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Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

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True to form, my “breezy summer beach read” was neither breezy nor read on a beach. Instead, I read Rebecca Solnit’s 2021 book, Orwell’s Roses. Solnit is an incredibly prolific author, and I like her work, but it is heavy and deep, and I rarely feel up to the task. However, at the beginning of the summer, this copy caught my eye at the local library, so I checked it out and read it whenever grading was complete and babies were asleep.

Here’s the copy that I read.

This book is about Orwell. Politics. The roses that he grew at his cottage. His interest in gardening and the natural world, and the hope that can be found there. Writ large, the book is about labor and freedom and politics and all of the themes of Orwell’s own writing, reflecting on labor and illness in Orwell’s time and also today. Solnit draws links between political strife that Orwell wrote about and the political strife of today.

As you know from my Instagram, I am interested in plants and gardening, especially flowers. I love the idea of growing food in whatever piece of earth one might inhabit. I like my own sheep, chickens, and flowers. I love to take a close look at a plant and watch it as it changes throughout the seasons and over the years. Evidently, Orwell and I have that in common. Unlike Orwell (and Solnit), however, I am less insightful and imaginative when it comes to politics, so I appreciated Solnit’s ability to meld the two together in ways that helped me learn and see these subjects all in a new light.

When I start reading Solnit, I think “This is mostly boring and only a little interesting,” and those thoughts are interspersed with with absolutely lovely prose and engaging content, and I love that about her writing. Reading Solnit is like the good feeling I have after I eat my vegetables and get my exercise. When it comes to nonfiction, Solnit is the realest deal. She also gives me permission to go on long tangents, and take up words and space, because it is meaningful to me, and trust that it will be meaningful to others as well.

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Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner

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Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter is a beautiful book of poetry by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. I don’t usually read a lot of poetry, but this one drew me in and held me there.

The place where I work has a relatively large population of Micronesian students. In fact, a summer program for work put this book on my radar, and I’m so glad it did. I find myself wanting to learn more about this population. From the book I read about the indigenous connection to place, language, racism, climate change, climate refugees, refugees from US nuclear testing, food, love, religion, womanhood, family, and more.

I found myself searching for plane tickets. Just how far away are the Marshall Islands?

The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote

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The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote brought back memories of gingham table clothes and picnics near Clark Creek with Grandma, trips to Omak, where I learned about suicide races, and the smell of tender beef stew from the crock pot, sliding in Grandma’s passenger seat as she accelerated over the railroad tracks, the proper way to make a flowerbed, the importance of reading, assimilation because your life depended on it, adoption.

Piatote knows the inland northwest well, and reading her work is like learning that someone else has the same secret you do. I have a similar feeling when reading authors like Sherman Alexie and Raymond Carver. They know these places and these people too, and it’s so nice to feel seen by them.

Reading is one thing that renews me and gives me a stronger sense of who I am. That sense of who I am has changed in wonderful ways in the past few years as I’ve become a mother, but also in worrisome ways. There is a daily grind, a constant sense of work to be done, no rest for the weary. Reading Piatote’s bio, I saw that she is also a mother, and I felt even more reaffirmed. She is able to remember. So can I.

The book made me feel creative and curious and revitalized, and in reading it, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my job, my colleagues, and my students and the life I get to live that puts me in the way of this literature.

The Nez Percé language throughout
the book was powerful to see and sound out.

2020 year in review

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I’m not sure what to say about 2020. It was quite a year. I’m an introvert, and I had a baby, and so I was prepped to do a lot of staying home and laying low and not really interacting with the public all that much. Then of course the pandemic put all of that into overdrive.

On one hand, it was a really lovely year. I felt like a pioneer. I made sourdough bread and took care of my babies. I felt capable, and it was exactly what I wanted to do.

Except that I would’ve liked to spend more time with human people. I would’ve liked to have had more help with the babies, so that there wasn’t always so much pressure around work, and timing, and getting naps just exactly right for a Zoom meeting, and working at odd times and late into the night because that’s when I could.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we were told to go easy on each other and to be accommodating to each other. At first it seemed like I wouldn’t need this same accommodation, but over time, I came to realize that I did. Even if you weren’t directly impacted by a Covid case, there was an unexpected cascading effect, so that most of us were impacted in one way or another.

In addition to a national/global crisis, 2020 was personally tough for most people I know. My life was no exception. Weirdly challenging things kept happening in 2020. There were literal floods and pestilence, and my heating system broke in, like, six different ways at six different times last winter. Although we never fully had to go without, I had to ration milk for my toddler because of food shortages, something I had never even thought about before in my life.

It’s not over yet, but the vaccine is in sight. I now know people who have received it. As that number increases, I think things will slowly start to feel normal again (though the fallout will last for years). I hope I look back on this year fondly and with gratitude. It’s no exaggeration to say that having to drop a baby off at daycare has been one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and so I am grateful that I’ve been able to spend so much of my kids’ infancy with them and caring for them.

