Smuggling Grace

A friend recently shared something sweet. Her five-year-old daughter is convinced that lightning bugs (or, if you use a different word regionally, fireflies) are really fairies.

They are disguised as bugs, but every time they light up, they are revealing their true selves. And to her, this is not just metaphorical.

Every time the green light emerges, she runs closer, convinced she’s going to see arms, legs, and a smiling face in addition to wings.

Whatever — or whoever — they might be, we definitely live in an enchanted world. Savor accordingly.

—Renee Roederer

As I continue my cycling journey, pedaling down every street in the in my town in alphabetical order, I texted an old friend and told him that the very next day, I’d be biking down his street.

He said, “Let me know when you’re coming.”

So that morning, I gave him an ETA.That turned out to be remarkably accurate because I pulled onto his street at precisely the moment Google Maps told me I would.

And I was greeted by the sweetest, silliest thing:

He ran down the driveway, many plastic grocery bags in both hands, shaking them like pom-poms as he celebrated my arrival.

This delighted me.This is the first time I’ve ever been able to tell someone that I was coming to their street on this journey, and it did not disappoint.

I hope you feel celebrated today, too, maybe in ways you didn’t expect.

—Renee Roederer

I opened the door to my local Panera Bread, where I was planning to pick up some coffee. The first thing I saw was two dads in their 40s with two sons who looked like they were somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. They had pushed two tables together, and both dads sat on the booth side while both sons faced them in chairs. Between each dad and son was a chessboard.

Two dads, two sons, two chessboards, two ongoing games.

This was about friendship, strategy, intellect, and fun. I love seeing dads spending time with one another and with their children. And I love that it isn’t only and always about sports. Here they were, sitting across from their sons, thinking and playing together.

There are many ways to be dads. There are many ways to be sons. There are many ways to be masculine. There are many ways to be human.

I love that.

Just a lovely image to encounter while walking in for some coffee.

—Renee Roederer

I stepped outside to run an errand, and when I looked down, a bloom caught my eye. I wasn’t expecting it. I smiled.

Last year, my Mom visited and planted a garden at my house as a gift to me. So kind. We made sure to pick out perennial plants so they would return each year.

For more than one reason, that was probably a great idea. Because I am sad to tell you that not long after she left, some critter ate a lot of the blooms.

But here they are, one year later, returning. And one year later, my Mom is making me smile, even though she isn’t in Michigan.

This makes me think that people we know and love are embedded in so many things we see, do, and experience every day. We have made memories at this place or with this object. This person always loved this smell, this taste, this scenery. We sang this song together. We had a conversation right here.

This happens all the time. And this little butterfly bush reminds me to keep looking.

—Renee Roederer

Recently, I was scrolling through social media, when I saw this segment of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent interview with Hasan Minhaj. He says (you can also watch below):

“There are people who in 1830 — very intelligent people — would have said, ‘We cannot abolish slavery. If we abolish slavery, this country will collapse. There will be chaos. God knows what will happen.’

“Logically, there’s an argument for what they’re saying. I would never argue that, because what I would argue is slavery is so immoral that you can’t just sit here — there’s just no option to pursue this path, you know? It’s just that wrong. And I guess, like, when you highlight Yemen, as you just did, what I think about is not just Barack Obama. I think about — 75 years? How long are we going to make war in the Middle East? How long are we going to do this?

“How long — I think about Iran, you know, all the time. I don’t think — and I don’t mean this in any sort of disrespectful way — because people have lives and they have things they have to do — but I don’t think people understand. Between Iraq and Iran, how much war-making we’ve done over there and how violent our presence has been over there, and how, you know, in certain cases, how anti-democratic our presence has actually been. How long are we going to go on with this, man? Is this going to be every presidency after every presidency? And then each one makes some sort of excuse for why we have to do this.

“I just, I don’t want to be part of that project.”

@hasanminhaj

“I don’t want to be part of that project.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

♬ original sound – Hasan Minhaj

A few days later, I was driving in my car when a news story from NPR came on. One of their reporters sat in on quarterly earnings calls for CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two private prison companies that are making billions of dollars by detaining immigrants in our country. People have been taken away at their immigration check-ins. Or they’ve been snatched after dropping off their kids at school. Or they went to the grocery store and never made it home.

