It's that time of year...

Every summer, it seems, I feel compelled to write a lament poem for the sad reality that I do not live within strolling distance from Lake Superior. 

Through the Wardrobe

I don't live here.
Here I'm just a tourist.

I live somewhere else,
somewhere the morning emerges out of mist,
the air washed clean by crystal waves.
I live there,
crossing the blade edge between this world
and one yet discovered.
I walk in and out of time.
In my little house among the trees
life moves forward
green and warm like a cup of coffee.
But across the way, the hours dissolve into minutes
into seconds and milliseconds
mixed in with pebbles on the shoreline.
Sitting there I can almost taste eternity,
see the light just beyond the clouds,
feel its warmth, even as the chill wind stirs the waters.

God's Spirit moves over Lake Superior. 

Pro-life is pro-choice. Pregnancy is pro-woman.

  Pregnancy is a positive good. 
        That this statement is controversial is in itself a tragedy.
But that’s where we are now, and I think it’s because women, in general, have lost touch with their roots.
Interestingly, though the feminist movement has absorbed multitudes of women into its ranks over the past century, femininity itself seems to have lost value to our society.
Meekness is equated with weakness. Subtle, patient guidance loses every time to domineering, aggressive bossiness. Cultivating a peaceful home offers no economic return. Loving submission and service are seen as outpourings of an oppressed spirit, rather than a grateful heart. 
And the most feminine quality of all—mothering, that act of nurturing one’s own offspring, giving of oneself, laying down one’s desires for the good of a dependent child, is now seen as an affront to women. Mothers, we are told, are held back by this degrading natural process.
Men, being free from this biological process of bearing children, are naturally freer than women, and women should seek to shed the oppressive garment of childbearing and become more like men—aggressive, demanding, rational. Children are parasites, burdens, thieves and freeloaders, and women can only elevate themselves by pushing their children downward. Abortion is necessary to ensure the equality of men and women, because women can only be empowered if they are able to do everything exactly like men. Women should put themselves first, in all things, and we should applaud the self-interest of successful women.
And so we are encouraged to grow up, to be our own heroes, to break tradition and seize control of our own destinies. Young girls, so often instinctively drawn to baby dolls and playing house and making cookies in pretend kitchens, are indirectly told that those desires are wrong. That their innate femininity is a curse they need to break free from, so they can have a career, see the world, make history.
The result is a society of women who are so disconnected from their innate feminine desire to mother, to nurture, it is hardly a surprise that they are willing to treat their own helpless babies with such callous disregard as to destroy them through abortion. 
But what if mothering, nurturing femininity was seen as an asset, rather than a weakness? What if our unique ability, as women, to bear and rear our children, is the legacy we are so hungry for? What if our natural desire to mother can be our biggest feminine strength, no matter our stage in life?
Pregnancy and motherhood come with responsibilities, that’s for sure. Becoming a mother means leaving some selfish and childish desires behind. But responsibility is a mold that can shape us into something beautiful. 
You are here because someone is your mother. No matter where you ended up along the way, you began inside your mother, and she carried you until you were ready to see the world. That kind of self-sacrifice, no matter what other flaws your mother may have, was a gift to you—the opposite of selfishness. Becoming your mother, in that uncertain beginning, was for her the first step toward the kind of love no one can even quantify. Whether she chose to see that journey of love through the rest of your life or not, whether she chose herself over you in years to come or continued to love you sacrificially, the very act of bearing you was one of love. And that, in itself, is a good, good thing. A miraculous opportunity, one that only a woman can take—and one that should never be wasted.
In the end, motherhood is defined by choice, but not in the way we tend to see it now. Becoming a mother is not always the deliberate and thoughtful act that it should be. A mother doesn’t always choose her child in the way that one chooses a car or a house. Before a child is created, you are not a mother; as soon as that individual human life erupts inside you, you are a mother, and you make every choice thereafter as a mother—even the choice to terminate that child’s life. 
The real choice in mothering, then, lies in how we respond to motherhood when we receive it. Will we choose to love, to grow, to accept the responsibility that comes with our womanhood, to open ourselves up to the beauty and the life inside us? Or will we choose to abandon that gift and deny its possibilities? 
Some say that in terminating a pregnancy, the mother is only saying goodbye to the possibility, the potential of a child. This is not so.
In reality, there already is a child existent, vibrant, new. The choice to terminate only eliminates the possibilities that await that child in his or her future. It doesn’t erase your child. It doesn’t erase your motherhood. It simply ends a process that could have been the beginning of everything good in your life, and leaves you bereft, the mother of a dead offspring. It takes away all future choices. 
The choice to embrace a child, then, does exactly the opposite. It gives way to the future and all its forks in the road. It proudly accepts the mantle of motherhood, rather than trying to hide it. It denies the selfishness of fear and replaces it with hope. It makes a mother stronger, more loving, more selfless, more in tune with every good thing we are made to be. It gives the child a chance to choose his or her own path. 
In abortion there is only one possibility. In the life of a new baby, there is nothing but possibility ahead. Embracing life, then, is actually the most pro-choice you can be. 
       To the woman afraid to have her baby: you may get an inkling of it now, but you have no idea the untouchable, all-forsaking love you are capable of until you’ve held that child in your arms. There is no strength stronger than that of a woman whose love enables her to give up her life for her child. There is no human force more empowering than the love-fueled courage you will find within yourself as you contemplate the life growing within you.
        Don’t give up on your motherhood. 

