So ok, I was doing what I usually do when I sit down to write, which is to focus on anything other than writing. Distractions and Diversions, which are among the Sirens of writers, called out to me with their tempting songs.

I write from home, in my kitchen, or more often these days, at my dining table in the living room; something I hope will change someday, to head off the Sirens. All around there are things, other things, in the moment urgent and pressing things, that I could be doing rather than writing. Laundry to be sorted. Decluttering the table where it seems I spend most of my waking hours when not at the office; it can really no longer be called a dining table; more like a repository of things that can’t be discarded, but which have not yet found a home. Mucking out the bathroom.

All of which could be ignored. Even though I talk to the pile of laundry with apologies and promises; even while I look with dismay and strain to find the wood underneath the detritus of suburban middle aged life on the dropleaf; the magazines and lipsticks found in pockets and the coffee cups and the earrings taken off and forgotten.

Not the trash though. Though silent, the trash awaited me in the kitchen. I felt its rebuke as I sat straining to find a title for what I wanted to share with you tonight. Take out the trash and start fresh for the week. Free yourself of the discards of life these past seven days.

But if I do that, I argued with the silent bins, if I do that, I will find other things to do and then it will be time for bed, and I will not have written a word! I know you Siren; I know that once it starts with trash, it will end with sweeping, and then hours will go by with a cleaner house, perhaps, but still a blank page. But I knew, behind the closed door was a chore that must be done. So I groaned up out of the chair with the screen pixel free, and answered the call of the kitchen.

And went outside, as one must eventually do, I am told; Outside. More than just the walkway from the front door to the truck. Outside to the land that I steward as much as I can. Outside.

The rains in San Diego have revived the property; it’s green; green like the savannahs of my African ancestors; green like the moors and lochs of Wales and Scotland and Ireland–my European ancestors; green like the fields of the lowlands of South Carolina and the ground of Louisiana and Arkansas; of my Native ancestors. A few months ago, I think I told you about my finally having the land cleared; acknowledging it was a task bigger than myself. It had not been fully done for years before then. My then husband was the one who undertook the acre. Now though, cleared and bright green, it is beautiful– the perfect backdrop to the ramshackle yet still sturdy house I hurry into and out of to do what I do best, think and read and write and think and read and write. Often without even noticing the feral beauty of the place I have called home for nineteen years

Today, I thank the Sirens. I thank the Siren Of Garbage Detail, because it got me Outside.

My trash cans were on their last legs. Looking at them and finally admitting that was a big deal. Trash cans were a Robert thing, along with clogged drains and going under the house to mitigate mice and ants. Like clearing tumbleweeds. Like shoring up gates. Like dipsticks and all the various oils that keep cars moving.

Two and a half years ago, when I lost Robert, I went into a mode as feral as I allowed the land to become. It was about survival, not thriving. Who cares about lavender and wildflowers and patio cushions and citronella. It was about rank survival; doing the minimum and getting the minimum; about feeling like an interloper on this land. About scurrying in like a squatter so the neighbors wouldn’t see.

There was a compost pile on the west side of the property, which sat next to a sickly orange tree, that had never borne fruit. I never went over there; the house faces south and north and the driveway is east. It was turned by Bob now and again, to make compost which would make for adding with good soil for the farming we had bought the acre to do.

I thought it would be my legacy, this. Reviving a dormant property, planting new fruit trees for the North side; raised beds for the South fields where we would plant and self sustain. But.

But Robert was sick. He was sick when we bought it, but a managable sick we thought, a sick which would lessen once he got his hands in dirt; soil lodged in fingernails; a neck which would redden with the sun. But.

Robert got sicker; the strain of responsibility and obligation he felt; for me, for the land, for the hoped for children who would run around barefoot and squealing, even for the dog that loved him. It came to a head, and kept relentlessly coming, in various ways for another 17 years, until he left me and the land and yet another dog who loved him alone.

