For My Girlfriends, My Sisters, My Loves

For My Girlfriends, My Sisters, My Loves       

For my sisters dancing in dorm hallways,

Swapping clothes, stories, mix-tapes, mixed drinks,

Running barefoot in the rain, in bikinis, in nothing,

Sharing clothes, ice cream, eyeliner, even boys and girls, the lovers who came and went;

We sipped sherry and played cards, slept in each other’s beds, held each other’s hair back,

We endured come-ons, pick-ups, put-downs, sexual missteps, sexual assault,

We tried on identities, created them, became ourselves,

We cried, laughed, made sangria, swapped poetry, swapped hearts and thoughts and lives;

For my girlfriends who spun out their webs to new cities and countries and jobs and partners and grad programs and lives,

To the Midwest, New York, San Diego, England,

To China, Seattle, Texas, and Santa Fe,

We traveled and studied and read and fucked our way through our 20’s,

We wrote meticulously collaged postcards, wrote stories and poems, we drank gin & tonics on rooftops, talked on the phone at all hours, drove across states for weddings, for sleepovers, for tacos, for beer, for hugs, for Art;

And for my Portland women: we are teachers and nurses and writers and lawyers and artists and doctors and specialists,

We are friends and sisters and kindred spirits;

We used to spiral in our lives on Thursdays for happy hour, for drinks and games and reality TV,

Before the obligations and the marriages and the kids,

and the life that got in the way of our lives,

Before we fled our centrally located apartments for homes in all five quadrants;

in Beaverton, West Linn, Ireland, Malaysia, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York;

For all my girlfriends, old and new:

Our very selves found and forged and forgiven,

Our childhoods, the cupcakes and Barbies and slumber parties and concerts;

Our phone calls, photos, letters, emails, and text messages;

The secrets and confessions, celebrations, all the coffee, tears, wine, cat underwear, nail polish, jade plants, bike rides, and late nights;

And for our bodies that held us and betrayed us, that grew strong, got sunburned, danced, freckled, wrinkled; that bled and healed, ran marathons, got cancer, were very fertile or not at all—

For my ladies—my support net frayed and knotted and snapped and rebuilt and strengthened and reinforced—

For my sisters, bending the life trajectory to find a path through love and jobs and joy and  financial security, or not—

We’ve lived through lovers and online dating and marriages and first houses and job loss and gray hair and earthquake fear and ovarian cysts and naked bike rides and karaoke—

For my sisters who have endured abuse, neglect, rape, failure, infertility, pregnancy loss, dangerous births, divorce, cancer, death, the infinite difficulties of love and family and children, of infidelities, of secrets;

Who have created and grown and nourished our babies with our bodies,

Who have lain on tables in doctor’s offices and cried,

Who have bit their tongues over miscarriages while other babies flourished,

For my sisters who birthed at home, or in pools, or at hospitals, or under a scalpel,

Who have navigated legal mazes to adopt babies to nourish and raise, babies who become our own,

And for those who are aunties to our children, you often-unsung yet crucial pillars of our messy village temple, I salute you;

We take on our children’s burdens: the tongue-tie, heart murmurs, seizures, migraines, diabetes, autism, bullying, broken limbs, stitches;

We take on the schools, the system; we watch for needles in parks, lead in water, and pits in cherries;

We teach our children to ride bikes, which neighbors can help, and how to wash their hands, how to use knives;

And we model for our children, no matter how hard, what we hope for them;

We laugh with them, we hold them;

And we think of the strengths and weights and horrors and weaknesses and victories and tragedies of our own lives and wonder how, with only one chance to raise them,

How will we get it right?

We examine the paths our own mothers laid out for us, our mothers who are here, or gone, or alcoholic, or have Alzheimer’s, or live in Arizona, Alaska, or Rhode Island.

Mothers who belittle us for not being them, or celebrate us for being ourselves, mothers who sing to our babies, mothers who have died.

For my women, my true loves, we are pushing 40, over 40, riding the waves of family and friendship and marriage and motherhood and political engagement and advocacy for children and for schools and healthcare,

We fight against guns and bigotry and hatred,

We call our representatives while making lunches,

We are pro-earth, pro-choice, pro-love, pro-vegetable;

We are straddling the past and the future, looking in all directions: how we were raised, how we are still raising ourselves along with our children, nurturing our families, nurturing our friendships, nurturing our futures, 

Forgiving ourselves, forgiving sins, redefining success, cradling ourselves and each other, watching our scars form and fade and inform us;

We are holding our gentle fierce imperfect aching hearts in front of us and trying to

Connect, connect, connect.

