where has this country come? we need so much more. for survival. understanding, compassion, commitment to unity, justice, truth, equality, equity, love of one another, peace among peoples.
the last days we have watched the democratic national convention. we have connected with the real-ness of regular folks, politicians, celebrities across the country who have had something to say. we have listened. we expected words of encouragement, words of hope, words of comfort, words of healing, words of promise to unify and not divide, words we could trust, words of truth. and we have heard them. our hearts swelled with a bit of optimism; our pulse slowed and calmed.
we heard the poignant words of michelle obama, speaking about the promise of this country. we heard the tenderness in jill biden as she spoke about the empathy of her husband, about the import of love and understanding and kindness in this nation. we watched people from each state and territory, on their own stomping ground, cast their delegates for the democratic presidential candidate. we listened and teared up and, mostly, we hoped for these instruments of peace to rise above the noise and the furor of division in this country, slobbering all over itself with rabid foam, inviting ultimate disaster.
we will watch next week as well. the republican national convention will be different than the democratic national convention, for sure. in a climate where i’m not sure everyday republicans even have a grasp of what the party means anymore, it will be important for us to glean that for ourselves. in an effort to attempt to understand the position of others we know and love, it will only be fair to watch both conventions. we will expect words of encouragement, words of hope, words of comfort, words of healing, words of promise to unify and not divide, words we can trust, words of truth.
we live in community. this country’s backbone is the melding of many peoples working to form a “more perfect union” together, to build together, to grow together, to share a common purpose. we shall never arrive as instruments of hatred. we shall arrive, however, as instruments of peace.
it is what it is. what will we choose to do? who will we choose to be?
tenuous. we are all walking on the thinnest of threads. the thinnest threads of life, health, relationship, value.
i don’t know what it would take to graffiti an outdoor stairwell with the stenciled words “you hate me”. it stopped me as we took a friday night walk – miles around our downtown, across the bridge, through simmons island beach, along the lakefront. we started down the stairwell to the channel and there it was.
“you hate me”
anonymous. you hate me. who’s the you? who’s the me? the anonymity factor adds concern for me. someone, on that thinnest thread, felt tenuousness enough that they stenciled it on the concrete wall.
that it wasn’t “i hate you” and that it was “you hate me” makes it even more distressing. it makes you wonder which sad and lonely face you passed might have been that of the stenciler. it thrusts questions about your local community on your heart. it is a gut punch that foists pondering upon you. it forces you to search inside, to see if you are emanating that to others.
there are so many reasons right now to disagree with another, so many reasons for anger. conflicting opinions distort the absolute importance of connectivity, of community, of the healing of love. people with differing thoughts opine as experts in fields in which they have no actual experience; people proselytize and preach and persuade. the bandwagons of what-seems-like-the-cool-gangs line up, circling, handing out candy to those who would like to be in the club, aiding them up onto the wagon and then looking away from their individual needs, only paying attention to replenish the candy and keep the furor going.
and so people feel hated. enough to write it on a wall.
“to reconcile our seeming opposites, to see them as both, not one or the other, is our constant challenge.” (sue bender, plain and simple journal)
i wonder what i would have felt if upon the concrete wall the words “you love me” had been stenciled.
we passed the daisy on the trail and i went back to take a picture. it was instant recognition of “loves me, loves me not” as i saw it. the questions we threw willy-nilly to the universe, the don’t-step-on-a-crack, knock-wood, bread-and-butter reflexes of our 60s-70s childhoods.
were it all still to be so easy.
i remember sitting in the grass making clover chains. i remember the transistor radio playing on the bazooka bubble gum beach towel. i remember playing in the woods out back with the neighbors. i remember kickball in the street and badminton and croquet in the yard. i remember hula-hoops and skateboards on my driveway. i remember the “boing” the pogo stick made. i remember koolaid and ice pops that seemed to never run out. i remember bike hikes with sue and carvel ice cream cones with chocolate sprinkles. i remember frisbee at the beach and making apple pies. i remember listening to cassettes and practicing piano. i remember the trunk of the maple tree against my back, the branches holding me as i wrote. i remember the sound the pressure-filled-from-the-sun-light-purple-hosta-flowers along our sidewalk made when popped. i remember it was time to go home when it got dark and i remember catching fireflies in jars with holes punched in the lids. i remember sunday drives and picking apples and kentucky fried chicken on picnic tables further out on the island. i remember cabins in state parks and wide-eyed flirting with older lake lifeguards upstate. i remember duck ponds and friendly’s. i remember my puppy riding in my bike basket and ponytails. i remember loves-me-loves-me-not.