And many are languishing in these detention centers. In the last quarter alone (also, why are we talking about quarters when these are human lives?), CoreCivic earned $1.4 billion. And this does not include the additional $1.6 billion CoreCivic has received after selling four of its facilities to the Department of Homeland Security.

If it is abhorrent to make money from bringing human beings into enslavement, is it not just as immoral to make a profit from ripping human beings from their families and their daily lives?

I just, I don’t want to be a part of that project. But I rarely do or say anything. I know that I am complicit.

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

This is so cute and relatable.

This week, while reading a book, I stumbled upon a wild and beautiful phenomenon I had never heard of before. I want to share about that, but first, here’s a detail you need to know: Bamboo plants can be easily cloned by cutting shoots and replanting them in other places.

And… no matter how far these clones are spread apart — all over the world, in fact — they can blossom and then die at the exact same time. This is not dependent on how long they’ve been going in the ground. A new shoot from a 120 year old plant that lives on its own for a year will blossom and die at the same time the initial plant does.

And bamboo plants don’t blossom regularly. Depending on the species, flowering may occur only once every several decades—or even more than a century. Some species flower at intervals approaching 120 years. It’s as if there is an inherent timer in the genetics. It’s a beautiful mystery.

I’d like to share a quote from the book I was reading. In Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, Linda Hogan writes,

“There are other summons and calls, some even more mysterious than those commandments to birds or plants, for instance, with their thin green canopy of light and golden stalks that creak in the wind. Once a century, all of a certain kind of bamboo flower on the same day. Neither the plants’ location, in Malaysia or in a greenhouse in Minnesota, nor their age or size make a difference. They flower. Some current of an inner language passes along them, through space and separation, in ways we cannot explain in our language. They are all, somehow, one plant, each with a share of communal knowledge.” (Pg. 157)

After reading that, I wanted to learn more, so Google and I became friends on this.

If you’d like to hear a historical account of one of these flowering events, feel free to watch the short video below.

—Renee Roederer

I love when I have new questions — curiosities I’ve never considered before. Yesterday, I actually got a new answer, and I had not even asked the question.

I was walking down several blocks to try a Yemeni coffeeshop in my town, when I suddenly looked to the right and saw this:

I’ll be honest when I say that I don’t even know what these are called. People sit around these. There’s a table in the middle, and everyone pedals together. There’s a driver in the front, steering so everyone can go around town and (typically) drink while pedaling.

I’m looking these up now. Words I’ve used so far: Foot trolley, Pedal trolley, Group pedal trolley.

Nope, none of these. This does not involve the word “trolley.” Google has now gotten my drift, however, and these are called “party bikes” or “pub bikes.”

Here’s the answer I didn’t ask for: This — pictured above — is where these party/pub bikes go when they’re not partying/pubbing. This little parking lot.

I realized I had never once wondered, “Who keeps these, and where do they go when the party is over?” Once I see them pedal away, or turned onto another street, it’s as if they no longer exist. They are dead to me. Apparently, I’ve forgotten that I’m a person in my 40s who has object permanence.

This is something babies learn over time. When that rattle goes behind someone’s back or is put away, you can’t see it anymore, but it still exists. It takes a while for babies to figure this out. I guess I never got the memo on the continued existence of party/pub bikes.

And now, this has me wondering about other things, too:

I have never in my life wondered where the orange barrels go once orange barrel season has ended. Is there, like, a big warehouse somewhere? Or does every city have one? How many orange barrels exist in the world — total? I know I am not able to comprehend the number.

And also, now that I think about it for the very first time in my whole life, where do voting booths go? Do they… fold up? Who keeps these throughout the year, and when the time is right, says, “Okay, time to load them up!” Where do they live? And each year, is there a rotation of which ones get to go to polling places, or do the same ones always go out? Do they get excited that they were in use the year that certain candidates emerged or won? When they go back to the casa de los voting booths, do they talk to each other about how some people don’t know how to fill in squares correctly with pens? Or that we smell bad? Or that we VOTED FOR WHO?!?

New answers. New questions.

Midlife Object Permanence.

—Renee Roederer