An Open Letter to the Portland Timbers

Hey Timbers!

I wasn’t much of a soccer fan, or a sports fan at all until this year. My mom, however, lives and breathes by the MLS schedule, and is a die-hard Timbers fan. She had season tickets back in the 70’s. She was thrilled when the MLS revived the Timbers. She hasn’t had season tickets this time around, but watches Every. Single. Game. Then she watches the highlights. She talks about the Timbers so much that her fever has spread to me. I’m a sports fan newbie, and can’t really talk the talk yet, but I love the Timbers because her love is infectious. (And watching hot guys run around for 90 minutes beats watching burly thugs slam into each other, in America’s inexplicable favorite sport.)

We’ve seen a few games together when we can get tickets. I’ve actually never seen a losing match live; you always win when I’m there. We were there for the jaw-dropping penalty kicks against Sporting KC. We screamed and clung to each other in joy. My mom screamed as loud as anyone in the Army, which is saying something because one of her lungs was full of fluid. My mom has cancer; she’s had it for about 18 months now. She’s losing energy as this terrible disease rapidly gains ground. But one thing she can still do with abandon is watch and enjoy soccer with her family.

Which brings me to tomorrow’s playoff game against FC Dallas: we don’t have tickets. We actually didn’t try to get tickets because we scheduled a party, a Celebration of Life, for her tomorrow before we knew the playoff schedule. Silly us. Luckily, the party is in the ballroom at the MAC and we will have a view of the field for the kickoff before we have to leave. While she gets to visit with all her friends and family, while we all get to drink and eat and celebrate Mom while she’s still with us, we feel fortunate that you, the Timbers, will be right outside gearing up for the next round of the playoffs. We didn’t try to get tickets for after the party, because Mom will be too tired. But I know she will rush home to her Roku to watch as soon as she gets through the door.

So even though I can’t watch the game live, virtually guaranteeing a win given my track record, please win for my Mom. I know you have millions of reasons to win, but add her to the list. I don’t want tomorrow’s game to be the last Timbers game she sees. I don’t want any game to be the last. But odds are, this is her last Timbers season. I want her to see you win the championship. And I promise to carry on her love for you.

RCTID, Allison

All That Stupid Old Shit

A lot has been written about how Liz Phair has sold out. She betrayed her fans, she lost her edge, she got famous and left her roots behind. She committed the lowest of rock ‘n’ roll sins: cleaned up her fuck-you-all image and reached her arms to the masses.

While I don’t feel that is exactly true, I’m not a fan of her these days. I think, frankly, she just got older, and yes, her music did change, and became an imitation of pop-mainstream instead of a shout from the sidelines at the big boys on center stage of the grunge era--and yes, she admitted to wanting more fans, after all, she had a son to raise and obscure fame doesn’t pay-- it then just got repetitive, uninspired and finally weird. I don’t fault her for changing over the years, but I mourn what feels like a loss of authenticity. I just can’t follow her anymore.

I came across Liz Phair, as so many did, shuffling through the array of northwest grunge rock, in 1993. I was fifteen years old, in the early years of grunge which brought the musical attention of the nation to my turf, the Pacific Northwest, and we still learned about music the old fashioned way: by going to hear it, by reading about it in magazines, by getting tapes from our friends, and by standing at the listening station at Tower Records. I was careful with my allowance; I didn’t want to waste my dollars on CDs I would only listen to once or twice. I wanted music I’d spin for hours in my Sony CD Walkman, lying in bed and imagining shapes in my popcorn ceiling, and after reading about Liz Phair’s debut album, Exile in Guyville, in a two-paragraph review with the photo of her album cover, all gaping mouth and hint of nipple in Rolling Stone magazine, I went to Tower Records and bought it having heard not one single track.