it seemed an innocent time. a time of marvel. a time of safety. never did i wonder if my parents loved me. i just knew.
babycat just rolled onto his back, all four paws outstretched, his big black and white belly just begging for a pet. he doesn’t ask questions. his world is relatively small – since his kittenhood adoption, the littlehouse was the only other house he has known other than our house. yesterday we brought him and dogdog into the basement as the tornado siren went off. dogga was nervous but babycat adapted, finding a place to lay on the carpet. his only demand is for food, several times a day with clockwork precision. otherwise, he is unconditional. his presence in my life has brought me eleven years of a gift i really needed when he arrived.
babycat is laying right next to me now as i type. tucked close in, his snoring is punctuated only by his purring – it’s a two measure repeat in 4/4, each breath a half note. it is the 11th anniversary of his “gotcha day” and he’s marking the day with a celebration of naps. no worry of “loves me, loves me not” crosses his mind. he just knows.
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since last i saw you. and you. and you. it is dizzying. the yous and the longwhiles.
it makes me want an RV, updated map apps and a little bit of time.
i’m finding myself talking to people these days – people who have gone on to different planes of existence like my sweet momma or my poppo. i ask them advice. i tell them tales of the day. i bemoan the challenges of our world with them; i wonder with them.
twenty-eight years ago today my big brother crossed over. the transition of here to there is something of great ponderance for human beings. we don’t know. we profess to knowing, but we hardly know. we only know what it feels like to be left behind, missing and yearning. i will forever-and-ever yearn to be within embracing distance of my parents, my brother, and loved ones who have no tangible form but whose silken threads-of-being are eternally wrapped around me, always reminding me.
it’s like that for people still here on this very planet, people who we have not seen, people who we pine about when last we saw them.
truth be told, i spent the last couple of days in tears. not slow-motion-tears that quietly weep down my face. but the kind of tears where your ribs and your back hurt the next day; the kind of tears that swell your eyelids and make mascara application undoable. the kind of tears that remind you how much you love someone and how much you miss them. for me, this time, this was about my children. it’s impossible to really explain what this missing feels like. i can say it is wrapped up in the act of breathing, in every aspect of living a day, in the darkening of light.
the pandemic has brought exponential pain to people in our world. suffering its disease, we worry about those who have been diagnosed, we grieve those who have succumbed to its ugliness, we wrangle with the illogical, implausible, grossly inadequate response of our land. we are floored at those who are picking fights over this monster that is on a path of destruction which has unfathomable fallout. we cannot understand the division and the planting of flags-of-the-ridiculous when peoples’ very health and lives are at stake; what truly matters more than that? it’s insanity: how can so many people be so lost? we try to sustain good attitudes and do the right thing. we try to protect each other. we try to avoid being a reason that this pandemic is spreading. and we miss everyone we love in the process.
we wonder: when? when will “last” be now? when will we see you?
and we hope, with great desperation, that it is not a long while.
i played “this land is your land, this land is my land” on the ukulele the other day. were woody guthrie to be alive, he may have added another verse to this song, this one depicting the russian roulette game that people in this country are playing with the coronavirus.
it’s astounding.
these are NOT normal times, no matter how much you might want to ignore that little fact. and since these are NOT normal times, you should be mindfully considering at-great-length anything you want to do that IS normal.
