Love
Is this thing on?
Hello? Is this thing on? Does this blog still work?
I’m coming to you live with a tiny baby on my chest, which seems like the perfect time to start chronicling my life again. After all, I’m going to need a place to put all these adorable pictures.
So, here we are!
The baby was born last week. And I just changed my first diaper. That means I missed about the first 50 diapers of my baby’s life. (I KNOW. I can’t believe how many they go through either.)
I’d like to thank Devin and my mom for being an excellent team. Basically, my job so far is feeding and holding the baby, and their job is to do everything else (including feeding me and retrieving little lost socks from the floor — how do people keep socks on newborn feet?). They are working so hard, and I feel infinitely lucky to get to focus on feeding the baby and recovering from childbirth… and COVID. The baby and I both tested positive, which has been hard, though thankfully, only I have symptoms, and they are mild. We’re praying that remains the case.
And now for some impressive stats:
The baby weighed 8 lbs. 10 oz. at birth, measured approximately 20 inches in length, and was promptly declared the world’s best baby in the whole wide world. (We know the title is repetitive, but that’s what the trophy says, so we’ll take it ; )
Devin and I have been showered with love and support from family and friends. We’re experiencing the wonders of a meal train (thanks to our incredible friends Alisa & Michael!), a cloth diaper service (thanks to a whole bunch of people because that thing is not cheap!), and living with a full-time mamá y abuelita (thanks to my mom who is enduring the fall and getting ready for winter even though she hates the cold — side note: I just looked up and noticed she is wearing a Playa del Carmen t-shirt today, haha).
Living in a new city with a new baby and lots of new challenges is an adventure. I’m excited to try to write some of it down and to share it with people who love us.
All right, that’s all I have for now, but I’m not sure how to end this post. How about this? Let’s pretend “Closing Time” just started playing over the speaker system while the house lights slowly turn on. Oh no, here comes a dude with a broom. Bye!
Immigrant Solidarity
Recently I listened to a news story about immigration on This American Life. It examined the vast resources that are being sent to help Ukrainian asylum-seekers who are being welcomed into the United States with open arms. Meanwhile, just a short distance away, people seeking asylum from Mexico, Haiti, and countries in Central America wait for years in squalid, dangerous conditions. They struggle even to have their asylum claims heard and live under the threat of gun violence and kidnapping, with no support from the U.S. or Mexican governments.
I’ve lived my life on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, and I study immigration, so this contrast was not new to me. My whole life I’ve seen how immigrants are treated differently based on the color of their skin and their country of origin.
But this news story was a necessary reminder of why I do the work I do. It reified my commitment to change the systems that value some lives more than others. Most importantly, it reminded me to take actions that help people who are trapped in these systems now, even as I work for structural changes that will make things better in the future.
That’s why I joined the Immigrant Solidarity Committee. We’re a small group of volunteers focused on supporting people who are often ignored by other immigrant-serving organizations, like LGBTQ+, Central American, and Caribbean migrants.
We’re committed to helping individuals from these groups get through the asylum process with dignity and safety.
This year, our fundraiser is focused on raising money to pay for rent and legal fees for the guests we support as they transition from ICE detention to fuller and freer lives in the United States. We cannot do this work without your support, and all of the money raised will go directly to help migrants.
I’m donating, and I hope you will, too!
Love,
Kristy
Anne
Today we celebrate a fantastic feminist and friend — always willing to listen to others and never afraid to speak up for what’s right. Her name is Anne, and she just happens to be Devin’s mom!
Since knowing her, I’ve seen her protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol, march on Washington, speak at county meetings, knock on doors for many causes, and phonebank for Elizabeth Warren.
In everyday life, she is soft-spoken and reserved, but her actions are loud. She is someone who lives by her convictions.
I’m grateful to know her and to learn from her example.
Love,
Kristy
Reflections on Easter
//THEN
When I was growing up, I waited for Easter Mass the way I waited for Christmas or summer vacation. At our church, when you walked in, the sanctuary would be dark to represent the tomb where Jesus’s body lay. Then, a huge low drum would start beating like a heartbeat while a woman named Sharon Castleberry would sing, “Roll! Roll! Roll that stone away!” in a booming voice. As she sang, the lights came up slowly, like a sunrise, symbolizing the miracle of the Resurrection. I still get goosebumps when I remember.
The church was festooned with gold and pastel fabrics. The pews were two or three times as full as usual. And everyone wore their “Easter best” (which consisted of brand new dresses in light colors or crisp new slacks with jackets and a lot of hair spray or hair gel. Not a hair out of place). It was clear that this was a Special Occasion. We were there to contemplate the miracle at the center of our faith.
