Feb. 9, 2008 at 10:06am

good times, bad times...

(a 24 hour recap of the good, the bad, and the just not pretty...)

I feel like the last two days have been this really odd whirlwind of stuff. 

My identity, becoming developed...  me, being asked to be an active part of my community...me, becoming politically awake... me, learning my family may be changing in a big scary way...me, trying to really soak in this weird family time staring through a haze...

Thursday night I had the opportunity to be accuracy judge at the Pierce County Poetry Out Loud finals.  This is an NEA-funded program that asks kids to compete in oral recitation of pre-chosen, anthologized poetry.  It's a cross between the best kinds of literacy-meets-drama, and in the case of the Pierce County finals, it opened up the eyes of six high schoolers (one freshman, one sophomore, and four seniors) to the fact that poetry can live beyond "dead men's words on a page."  --Kinda like Dead Poets Society in a spelling bee-esque forum.  I loved it, and I was stoked that I got to be the "someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows--who'll trip you up and laughs when you fall." --only, it wasn't about plagiarizing, and I didn't laugh when there were flubs.

Three finalists from Thursday go on to UPS to compete in the State Finals on March 1, then that winner goes on with a chaperone on an expense-paid vacation to Washingotn DC to compete for a $20,000 scholarship, among other things. It's the kind of program that makes me grin like a buffoon.  Rather than "dismal test score" headlines and "Students Fail WASL" crap, this competition is about synthesizing history and drama and literature and putting people, real people, into tangible contexts.

So there I was Friday morning, explaining to my MIL how cool the whole thing was, and I got yet another lesson in synthesizing history and real people into tangible contexts when we went to the Hillary rally.  It was a mind-boggling thing, to imagine that in the lifetime of the strong, articulate woman who spoke to us, women themselves have come from second-class citizens to bra-burning militants, and can now run as viable, credible candidates FOR PRESIDENT.

Awesome, truly awesome, and I rode that high until the mate came to meet me at our kid's school, where she was showing off all the Native American treasures the class is learning about. I was asked by another parent, en route to the car, to consider taking a leadership position in the PTA. We all went to ballet together, as a family where the mate told me, super-uber quickly-casually, Yeah, that Iraq thing I was telling you about? Probably gonna happen.

Guh?

Probably, 85 percent chance, I'll get mobilized to active duty, he says as I knit. I look up, pause knitting.  Equally casually I say, oh yeah?  When? 

Probably March, he says.  Probably, he'll be going to a safe-ish place in the middle east, and working in finance, not infantry capacity.

I knit faster, and say.  Wow.  That's, like, next month.  And it's almost, like, the middle of February.

Uh huh, he says, and tells me he's not excited to tell his mom, jokingly saying, do you love me enough to tell her for me?

FIrst, I need to take it in, myself.

To ease the blow, he took us all to sushi, Flying Fish on the way home from the Y.  Weird, weird, weird (and bad)(and expensive) experience was had, with the wrong order, chopped unevenly, brought out first, and then with the kid's rice and inari sushi brought out last.  And with my wine brought out in screw-top mini bottle for me to pour myself.

Disappointing, really, considering I've had decent experiences there in the past. 

But then, that's just kind of how the day was.

So now, the kid and I will trot off to swimming, acting as if everything is normal, and then I'll go add my raspy voice to the caucus, and try to make myself heard this election.  Because for once, I feel like I really can be a part of how history is shaped, and I can change the course of the country by helping people to put somebody in the white house who seems less self-serving, and more country-serving.

And right now, I need to think about something other than "self."