To Emily Kate

Dear Emily,

Tomorrow you will turn 18.  

At 18, you probably don’t want me to write about one of my favorite memories of you.

I love the memories of shopping in the grocery store & sensing movement & there you were.

At 18:

You will be able to vote.  You will be accountable in a court of law for any infractions.  You can enter into a contract  & you can buy property.  If you were a male, you would be required to register for the Selective Service, just in case Congress decides to bring back the Draft & call you into military service (a sexist act – women are among our troops in both these crazy wars we are fighting).

Voting is huge.  

I wish that your grandfather had lived to know the wonder you are & the wonder your mother has become & the wonder she married.  

 In these times, when people across the world are protesting for the right to vote, you will be given the right & responsibility to vote tomorrow morning.

Vote with your conscience & conviction. 

Grandpa Jack raised me to vote that way – he did not always agree (there is the famous story of him throwing a plate of spaghetti across the room when I told him I was voting Democrat, not Republican, the first time I voted).   

But he believed in voting with conscience & conviction.

Jack would have adored you.  Third generation Aggie – nothing would have made him prouder.

You will be going off to college, living “independent” of your parents, very soon.

 

That is huge.  Your parents have given you a wonderful foundation in faith & family & friends.

I know that my father, your grandfather, Jack , will be watching over you.  Wonder that you are,

Love,

Jaki

Citizenship & Solomon

My friend Andres posted a link on Facebook (http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/29/2619499/children-of-illegal-immigrants.html) about a little boy born of an illegal immigrant in Missouri.   

His mother came from Guatemala in order to find work to support her two children & her unborn son.  Arrested in a raid on a Missouri poultry plant, her seven month old son Carlos was taken into protective custody & eventually went to live with a childless American couple.   

While his mother was still in jail, Carlos/Jamison’s (depending on which mommy is speaking of him), foster parents filed adoption papers.

The papers severing his Guatemalan rights, served on her in jail, were in English.  She only speaks Spanish.  

 Clever little trick that smacks of something that should never take place in this country filled with languages & translators from around the globe.  Not in this day.  Not under our watch.

Carlos/Jamison is loved by two families & has apparently thrived with his adoptive parents.  His Guatemalan mother & family love him & grieve over his absence from their lives & want him returned.

A case for Solomon.

In light of the backlash against immigrants & a move by anglophiles to deny children of illegal immigrants, born on US soil, the rights & responsibilities of citizenship,  the story got me to thinking (always a dangerous turn of events).

So I went to the Internet source for instant answers to all questions, Wikipedia, & read about US Nationality Law.

A bit more complicated than one is taught in school.

I learned that had I given birth to my son Nick while living overseas for a year or more, he would not be a US citizen.  Because he was born out of wedlock

.

Nick’s father is French, worked here legally & paid US taxes for decades.  He still owns a home here.

Reading the law, I am not sure that even my son Sam would have been a citizen under some circumstances.  

Sam’s father is a US citizen.  However, if we had both been living outside the US for a specified period of time, unmarried, without owning a residence in the US, I cannot ascertain from reading the statutes that citizenship for Sam could be taken as a given.

Like all law, the rules of citizenship are complicated – wedlock vs. out of wedlock (one set of rules if the out of wedlock parent is the mother & a separate set if the parent is the father).  

Luckily for both Nick & Sam, they were born here to at least one if not two US citizens & wedlock was not an issue.  Except, perhaps, emotionally, for each of them.

In my reading, I find nothing that guarantees the children born on US soil, of illegal immigrants, are automatically granted citizenship.  I also don’t find anything forbidding it.  

While I realize that Wikipedia is not the ultimate source of information, or even the most accurate source, I know that this omission addressing the children of illegal immigrants is driving the fight to reverse what has been unspoken & undefined policy for decades.

I want to know how many children born on US soil throughout our country’s history, whose parents were here illegally, or were not US citizens, have gone on to be productive & amazing participants in this democracy?

In the coming months, we are going to need the Wisdom of Solomon.

Needles – One full – One Empty

So, I am looking at two needles, one with yarn cast on, & one dormant, & a beautiful skein of yarn, a bit of green, a bit of purple, a bit of each.

It is beginning to obsess me, this inability to move past casting on & knitting, weaving a text.

How hard can this be?

If I can cast on, surely I can move forward, knit a scarf, weave a text.

Writing is easy – knitting & weaving a scarf or a text is a challenge.

At least a scarf someone wants to wear & a text someone wants to read.

Arachnologies

So I want to learn to knit.

