Tuesday, January 31, 2017

My birthday

Hi friends. 

It has been a dark few days for America, and so, too for me. 

On Saturday morning, I met a lovely couple as I waited in the lobby at the Ann Arbor YMCA while Cecilia was in gymnastics.  They had an adorable  happy baby boy -Lorenzo - exactly one month older than Penny Kate.  We commiserated about sleep schedules, eating, hungry boy babies, older siblings, the weather.  The mom is a dual citizen of Italy and the US,  and they laughed when I told them that  Lorenzo was one of Jake's favorite boy baby names and on the infamous "list" he compiled - full of names ranging from bizarre to absurd.  The mom really laughed when I told her that Carmine was on the list.  Apparently it's an "old-fashioned" name in Italy, but not "trendy" old-fashioned.  I joked that thank God we had a girl. 

Penny Kate and Lorenzo smiled and cooed at each other. 

The mom is a lawyer - not practicing.  The dad is an anesthesiologist.  They came to Ann Arbor for the dad's residency (or fellowship) at U of M, a few months before Lorenzo's birth. 

The dad moved from Iran to the UK with his parents in 1977.  He has an Iranian passport though the U.K is all he's ever known.  

They were processing the news from the night before, knowing that they may be "stuck" in the US or the dad might be deported, as he is a green card holder from one of the 7 nations.  They had nervous laughs and smiles while they talked about it. 

They are both warm, loving, friendly people.  Our lives are so similar.  New babies, two career marriage, sacrifices made for one another's careers.

Yet are lives are so different.

My heart was breaking as I spoke to them, looked at their nervous smiles, and I just kept saying "I'm sorry," well, because I had no idea what else to say. 

Sunday was Penny Kate's baptism. 

We traveled to Oak Park, Michigan, to the church I grew up in - Our Lady of Fatima.  Fr. Paul Chateau baptized her, as he baptized me, Cecilia and Jude.  He also married Jake & I.


As we drove through Oak Park, my mind wandered back to the old neighborhood.  I lived there until I was 8 (1986). My parents lived in Oak Park from 1973-1986. 

We had many neighbors that were Holocaust survivors.  One neighbor was an older gentleman.  When I was a baby, he would come down to hold me.  He told my mom that he reminded him of his baby girl, who was killed in a concentration camp.  He lost his entire family.  This kind, gentle soul, with numbers tattooed on his arm, who had been through hell, was comforted by holding an infant that did not belong to him. 

We were also surrounded by Iraqi immigrants, Chaldeans.  So nice and warm is my mother that one little Chaldean girl in the neighborhood was named after her - Janice. 

Oak Park was a true melting pot - we were the minorities by far - when we moved to predominately white Lathrup I felt uncomfortable and out of place, surrounded by all the whiteness.  That feeling follows me until today, when I still feel out of place and uncomfortable in settings that are homogenous. 

My heart is torn to shreds on this, my 39th birthday, raising three precious children in a world that is so full of hate and a country that seems to have forgotten its history. 

My descendants- Irish and German Catholics - fled their countries because of religious persecution.  The same goes for almost every person in this country that looks like me. 

How have we forgotten that? 

How do our elected officials - most of them Christian - most of them descendants of people that fled their countries of origins because of religious persecution - how do they forget this? 

I have no answers.  I have no wisdom.  I am just very, very sad.   

Wednesday, January 25, 2017











 



Photos from the march. 

Getting ready to march

Tonight we had a lovely group of neighbors over to make posters for the various sister marches.       

Friday, January 20, 2017

Jan. 20, 2017



Action alleviates anxiety.

This is my mantra.  I repeated it over and over during law school, where stress and the fear of failure often overwhelmed and paralyzed me. 

I, like many Americans, am filled with fear and anxiety today.  And, so, I return to my mantra.

Action alleviates anxiety. 

Every day, any way. 

What does this mean? 

This means that every single day for the next four years, I will do something to make my world and my country a better place.  Most days, that something will be very small.  All times, I will keep my focus on speaking up for those whose voices are not protected or cannot speak on their own. 

I believe that most Americans are good people, regardless of who they voted for.  Our nation has chosen a leader that, in my view, does not stand for goodness or hope or hard work or integrity. 

I refuse to be a whiner, though, I want to be an actor, I want to be in the arena fighting for my country. 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”   -Theodore Roosevelt

Join me.