CoronaE de Tucson

corona: crown; circles of light seen around a luminous body; plural form: coronae or coronas

vail: to doff one's hat in reverence/respect

How perfectly fitting. I live in Vail, Arizona. Yet Vail shares the same zip code with Corona de Tucson. Our neighborhood happens to be right near the border of Corona de Tucson, so around here they are nearly synonymous when mentioned in conversation. Though Vail was named after the rancher brothers, Edward and Walter, I'd like to acknowledge the above meaning of their family name.

This is the first year, since Grace has been in school, that she has been old enough and close enough to her school to walk or ride her bike alone. It was one of the reasons she was most excited to begin at this new school, despite her sadness at having to leave friends behind at Basis Tucson. It was a forty minute drive one way that we were happy to give up in favor of a school that is just over a mile away.

After walking for two weeks, Grace's new friend Luis invited her to start riding her bike with him, telling her she could lock her bike up with his. He lives a subdivision over so they agreed they would leave at the same time and just meet up on the way to school at some point.

A few days ago, her second day riding, after she had left for school, I made a phone call to another school in our district, Vail Academy, to decline the opening they had just offered the day before. It's a school that is about twenty minutes away by car that we had been considering, but that goes by a lottery system for new students trying to get in. One of the pluses is that they limit class sizes for her age-group (the largest in the K-12 school) to 28 students maximum (to account for siblings), 26 ideally. But now that we're over two weeks in, we know Grace is happy and well-adjusted to this closer school, her "home school." We saw no reason to pull her out and start over at what would've been her sixth new school in her short lifetime.

After that phone call, I noticed I had missed two calls from an unknown number and there was a text from the same number: Hi my name is erin...I'm with grace, she feel of her bike...She's ok but trying to get a hold of you

Leave it to my beautiful and anything BUT physically adept daughter, Grace, to wipe out on her second day of riding to school. She is graceful in spirit but her body is still trying to catch up.

When I immediately called back, Erin informed me that she'd been driving along, noticed a kid on a bike, but then when she went past and looked in her rearview mirror, the bike and the kid had disappeared. She said at first she thought she'd been hallucinating, it happened so fast, she even asked aloud, Wasn't there just a kid on a bike? Her sons weren't sure, but she knew something wasn't right, so this kind and caring woman looped back around and sure enough she spotted a little girl in the rocks trying to lift her bike. Grace.

Erin said another mom, at a nearby bus stop for the younger kids, had joined them with a first aid kit to help clean her up with antisepitc (don't you love these moms already?). Erin asked if I was nearby, but quickly added that she was willing to take Grace to school, bike and all, in her Acadia. She said she was pretty scraped up and should still stop by  the nurse's office to get cleaned and bandaged up better. She said she'd have Grace call me again once they were at the school.

Uhhh. I hesitated because I was nearby, but I was not dressed, I didn't have my contacts in, I didn't want to make them wait for me since I knew they'd already be late, and most mysteriously, I felt completely at ease with Erin's offer to take Grace which was, in itself, slightly confusing to me.

Erin then added that she totally gets it if I wasn't comfortable with her idea and if I'd rather come get her myself she'd wait with her. And truly, my gut had no qualms. And because Erin listened to her gut, I listened to mine and told her to go ahead and take her as long as Grace was okay with it.

Five minutes later, Grace called on Erin's cell to let me know she had signed in late at the school and that she was okay and didn't need me to come (but of course, I was dressed and ready to go by then). She passed the phone to Erin, who also guided her to nurse's office as we spoke, and told me for the second time what "a tough cookie" Grace was for not crying and holding it together so well for being so scraped up. She pointed out that they were not just the small rocks that she fell in, but the big jagged ones. She said Grace declined her offer to help her put her bike on the rack, and that she even voiced her concern of making her two boys late for school. Erin assured her the school would understand.

I told Erin that Grace's dad would get a kick out of her assessment of Grace being "a tough cookie" since he calls her a "drama queen" all the time. We joked about how our kids save the drama for us parents. But to Grace's credit, she really is mature. And tough, too. (I'd like to see how Joel handles having days of 102-105 degree fevers the way she does, almost like it's nothing. But that's another post. Grace and her fevers.)

After hanging up with Erin, I drove to see Grace while she was still in the nurse's office and found her smiling self-deprecatingly at her clutziness. She had some minor road rash on one forearm, pucture marks and bruises on each palm, one with a good-sized flap of skin torn up with debris under it, and various scrapes, basically more road-rash, on one knee which was already covered with a bandage. But overall she was doing so well. So, so well. All thanks to Erin and that other mom.

