One Small Leak for Mankind

A variety of things are happening. Our pool sprung a leak. My mom's brain sprung a leak. Our daughter is graduating during a pandemic.

The mom and pool thing are equally stressful. The mom is all the way across the country so going to get her means I have to go all the way across the country in a fairly old van with by then 3 teenagers. The pool has been losing water for a few weeks and no, hot tub fix it guy, it is not evaporation. I know my pool, man. Today after going to Emma's graduation recording speech on the lawn in front of her school, with her in a cap and gown, I came home and dug up the pipe hoping it was the one leaking since it was the ONLY ONE above the ground that wouldn't require a jackhammer which I CAN'T DO we all know the louder the tools, the more the money is flying out everywhere. I dug up that pipe I could see using an old rusty hatchet that I found under the bushes where I guess it had last been used to scalp someone during Lewis and Clark's adventure. I first dug with a big fat screwdriver that no one was using obviously in the shed, but why use that when you can use a rusty tomahawk? Why do I have no little shovel? I dug out the fucker in a DRESS that I wore for Emma's graduation speech because there's where I was, I found the hatchet and my hands were THERE already.

The dirt kept getting wetter and I was thinking PLEASE LET THERE BE A LEAK HERE and I didn't chop my fingers off and there was the leak, just down a few hundred feet kidding just like whatever that measures, right there, like right down there. I feel huge relief. Now I just have to convince my friend Tim who is having to move out because my mom is coming to take his place, I have to say hey while we're kicking you out and making you move all your stuff, could you um fix this like you fix everything else. We'll see how that goes. I found the SOURCE. Do you know how big this is when you have 20,000 gallons of water, every drop that you're (as the farm mom) responsible for, and there is an end in sight. Do you see how big that is? And I did not get my dress dirty.

My mom's brain leak, well, that's a bigger thing and I don't think Tim can fix that. But it's no big deal, just drive 3000 miles, empty out her whole house, and drive back, all in two weeks because kids have work and school. But the good news, who knows how it will all go. And good news, the kids have never seen the country. And good news, we have a home to come home to. And good news, moms are important. So one thing at a time. If you can find where the leak is coming from, it does take more than just you to stop it up. Tribe logic. Tribes matter. I am not alone. I hope.

Then Emma. Oh man, when Nathan graduated on that big football field at sunset two years ago, all of us were crying. It was so beautiful, all the graduates milling around, feeling celebrated, feeling accomplished, feeling excited about college and the next growing up years. These are the years, the ones where all the colors start to get filled in, you can see yourself and who you are becoming after your parents set you off to sail.

Emma said can you come with me to record my speech for the graduation they're going to do online. She'll be in a cap and gown. So this is this year. Just Emma, in an empty school on a Wednesday at 10:30 am in May, when she'd usually be in Stats class, and there's only four kids here, recording their speeches on the front lawn. Under big lights and bounce boards and reading from a teleprompter. In front of this majestic school where she danced and did pole vault and shredded every math class she could tear apart with her vicious insatiable math brain. Where she stood on a bridge overlooking the basketball gym at lunch with her friends so she could spy on the cute boy she liked. Like all of us did, all that time in high school and it's ending so differently.

We walked across the big green field, the tiny just us, and that's where I started tearing up remembering Nathan's big night there and here's this weird time. But Emma recorded that speech and I quick called her dad and sister to come up because it felt like this was the graduation. We watched her cheerful, proud self talk spiritedly to the camera that would later be all of her classmates watching online next month. She made us cry because no matter the dumb virus, she is here and she is incredible. She is graduating, she will be at college by the beach, she has a mask her uncle made on his sewing machine, and it matches her Verdugo colors. She despite the weirdness, is weirdly  
         still perfect.

Maybe things don't look the same and that bothers us who like things to look the same and we deserve it all, we deserve exactly what everyone else gets, all through history.
But we got this moment on the grass watching her, which is all we ever get anyway.

We will drive by the school on the day before virtual graduation, and all the kids will wear their cap and gowns and we'll celebrate them and decorate them and yell for them and it might be shorter, just a loop around the school, waving at teachers, all in a line, but her friends will be there who have been there all four years, and it will be a new thing never before done and never expected ever and we will laugh because
that is Emma, and her whole life with us