Not eight months after his final illness at home, I launched Lace on Race. During the time he got sicker, we were also contending with a country also afflicted, personified by a man who has now been proven to also be sicker than anyone first thought.

Surrounded by a property going feral and barren, still there was a land, a larger land, also barren and growing more feral by the moment, I felt a stirring to gestate. Not in the ecosystem of Tarbox Street which seemed overwhelming. But in the land I loved, populated by the people I loved, all of whom were hurting, and scarred, and scared–terrified, actually, and for good reason. I was scarred and scared too. By the events in my personal little corner of the world, but also for the larger world outside my narrow borders.

I had given up the dream of fruit trees and raised beds and lavender and sage in the walkways. I had given up on watching sunsets with a hand holding my own. I had given up on laughing children making mudpies.

But I had not given up on gestation. I had not given up on legacy. I thought about making a little fortress here for myself. I thought of contracting more and more till there was only a worn path from me to the truck to my grey cubicle and back again.

But. Another But.

I knew that my life, my seemingly barren life on my seemingly barren land could still gestate. Could still nurture growth. That my pregnant mind could create something that all of these last year’s losses and sorrows had been preparing me for. I knew I could take all of the dust and trash and discards of a life I would never have and make compost. Compost that would nourish others’ fields and minds and hearts.

I knew I had to hold my own hand. And then hold the hands of others. I knew that any new green in my barren soul would only happen with others who walked what I now know to call Lumpy Crossings.

And so I pressed the button that took Lace on Race live.

Almost two years later. The compost is nourishing. We in this community have taken our discards: our schemas, our acting out, our false narratives, our relational detritus of shame and grandiosity, and have thrown them in the pile. And we have grunted as we have turned with our new tools, gaining callous and muscle and sweat along the way. We have held our own hands, and each others’ as we watch the sunset on the formerly neglected West side.

I am so proud of us. And I do not want to stop. I want to walk and sweat and breathe the clean smell of compost for as long as you will allow me to do.

With you.

They say feminist media is dying, or at least morphing. In this article lamenting the demise of Feministing, along with other feminist and social justice oriented websites, they talk about how issues that once seemed radical are now mainstreamed. I disagree. I believe the novel, the singular, the new lens, the pivot still exists. That issues have been diluted and co-opted and does not in any way mean they have disappeared. They have just lain dormant.

What we do here at Lace on Race is to nurture the dormant, the otherwise unseen and unacknowledged, in the world, and more importantly, and more crucially, in ourselves, so we can break down and rise back up, loamy and fertile, and allow ourselves to become and and then to spread compost.

So

Not an hour ago, I went to the West side and looked. Really looked. At the green fertile fields. At the compost pile the Bautistas made new again.

At the once barren orange tree. Two years ago, it was sticks. Today, the leaves are thick and green, heavy with fruit. Some almost on the ground. I will reach on my toes for the topmost ones. Fruit in December. Good fruit, which i will pick and eat and share.

We do good work here, all of us, as we gather on the West side of the property. Tonight, I watched the sunset with all of you, and wept.

Lumpy Crossings lead to Orange Trees.

Let’s keep baring, and bearing, good fruit.

Support the work of Lace on Race.

This is the Ask for December.

As a grateful Thank You to current active Sustainers, and also for those who are willing to walk with us as Sustainers through 2020, to those who have carried and watered us without fail and with resilient resolve, we are beyond tickled to actually offer you a gift!

Lace’s poem ‘God Is A Black Woman’ is being readied into a gift book, made manifest by my brother by another mother in Houston. He is a wonderful brother and also an amazing graphic artist. I saw the proofs and wept. My baby brother gets me, gets us, and has borne great fruit for our community.

They will ship early this next year, regardless of if we meet our December 21 goal.

If you want to be included in this, message us and let us know, or just fill out the Sustainer form to commit, or to re-commit, to keeping Lace on Race alive and thriving this month and through the next year.

We will be taking the risk of boosting this post for maximum reach. If you see this more than once, thanks in advance for your graciousness.