Having them home while working took a toll though. I think I juggled it all, but it was exhausting, and I am but a wisp of the person I used to be. I hope that in time, I can recover and that I can come out of this experience without debilitating germaphobia or food hoarding habits. Time will tell.

2020 Top Nine from Instagram

2020 reading list

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Once again, this year’s reading list was fairly short, but a little longer than last year, which is impressive given that I had twice as many children to care for! Trust me—reading any books that aren’t for work with little ones at home is a feat. I also read zillions of children’s books and am including Stuart Little on this list because of it’s literary merit.

Severance by Ling Ma

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

Stuart Little by E.B. White

round 6: knitting a baby blanket (with pattern!)

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As I scroll back through the old blog, I’m a little surprised to see that I’ve made several baby blankets that haven’t been documented! After I found out I was pregnant with baby L, I quickly knitted a baby blanket for him using the same yarn and pattern as this one because it was a favorite.

This fabric has bright, cheerful colors and consistently inconsistent blemishes throughout to create a nice visual texture.

I thought I would do something similar when I found out I was pregnant with baby A, but in the interim, I had knitted another baby blanket for my cousin’s baby. I liked it so much, I bought an extra skein, not knowing how I’d use it. So, when I was pregnant with baby A, and that was such a wild and hectic year, I just used the skein I had on hand for a future baby blanket. I didn’t know for sure when I bought it I would be using it for this purpose! I really like this yarn. I like the color and consistency. One of these large skeins can make an entire baby blanket, which is nice because I never seem to buy enough yarn for my projects–a more serious problem now that I don’t have a Michael’s nearby.

The nice thing about knitting a baby blanket for your own baby is that you get to knit, your hands stay busy, it feels productive, and with each stitch, you get to meditate on loving thoughts toward your baby, which is one of my favorite past times!

I started this blanket in spring 2019. I was unable to complete it before A’s birth. I was then unable to complete it for his first birthday. However, a few weeks after his first birthday, with about a week left before Christmas, with my grades submitted, and a serious need for some down time, I began to finish the blanket. I worked on it every night and stayed up late on Christmas Eve to finish it. That night, I had to tear out the last rows three times: once because I forgot how to knit, then purl, then reverse it, and once because I began the ribbing too soon, and once because I forgot how to cast off. I was rusty, but thanks to a few videos online, I was able to finish it, wrap it, and hop into bed by 12:30am.

The finished product, folded up and ready to go.

This project also inspired me to make more blankets for my babies. The next projects will be twin sized blankets for when they graduate from their crib-sized bed, which hopefully won’t be anytime soon.

Here’s the pattern:

The Materials:
-6 skeins of “Rainbow Jellys” by Caron Chunky Cakes
-Knitting needles, US 10.5

The Pattern:
-Cast on 65 stitches.
-Knit purl, knit purl, purl knit, purl knit until the row is finished.
-Then reverse it: purl knit, purl knit, knit purl, knit purl until the row is complete.
-Continue this pattern until you’ve got a few inches of a ribbed border. With this yarn, I like to make the border the length of one color, since the colors make stripes throughout the blanket.
-Then, knit the rest of the blanket until the last few inches or so.
-Finally, repeat the pattern from the beginning (knit purl, knit purl, purl knit, purl knit; then reverse it on the next row) to create a ribbed border for the last swatch of color again at the end.

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

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If you’ll recall, in December 2019, I was part of a book gift exchange with a group of women who also had babies that year. I was gifted two books by one woman. The first I read and wrote about here: https://sherewin.com/2020/03/09/severance-by-ling-ma/. The second was Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. Both were shockingly timely to 2020. Severance was about a global pandemic and Queenie is about, in part, race and racial injustice.

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So, here’s my take on the book. The story immediately drew me in. It starts with some relationship drama, and I am always happy to be a fly on the wall to any and all relationship drama.

But, as the book progressed, I grew weary of Queenie’s antics, and I didn’t always have enough emotional connection to the story to be patient with her as she navigated her failed relationship, her abusive/borderline abusive sexual escapades, and sabotaged her career. Certainly there were reasons, and certainly we would grow to understand them, but I sometimes grew weary in the waiting. (This happens more and more with me when reading works of fiction.)

While her relationships with friends didn’t always resonate with me (which probably says more about my relationship to “friends” than about her depiction), her relationship with her family became the most interesting aspect of the book to me. Fortunately, that narrative builds and builds throughout the story to a nice conclusion. (Not nice as in happy or resolved per se, but nice as in well done.)

Overall, this piece has literary merit, is well done, if a bit too long. I hate to make the comparison, but it really does allude to the Bridget Jones’s Diary story. It’s a workplace romance starring woman who is a mess. It’s a hallmark of British Literature, and Carty-Williams carries it on and makes it her own in Queenie. The author artfully integrates trauma and politics, specifically the #BLM movement. I am glad I read it, and I think you will be too.