     Everyone marvelled over the blow-job song, actually called “Flower,” in which Liz (I’ve known her for 17 years, I get to call her by her first name), in a deadpan, up-and-down voice, sings lyrics like, “Every time I see your face / I get all wet between my legs,” and “Everything you ever wanted / Everything you ever thought of / Is everything I’ll do to you / I’ll fuck you ‘til your dick is blue.” I almost always listened to Liz with headphones on so my mom wouldn’t hear the lyrics. I was the kind of kid who cared what Mom and Dad heard. This song is practically a capella, so you can’t hide in the music. It was provocative in its lyrics and approach, and I’ll admit that at 15 I was in awe of the sexual power she commanded, but it’s her willingness to be vulnerable and powerful at the same time that I kept with me. These days, when you can find sex all over the internet and get it on your phone, explicit lyrics have lost their power. They are standard. I read today that three of the top ten singles have titles you can’t print in a newspaper. I wonder if kids would be fazed at all by how raw her lyrics are, or if they would stop to marvel at the subtlety of her delivery.

Her song “Fuck and Run” was probably her biggest hit, if you could call it that, because while Liz Phair was referred to constantly as a no-holds barred,  potty-mouthed blow-job queen in an indie rock scene dominated by shaggy, flannelled men, she wasn’t exactly topping the charts. I was probably the first person in my school to have her CD. Over the years I’ve been surprised that I’ve had to introduce her music to dozens of people;  she’d escaped their radar.

“Fuck and Run” became an anthem for sexually liberated girls everywhere; girls who hit college and strived to have their way with men and leave them to cry in the dark. This is a radical misinterpretation of the lyrics. It is actually a sad song:

    Whatever happened to a boyfriend?

    The kind of guy who tries to win you over?

    Whatever happened to a boyfriend?

    The kind of guy who makes love ‘cause he’s in it and

    I want a boyfriend

    I want a boyfriend

    I want all the stupid old shit

    Like letters and sodas

    Like letters and sodas

I understood that loneliness and need for connection before I understood much about actual sex or screwing around. At 15, 16 I’d had my first betrayal by a boy, I’d had a glimpse into what my peers were doing, and what it cost them. I yearned to be treated well, not just be treated. I wanted letters and sodas too. So many girls I knew caved to desires of boys for all the old reasons: they didn’t want them to leave, they wanted popularity, to be cool, or they wanted to but were crushed when boys moved on.

    The song had a cool, snide veneer atop the vulnerability: “I woke up alarmed / I didn’t know where I was at first / Just that I woke up in your arms” which sounded to many like the aftermath of a carefree, drunken hookup, but not all listeners listened past that until the sing-along chorus: “Fuck and run / fuck and run / Even when I was seventeen / fuck and run / fuck and run / Even when I was twelve” which makes it sound like she’d been fucking around, having the time of her life, forever.

     I always chose to take that last line metaphorically-- As a child of divorce, I knew early about holding my emotional cards close to my chest, and that’s how I interpreted this line-- she protected herself from being left, from pain by being the one who leaves.

     The letters and sodas, and almost mumbled line, cloaked by a “stupid old shit” sentiment, is actually what she’s after-- something experiential and shared, that is too often elusive in a time when people use only sex to connect. Even so, there’s an ambiguity, an acknowledgment, of one’s own faults. The demo version of the song turns the tables and includes the lines “Whatever happened to a girlfriend / The kind of girl who tries to win you over”-- she admits that she sometimes, purposefully or not, is the one who disappoints, who leaves.

     The song remains sad. I was haunted by Liz singing “I can feel it in my bones / I’m gonna spend my whole life alone.” It comes off as angsty now, but when I was at my loneliest in my teens and early 20s--alienated by callous boys, failed relationships, misinterpreted interactions-- that shared angst kept me going.

     Liz went on to sing two more albums I liked, each more “produced” than the last; the authenticity really did seem to be gone. I couldn’t feel Liz in my gut anymore. It was like a dying friendship: you’ve outgrown one another, you see the end coming, but you don’t want to let her go. Eventually you stop trying.

     Sex and relationships are tough to deal with-- so you have to be tough to survive them, but tough doesn’t have to mean being the one ahead. Everyone has room to stumble. After college, my experiential learning curve wasn’t as steep--I had more real relationships, and the Johnnys and Joes Liz Phair sang about that do you right or wrong faded from my iPod. I guess she had to change: like me, she grew up and couldn’t sing the same songs anymore. The shock value of her lyrics may have vanished as songs get increasingly vulgar, but the few times a year I do break out Exile in Guyville, I am still in awe of her authenticity. You can’t fake honesty. There is a thread, a feeling a knowing, that I glimpsed in her songs and recognized when I lived them, that are part of my history. She was with me in my early relationships, her cynicism and hope work alongside mine.