//NOW
As an adult, I no longer go to Catholic Mass. I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, where Easter is still one of the biggest holidays (along with Christmas), but not everyone wears their “Easter best,” unless that definition includes someone’s best protest t-shirt (SAVE THE PLANET) or an Easter hat with a button pinned to it that says something like I’M ALREADY AGAINST THE NEXT WAR. It’s possible we’ll hear a Mary Oliver poem about nature as part of the service, and nothing is likely to be as theatrical as the Easter Masses I remember from my childhood.
I don’t think The Resurrection is the miracle at the center of our faith, though we do talk about Jesus a lot.
It’s just that we tend to focus on miracles that might be considered less spectacular. You know those people who say things like “Jesus was a radical socialist feminist”? That’s us.
We talk about how he said, “Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Shelter the homeless. Comfort the sick. Visit the imprisoned.”
And to me, it seems absolutely incredible that he convinced other people to believe the same. I mean, have you ever convinced people that everyone is equal in the eyes of God and that they should drop everything they are doing –– their jobs, their quests for social status and success, their mundane challenges and distractions to preach the gospel of love? The older I get, the bigger that miracle seems. It knocks me over and makes me cry. It takes my breath away.
Once Reverend Ana Levy-Lyons, our minister in Brooklyn, preached a sermon about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. She said that often this is interpreted as a magic-trick miracle in which Jesus asks people for some fish and loaves of bread and “Ta-dah!” he makes a feast to feed the masses. What’s the moral of this story? God will provide.
It’s a comforting moral, but Reverend Ana doesn’t read the story that way. Instead, she considers that story to be about a group of people afraid that they don’t have enough to eat. Some people have bread. Others have fish. And lots of people have no food at all.
The people who have food are clinging to it desperately. They are afraid that if they share, they will starve. They are willing to eat nothing but bread for the rest of their lives, instead of taking the chance to trade a morsel of bread for a morsel of fish from their neighbors. And vice versa for the people who have fish. They are willing to watch people in their community die from hunger. They shake their heads and shrug their shoulders, “At least it’s not us.”
And then comes Jesus who says, “Bring whatever food you have, and let’s use it to feed everyone. Don’t squirrel it away for you and your family. Share.”
Can you imagine how people responded?
I can. I think just like them.
“What is Jesus thinking? I’m not giving up my food! There’s not enough to go around! We are in a food crisis, and I have to look out for me and mine even if that means that others will suffer. Those people are not my responsibility.”
Yet somehow, Jesus doesn’t get laughed out of town. He convinces the crowd. They go to their houses and bring back all of their food, and they wait while Jesus makes fish sandwiches. And lo and behold, there are enough fishwiches to go around! Everybody eats. Nobody starves. They are saved by generosity and compassion and trust in each other.
These are the miracles I like to contemplate because they have the lessons I need to learn.
I used to ask God to make miracles happen in my life. “Please, God, do this for me!” “Please, God, help me get this.” “If you do this for me, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.” (That kind of thing.)
Now I ask God to help me want less. I ask God to help me do more. I ask God to help me give to others even when I want to keep everything I have for myself.
I pray for things that seem smaller and less majestic than the parting of the Red Sea. But in my life, these are the challenges I struggle with, over and over again.
I think if I were pitching my current religion to my younger self, she would not be impressed. She’d want to bask in the magic of Easter, to think about Jesus and wonder “How did he do that?”
At the very least, she’d like a big drum booming in a darkened sanctuary. The lights coming up as the music swelled.
I can imagine telling her about the less-magical interpretation of the loaves and fishes story and seeing her face draw a blank. “That’s it? You think it was just people sharing? You call that a miracle?”
I don’t know if I could explain my faith in a way that would make sense to her, but I hope that maybe it makes sense to you.
Love,
Kristy
P.S. Unitarian Universalists are notoriously bad at evangelizing (maybe you’ve heard the jokes?), but I’m trying to get better at it because it really is one of the most rewarding parts of my life. If you’re curious about my church, here’s a link to check it out: https://www.fuub.org/home/ The service is at 11 ET/10 CT every Sunday in Brooklyn or on Zoom. I can send you a link if you’re interested!
P.P.S. If these words sound familiar, it’s because I posted a similar essay last year. I wanted to post a shorter version this year.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WAS NOT A NICE GUY*
Volunteering at soup kitchens and painting schools is great, but that’s not how Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the world.
The United States declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday in 1983. Since then, it has come to be celebrated as a “Day of Service,” which usually translates to volunteering in one’s community doing nice things like painting murals, picking up trash, or donating blood.
These are in themselves good things to do, but to associate MLK with volunteering is to misrepresent his life and his legacy.
Dr. King was not a volunteer. He wasn’t a kindly Santa Claus figure who wearily sighed, “Can’t we all just get along?”
He was a revolutionary who demanded structural change.
He did not just “have a dream.” He acted on his convictions, risking––and ultimately, losing––his life to challenge the status quo of injustice. He led marches and strikes and went to jail for breaking unfair laws.
