Catch up

When does one officially become a resident of somewhere? If it is when the address of all the details of their lives changes (bills, ccards, drivers license etc) then ours has not changed.  If it is based on Amazon shipments then I guess we officially live in Indiana.

Today I am thinking about whiteness. I'm thinking about racism. I'm thinking about hatred.  I'm thinking about how to get involved.  Thinking about how the kids in my children's classroom must feel. I'm wondering if people of color always feel the way the white terrorists in Charlottesville, VA make me feel.

A moment of quiet.
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I am also disconnected from it all. I am not in a community right now.  Living in a hotel is crazy disorienting on so many levels.  It is hard, though, to feel connected to anywhere and anything.   Every morning I drive the kids to our future neighborhood and I take them to the bus.  Then Thomas and I have to figure out what to do with the rest of our day.  It seems like it would be fun but NOTHING is open at 8am.

Miriam is struggling with the transition to Kindergarten.  She weeps about it all the time.  Even just thinking about going to school makes her cry.  She lives with a constant dread of it.  Honestly, I think that she is homesick.  So many of her feelings remind me of going to college at first.  In the beginning I counted down the days to go home and then when I was home I dreaded going back the entire time I was home.  She talks about feeling nervous (I have bugs in my belly but they are biting me).  She talks about how "our family is like a shoestring tied together and when I am at school we are untied."  

Our coping skills right now include encouraging her to investigate school and be prepared to tell us all about it.  We have sent her with some special things in her backpack...awesomely the thing that is helping her the most is that now she wants to be on a school board when she is a grown up so she can make kindergarten half day again.  I hear you kid. I hear you.

The fact of the matter, we just need to hear her feelings.  We can help distract her from them at times but it is sad.  It is new.  It is hard.  And she can do it.  She will learn that she can do it.  And her heart will be broken as she learns that.  Oh blessed be Miriam.

I have all sorts of thoughts about Indianapolis and Indiana. I have thoughts about living in a hotel and the experience of being housing vulnerable.  But for now I am distracted.  But the violence in my country.  By the very separate pain my daughter is in.  .    .




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