What if no one had stopped? I know it would've been a much more stressful morning for Grace. She worries about being late, always. She likes to be at least ten minutes early for school and not a minute later. She's always been that way, even though I can only remember her ever being late for school twice in her lifetime. So besides the fact that she would've been alone and hurt, she would be worried about getting to school on time as she tried to ride or walk the bike with her scrapes and bruises. What a way to start a morning for a ten year old kid who's still pretty new to a school and its teachers.

(It turns out Luis had been running late and did pass the moms with Grace, mumbling a shy hi to her, as he zoomed by to get to school. I know he would've stopped had she been alone still. He told her later in class that he'd thought one of the moms was hers.)

Having Erin and the still nameless mom there to help made a world of difference to Grace. (I tried to track the other mom down by going to that bus stop using Erin's description of her van and hair, but no luck. I will keep trying come Monday.) They were her guardian angels. Her day turned out bright and happy and she has a great story to tell of the kindness of strangers.

Thank you, Erin and First-Aid-Kit-Toting-Mom at the Desert Haven bus stop. We are deeply grateful.

Sunspots Revisited

This blog was started to help others see the brighter side of their lives. At first it was geared specifically for single parents, both divorced and still married, but with a spouse living very far away for a job, as was our situation for almost five years. I wanted to uplift them and show them they weren't alone. I wanted them to see that it's all in the point of view:

Imagine three people looking at a house. One is inside, one is in the front yard, and the other is in the backyard. They are all looking at the same house, yet their descriptions of that house will vary widely because of their POINT OF VIEW.

So,  I wrote about the benefits specific to being a single-parent. Nothing had changed. I was still a single parent with a husband who was only able to visit a few brief times per year, but I was putting a positive bent on everything I wrote about being a single-parent. After a time, I realized I would like to expand my audience to include...everyone. Why limit it to the single parents? So I changed the name to "Gina's Sunspots."

Yes, sunspots are actually dark areas on the sun, I know. I wanted to show people that though they may think their life is dark, look at the whole sun. It will change your life. A point of view can change what you see as your life. And because of that, you will draw happiness, contentment, fulfillment, joy into your life--just like the powerful magnetic fields of those sunspots. Sunspots in life are an opportunity to see how capable and tenacious you really are. Because you are. But so many of us wouldn't realize it without those difficult periods--those sunspots.

So whatever it is you are working through, or working on, keep at it. Don't give up. And remember to widen your lens and recognize the whole sun; you can't help but notice its true brilliance.

I Love This Place

I hear myself saying that a lot. And then I realize, Wow, I do. I love Tucson, (and Vail), Arizona. It still surprises me that I really live here and that I'm enjoying it so much.

When the kids and I came out here to live with Joel temporarily in the summer of 2010, it was summer in Tucson (think 110 degrees regularly) and it was not permanent. Also, we learned the foibles of apartment living with our bellowing beagle, Daisy: being land-locked, for one. She could never be left alone lest she hear a creek from the neighbor's floor boards and begin her incessant barking binge. Our neighbors informed us pretty quickly about that issue. She's always been a house-dog, un-used to hearing the voices and movements of others in our absence.

So now, we're renting a house in Vail. We have the best of both worlds: small town living at the foot of a mountain, surrounded by cattle range and more mountains, unobstructed by anything but the silhouette of a saguaro or an Italian cypress. We regularly spy the sharply contrasting coal and russet cattle grazing on dry grasses in the endless fields of cacti; and even the occasional coyotes with tawny, dust-colored coats trotting in twos across the sun-baked roads, so much like domestic dogs chiefs of themselves. And then, we listen to the twilight lowing of those longhorns and the timed yip-yap-yowling of our canine neighbors on their nightly hunt for food and fun.

On weekdays, Grace and I head into Tucson. Her school and her new community theater class is right near the heart of the city. Each morning and afternoon we see joggers, runners (think Kenyan speeds), walkers, speed walkers, walkers with babies and baby strollers, and besides all those walkers, are the ubiquitous bikers of Tucson. There are so many cyclists in this city, they have lanes on all the roads exclusively for them. And for all  those walkers? They have special crossing lights in addition to the normal "Walk/Don't Walk" signs; all they have to do is push a button, the traffic lights blink yellow, then turn red for the pedestrian to make their way across safely and conveniently. All public schools, even in the suburbs, have portable 15mph signs posted when school is in the first or last hour of session, and all cars obey the slower speed limits. I love this town!

In Warren, I felt so conspicuous in my Prius--like an alien in a spacecraft, so unusual was my environmentally conscious automotive choice. Here in Tucson, my car has found its people. They come in all colors and dress up in bumper stickers that have sayings like: "Keep Tucson Kind," "Whose Your Farmer?" "Tolerance" (with applicable religious symbols), "Create Art Not War," "Zombie Outbreak Response Team," and "Green Cabs for Blue Skies" (the taxi cabs are little bright green Priuses{I can't call them Prii}).