More existential poetry

As a historian, it's both hard to believe in destiny and hard not to. 

Teleology

I feel tight somehow,

dough rolled into a spiral and no room to expand. The oven turns on.

I am compressed like a black hole. I am immeasurably tiny

and vastly inevitable. Where is all this gravity going?

and where did it come from

The universe has rules. Everything exists to do just that

and no history could have ever been any different, or else it would have happened.

If things could be different they would

but rules make the world just like they make up our bodies.

We exist in the space between ice and water,

lava and stone

the future solidifying into the past, as quickly as it passes us by

like the cows on the side of the road,

still there in our minds even after we reach our destination. 

Can destiny be applied retroactively? 

Saying goodbye to our Bombadil

This is a story about my sweet kitty boy. Rest in peace, precious Bubby.

A Bombadil-shaped space

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The new kitten signed her name

on this word doc.

Prowling across the keyboard

to claw her way up my shirt

and bite my face. I almost forgot,

kittens tend to leave marks,

though they’re the kind that heal on their own.

We never knew you as a kitten.

You forced your way into our lives

one cold, bitter January day.

We didn’t want you.

You hissed

and bit with strong teeth

and your claws were like dragon claws.

But then we thought,

nobody else would want you either.

You didn’t want us

or our bumpy-hummy car

or the gray striped meanie who awaited you,

hissing and swatting.

But you did appreciate your new big litter box

and the view from the sliding glass door.

You spent your first few days with us

curled in the corner,

tip-toeing around your new sister,

looking over your shoulder with every bite from your food bowl.

No one touch me, you said.

I’m done trusting anyone. 

And we were okay with that. Our reward was you 

not living in a glass box anymore,

you blinking lazily at us

with those icy blue eyes,

you allowing me to give you a bow tie,

the finishing touch on your tuxedo.

The first time you slept on our bed,

you appeared like a ghost in the middle of the night,

gone by morning.

The distance between us on the couch

closed slowly

until one day you curled up against my legs.

I could’ve cried.

When you sat with us we’d barely breathe

lest we break the spell.

You were our anxious boy,

the sour patch kid of cats.

The hard-shelled protagonist

with a mysterious backstory. We named you Bombadil

because you were impossible to quantify.

A walking contradiction,

distant and tender,

fierce hunter, pathetic beggar

cinnamon roll and stretchy dough.

Grouchy, wizened, playful and patient.

You would’ve liked the new kitten

because she’d be afraid of you,

properly, like a kitten should be. 

Don’t worry, she hasn’t replaced you.

I still hear you scratch at the window,

still expect to laugh at you 

trotting alongside the car pulling into the driveway,

still see you in a pile of laundry

that in the shadows

could be you, stretched out long in the heat.

We didn’t deserve you, 

but you made us your home anyway,

even as you knew

you were too adventurous for this world.

If you get the chance,

between walkabouts among the stars,

Tell God to scratch your chin

for me.

Bombadil (8/4/18-6/1/21)