Stuart Little by E. B. White

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Since my ability to read for pleasure has been severely diminished since 2018, I’ve decided I’ll also keep a tally of children’s books that I read that I think are also worth reading in adulthood. For the most part, we read many, many baby books, but I’m also able to read a page or two of capital “L” children’s literature, and so I try to do that as I can.

First up is Stuart Little by E. B. White. I had never read this children’s classics, and so I snagged it from a “Little Free Library” when I had the chance. It is the first “real” book I’ve read to my child. I read it page by page over the first two years of being a mother, with several months-long breaks in between. There were little images on every other page or so, and it, along with the text, was just enough to sustain my child’s attention for short periods of time.

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our copy

This is a delightful book. It’s about a mouse named Stuart Little who takes himself far too seriously. He lives in New York City, but a few discomforts and experiences compel him on an adventure. He is both honorable and seriously lacking in accurate self-reflection.

It’s E. B. White, so the writing is perfection. Every bit of dialogue enriches the characters. The plot is simple. It’s a child’s book, but somehow the journey seems very authentic to real human experience. It’s a quick read (unless you’re reading it like I did) and well worth the time.

A bonus is that it also reminded me of my grandpa, whom I miss tremendously, who also wrote and told delightfully absurd stories of characters who took themselves too seriously.

How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

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I read How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones because it was sitting there, and I’m glad I did. It’s a quick (but not necessarily easy) read. I was immediately drawn into the narrative. He shares what feels like a really authentic account of what it’s like to grow up Black and gay and how and why that felt like a death sentence to him.how we fight for our lives

The confusion, innocence, curiosity, and angst of childhood felt really authentic to me—though his experience seemed even more exacerbated by his firm knowledge that he was *different*. Later, the sex is explicit, and there’s a lot of it, and at times I wondered if it was gratuitous, but in the big pictures, it really did serve an important purpose in the story. And anyway, it’s about a young gay man, so yeah, there’s going to be some sex.

About two thirds or three quarters of the way through the book, when many authors lose their steam, attention to detail, and sentence-level care, this book picks up, ending powerfully as the author’s relationship with his mother contextualizes and heals and, although imperfect, a clear love story emerges that feels true and healing and heartwarming.

The ending is surprisingly, as it becomes clear that this author has achieved the sense of self that he’d been searching for—in some unlikely ways and places that simultaneously feel familiar. I too have suddenly and unexpectedly wept with strangers.

The book made me much more reflective of my own education, especially my undergraduate degree, an experience that, for me, has inexplicably evaded much analysis or meaning making from me. This book also made my world much smaller. I identified with this man in that I too went to a state school on a scholarship, and although it wasn’t the fancy private school to which I had received a partial scholarship, it offered an important education still the same.

Because the book was not too demanding of my time, I googled some of people listed in the acknowledgements section. I read Sarah Schulman as an undergrad! I didn’t realize Roxanne Gay has a PhD in Rhet/Comp like I do! I didn’t realize it was from Michigan Tech, a sister school with my own PhD program that often exchanges “talent.” Not only did the book’s journey resonate with me, I also had the sudden sense that these people were actually my people. This felt like…my circle.

This is a story of a gay black man, but the journey to reconcile the love and harm inflicted by one’s family, the journey of navigating the first years of adulthood (college) and settling into one’s authentic identity amid wildly conflicting pressures, the community we find, the family we choose is the stuff of life and something with which every reader can identify.

planting the placenta

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Today I finally planted the placentas that I saved from both of my hospital births. I kept them in case I was struggling postpartum and wanted to have them encapsulated. Fortunately, I never ended up needing to use them postpartum. So, I stored them in the freezer for months with a plan to bury them. I learned that once you have them, there’s no turning back. I moved across two states with a placenta in a cooler on ice. I started to have my doubts about keeping them, but what else could I do?

Finally, it is springtime, and I am settled, and I am planting my first orchard: apples, pears, apricot, and peach. It is time.

appleblossom

a new fruit tree for the orchard

To begin, it felt like a chore. Get trees. Remember to get the placentas out of the deep freeze so that I can work with them tomorrow. Dig holes. Do it all quickly before the babies wake up from their naps.

I’m so glad I did it though. It was a beautiful and surprisingly introspective process. When I opened the containers, they were so fresh, like I had just given birth. Everything slowed down. The memories of my pregnancy, of growing and birthing these beautiful babies came flooding back as I prepared the placentas that connected us in every way. It was bittersweet to let them go. To put them in the earth felt like letting go of the most physical connection I have with my boys. It’s something I’ll never get back.

I hope I’ll remember. I hope sometimes when I am in the orchard, I’ll slow down, and I’ll remember the absolute miracle of life and the life changing gift this experience of motherhood has been to me.

How fitting that today is also Earth Day. Happy Day!