i have no doubt we’ll all fall over it at some point – the precipice.
there will be some moment of grief, some slight, some jarring change, some out-and-out grotesque manifestation of this-thing-that-is-coming that will be the precipice for each of us.
i have already felt it. i fell over it on new year’s day. i realized that this thing that is coming now – in 2025 – this new administration’s cruelty and revenge, the emphasized attitudes disenfranchising people, the new way of being in this country, the gloating extremist, isolationist stance this country will take in this world – is already taking a toll. the precipice is real.
for the life of me i cannot understand wanting such things. i cannot understand turning my back on the rights and needs and experiences of my own family or friends. i cannot understand being a cheerleader for what’s coming. and, on new year’s day, it pushed me over the precipice and i spent the day grieving. for all the light i have tried to seek, for all the light i have tried to be, this thing-that-is-coming faster-than-fast pushed me under and into darkness.
it is real.
there will be fallout. fallout for people who know it’s coming, for people who bandwagoned and didn’t bother researching, for people who have family and friends against whom they voted. and that’s the part that made my heart hurtle over the cliff.
even though i knew it – and have known it for a couple months now – the fallout – part of which, of course, is silence – is painful beyond imagining.
knowing is hard.
i imagine i am not alone…one day at a time it all becomes more and more real…and so one day at a time there are others who are over-the-precipice-ing. it’s not going away and, as we are gleaning, it will only get worse and worse. and people voted for all of it. and i wonder – again and again – if it ever occurred to them to think about their own families or friends or community that might be drastically impacted by this new reality – the one they were choosing.
and so the fallout will gain momentum. not just the stuff that the new administration is going to set in place – the stuff that will marginalize more and more people, that will push people down – those already disenfranchised, those about-to-be disenfranchised. the fallout will lift up others – those with self-aggrandizing agenda, those with monster motives, those who perpetuate hatred, those who are clearly soul-less. and the fallout – well – it will snap the binding of relationships at their core, it will silence conversation, it will destroy friendships, it will undermine families.
because it’s real.
now – each time we are hurtled over the precipice – for it is likely that will be more than once – it will be our job to climb back up, to seek safe shelter and to heal from the pummeling of the precipice-fall. even a little bit. to keep going. to get to – what we hope will be – the other side of all this. to survive.
i cannot help it. memories swoosh around me constantly. and these days are no different. in fact, they deliver memories much like santa scooooching down the chimney – sans fanfare or warning. the memories arrive, sometimes with a kerplunk.
i suppose that it is simply a part of me to be wistful. and…the days are darker, the sun is shorter, it is colder and the holidays began to arrive in rapid succession.
i prepare myself for this – i know that time has flown on and that everything is different. yet…there is this piece of me that yearns to go back…to be overwhelmed with all that was going on when my children were little – the time of year that was fraught with choir and band rehearsals prepping, the time of year when it was hard to find alone-time to shop for surprises, the time of year when the children were counting down to school vacation, the time of year when end-of-year business records were lurking on lists-of-things-to-do, when you wrapped presents – that had been hidden in closets and the attic – around the the table in the wee hours, the time of year when you just really wanted to make cookies and fudge and sip hot cocoa around the fire with your children, reading christmas books, watching holiday movies. dreamy.
and then, there’s the further-back…the days in my growing-up neighborhood – along with our neighbors and friends outside caroling. luminaria, my dad making spiked eggnog and my mom fussing with cooking, the grandparents lingering on our old slipcovered couch, nieces and my nephew tiny and enchanted with it all.
it all seemed so innocent back then. and easy.
it’s not as easy now – as i watch families sort through all the gala preparations and the calendar of when who-visits-whom. there is much to do and, seemingly, not as much time to do it all. it makes me wish for a really big close-proximity-family with whom to share it all, all together, everyone from every side.
we prepare for our own christmas. i’ve been thinking and brainstorming and researching and googling and making lists for weeks now. we’ve been out browsing and shopping, we’ve had a moment or two indulging in a treat while out. we’ve encountered wonderful, joyous shopowners and salesclerks and a few not-so-wonderful nor joyous folks. we’ve tried hard to bring light to each person.
