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A couple weeks ago, when S. and I were still enjoying SURVIVOR, I got a computer game called The Sims: Castaway Stories. It’s like a computer dollhouse where make believe people have imaginary adventures on a tropical island. The fun thing was that I made a little family –and I was so happy to see tiny versions of S. and me holding our baby at last.
Here is a picture of us NOT holding the baby, but smiling for the camera:
We are almost done with all the bureaucracy of the adoption, but of course that is like saying we are almost done with air just because we are approaching the mountaintop where it is a bit thinner.
Yesterday we got our new 171 form in the mail from immigration, which is the almost-last piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, it said that our fingerprints expired a week ago, despite our re-visit last month. Shasta immediately jumped into action, making me scan the letter while she emailed our agency coordinator. Then she jumped up and hit the ceiling with her fist before running out into the yard and tearing a tree from the ground with her bare hands.
Today, we got a post-it note from Immigration, along with a new copy of the 171 with a valid expiration date. The note said, basically, “My bad.” I haven’t actually SEEN this letter, but Shasta seems satisfied. She has put the letter somewhere I can’t get my dirty hands on it. She somehow has the idea I might mess it up just because I threw yesterday’s letter into the trash before she got home. What can I say? My father taught me not to leave clutter on the kitchen counter and we got a lot of junk mail yesterday . . .
Shasta and I are a great team.
All of the following is true, though it felt like a dream, but that’s how my life always is anyhow . . .
I felt very lucky this week, and also shamed –my friend and co-worker MAX called me on my way home and asked, “You interested in calling in tomorrow and going to see [a certain political figure]? My sister got me two tickets for his town hall in Lafayette.”
“#$@@ yes, I’m interested,” I said. “I’m in! I’m in!”
I was excited as a little kid because S. and I had tried and failed to see this speaker a month before. We both have been moved by him. I wouldn’t cross the street to see a celebrity and, in person, I probably wouldn’t recognize 90% of the singers or actors on my little iPod, but I admire this politician for all the obvious reasons. Because he’s a good man, I think.
I called S. and told her my plans. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said. “I had two students offer me tickets today, but I told them that if they couldn’t get two, then I couldn’t go. You’re going to go without me?”
“Uh, yes,” I said. And somehow– because I am so quietly lucky, because, I guess, if there is any design to the universe, apparently I am supposed to be happy– Shasta easily forgave me for being so selfish and wished me well. Shasta loves me.
And so, Thursday, MAX and I drove up to Lafayette –actually, he drove us, in his big, tinted-window pick up truck, a dirty soda bottle of tobacco juice on his dash (“You realize,” I said, “you rural-working class-son of a (*(&*#, that you ARE the demographic everyone’s talking about now. He’s had the half-race, overeducated, Africa-loving, liberal vote like me for fifteen months.”
Max and his wife named their son after Abraham Lincoln; despite his rough and unshaven appearance, Max is “country” more like Thomas Jefferson than Toby Keith. We had a very good afternoon of rain and far horizon talking before the speech started. Then, I think we were both impressed with how local questions were dealt with. Max and I both work in the prison, so we are, perhaps, a little impatient with crazy people –but the senator, on the other hand, answered one long, strange, story-question about cataract surgery and student loans and a closed LTD plant– he answered it with a huge heart– and was even better with the nine year old girl who asked about school testing and with the law student who asked about the Supreme Court.
It was a good moment. I was glad to feel my life cross, momentarily, with something bigger.
Which reminds me of something great I read this week. I will pass it on, for what it’s worth.
Yesterday, Shasta and I met Jennifer and Jody in person. A beautiful almost-spring day –I had to leave a barber shop with my huge and goofy haircut untouched so we could meet Jennifer and Jody at an Ethiopian restaurant near our house.
I was crabby because I’d wanted to try a new barber shop and after thirty+ minutes in the waiting area, when I got up to leave I looked like I was a pissed off and impatient, but the truth was that I knew Shasta was waiting for me. I’ll go back on Tuesday though; I liked the place. I was the only white person and it was fun to see all these other dads with their little boys sitting in different chairs while the barbers turned them all around. Shasta hates to be late, however, and so we arrived at Abyssinia and looked around the parking lot. Sunlight on the windows and a strong breeze made the junky parking lot outside the Best Buy strip mall seem playful and bright, but we could barely appreciate all that crappy urban beauty because of TIME. And then we met Jennifer and Jody.
Jennifer was very funny and smart in an un-lawyerly way, and came into the restaurant with a boxed and ribboned gift for Shasta and me (a lovely children’s book full of great faces and the world). She and Shasta seem to have a very similar way of preparing for parenthood. After reading Jennifer’s blog and description of her husband, I was expecting someone good at sports, great at DIY projects, uncomplaining, good at math and science –in other words, a walking Y-chromosome. Maybe ten feet tall. Possibly Bigfoot. But Jody was actually very charming, with the trustworthy good looks of a TV anchorman or a pro golfer. As a couple, they seemed like a perfect fit.
In one of those strange parallels of similar people, both Jody and I closed our menus, willing to go along with whatever our wives ordered and then these two, after much indecision, ordered exactly the same things. We ate beef tips and crushed vegetables on the wet enjera bread, talked for a couple hours. Neither Shasta nor I had a camera, but Jody did and the owner took a picture of us.
As Shasta and I drove away, we saw the owner walking past the Best Buy. He was Ethiopian, walking shoulder to shoulder with an older white man we’d seen eating alone in the restaurant. They seemed like friends.
My father, who is one of the smartest people I know, sent me the following article yesterday.
Shankar Vedantam describes race and America in a way that completely makes sense. I’ve had a lot of disturbing conversations on the subject at the prison where I work; I read this essay and wished it was on the sides of buses and printed on McDonald’s menus so everyone could read it and our conversations could be a little different.
I’ll just put it here for anyone who’s interested.