We moved here to be with Joel. But this place is chock-full of artists, poets, painters, musicians, students (and professors) of the Univerisity of Arizona; I love college towns and college students. I will never stop being a student myself and to have them so near is inspiring and makes me think of Nathan, too. This is the place for me.

In Case of Cattle in the Road Dial 9-1-1

Yay! I figured out how to access my blog again. It's been a long while.

After almost five years of living apart, Gracie and I are finally living in Arizona with Joel. Nathan is up in the U.P. for his first year at Michigan Tech...he graduated first in his class this past June--whoo-hoo, Nathan!--and is now studying civil engineering. He was  torn between whether to go for the engineering at Tech or go to CCS or U of M for art/design...in the end, he fell in love with the great outdoors of Houghton, Michigan. He's still not positive he made the right choice as far as area of study, but at least he's made great friends and loves the life up there. The kid is an artist at heart...and hey, an artistic eye will get him far in designing and building bridge-type structures, too, right? Yeah.

So we've been here since mid-August and I'm loving it. Grace loves it but really misses her friends in Michigan. She just turned ten and started the sixth grade, so it's a tough age for her to have to uproot, and a major school transition, but she's adjusted beautifully.

Yesterday, after dropping her off, I turned onto the road that leads up to our house and saw two  fuzzy young copper-colored cows moseying up the hill, seemingly to find their way back on to the wide-open range on the other side of the wire fencing. My first thought was that I should call 9-1-1, but then it wasn't really an emergency per se. It was a slower paced road, but it was hilly, and people did speed, if a car came at them from below, they might get hit. I didn't have my phone with me anyway. I wondered what the rancher's phone number was or how I would find out. I briefly toyed with the idea of pulling over to herd them toward the opening myself...hya! hya! waving my arms to make them go...no, that would just be too comical and dangerous; how would I get them to move that far without accidentally herding them further into the road?

It was only a minute to our house, I would text Joel to see what the standard procedure was for these matters.

He said to call the Pima County Sheriff. I did, but they told me (and very kindly transferred me) to dial 9-1-1 next time I see a cow in the road. The 9-1-1 operator said she had someone on the way. Whew! Disaster averted.

Since living here, that was actually my third encounter with cattle in the roadways. The other two already had ranchers and police there taking care of the situation. Such a vastly different place than Warren, Michigan.

Maracas in the Sky (Summer Sounds Revised)

I also did a version of this one in July of 2011, but I think I like how this one turned out better. From October 2011, the last installment of the-story-of-my-life-in-one-hundred-words-or-less-assignment:



Maracas in the sky, I call them. They play their music with the whispering of the trees or in the heavy heat of a breeze-less day. Always, there is sun and warmth to accompany their continual concert of hypnotic buzzing and maraca-like harmonics. It is the steady, bewitching song of the cicada that has the power to soothe my soul and transport me back to my childhood summers in Michigan--camping with my grandparents, lazing in the hammock while reading Nancy Drew Mysteries; collapsing onto the cool, fragrant grass with ten other kids after a lively game of freeze-tag; walking home from Warren Pool in quiet contentment with my best friend, the flip-flopping of our shoes in rhythm to those maracas in the sky. It is in these hushed moments that our minds acknowledge the lulling call of the cicada and the renewing sway of their good vibrations.

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment

As I lay on the couch, cocooned under a light blanket, in the throes of shivering feverish shudders, I argued with myself about reaching up from beneath that shelter to grab a heavier blanket. I wanted it so badly; it was draped across the top of the same couch, yet my fear of the intensely painful symptoms resulting from any movement, stopped me. I argued, justified, and taunted until finally, I just did it. New waves of nausea and misery wracked my body...but in a few moments it was over...and I laughed. Many of us do this everyday: afraid to move on from a situation, even though we know we will be better off. We stay--wishing, obsessing, arguing--but in the end, we can only help ourselves (and oftentimes, others involved) and know that the pain it causes to move on will pass. And then we will fly.

Do Your Thing

It is that thing that is closest to love, making you do things you would not ordinarily do. It is a different form of love. It is passion and joy. When you are doing it, you lose all sense of time; you forget to eat and sleep. It is that thing you have done since you were a child. If you have a child, they have told you that you should be doing it. You can't stop thinking about it even if you tried because it keeps coming up in your daily life: in movies, books, conversations, and most amazingly, in the people you meet. It is that thing that makes others secretly think you are crazy for giving up a stable, decently paying job in order to pursue your dream of doing that one thing. For me, it is writing, writers, and butterflies and my life is transformed.