The song I find myself coming back again and again is “6’1”.” The lyrics are more general, but that’s okay, I can fill in the gaps now. Her seen-it-all perspective still shines bright after all these years:

It’s cold and rough

And I kept standing 6’1”

Instead of 5’2”

And I loved my life and I hated you

It’s a shout against fakery in a world full of cliched experience. The guitar thrum backing her voice makes it one of her most energetic, most uplifting songs. High school is like the demo version of who you want to be in the world, a place to learn about betrayal and honor, so you can hone your instincts and your manners for the reality ahead. This song had just enough me-against-the-world to satisfy my teenage self, lying in bed with headphones on, staring at the ceiling, but also enough get-on-with-your-life, stand tall, to remind me that ultimately, I’ve got to make it or break it, I’ve got to be the one who’s in it.

Nursing My Son

    In this photo I see my sweet Leif at eight months old, mostly asleep at my breast. His little body pressed to mine; we are curled in bed together. His little hands are holding my breast in perfect instinctual concentration, his elbows tucked in like little wings at his side. I’m kissing his forehead. Our faces are turned inward, his to my breast, mine to his head. Our little world is right there. At this moment, I am his everything, and he is mine.

Nursing at 8 months

    The outside world lurks, but does not penetrate our peace. The dishes are in the sink, the laundry sits in its basket, all the quotidian chores that I used to feel guilty for neglecting can wait. Having Leif has released me from feeling that stuff is important.

    Watching him, at this age, I am aware of all the ways I’ve been molded to fit into the world, and marvel that he is at once both entirely his own little person, and still so new that we’ve only begun to see the person he will someday be. We all grow to learn our place in the world and with those we make relationships, but now he is still a bundle of need and take. He doesn’t know how much I love giving to him, though I feel through the trust he gives me that in his bones he knows. I’m his mother.

    How many hours over the last fifteen months have we spent like this? How many more do we have? When Leif was born the days all blurred together, yawned out over time until suddenly he was three months old, and then the holidays came and went, and six months passed. I was lucky to not be working his first year. We had so much time. I learned to take naps again, to slow my busy brain. I read books while he slept and went to yoga classes. We nursed to sleep.

    When Leif was new, and his whole body still defaulted into a curled up bean, he’d snuggle perfectly into the space left by my body curled around him. I would keep a hand on him, feel his baby chest rise and fall as he slept. I didn’t know babies made so many noises. He snorted in his sleep. Nursing was a noisy affair: slurps, grunts, burps. We nicknamed him the Gremlin because he’d get hungry and look at me and start making these grunty noises, mouth opening and closing as he zeroed in.

    When babies are born they can only see as far as about eight to twelve inches: the distance from breast to mom’s eyes. I was literally his whole world. He took to breastfeeding like a pro. We had so few problems, and only later, listening to other mothers, did I realize how lucky we were. Over time Leif’s little hand motions changed from little waves and random finger flexing to soft gripping. Around four months--I think, the time all blurs together--he started making big slow circles with his arm down his body, over to my belly, up over my breast, across his head and down again. For a few months when we nursed he would settle in my arms and immediately start these circles. It was mesmerizing. I’d watch his hand move; I’d watch his eyes flutter under his lids; we were both hypnotized--he by my breast, me by this little motion he’d invented. I cried when I realized one day he’d stopped.

   

It was an amazingly natural and easy process for me to become a mother. During pregnancy, I had very little nausea, no morning sickness, no heartburn, and was very healthy. After sleeping a lot the first few months I had trouble sleeping the last couple, but that’s all normal. Those small things are manageable when you feel the power of a life growing inside you. I loved everything about it. If I could be about six months pregnant forever, I think I’d be happy: the glow, the energy, the adorable but not-yet-unwieldy bump. The sense that my body was constantly in production, gearing up for its greatest piece of art. But as excited as I was to become a mother, I could wait for the baby, I was happy to let nature flow at her pace-- I loved the pregnancy so much. My husband and I cherished our time left as a couple.

