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This poem could be subtitled, “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone.”
After a childhood spent succumbing to and adapting to the routines imposed upon me, I spent the next huge chunk of my adult life creating classroom routines that attempted to balance the things that HAD TO be done, with the things we WANTED to do. Outside the classroom, adulting brought its own set of non-negotiable routines: laundry, trash day, oil changes, bills. Woven into the mandatory adult routines were the self-imposed ones: exercise, writing, reading. Oh, how I longed for retirement and a lifting of the burden of routines.
Spoiler alert…routines don’t go away when you retire. They change. There might be more wiggle room in the schedule, but the shapes of days and weeks and seasons remain.
Then there is the net of great big routines that seems so distant and inviolable that we forget to pay attention. Our democracy. Social services. The never-ending push towards civil rights. Voting. Representation.
These are the things that were on my mind as I sat down to write my ___is a Word poem. How every day seems the same…which can make me grumble even though I lean into the comfort of knowing that the one time of the day the cat loves me best is morning, when he gets his medicines and treats and grooming; if it’s Sunday, I’ll go swim some laps; if it’s summer, I’ll be looking for black swallowtail caterpillars in the fennel. It’s been almost eight years, but I remember the visceral experience of my every routine shattering the way mom’s arm and hip did when she fell, was life-flighted to Denver, wound up in the ICU, and never recovered. And yet, even within those jumbled-up days, I created what routines I could. Which brings us to now, when the net of great big routines called Life As We Know It In The United States is being demolished and we begin to see response routines emerge. I’m not buying anything today. I’m helping to jam congress’ switchboards with calls using the 5 Calls app. I’m donating every month to ACLU. All very safe and easy to add to my regular routines. I was yesterday years old when I sat for two hours in a community stitching circle and heard passionate volunteers tell about what Food Not Bombs and other mutual aid groups are doing to get good food that is headed for the landfill into the hands of those who need it. Work that is and has been being done to push back against broken systems and make an actual tangible difference in the lives of our neighbors.
It’s time for another change in my routines.
Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Denise has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Care to Share.
The image is via Wikimedia.
A(nother) Year of Reading 