Knitting is not that different from weaving or writing.  I can write, I can weave from Barthes’ braid & write.

But I cannot knit.

I can cast on, which all knitters I speak with say is the hardest part.

But I cannot move on to the next step – to create another stitch, another text.

Today, I realized why.

When I write, beginnings are always the challenge.  Whether I am writing a paper or an email or a journal entry or a piece of fiction, I have to conquer the beginning & move on to the next paragraph.

In desperation over my inability to move to the next row, I re-read Nancy K. Miller’s essay from “The Poetics of Gender”.

Arachnologies:  The Woman, The Text, and the Critic.

Just to prove to myself, that if I cannot knit, I can still read.

And Miller reminded me that “Arachne, the spider artist, began as a woman weaver of texts.”

As a woman, I can weave texts.

I will learn to knit.

Again, About Sarah Palin

How Traumatic Events Change Our View Of Language

www.npr.org

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the recent shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, arguing that traumatic events make people self-conscious about their language — and perhaps, rightfully so.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Fox News Channel's Hannity, Jan. 17, 2011.

January 20, 2011. . . Sarah Palin was right. It was irresponsible for people to say she had anything to do with the Tucson shootings. I'm not sure why she had to bring "blood libel" and the persecution of the medieval Jews into it. But she could certainly say it was a bum rap .  . .

So, in part I agree with Geoff Nunberg – Sarah Palin was not responsible for Tucson.

But I stand by my earlier posts & comments – her use of the term “blood libel”, drawing an analogy to people’s criticisms of her inflammatory antics to the persecution of medieval Jews was obscene.  

So I will insist again, just as I insist on the mantra:  “Integration without assimilation, union without loss of self, difference without dominance.”

Words matter.  Words have meaning & life & influence. 

So we should all choose them very, very carefully.

Comparisons & Almost a Full Moon

Sometimes, when things get strange & unusual & a bit crazy, I think to myself:  Is it a full moon?

The other night, I heard my cell phone indicate a text.  Expecting it to be my Alpha Son Nick, I reached out for the phone & read it.

Do I have the right number?

And I think to myself, WTF & reply:

I don’t know.  Who are you looking for?

And when the reply comes back, I pause.

JJE

And I think to myself, WTF & reply I am indeed a JJE & who is texting me.

The reply consisted of three initials & I was both dismayed & curious.

Initials from the past, initials I had not heard from for over a decade except for one strange night.

A series of texts followed – 39 – including one chastising me for my slow response.

Cyber speak drives me mad – I text in full words, full sentences, complete with punctuation & capitalization.  My one concession is the use of the ampersand.

I make no apologies for that.  The full words, full sentences, the grammar or the ampersand.

Then we talk on the phone & the most bizarre conversation occurs.  The details don’t matter.

Except that I asked him if he had been drinking.  He said no & asked me if I had been drinking.

And I thought:  But I am not texting you or calling you.

In the end, after all the inane banter, he wanted to know one thing.

He wanted to know who was better in bed – he wanted me to give him a comparison between himself & someone who followed.

If it was not a full moon, it must have been near a full moon.

Why do men ask for what amounts to validation of their prowess?

Every relationship, emotional, intellectual, physical, intimate is different.  Rating systems don’t apply.

So, all of you out there who wonder who was the best, I have this answer:

You know.

Think about that the next full moon.  Or near full moon.

Girl Scout Cookies

One day last week, my supervisor’s youngest daughter, Cate (aged 4.5), came up to me & said:

            Jaki, would you like to buy some of my Girl Scout cookies?

I said yes, indeed, I would and Cate said, pointing to a picture of the Thin Mints:

            If you put these in the freezer, they are really good.

So, because Cate calls me Jaki & her sister calls me Miss Jaki, I bought nine (9) boxes of Girl Scout cookies, including Thin Mints which taste really good when they are in the freezer.

Now Jean & Jason & Sam & Eli & I do not need nine boxes of cookies, even two of Thin Mints which taste really good when they are in the freezer.

But Cate reminded of another little girl, whose mother was my coworker, who asked me to buy Girl Scout cookies & always wrote a thank you note when the cookies were delivered.

A little girl who became a young woman & died too early & is buried near my father, Jack

So when I go to the cemetery to replace Jack’s flowers ( a ritual I hate but feel obligated to do ), I visit Sarah.   She loved horses & everything Disney & collected American Girl dolls & had a beautiful soul & spirit.  

This year, when go to replace Daddy’s flowers, I think I will leave a cookie on Sarah’s grave.

A Girl Scout Cookie in her honor.