    I had a lovely, hard, but worthwhile birth. The change from before Leif to after his birth was dramatic and all-consuming, the biggest change of my life, yet motherhood  settled on me with more ease than I could have predicted. I love being a mother. I love it. I feel like I’m good at it, though I’ve heard that will change. For now, while Leif is so young, our symbiotic relationship is thrilling. I used to think that love was something we learned through family, experience, poetry. Now I know it is there from the very beginning, from when he was swimming in my womb—he has always loved and needed me, and he’s had no reason to doubt my love for him, and he shows his love for me a million ways every day.

Nursing at 21 months

    My friend L’s boy G self-weaned over the course of a week. He starting refusing her breast, then would have some milk, then refuse more and more until she realized it had been five days since he nursed. She stopped offering. I think about the as I nurse Leif now, at 21 months old, seemingly endlessly during this period of teething. His canines are taking a toll on his little mouth, our sleep, and he nurses to comfort himself at night, in the morning. He doesn’t seem like he’ll self-wean anytime soon.

    I have a two-day trip planned in a few weeks with my girlfriends; a getaway to Beitenbush Hot Springs. Leif, who came along last year while he was still a crawler, will stay home with his daddy this time. I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve never been away from him overnight before, and I hope he won’t be too freaked out by my absence. Leif has just started demanding that Dad help him with putting on his shoes; he wants Dad to read to him. If we are heading outside he wants Dad to come too. This new occasional preference for his daddy is a relief. They will be fine without me. I get a little more respite now from being physically attached to Leif all the time; he lets his dad--demands, really--read with him and play. The light in both their eyes is beautiful.

Being a mother though, I have a built-in tendency to worry. What if I go away for two days, and Leif decided to not nurse when I return? What if my breasts dry up in two days? Is a relaxing weekend away worth the risk? I know many mothers who have already left their child overnight, and the first time especially is hard for everyone. I still love nursing. I love our connection, I love that when Leif is upset he reaches for me and together we make him feel better. I always had a hope we’d nurse for at least two years. And even though biology and life often has other plans for us, I imagine that when I decide to get pregnant again, not only will that happen easily when I want it to, but Leif will have phased out almost all nursing. My friend T has a son Leif’s age, N, and she just had a daughter a few weeks ago. She nursed N all through her pregnancy and is tandem nursing now. She wishes she had weaned N, who, like Leif, is showing no signs of slowing down. With a newborn you are nursing constantly anyway, and with a toddler she feels it’s pushing her over the edge. She feels revulsion at nursing N, which makes her feel guilty. And N is even more assertive than Leif, as well as a bit jealous of his baby sister. He doesn’t quite understand why he has to share his mother’s breasts.

 

    Observing my friends’ experiences with weaning and tandem nursing, I feel I’m at a crossroads, though really I’m still following Leif’s lead. We’re on a Don’t Offer, Hardly Ever Refuse plan. I don’t want to stop yet and neither does he. But I find myself wishing it took less time to nurse him to sleep, that he nursed fewer times in the day. I fantasize about having my body back to myself before I get pregnant again. He’s becoming more independent which is thrilling to watch, and creates a conflict within me: I simultaneously want more bodily autonomy and want to nurse him longer for his health, for our connection.

    Nursing a toddler can be maddening, it can be sweet. It’s adorable when he reaches for me, for “na-na”, and climbs into position on my lap. It is frequently  a full-contact affair: he wiggles, kicks, grabs, twists his head around. But what gives me the willies is he likes to finger two moles I have at the base of my throat, pinching and touching them. It’s like Chinese water torture. After a while my skin feels raw and sensitive, my anxiety rises, I feel repulsed. For months, since he became stronger and his dexterity improved, I have been preventing him from touching those moles but his hand instinctively goes there almost every time he nurses, especially if he’s trying to calm himself for sleep.  I imagine that revulsion magnified by one hundred if I were to be pregnant and nursing. My breasts were so sensitive and sore last time, I’m afraid an active toddler nursing would feel awful. But like most elements of motherhood, you do what you have to do and figure out the rest. Just when I’ve reached my limit, and I think about weaning, is when Leif becomes the sweetest. When he’s crossed that threshold toward sleep he turns into a baby again. He cocoons his body  into mine, his legs curled up, little big feet pressed into my thighs, and closes his eyes, nursing to sleep. I still help him drift off, he’s no longer active toddler on the move, but my baby again. I often feel like rushing him to sleep while I think about what I have to do--dishes, laundry, alone time with my husband, read--but then I’ll stay with him for 20 or 30 minutes after he’s asleep, listening to his baby breathing, having missed the moment he fell off my breast. I’ll put my ear on his back and feel his lungs rise and fall, smell his beautiful smell. Sometimes I’ll drift to sleep with him.

