when I was 19. I was a kid when I came here, my cousins and my brothers too.  Each of has taken a different route into our (mostly) adult lives and many of us have lived all over somewhere away from home base Illinois.  But, as fate will have it, in two weeks, we'll all be in the same state again.

If I am honest about why I'm moving home I will say that it is to help my mom with a few things but it is also a hope that I can get to know these kids again.  I have no idea what makes them tick.  If they are like me then that which made them tick as an adolescent has changed a bit. Maybe we didn't know each other so well as kids, maybe it's more a familiarity that I hope to regain. I don't know.

It has been a slower realization with my extended family but the more I think about moving home the more I realize how much I've missed and how much I miss them. 

Two Boxes

by Shel SIlverstein

Two boxes met upon the road.

Said one unto the other,

"If you're a box,

And I'm a box,

Then you must be my brother.

Our sides are thin,

We're cavin' in,

We must get no thinner."

And so two boxes, hand in hand,

Went home to have their dinner.

Grade School, Larry and Me

A few days ago Al asked me a simple, direct question about these pictures and it was all I could do to muster an answer without crying. She asked me why I posted these two particular photos of me and my brother since I never seem to put anything on this blog without an equally particular reason whether or not I choose to write about it. The brevity of my answer has been heavily on my mind. It's relatively easy to give voice to an aspect of this, or any relationship, but what's been on my mind is a persistent feeling of estrangement.

We were together most of our childhood which would seem obvious to anyone who's family has never been separated by divorce and craziness. (I didn't meet my older brother until I was about 9; he was someone I knew about and even named my goldfish after, but not someone who was part of my family.) It was always Larry and me no matter what was going on around us. We were buds.

It's not that we were inseparable but we definitely had some good times together. Dang! We'd get the giggles like no one else I've ever had the pleasure of giggling with. I always felt his little-ness and I was fiercely protective of him. The year these pictures were taken I punched a kid twice our size who'd been bullying Larry. Can you imagine what that kid looked like after I walloped him? I'm sure scrappy little me left quite a mark!

Even though we grew to be very different people I've always felt that we were close, until recently. I haven't really seen much of him or my older brother in the last few years although distance doesn't have to mean estrangement. The last time I saw Larry, which was briefly this summer, he spouted all this mumbo at me about my supposed feelings towards him, how I judge him to be a bad person, a bad father and that my living in Minnesota is an abandonment of him. Nothing I said to the contrary seemed to make any difference.

Mostly I think he was trying to tell me that he misses me and he wishes we would talk more and doesn't really know how I feel about him. What hurt me was what he said about my living in Minnesota as I'd decided years ago that if the distance between Minnesota (or anywhere) and Chicagoland equated the abandonment of my family then I would need to redefine what it meant to live my own authentic life. If I'd made peace with my decision why should his words have hurt me?

After thinking about this for a few days I realize that some part of me does feel that I've left him.

Prayer For A Changing World

I offer you the song in my heart.

I begin the circle of my song in praise of yellow curtains, blissfully expressing

the will of joy in the world.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor all that is, the ecstatic embrace of shadow and light.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I hear the song of our blood. Let us rise up and make a joyful noise!

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I am glad for wonderful friends. We are happy together.

I am glad for big orange kitties, Shelley I love you.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the the North; place of my birth, Earth.

I pray for the healing of the Soil.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the twinkle in my mother’s eye, from which I shall never be parted.

Thankyou for loving me.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I pray for peace in the Neighborhood.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I love you Joshua.

I honor the East; Magnificent Haegl. I pray for the healing of the Air.

I love you Justin. I love you Miranda.

I honor the Honeybee and the Matrix of all Life.

You whisper the story of Astounding Love.

I love you Brandy. I love you Savannah.

JayBee, teacher-friend, I love you.

I cherish the Dawn Chorus.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the twin stars of my day, Baking and Cooking.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

Thank you for strangers at bus stops.

Thank you for mix tapes without playlists.

Thank you for freshly made beds.

Thank you for naked gardening, singers out of tune.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the sacred aggreements with the Animal Realms.

I pray for compassion and understanding.

I honor Owl.

I honor Deer.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the kitchen table, kind friend everloving. Thank you.

I offer prasie and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I hear the song of our blood. Let us rise up and make a joyful noise!

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

Girard, I love you.

I do not fear the darkest unknown.

I honor the loaming.

I honor the seeds and stones and cells.

Heather, sister-friend, I love you.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the South; the families of the Disappeared.

I pray for the healing of Humankind.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I love lifting belly.
I love the coil of my sex.
I love lifting belly.

I honor Bog. Slothbrain.

I cherish lighthouses, storytellers and innkeepers. Thank you.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the West. I pray for the healing of the Waters.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the emerging. I honor the creation story.

Lake Superior, I love you. Thank you for loving me.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the teachers and guides, the monk and the butterfly,

Joy Harjo and the Dalai Lama.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor our Loving Anscestors.

I honor Mary, manifest in the world today.

I honor Buddha, manifest in the world today.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

I honor the wheel of heaven and the axis of time.

May I learn to carry what it is hidden as a gift to others.

I honor the evening star; the great guffaw of deep healing magic.

I offer praise and thanks for all of creation. I celebrate the fullness of life.

God awaken us and awaken within us.

Brothers and sisters, we shall rebuild our lives.

Let there be no strangers here.

Om.



*By conniewonnie13

Dynamic Duo

SophieLight

"We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." - Henry Beston, circa 1925

First Duo

A Few Words To My Brother On Father's Day

You're such a complicated person. So beautiful and so messy. A skinny little fucked up kid inside the body of an ogre with an unbelievably awesome laugh that transforms you. I wish that you could let go of some of the anger inside you.

You're not fooling anyone. Except maybe your son.

First Trio: Show Me The Way To Endless Joy

Family Snapshots

I've been searching for and trying to download a single picture by a photographer who's work I deeply respect and admire...Turns out her work is heavily gaurded, protected and otherwise off limits to the pilfering masses and since that obviously includes me, you're looking at my awesome nephew. Since the day he was born he's been teaching me how to make the photos I love the best.

Alongside all the fancy art books I have on my bookshelves are my photo albums. A few of the albums are fancy pictures from trips abroad, but mostly they're family pictures. Some of these pictures I flat out stole from my mom (remember: amateurs borrow, artists steal), but most of them are probably just like yours: random get togethers, the occasional oh-that's-a-strange-picture, sleepovers with cousins, holidays blah blah blah...

I've looked at these photos a gajillion times. I never get tired of them. These are the kind of pictures I want to make for the rest of my life.