Porous.

A year ago or so, a woman I didn't know wrote to me to ask if I would be interested and willing to be the poet in a summer camp in a school district a couple of counties south of here. The Poet? "Sure!" I said.

There were a bunch of things I did not factor in to that "Sure!" To wit:

• other, bigger grant I was also nominally a person of interest in/on/wherein/what have you. We hadn't yet been awarded this grant, but still.
• there was big life-altering medical stuff happening in my family.
• I had a book coming out--whatever that means.

The key here is, I didn't factor that stuff in. I just said yes. 

I'm sure you're ahead of me here, but a few weeks ago, I heard back from the woman. They got the grant. Was I, perchance, still available? 

Here's the part where I talk about my conception of time:

Time is infinitely subdividable into increments which can contain, potentially and approximately, three times the amount of stuff you think you can get done, and actually, twice the amount of stuff you can get done, if you don't mind a little bit of sloppiness and stress-induced forgetfulness and if sleep doesn't actually matter to you whatsoever.

I realize that this sounds like I'm saying that, through application of this theory of time, I get twice as much done as other people. But what I'm actually saying is, the sloppiness, forgetfulness, and sleep-deprivation you see me exhibit is the side-effect of a conception of time that is, quite frankly, inadvisable. 

Flash forward to this week, when I drove to points south each day, Monday through Thursday, for a morning with young people--first through twelfth graders--to write poetry. I said to one of my colleagues, "I've had the drive south and back again every day this week to consider my sins." We laughed, ha ha ha, because clearly what I meant was, don't ever do that again, LISA. But if that's the lesson that life was dealing out to me, via a lengthy drive forth and back each day, pray tell why I found myself feeling bereft today, when I realized I would not be working with these kids again? 

Today, everything went pretty well. The little girl, probably a first grader, who wanted nothing to do with poetry writing, was happy to dictate to me, so I could transcribe, an acrostic based on her own name.

"What's an H word?" I asked. "Huh huh huh?"

"Honey!" she said, while playing with three rather hazardous looking unbent paper clips, which she was imagining as characters.

"I have two names, Josh and Joshua," another little one told me.

"Which name do you like better?" I asked him.

"Josh," he said, with a tiny smile.

Before the various rotations of the summer camp started today, I arrived to see a part of circle time. This camp is located in a community with strong Native heritage, so upon arrival, the kids all took part in hoop dancing, or grass dancing, or fancy dancing, or jingle dancing. The littlest ones were the happiest to explain these various dances to me, showing me a little bit of their footwork and the positions in which they held their arms.

"You also keep nodding your head," one boy told another boy, who was showing me how you tapped your feet for the grass dance. They all nodded their heads.

Today, the woman in charge was showing the children how to put up a girl's hair in a traditional Navajo bun. One girl knelt while another girl and a boy helped the woman bind the hair with a tie, then secure it. The woman explained that putting the hair up was a way of showing respect for traditional ceremonies, such as dances, and that different tribes might have different traditions, for both men and women. I watched as the bigger kids paid attention, their little brothers and sisters sitting on them, or near them. 

I was watching--lucky enough to take part, even--in the intimate work of binding together a community.

The woman, when she first asked me to be a part of the summer camp, had told me that the curriculum had a strong Native American emphasis. But clearly, I didn't have any idea, really, what this meant, and for whom. And only by being there, by figuring out how to engage these kids in processes of writing, could I begin to understand. That, of course, is why I felt so bereft when I left today.

I told my colleagues about all this unexpected emotion at the meeting to which I raced after leaving the summer camp poets behind. It was, of course, a meeting for the bigger grant, which kicks into motion in T minus nine days. 

"One of the little boys [it was Josh, with the little smile] saw me in the gym as I was leaving. He had a little cookie in his hand. He said, 'I guess I'll see you tomorrow.' But he won't see me tomorrow." 

And then I cried into a Del Taco napkin, because even when time is infinitely subdividable, you still need lunch. 

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said from behind the napkin.

My friend and colleague said, "Well, sometimes you just have to cry." She has said this to me before, and she's right. Otherwise, you just try hard not to feel things. And in the end, I'd rather feel things, to say yes, and to make sure that I show up at the powwow at the end of the month--"bring a lawn chair and a sun umbrella!" says the woman in charge--so I can see the kids' fancy dancing, help showcase their writing, and remember their names.