“from california to the new york island. from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me.” when was the last time that it occurred to you that what you do affects others? was it today? was it last week? was it ever? what amount of sacrifice are you willing to take in order to protect others and yourself and put this country on a healing trend so that things MIGHT be able to be normal again SOME day?
are you out at the bars? are you at a restaurant, maskless, ordering from your masked server without a care in the world except whether you would rather the sparkling water or the tap? are you having dinner parties, group gatherings, barbecues in your backyard? are you on vacation? are you talking out of one side of your mouth and acting out of the other? are you duplicitous; do you want people to believe you are being careful and mindful, but on the other hand, it is your life after all…… are you putting anyone in harm’s way? are you renting cabins in small remote towns that have hospital/medical systems that would be stricken by a surge in numbers, something that you might bring there, even inadvertently? are you at the beach? the club? the public pool? are you making plans to go to disney as soon as it opens? are you wearing a mask when you are outside your home? are you social distancing? do you really care? or are you like so many people – irked by any degree of self-sacrifice, believing you are an entity unto yourself? are you buying into conspiracy theories and falsehoods? do you think this global pandemic is overblown? do you feel inconvenienced? do you think we should just throw caution to the wind and take-our-chances? are you upholding ignorance? are you mimicking the repulsive behavior of a president who doesn’t care about anything but his re-election and will spout off lies to your face, your actual face?
“when the sun came shining and i was strolling, and the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling, as the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting: this land was made for you and me.”
for you and me. there’s a responsibility there.
today my daughter told me that someone called her an asshole when she asked them to as-per-the-law-where-she-is put on a mask to enter the shop. and SHE’S the asshole??? this person could not put a small piece of cloth over their nose and mouth to protect others and my daughter is the asshole???
because of this person and their apathetic incomprehension and their unconscionable extraordinarily selfish behavior – repeated ad nauseam across the land that’s made for you and me – i cannot see my beloved daughter. “it’s a pandemic,” she wrote. “all the respectful tourists stayed at home.” she is at risk. the numbers are rising where she is and the people who should stay in their states-with-exponential-growth and wait-to-travel are populating her area in droves. without a care in the world. without giving a flying flip. and with no shame. and so it’s not safe there. how dare they.
“this land was made for you and me.” act like you belong in a community, like you belong in a country, like what happens to people across the land affects you too, like you care even an ounce for others. it’s actually pretty simple: don’t be an asshole.
we cleaned the garage this weekend. our garage is old-old-old. it has a little bow in the front and there is a bit of an issue with the walls no longer in alignment with the foundation. the decades-old automatic garage door opener no longer opens it. que sera, sera.
there was the usual assortment of garden tools and clay pots, chairs-in-bags and chairs-without-bags, the wrought iron table and umbrella we hadn’t put out yet, random bags of potting soil, milorganite, sand, a plethora of spiders and their webby homes. there are old doors in the rafters, the tricycle My Girl and My Boy rode, a red wagon, the hammock. there are jacks, a snowblower-that-doesn’t-work-but-we-should-have-repaired, a wheelbarrow that has seen many trips down third avenue. our bikes hang on hooks; we wonder if i will be able to ride this summer – the whole two-broken-wrists-thing has put a damper on things. there is a woodpile rack waiting for us to re-stock, have a few bonfires in the firepit or the chiminea. and there is my old vw bug. smack-dab in the middle of this tiny one-car garage is my well-loved 1971 super beetle.
it was father’s day yesterday when we moved it out of the garage, me behind the wheel, clutch in, gear in neutral, hand ready on the emergency brake as david pushed. it hasn’t been started in years and i could hear my sweet poppo groan with me from another plane of existence as i looked it over. dirty from a few years of garage-sitting, it sure-enough wouldn’t start and i ticked off a list of things that likely now need fixing. these are things i can’t do anything about right now, so i did what i could do something about.
i got a bucket of warm carwash-soapy-water and a good sponge and my dad and i washed our bug together.
i could hear him telling me about when he and my mom picked it up brand-new in germany for their roadtrip around europe, about how it was shipped back home to a port in new york. i reminded him about how he ‘sold’ it to me in the mid-70s and how i drove that little car everywhere – rain, sleet, snow or ice – and it always kept me safe. i reminded him about how my little miniature-collie-mixbreed-dog missi used to ride in the well (i could hear him laughing when i retold how she one day actually pooped in the well.) we talked about its color iterations – it was born baby blue (marina blue, they called it). somewhere along the way we had earl scheib’s paint it navy and later on down the road it was painted white, its current color. i drove it with my best friend sue back and forth to florida, a trip where she learned how to drive a stick shift. it lived in new york and then florida and then wisconsin. it’s been dragged behind tow trucks and up on flatbeds. it bowed out of the drive moving up to wisconsin, so we pulled it behind us with a tow bar. it’s had a couple engine overhauls and lots of tires. i know how to adjust the timing and the carburetor myself. i’ve played countless john denver and loggins and messina cassettes at full volume in this little car. the heat was either stuck on or stuck off. my poppo reminded me that it had 455 air conditioning – four windows open at 55mph. i drove it to get both my degrees in florida. i drove it through a drive-through to get a milkshake the day i went into labor with My Girl. it’s been around the block.