very happily, the boys will be coming and we are excited. but we will miss our girl and her husband. so many of us will have a facetime christmas and, though i am grateful for that technological ability, my heart – as always – yearns for in-person. so much bittersweet-ness. but…i am reminded by my own words earlier this week…“even if…enough”. it’s a good time for me to practice the enoughs.
i wonder – if it were possible – what it would be like to live back then and now simultaneously…kind of like walking from one room – the right now – into the next room – where my children were tiny ecstatic toddlers – into the next room – where i was a teenager surrounded by my island family – into the next room – where i was little and watched for rudolph’s red nose out my window.
i guess the gift of not being able to do that is the same as the hard part of not being able to do that – it is the wistfulness of it all. i guess wistful IS the gift. that thing that reminds you – just like in the movie about time to really, really live the day. “I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
*****
…and, by the way…just in case you misunderstood – in this climate rife with words like great and back – misused and twisted…as you are reading the words “go back in time”…i want to be perfectly clear…even in a post about these holidays…it’ s not THAT kind of going back. this is a post about love and respect for each other. it’s a post about time spent together and mutual generosity of spirit. it’s a post about decency. goodness. it’s a post about unity. together. it’s not that OTHER kind of going back. because we aren’t. going back.
we were on the phone and she said, “we all just need to check out a while.”
i couldn’t agree more.
it has been a lot. more than a lot. and it just continues on and on and on – this farcical nightmare of politics. there is nothing like watching an incoming administration poking fun at every single serious issue out there, lining its own pockets and the pockets of kakistocratic cronies, maniacally ranting and raging and seeking revenge, raising up the uppers and cruelly disempowering the middles and the lowers. it is utterly exhausting and disrespectful to the core of this nation.
but this is me…checking out.
so as we are tending to this holiday season, looking for gifts – the things people may need or wish for – and shopping, i know that there is one thing that we simply cannot buy – for ourselves or anyone else:
hope.
and so we’ll do our best to make people smile, to engage people, to let them know we are thinking about them and holding them close – particularly now, when so many others have disappointed us and them, particularly now, with the emotional whiplash we have felt as a result of the loss of positive possibility, particularly now, grieving the burial of any goodness from the top down, particularly now, overwhelmed by the stunned surprise we have felt watching those we care about wholeheartedly support this horror.
i know that we cannot buy hope. and i know that right now it seems far away, especially if we are actively paying attention to the intentional bullying and destruction of all we know as this democracy.
but that doesn’t stop us from yearning for it, from seeking it, from creating it. together.
if you asked george winston about reprising, he’d laugh and tell you that we here – in this household – have reprised his thanksgiving album hundreds of times. there is nothing wrong with a good reprise.
we put the rolling computer desk up on facebook marketplace – for free. the first person to respond was a young woman named steph. there was a bit of a goof-up on pickup and she messaged her apology and said she understood us moving on to the next interested person. and, even though i messaged a couple others about its availability, i decided to write back to her to see if she still wanted it. she needed us to wait a few days for her to pick it up. i agreed to wait and the computer desk had an awkwardly-placed home smack-dab in our living room for those days. it turned out a bit helpful as we decorated our home yesterday – a place to put ornaments and mini-trees while we planned and designed our decorations.
this morning she came to pick it up, this rolling desk we had placed on our front door sidewalk, this rolling desk i thanked before it went away. i went out to meet her when she was walking up the driveway and she thanked me profusely for holding it for her, for waiting.
i told her that it seemed to me that people really need to be nice to each other right now, especially right now. she replied she wished that it were christmas all year round. i said that i just wished people were good to each other year round. we shared just a few more moments before she left, but it wasn’t before i was grateful that we had waited – to give this desk to her.
and so, with george winston’s approval, we reprise this SMACK-DAB cartoon from december 2023. because right now is as good a time as any to remember the feeling of the holidays, the feeling of peace and joy, generosity and kindnesses shown to others. right now – before what’s next, before what could be harrowing, before the intended cruelness from this country’s top down – right now is a good time to zero in on how we really want to live, what we truly hold valuable, what it feels like in a community of giving, of support, of love for one another – whether we know them or not.
little morsels of goodness between people are possible. it’s impossible to close our eyes and not feel it.