Graffiti Homework

I took a class this past weekend that focused on the intersection between text and images. One of our assignments was to document graffiti we see in our neighborhood or city. Immediately thought of this shell of a building across the river, but didn't have time to go out there on Friday before class, so I wandered around my neighborhood looking for some graffiti or public art to photograph. Here's what I found:

I started around a bar in NW--

And moved on to PNCA....

Some of these images I doctored or Instagrammed, some not so much. Once I found these though, I started seeing graffiti everywhere, and the next day after class I went to that shell of a building across the river and took these:

"Don't break me, I'm beautiful."

"Beards are Hot."

I love the graffiti trees rising from the plants taking over this building.

I've been noticing graffiti and stickers and other, well, creative vandalism around where I am now, and though I know I probably wouldn't like my property tagged, I do find graffiti to often be aesthetically pleasing, often interesting, and not over-intrusive, when taken as a whole. Of course some places are completely covered in graffiti. I don't know how to carefully impart my meaning here, having no expertise in the politics of graffiti and its removal, but I think the world is a little more interesting with it. As someone who's interested in text and its use, message, and medium, I almost have to find it fascinating: What is the use? Who works with graffiti? Whose voices are being represented, and do they feel heard? As Nance Van Winckel says in her essay "Astral Project Town: Butte, Montana", in Poetry Northwest: "Like good poems, graffiti often reverberate the big emotions: love and grief, joy and anger. But primarily, the messages affirm sheer being, unequivocal presence, a presence that's not only an act of language, but a physical thing: paint flecks and spray paint 'put up' in a mad frenzied rush." These rushes of physical language appear on many surfaces: claiming any blank surface, sometimes covering other graffiti in layers. As an observer, I can't help but wonder who is behind the markings.

The next night, while walking with my guys to get dinner, I saw these:

All within a few blocks. In class the day before, I had noted several sitings of graffiti by Humen. While going to dinner, I see three tags by Humen in a row, and so I'm left with one main question: Who is Humen? Why is he everywhere?

I'll continue to look.

I Might Be an Optimist

I am constantly struggling with my lighter and darker selves, trying to reconcile the horror and bluntly harmful deeds I see in the world, which some days leave me despairing over bringing children into being, with the beauty and kindness I strive to exhibit in and cling to the experience of almost everyday. I see my glass as not half full or half empty, but as containing a certain amount of water, a certain amount of air, and some days it is still and some days it sloshes violently, as if the glass were sitting on the dashboard of a car driving down a gravelly road.

My friends tell me that at my core I must be an optimist, because I mark the experiences of beauty and goodness, and I write about it and I talk about it, and my friends are probably right-- but I have periods of such extreme emotional turbulence that I am afraid my glass that is either half full or half empty is going to shatter. I think one can see a shattered glass and still remember what it once contained while picking up the shards. I think one just needs to get a new glass.

I grew up believing that everything would work out for me. I hadn’t matured enough to expand that thought to encompass everything working out for everyone, before the pillars of my life started crumbling, and I started to doubt my charmed existence. When my parents got divorced, I remember understanding all-too-harshly that no matter how much one wills it, time inevitably and thoughtlessly moves forward, and you can’t march it back. In my mind, at age nine, the fighting, mom crying, the nights my dad came home late, or perhaps not at all, all the bitter undercurrents of our daily lives, should not add up to making me a part of a rising, grim national statistic on divorce.

Now, I continue to keep an eye out for the storm clouds behind every silver lining. I am keenly aware of the balance in the universe, for every good thing that happens there occurs something to tip the scale. My hope is that everything at least evens out. I have a problem coping with what I cannot control: another shooting today, this time at a Navy yard. Not kids dying, that’s Syria, for now. 

Lately I’ve been struggling with the balance. I want so badly for life to be beautiful, but I cannot shake the shadows.

            I need to tell you about the feeling of running, barefoot, in the rain. As a kid, I took off my shoes and stomped in mud puddles. As an adult, now that I’ve remembered how, I can tell you the importance of mud puddles.