And we have every reason to believe that, had he been allowed to live, he would have continued protesting racism, war, and economic exploitation.
So, what does it mean to “celebrate” MLK Day? What if, instead of volunteering, we read, listened, and reflected on his words and whether we have achieved the future he imagined? (For instance, how is it possible that some states celebrate segregationist leaders on the same day as Martin Luther King, Jr.?) What if we expected the country to live up to what Dr. King dreamed and demanded? And what if we took action to fix the ways in which it doesn’t?
Over the past five years, I’ve seen this interpretation of the holiday gain traction. This year, members of Dr. King’s family are calling on us to use MLK Day as a Day of Action for Voting Rights.
- We can do this by calling our senators and demanding that they eliminate the filibuster and pass the John R. Lewis Freedom to Vote Act. Dial 1-888-408-2349 to be connected with your senator.
(How is the filibuster related to voting rights? Learn more here and here. What’s in the Freedom To Vote Act? Learn more here.)
*About the title of this post: I thought of this after reflecting on how challenging injustice is not “nice” or “polite” behavior. Activism requires confronting injustice and making “good trouble” to challenge “the way things are.” Dr. King was willing to stand up for his beliefs. He angered and inconvenienced both people in power and incrementalists who agreed with him but believed we should “wait for things to get better in due time.” That is what I mean when I say he was not a nice guy. In the face of injustice, I don’t believe any of us should be “nice.”
Note: I adapted this post from a blog post I wrote on MLK Day in 2017.
Home Video, December 2021
My cousin Ana Karen sent me this video she filmed when her family came over a few weeks ago. Usually, smartphone videos seem different from the home videos of my childhood –– back when all the moms had a big videocamera glued to their right eye on special occasions –– but this one feels like the big VHS tapes of my cousins and me that we would re-watch around the holidays.
I can imagine returning to watch this video, over and over again, with my sobris Nolito and Dahlia to remember what this time in our life was like. It’s an instant treasure. ¡Mil gracias, AK!
Letter from Victoria
Ten years ago, I became Tía Kiki and wrote a letter to my sobri Victoria on this blog. This year she wrote one to me. It is the nicest letter I’ve ever gotten, and it reminds me of the coolest part of being a tía: first, you love the babies, and then, they love you back. Logically, I understand that this pattern is key to human survival, but to experience it first-hand is incredible. I feel lucky beyond words.
.
2020 in Review
I wrote this in a notebook on the 2nd of January (2021) and then packed away the notebook and didn’t find it until many months later, but I love to uphold personal traditions, so here I am, typing it up in November. I learned a lot of hard lessons in 2020, and I worry I might forget.
What I Will Remember from 2020
THE PARTIES
- Going to give a hug to another volunteer at the closing party of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign office in Madison, Wisconsin. The startled look on his face. The way I laughed it off and hugged him anyway. He was older and started worrying about COVID long before anyone else I knew. That memory haunted me the rest of the year.
- Dancing in my living room at my birthday party. The house so full I had a hard time making sure I’d said hello to everyone. Two of my friends bonding over something from their youth and one of them sneaking away to cry in the corner. I checked on her and she said, “I’m fine. I just need a minute.” I thought about all the little private moments at parties. The ones we see and the ones we miss.
- The theme of my party was 2010–2020: Hits of the Decade. I made a playlist with everyone’s favorite songs from the ’10s, but the living room didn’t really become a dance floor until someone put on a Bad Bunny song so new that nobody knew all the lyrics. Then, we were all dancing to Selena in a circle. A White friend of mine laughing nervously, unsure if she was moving her feet correctly. I wanted to say “You are!” The best way to dance to Tejano music is like this: going around and around in a circle, everyone shuffling their feet in the same direction. It’s magic the way you feel your body getting in sync with everyone else’s. Hearts thumping to the same rhythm. Heads nodding to the same beat.
- The music kept changing after that. Cumbias y rancheras from the ‘90s. Los Angeles Azules. I felt myself transported to a party in Mexico –– someone’s wedding, I think. I could imagine the couples dancing, the pre-teen sobrinos giggling on the edge of the dance floor, little kids asleep on chairs that their parents had pushed together as makeshift cots to buy themselves a little more time. Just one more song. Just one more song.
- I thought about the power of music. The way my friend’s bluetooth speaker made this snowy night feel like a memory of home.
- It’s funny, but I don’t remember the cake. It was my birthday, so there had to be cake, right? I do remember saying goodbye as the last guests trickled out and thinking, “More parties. This year we’ll have more parties.”
THE PANDEMIC
- The shame that burned my face and clamped tight around my throat a couple of weeks later when I realized how reckless it had been to have a birthday party at all. Learning terms like “community spread,” “droplet vs. airborne transmission,” “safer at home,” and “together apart.” Becoming convinced that the most important thing was to follow the guidance of public health experts in order to save lives. Remembering that I didn’t always know that I should do this and trying to stay patient while waiting for everyone as privileged as I am to realize that the sacrifices being asked of us were necessary and worthwhile. Waiting. And waiting.