now we need to decide it, to choose it, to live it.
we’re getting all the mail – snail mail, email, texts, phone messages. tons of correspondence this holiday season. and all about … healthcare.
because forget about thanksgiving, forget about the gatherings of family and friends, forget about the holidays. we are now in healthcare open season. ok, they call it open enrollment….but it’s clearly one and the same….and the other day – when we saw a hunter, all geared up in camouflage, stride into the woods – it made me think of healthcare open season.
we – david and i and, in amusing moments, my former dear husband as well – are all receiving every manner of advertising for our healthcare. i must say – there is something vastly wrong about this – ads, brochures, glossy words schmoozing us about healthcare.
so we have until the 7th of december to lock in our medicare wishes, in addition to our chosen drug plan. we have until the 15th of december to sign up for whichever “affordable” care act (ACA) plan we wish. it’s all a bit like gambling and there really is no actuary on earth – sans a fortune teller – who can predict what we might really need, what we might really benefit from, what teeniest-tiny details in each plan might be relevant, what might not make us financially suffer.
but wait! there’s more! because now we are at the threshold of new stuff! there is a concept of a plan out there – floating in the universe somewhere – to change the lives of all americans who need healthcare which, ummm, is all of us.
maybe it will be like something we’ve never seen before! maybe something that might place the health and well-being of the populace highest on the priority list!! maybe something that won’t bankrupt people or place healthcare as the apex reason for being impossibly financially strapped. maybe it won’t be privatized in any way, won’t be so insanely priced that it necessitates government subsidies – which, incidentally, will likely disappear anyway in this regime. maybe something that will be like industrialized nations around the world! maybe – just maybe – universal healthcare!!
you are dreaming, i warn myself.
because magaland is not interested in what’s best for actual people. the bottom line, the bottom line, they scream! money, money, money, they insist! and so, instead, their concept is to go back to the days when pre–existing conditions were like leprosy to insurance companies. their concept is to severely cut medicaid, healthcare for the needy. their concept is to eliminate medicare supplemental plans – eliminating choice for people in their own healthcare, foisting privatized advantage plans upon unsuspecting purchasers who think that getting $80 in toothpaste is advantageous over the freedom of seeking out appropriate physicians and facilities and treatment plans for their own needs. their concept will keep regular americans poorer, all in their efforts to make the oligarchy richer. their concept is to be limiting, repressive, serving their own pockets and the pockets of their cronies in some kind of weird quest to make america unhealthier.
it’s all a sad story. and i’m wondering which maga-voters out there are now “learning” all this – suddenly knowledge (all available PRIOR to the election, i might add) is now more abundant. suddenly, some of the corrupt and cruel “policies” (and i use that term loosely) don’t seem like they are in your best interest. suddenly, it occurs to you that this looming autocracy wasn’t really a good idea.
oh well. que sera sera.
in the meanwhile, we’ve gotta don our camouflage and hunt down some healthcare.
it all started with a print hanging in our bedroom. it needed to move somewhere else and it needed to be replaced with something different or nothing, blank wall space.
and so I took the print off the wall and brought in the vintage piece i thought might work. we held it up and hung it up. a little bit of change.
i went into my studio and pulled out an old full-of-personality metal tripod work light we had found at an antiques flea market this summer. it was five dollars and it actually worked. i brought it into the living room, wanting to find a spot for it.
i think it was the five-dollar-metal-dome that started the avalanche. still in our buffalo plaids, we set to work.
now, usually when people decorate they go to furniture stores and home good type places looking for pieces, new items to incorporate into their decor. but that’s not budgeted at this time, so we tried using different eyes as we looked at what was in place, what was in the basement stored, how we could change things up, refresh our home.
in the end, we spent the entire day rearranging. many spaces were treated to a littlebittachange – the living room, the dining room, the sunroom, the foyer. we imagined all kinds of things – maybe in the future some of those will happen.
and we laughed to find ourselves at 7pm – still in red buffalo plaid – ready for some leftover homemade soup.
the best part of the day, though, was a realization. at 7, sipping a friday night glass of wine with our tomato soup, we realized that neither of us had thought about or talked about the current political turmoil. it was a relief to be lost in something positive, something productive, something personally gratifying.
