Suburban moms loose in the big city

Gratification:  Two babes who didn't know what the Tar Sands protest was all about until my teach-in not only show up at the protest outside Obama's SF fundraiser, they also get on TV!!!  Because we were being good mamas and left the protest a little early to go pick our kids up from school, we stumbled across the speeding motorcade routing the Predident away from the mass of protesters and got to wave our signs as the long Presidential hand waved at us.  (And yes, that sign on the right does read "Another Motha' against the pipeline.")

Out of my comfort zone

Nice how really believing in something will make you stretch outside your usual orbit.  As if the handcuffs weren't painful enough, I have delved fully into google docs presentations to give a teach-in for people in my community tomorrow.  So, from a former and future Luddite, here's my slideshow if you want to see it.  It's got some cool videos.  (Yes, I really did imbed videos.  They might even let me into the 21st century soon.)

Empty Jars

Cascades of over-ripe, late-season blackberries scold me with their fermented sugars, leaving sticky liquor all over my hands: “What, did you think we would wait for you?”  The chickens trail along behind me, getting drunk off my discards.

“When summer’s over, it’s gone,” the berries whine, like my children bemoaning the spate of babysitters who bide the time reading book after book, but who don’t get the harvest in.  While I’m off protesting, sending out press releases, doing interviews, the kids and ripe fruit miss me.  On the counter sits a new box full of empty jelly jars, pristine in their unmet potential.

Every choice has its converse: if I’m doing the activist stuff, which feels like the big work of mothering, there’s a lot of other mothering work that I miss out on.  Like cooking dinner, tucking people in, and canning the jam.  This year, I missed the first day of school, and I missed the blackberries.  Hopefully those are the biggest things, and I didn’t miss any unrecoverable moments of ripeness in my children.

My son, declaring some mix of independent thought and resentment, insists he doesn’t care if they build the planet-killing pipeline.  Sigh.  Mom’s on the front page in her handcuffs.  I’m so not gonna care about that stuff.  I just want her home.  I just want jam.

For now, I’ll let him have the final word on this thorny issue.