A Poem - I Am From Everywhere and Everything

I am from over 13 billion years of all-there-is, from high energy photons pair-producing a plethora of sub-atomic particles through the elegance of E=mc², particles that always have been and always will be quantum entangled in a mutual relationship of instantaneous communication. I am from atoms and molecules composed of those particles, collecting into galaxies, like the one we call the Milky Way, containing billions of stars that have lived and died, giving birth to new stars and planets, like the one we call Earth. 

I am from molecules on the young Earth, cooling and forming complex proteins, forming life, including my species, homo sapiens. I am from a place on the Earth’s crust called Europe where my Germanic and Celtic ancestors, for untold generations, fought and killed each other, married and had children together, and again fought and killed each other. I am from countries called Germany and England and from grandparents and great grandparents who, through unimaginable effort, left those countries to make their way across the Atlantic, hoping for a better life in America. I am from my mother, who was born with glaucoma and severe hearing loss, and from her family traveling back and forth across the Atlantic to protect her from being marginalized and institutionalized. I am from her indelible memory as a nine year old child watching Nazis haul her Jewish neighbors away to concentration camps. I am from my father, fighting on the front lines in Germany, watching his friends give their lives to stop the Nazi advance. I am from his quiet and humble life, seldom speaking of the war, and his simple hard work supporting our family. 

I am from a carefree childhood, playing in the woods for hours on end, delighting in the beauties of forests, lakes, and rivers. I am from a clear night when I was seven, looking up at the night sky, feeling so enraptured and deeply connected to the stars and the Milky Way, deciding, then and there, to become an astronomer. 

I am from being diagnosed with glaucoma shortly after birth, with the same condition as my mother and sister, spending my seventh birthday in the hospital, chasing nurses through the halls in wheelchairs when I was supposed to be in bed recuperating from an eye surgery. I am from surgery after surgery after surgery through childhood and young adulthood as doctors figured out more and more sophisticated ways to slow the progression of my eye condition.

I am from the suburbs of Detroit in the 1960s, watching with fear and an aching heart as Black people, only a few miles away, struggled for the freedom they had been promised a hundred years before. I am from a high school physics internship in the heart of Detroit, afraid for my own safety as I walked through the tense and anguished city.   

I am from years of undergraduate and graduate education, studying astronomy in the beautiful Arizona desert, and I am from social and environmental justice work, deepening my love of people and the natural world. I am from struggling with the realities of mainstream science education that became so intensely at odds with my being that I couldn’t stand it any longer. I am from a dream lost, stress so great that my eyes couldn’t hold it, from retinal detachments, unsuccessful surgeries, an eye gone blind, months lost in uncertainty, and finding a new direction teaching community college students. I am from a car accident, tearing my other retina, landing me in the hospital again, spending three months recuperating in a Catholic convent in blindness, and slowly regaining my sight.

I am from the joys of returning to the classroom and the forests, mountains, and lakes of North Idaho. I am from neo-Nazis and hatred against my Cuban wife and all people who are different. I am from a rock thrown through our apartment window aimed straight for her head, smashing the entire window. I am from hate mail against us delivered to my college mailbox. I am from our escape to Bellingham, seeking a better life, scraping by financially, teaching part-time, and working my way through more graduate schooling in computer science. I am from a painful divorce and the search for a new beginning.

I am from rebuilding my life, deepening my roots in Bellingham, singing, movement and breathwork, support groups, therapy and a counseling degree, a new partner and marriage, travel, sacred Orcas Island, and a beautiful child, ever changing and ever teaching me what it is to love.

I am from nearly a quarter century working to support the vision of the Coast Salish people, giving my heart to sacred work at Northwest Indian College, slowly, so slowly, starting to understand what the Indigenous people of this place know and have known from time immemorial – that everyone and everything is related. I am from the conviction that I am responsible to do my part to nurture relationality and maintain the balance of nature. I am from the heartbreak of leaving that sacred work behind. 

I am from just a day ago, sitting with my wife and child for hours, waiting for the moment when a baby tooth would give way to a new tooth that was ready to take its place. I am from being with fear of pain, and from rejoicing in release when the tooth was finally freed and space opened for what could come next.

I am from every one of my joyous experiences, from every one of my painful experiences, and from everyone else’s experiences. They have made me who I am. I am from everywhere and everything.