Occupying at Home

I am not brave enough for civil disobedience. In fact, I'm not brave enough to get to the airport less than two hours before a flight. I pay my taxes on time, and I pay contractors, even when the job isn't done right or even completely. I go to the dentist twice a year, though I do decline the x-rays. However, that may cease as I have recently suffered a toothache. I guess I'll be back on that plan of action, too.

While I grumble and moan and complain under my breath about deadlines, I turn in my grades at the college I teach at before the due date, order my textbooks by the 15th of April and October for my classes, and sign up to serve on the correct number of committees.

I follow along, pretty much, doing what I'm supposed to. My first husband is like that, too, so it was much to both our surprise that our older son turned out to be a disobeyer from the beginning. I would tell my son to stop, he would go. I would say turn right, he would turn left. I'd ask him to do his homework, and he'd play video games. He'd subvert all that could be subverted until his house of cards toppled, and then he did what he needed to restack the deck and get out and away from us rule followers.

In college, he was asked to leave the dorms and never come back because he and a friend howled Howl from the literal rooftop.

After college graduation, he graduated to bigger insurrections, protesting war and democracy and capitalism. At first, he and I were still so connected that all his disobedience was personal to me, something I had to handle. I posted bail when he was arrested at a war protest, went to hearings, worried myself sick. Segue to now--the last time he was arrested, I let his pals deal with it, and they did.

His disobedience is no longer mine. I can go back to turning in my grades.

Society has always had evils. Those who long have had it all still have it all. We are a cruel and inhuman bunch, we humans. We steal and wreck and and mess up. Society needs people to fight and protest and call attention to the vast wrongs everywhere, but I am finally okay with saying I'm not the one to do it. I'll write about how I feel and let my readers see my side of things, but I'm not going down to live in the center of a city in a tent. Call me lazy or selfish or complacent, which all may be true. But in this lifetime, I'm the one watching the protest, appreciating the struggle, but not wanting to join in.

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Onto other news: My latest ebook is up. Forgotten is the story about what happens to a family when what is forgotten is the most precious thing of all.

I'll give away five e-copies of this novel to the first five folks who write to me from my web site.

On His Knee, and Then The Ring

My first marriage was one created out of love and desire but also need and practicality, too. By the time we ended up in South Lake Tahoe standing in front of the drunken (he'd been at another wedding or two before ours) justice or Reverend or minister, my finally husband and I had a ten-month-old baby.

We hadn't the romance leading up to the wedding only the fact that we needed to have one. Both my husband and I felt trapped in something that we'd certainly created and were both unsure of what to do next or how to do it. I was excited and worried and nervous--he was depressed and unclear and concerned. As you might imagine, hilarity did not ensue. Not one aspect of the summer months of 1985 bring much good in terms of memory except my son.

Yet for more than twenty years from that August day in 1985, we made a go of it, and I never stopped believing in marriage even when ours ended, the divorce official in December 2007. Despite a great deal of acrimony at the end, I always knew that when marriage worked--when two people pulled together for one or more reasons--the bond was a good thing.

Plus, and, I never lost my belief in the mystery of it, the way two people are brought together quickly or over years--the way suddenly, someone knows that it is right, time, perfect.

And yet, it's not necessary when we are older, really. Unlike my husband and I in 1985, there is no biological imperative. There's usually some financial incentive or, at least, a great insurance plan on one end or the other. There's the desire to pull things together tightly, to show each other and the world what the relationship means. But careers and families are likely already made when two middle-aged (or older) people get married.

But let me tell you that on Christmas Eve night when I pulled a small ring box from my stocking, I was amazed and overjoyed and happy. Kneeling (yes, folks, on his knee), Michael asked me to marry him. In the box, a ring. On his knee, the man. In my heart the answer: Yes.

I've never been engaged like this before, an engagement based on only one thing, the true desire to bring our lives together. Four years of relationship and all the word means brought us to that place in the living room in front of our children and my mother.

"Yes," I said. "Yes."

The Night Around Me - Jessica Inclán

Back in the days of babies, I used to find myself up in the most silent time of night, sitting on a couch or chair, nursing a baby. Then I would change the baby, rock the baby, and put the baby to sleep. During the day, I would rue this late night upness, but at the time, baby in my arms, the night silence surrounding me,nothing but the baby and me in the world, I loved this quiet time together with my child. From 2 to 3 or 3 to 4, there we both would be in the stillness of the house.

Well, I'm up again from 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 (sometimes from 2-4) but there is no baby. There is nothing but me and my upness, some new nightmarish hormonal twist of fate awakening me from a deep sleep and keeping me awake, an alertness that no glass of milk will quell.

This time is familiar and known, and the silence is here just as it always was, but I'm alone now. The tasks I can perform are not about a child but about my work. The to-do list for the next day is there, and I dip into it, moving through a couple of items before heading back to the bedroom for sleep, round two.

So I write a little bit. Sometimes I read. I write a blog. I read a student's work. During all, my mind seems alert and focused, something I would never imagine possible. I don't like the sound of "Two in the morning." "Three in the morning" is almost a swear word. Sadly, "four in the morning" almost sounds normal as I often make my way down to bed as my boyfriend Michael is getting up for the day. We pass each other on the stairs, he headed for the office, me headed for unconsciousness.

I wonder if I will look back at these nights with the same fondness that I do with those hours spent with my babies. Will I be an old woman, thinking about the nights I spent with myself, writing and reading and thinking? Perhaps I will imagine that holding my own life in my arms was as endearing as holding those tiny babies, the night around me, the time as full of growth and wonder as all those years before.