i gently washed the dirt off of my little-white-vw-bug yesterday and realized how time had flown by. i was struck by how – right now- in the middle of a pandemic and unrest – time seems to drag. both are true.
yet i know that one day, as i ponder this time – in all its dragging chaos and emotional upheaval – i will look back and realize time, precious time, was actually flying by.
i sat down on the rusty metal bumper and missed my dad.
i am imploring you to help keep my beloved daughter safe.
please.
enlightenment comes through unexpected channels sometimes. this morning i read a post by a brilliant woman who was my piano student 40 years ago. she forwarded a writing by a young woman who is a server in a restaurant who detailed her experiences in just one of her shifts.
it’s bracing.
my friend-who-was-my-former-piano-student prefaced it with this: “I know it will feel so good to feel normal again and go out to dinner. But please, read this WHOLE DAMN THING before you do. You BETTER tip your server like they are risking their life to bring you a drink, because they f*ing are.”
the server wears a mask and gloves, carries sanitizer with her to work, stands back 6 feet from her guests at the tables in the restaurant. the guests? they remove their masks, which were required to enter, as soon as they sit down and never put them back on, even while ordering, even while their server is present. it is cavalier at its best. her safety is compromised over and over, at every breath, and she is painfully aware, as you read in her candid outpouring.
is the safety of this server any less important than your own? is she dispensable? is your dining-out experience so important you cannot sacrifice a bit of comfort? where has this message of it-doesn’t-matter-if-we-protect-each-other come from? hmmm. let me think. might it be that the “leadership” of this country has made it a fashion faux pas to wear a mask? might it be that the “leadership” of this country has made it seem unnecessary to protect each other? might it be that the “leadership” of this country thinks everyone’s breath doesn’t matter? might it be that the “leadership” of this country doesn’t really give a flying flip about the populace of this country? if i sound pissed, it’s because i am. enough already.
where do you stand?
i, for one, was breathless when i read the detailed narrative of this young woman’s shift. with angry and worried tears in my eyes, i read it aloud to david. i would love to read it aloud to you.
an expert at piecing-it-together during off-peak, My Girl, among other things, bartends and serves. she busts her butt working hard in high mountain towns, waiting on tourists and locals alike. she is a hard worker at everything she does and i have sat on her barstools watching her move in blurrying pace getting it done. the last thing i want to have to worry about in the middle of this pandemic as it actually continues, despite the “leadership” and a percentage of the country’s population ignoring its steady presence, is whether or not the people who are sitting on those barstools or at the tables in her restaurant are (with sarcastic voice) oh-so-tediously pulling up a mask when they are breathing at my daughter. i want to assume that they are. i want to assume that the meager income she is hour-after-hour-after-hour trying to earn will not be dangerous for her. i want to assume that the people who have chosen to go out, have a few drinks, eat a nice meal prepared by a chef, will generously, even at least appropriately, tip her. i want to assume good although i fear selfish, unconcerned indifference.
the server ends her writing with a plea: “For the love of god..if you go out to eat please please please pull up your mask for the few minutes that your server is at your table. Why are you not already doing this?? And oh my god..tip your server like that burrito you are eating may cost them their life…”
have you gone out to dinner? have you gone out for drinks? did you ecstatically plan your outfit and put on your favorite shoes? did you make reservations at your favorite restaurant? did you pile into your favorite downtown bar? did you wear a mask? did you even bring a mask? or did you leave your mask at home because it’s not mandated by the local, state or federal government? does respect have to be mandated? does protecting each other have to be mandated? can we choose respect and protection regardless? there is still a global pandemic. can we connect the dots? can we think???