i know that as i go into the rooms of our home today it will strike me somewhat differently today than during yesterday’s flurry. i – sometimes – don’t do change well and my threadiness includes my surroundings.
but this time may be different. this time i think i will walk around our home and imagine all the potential of our future here. this time i will again feel the comfort of this old house, no matter what the decor. this time i will be decidedly more open-minded about not changing it all back.
because going forward – in all its shapes and forms – and not going back – holding to hope and possibility needs to override the exorbitant negativity – the absolute control-mongering insanity – so prevalent in our country right now.
we sat in the old wooden glider – moved – surprisingly – from the deck into the living room – and talked about the new perspective it gave us on the room.
“furry pillows will offset the rough-hewn-ness,” i coaxed him. we glanced around the room – at the peeling-paint-chunk-of-concrete in the role of coffee-wine-perch next to the leather recliner, at the portion of desk – with the sawed-off-side next to the radiator – in the role of end-table, at the huge tree branch from the beloved tree out front happy-lit in the middle of the front window and we laughed.
getting lost in our own home – our sanctuary – was just the thing we needed.
and to remember that little bit about control: “let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos, where you find the peace you did not think possible and see what shimmers within the storm.” (john o’donohue)
i told him the other day I wasn’t sure if i had anything left to say. in the lostness following this horrific election, i still feel all the things i have already written about – truly gutted.
i would imagine that there are many of ‘me’ out there. heart-broken, infuriated, exhausted, confused, feeling betrayed.
and in that wanderland of grief sit the questions of “what is real?” and “who is real?”. they nag at me – wherever i am. we escaped to the trail and they followed me – sitting heavy on my heart, ponderous.
real (adjective): 1. actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact: not imagined or supposed.2. (of a substance or thing) not imitation or artificial; genuine.
and
real: behaving or presented in a way that feels true, honest, or familiar and without pretension or affectation.
and so i look at life now and think about what is real and who is real.
the “real” i knew would have stood by me, by my family, by values i assumed we shared, by the lifting up of humanity.
the “real” i knew would have been morally aghast by the cruel, devastating intentions of the new maga-regime.
the “real” i knew would have pushed back against all of it – leading with goodness and kindness.
but i guess the “real” you wanted me – and everyone else – to see wasn’t really real. and i will now admit, you fooled me.
i suppose – like many others will – that i could pretend it doesn’t matter. i could act like it doesn’t matter. i could interact like it doesn’t matter. i could just go on as if it doesn’t matter. but it does. it matters. it’s real.
mary oliver wrote, “you can fool a lot of yourself, but you can’t fool the soul.”
so even as i fight the internal fight – trying – irrationally – to hold onto what or who is really not real – my soul knows.
and, like many of you trying to process this soul-knowing, i am deeply sad.
the monday-morning-armchair-quarterbacking is over the top. there is no one excuse for these election results. to be real, there cannot be enough reasons for the despicable – what the majority of voters voted for.
in the aftermath – afforded from even little to no doom-scrolling that highlights the absolute tsunami of finger-pointing, blaming, history-touting, policy-pummeling, we now see that the maga-voters voting for all the maga-sh*t did not quite understand what the maga-candidate’s maga-agenda really meant.
many of them had tuned into fox news where they learned – and clearly believed – things like people were eating other people’s dogs and cats and you could send your child to school and they would arrive home the opposite sex.
and, worst of all, they poo-pooed any talk of the abject cruelties of project 2025, jumping on the he-doesn’t-really-mean-that-he-wouldn’t-really-do-that bandwagon.
weren’t they surprised when – post-election – all the maga-cronies paused very few milliseconds and posted what would amount to a naa-naa-nah-naa-naa, stating that it was the actual agenda all along.
adding fuel to the what-the-hell fire, “…catherine rampell and youyou zhou (washington post) showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred harris’s policies to trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them.” (heather cox richardson – american historian, professor of history – boston college, previously MIT, university of massachusetts amherst )
if you don’t fact-check, if you don’t ask questions, if you don’t care about any potential work in the aisle or if the country’s democracy could be decimated, if you don’t worry your little head about character or details of a candidate’s experience or qualifications or with whom they choose to surround themselves, you have chosen to be a voter voting on whatever your rage is, you have voted to follow the lemmings off the cliff.