- Learning to be roommates with my mom and Devin as 2 weeks stretched into 5 months and we bickered over how to wash the dishes, what movies to watch next, and how often to eat kale.
- Becoming weirdly fanatical about going on long walks with Chloe the dog and not missing the neighborhood farmers’ market.
- The horror of watching public officials and corporate executives put profits over people’s safety. The horror of realizing that most of us had become numb to mass casualty deaths, even when we could have prevented those deaths.
- Sobbing quietly to Devin, hoping my mom couldn’t hear. Saying over and over, “But I need to see my family. I always go home. That is who I am.” Typing out long messages on the family WhatsApp explaining why we shouldn’t get together and begging all my aunts and cousins to stay apart, even though what I wanted more than anything was to be there, breaking the rules with them.
- The strain of forcing myself to act rationally for nine and a half months.
- Logging out and staying off social media because I couldn’t handle all the restaurant–party–vacation photos interspersed with death announcements and pleas from exhausted doctors and nurses interspersed with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and unfounded natural cures for COVID.
- Wondering if I was overreacting and checking COVID statistics only to realize that things were even worse than I thought. Again. And again.
- The miracle of realizing that my wish of being a better tía who sees her sobris all the time had come true. Even if it was on Zoom.
- Feeling the giddiness that I only get after throwing a good party after logging off the birthday Zoom for my cousin Alex and how proud I was to have planned it.
- The perspective I gained from the pandemic and how fearless it made me in other parts of my life.
“Want to paddleboard all by yourself on a big lake even though you’re not a very good swimmer?”
“I’m in.”
“Want to learn to drive even though you’ve always been too scared?”
“Yup.”
“Want to lead national Zoom calls to get out the Latinx vote in the election even though you hate public speaking?”
“Definitely.”
- Feeling my home transform into a space station and learning to do everything in one place: “Welcome to my home/office/fitness studio/phone-bank central/classroom/movie theater.” Leaving the house felt like going on a space walk.
- Learning to appreciate in-person human interactions so much that an hour spent in a park with friends felt as luxurious and restorative as a weekend trip.
- The sadness of wanting to hug the people I love and invite them in, instead of standing awkwardly on the porch and sidewalk. Knowing it was the right thing to do but feeling unspeakably cruel.
- Reflecting on how I process information and make decisions and feeling like a scientist for the first time in my life.
- Remembering my January trip to Phoenix and feeling like it was a dream.
- Becoming someone who wears her hair in a ponytail almost every day.
- Knowing what my values and priorities are more clearly than ever before. Trying to be congruent.
- The gift of practicing gratitude.
- Turning to Devin and saying “Can you believe we aren’t sick of each other yet?” and feeling lucky every morning when I realized we’d get to spend another day together.
- Having the best date of my life: walking 3 miles to see Christmas lights in the snow, talking about anything, everything, and nothing. Coming home to our apartment, turning on the twinkle lights, and staying up all night.
- Baking dozens and dozens of different chocolate chip cookies and discovering a cardinal rule for myself: never brown the butter!
- Becoming one of those people who makes dinner with whatever they have in the kitchen.
- Watching my first live-streamed funeral and wishing it would be my last.
- Feeling older and younger than ever before.
This one goes out to Bob
You know how sometimes you’ll say something like, “Thank you for making me this present! It’s perfect, and I love it” and the person who made it will respond by saying, “Oh, it was nothing” (even though they clearly put a lot of time and effort into it)?
Well, that’s how the Midwesterners I know respond to every compliment. The Midwesterners I know have elevated the art of deflecting compliments to an Olympic sport.
I’ve spent years trying to decipher whether giving compliments is good or bad because it seems like every time I do, the person being complimented feels obligated to put themselves down, and then I try to convince them to be proud of themselves, and they insist they’re not special, and on and on, until I think we both walk away from the interaction feeling a little dizzy.
When I realized that deflecting compliments is a SPORT, however, suddenly everything made sense. Here are the rules for winning: the quicker and more self-deprecating you can be in response to a compliment, the more points you get. To win, leave your opponent (the compliment-giver) speechless.
I know someone who will be a gold medalist as soon as this sport is ratified by the IOC. He is lightning fast and able to deflect any compliment, big or small, expected or unexpected, day or night.
Take this interaction for example…
Me: This lasagna is literally the best lasagna I’ve ever had.
Future Gold Medalist: Well, I packed up the leftovers for you, so you’ll be sick of it soon enough.
Now, what are you supposed to say to that?
There’s really nothing you can say, and that’s why he’s the undisputed world champ (but don’t tell him that!).
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