WILL you be going out to dinner? out for drinks? will you wear a mask? will you carefully protect every breath of your server – someone’s daughter, son, mother, father, sister, brother, spouse, best friend, caregiver? will you recognize their safety? will you tip them for risking their life to bring you your margarita? will you protect the others inside the restaurant or bar? will you give a flying flip?
change is imminent. we can feel its rumblings. we try to tether to something solid, something reassuring. as when fierce winds swirl around us in the woods, we scan the limbs of trees above us, waiting for the inevitable crashing-down-bow. we are unsure. we are afraid.
because change is here. we sense it all around us; we know things will not stay the same. they cannot. for this time is a time of transformation. the transition time will be full of the unknown. the re-shaping will be disorienting. we are agnostic. we are nervous.
because change is like that. it undermines our normal, throws our predictable into a frenzy, propels us past the lines we color in. it’s a metamorphosis like a kaleidoscope, ever-different, ever-rearranging. it pulls, it pushes. we resist. we dig in. we argue with the wind till we are hoarse and weary.
because change makes us fearful. we ask for guarantees that this evolution will be better, that we will feel settled in it, that it will improve things. but life comes with no guarantees and there are few among us who have not heard the words of nelson mandela: “courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
and change delivers. courage shows up and partners with strength and perseverance. belief peers from around the corner. and hands reach out to us. we see we are, indeed, not alone. we step. and step again.
and we learn to know: love > fear.
we look change in the face and say, “ok. let’s do this.”
the photograph for this post is taken of a shirt i purchased in a tiny magical bookstore on washington island. it is available – click here or on the photo above – if you would like to virtually visit fair isle books and order one in long or short sleeve for yourself or as a gift.
we put out a different water bowl in the kitchen for dogdog and babycat. neither one of them will drink from the bowl. we put their old water bowl in the next room, filled with water, so that they will be able to hydrate, but we were hoping that they would adjust to the new one. neither one of them will drink from the bowl. in the world they inhabit, one that must have low level anxiety frequencies they can feel from the-whole-outside-world, they do not like change. it’s been days and neither one will drink from the bowl.
“what now?”
in the past months and in what now feels like a broken world, we can face forward. we can set intentions and take one baby step at a time, all in unequivocal love of all humankind. we can be light for each other and we can hold fear tenderly. we can look newness of change eye to eye as we learn, challenge the status quo, embrace compassion and principle and stride confidently into a new time.
we can sit by the new bowl, encourage our dog and cat to drink from it, recognize their fear of the unknown, of change, and just love them.
the ferns make me think of sally; the day we pushed the wheelbarrow up and down third avenue back and forth to her house – over and over – loaded with hosta, ferns, daylilies. the sweet-smelling peonies make me think of linda, digging in the dirt of our gardens, planting, weeding, helping to shape the space. the grass makes me think of russ and marykay, again, a day of wheelbarrowing, again third avenue, but due north instead of south, over and over. we dug the pond with big help from ted and monica and a bevy of friends at our ‘big dig’ party. we sustain the pond with words of wisdom from jay and charlie. we build bonfires in a firepit from jen and brad and we watch lettuce grow in wooden planters from 20. we just added hosta from daena’s mother-in-law-to-be; dan and gay delivered them. it has taken a small village to plant our garden.
it is not without luck that these have grown well. dogdog has done his best to try and decimate the yard and My Girl worked long hot hours last summer pulling weeds any rainforest would be proud of; our stay on island and not in our backyard encouraged strong holding-on-not-letting-go weeds of great substance, but the girl prevailed over them.
we didn’t hire a garden center to ‘do’ our yard. it’s not too planned; it’s definitely not too fancy. it is a place of sanctuary, though. a place, created with so many people we love. a place where – in the middle of this pandemic, in the middle of the heart-wrenching chaos in this country, in the middle of economic worry for so many, in the middle of fear of more divisiveness and even less thoughtful leadership – we can sit in broken adirondack chairs on the patio or on the edge of the deck, arms wrapped around our knees, listening to the fountain, the birds, the wind in the trees.
the sun warms. and we wait to hear the croaking of the pond-frog who magically appeared just a few days ago.
