Bread and Bread

Friday morning I was pulling into CVS to buy baby sunscreen in anticipation of the Homeboy Family Picnic. A basic errand, but compare it to the day of last year’s Homeboy Family Picnic , when I was trying to finish four grants and text with a potential birthmom who ended up dumping me later that day, all before getting on a plane to New Zealand. I mean, the New Zealand part was good, but I was appreciating this year’s hard-won simplicity. My coworker Sierra with two-year-old Marla. Sierra claims to hate kids. Clearly. I turned on NPR just in time to hear Barack Obama say, “…and then there are days when justice comes like a thunderbolt.” As he continued to talk, and I sat in the same CVS parking lot where I’d once called AAA for a dead battery, I soon found myself in tears, the kind that come when a weight you didn’t even know you were carrying is finally lifted. People say this about finalizing an adoption: Sure, you’re out of the danger zone as soon as your child’s bi...

1. the plasticity of the human spirit Things that are over: DOMA, Prop. 8, the Voting Rights Act, radiation. Things that aren’t over: racism, homophobia, my personal cancerphobia. I realize that this lead sort of equates my personal shit with important historical developments, but this is a blog about my personal shit as it relates to the larger culture, so there. My point is that last week was bittersweet, and that some endings come too soon and others come too late, and most are false in some way. Wednesday night I found AK’s long-lost iPad Mini under the passenger seat of my car while looking for my own newly lost phone. When I found my phone, I texted her the good news. She replied, “Can we celebrate at the York?” I told her that I was feeling fried—literally and figuratively—from radiation. I hadn’t played the cancer card much in my seven months of treatment, so I decided I’d use it to get some extra rest between then and Friday, my last day of radiation. ...