branches up, roots down

My son spent his summer rising at 5am to get to football practice by 6am. When September came, he went to practice every weekday afternoon until 6pm and sometimes on Saturday mornings as well. Thanksgiving has always been a favorite holiday for him. He usually goes with his father to Oregon and hangs out with beloved cousins. This Thanksgiving, he stayed home. Alone. His team had made the championship for the first time in forty years, and even on Thanksgiving morning, they were on the field, practicing. I watched all this with parental wonder. I don’t get sports, period. I spent most of my P.E. hours in high school feigning cramps, and I associate football especially with a whole bunch of things I am against. Like running into people and hurting them. I went to his games when he was a freshman and sophomore, patiently waiting for this reactionary phase of being raised by a Pagan - activist - therapist - artist - mom to be over. I imagined that by junior year he might find t...

I was teaching at witchcamp in England almost two years ago when calling home I learned that. my housemate was going to Crawford , Texas to help publicize that a mother of a son killed in Iraq had started a peace encampment outside the president’s home. By the time I got home, Cindy Sheehan was a name that everyone knew, as well as the name of her son, Casey. On Memorial Day, Cindy Sheehan once again made news, this time by publicly withdrawing and putting up for sale “ Camp Casey ”, a place than several of my friends have traveled to. I’d been thinking some about Cindy Sheehan the week before and about all the other mothers who have lost children in war. In that week, I’d been feeling how difficult it is to let go of children and also about how the direct effects and cost of the war had crept just a tad closer to my life. I have a fifteen year old son who also has the name Casey. Our life here in San Francisco can sometimes be at a far remove from the rest of the...