amanda marcotte (senior politics writer – salon) opined, “a lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. more so than in the past.” ya think??
so, yeah. now what?
i’m going to clean out my closet, take a hike, hydrate and try to breathe.
we are there – at the place where we all decide how this country will move forward. forward, not backward. forward to better, hopeful, joyful, united.
and so, in this moment, we could talk about so many pieces of this decision, so many aspects of the candidates, so many policies, so many ramifications.
we could talk about the maga candidate and his historically misogynistic, racist, bigoted views on life.
we could talk about his repulsive imitation of a disabled reporter.
we could talk about the many, many women who have accused him of sexual assault.
we could talk about his silver spoon, his elitist attitude, his entitlement.
we could talk about his lack of compassion, his clear lack of empathy, his lack of regard for the populace of this country – people – some of whom he refers to as “the enemy within”.
we could talk about his corruption.
we could then talk about his incompetence, his hateful vitriol, his obscene handling of the pandemic, his lack of respect for the vulnerable, for people different than himself.
we could talk about his felony convictions, the civil suit jury decision in which he was found guilty of sexual abuse. we could talk about his multiple standing indictments.
we could talk about his ad nauseum lies, his utter nonsense about disproved election fraud, his inciting of a brutal insurrection on this nation’s capitol.
we could talk about his lack of vested and intelligent interest in addressing human-based climate change that will affect this planet and the lives of all those who follow.
we could talk about his depravity, his lack of coherence, his inability to speak to his policies, his deliberate weave off-topic, an avoidance of spilling his actual intentions.
we could talk about the people he surrounds himself with – all with agendas of the most vile nature.
we could talk about how his maga supporters are not hearing – really hearing, really grokking – that he will destroy the affordable care act, decimate healthcare in this country.
we could talk about how project 2025 will slash medicare options – making narrow advantage plans the only option, eliminating supplemental plan choices of care, places of care, medications of care.
we could talk about how his cronies – who will have positions of power – will create hardship for the people of these United States. we could talk about how the present economy – under the present administration – of which other industrialized countries are envious – will be demolished under their selfish thumbs.
we could talk about how maga will run social security into the ground. we could talk about tariffs that will add mountains of cost to our daily bills, about taxes that will serve the super-rich and undermine everyone else. we could talk about how this might affect you and me, regular people.
we could talk about the elimination of women’s rights. we could talk about how this despicable, women-abuser will continue down his already-well-established path eliminating the right of women to choose, the right of women to seek reproductive health care. we could wonder how else this maga candidate wishes to drown the rights of women, what else he wishes to do to push women under, to eliminate their voice. “whether women like it or not.”
we could talk about his appalling intentions against the LGBTQ community, his limitations on who people may love, marry, with whom they may have children, basic rights of every single person regardless of sexual orientation or identification. we could talk about his spreading of lies about transgenders, his repugnant and distorted-from-reality rhetoric.
we could talk about how his extreme nationalist view runs scared of and runs rampant over any race other than his own whiteness. we could talk about his egregious plans for mass deportation of immigrants; we could talk about his zeal for remigration. we could wonder about this kind of loathsome animosity, this kind of sadism.
we could talk about his kowtowing to vicious autocrats. we could talk about his alliances with dictators around the world, his bowing to them, his ego hungry for their strokes. we could wonder about – or do we intuitively know – the tyrannical direction in which he wishes to take this precious country.
we could talk about his unhinged dedication to revenge, to retribution, to perpetuation of the ugliest ugly.
we could talk about his stoking of division, his glee at chaos, his embrace of violence, his utter evil.
but – really – we are merely three days away from this election. and who has frickin’ time for all that?!!!
don’t bother comparing policies now. don’t fool yourself into thinking that policies are the issues.
we are at a place like never in recent years – a choice-point – this very election – that threatens the very tenets of this country.
so now it’s time to cut to the chase.
because it clearly all boils down to one thing, one choice.
do we wish for this country to continue to grow forward as a democracy?
or do we wish for this country to sink into the depths of fascism?
reverse threading 