November surprise

Before I was bereft, I was annoyed.

No one wanted to cook, so I improvised. I made "sammiches": toast, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and cheese.

I had been feeding the washing machine all evening and the kitchen sink was piled precariously with dirty dishes.

I finished my meal between the first and third time I let the dog out into the backyard to chase the shadows brought to us by the wind and the return of Eastern Standard Time.

I cheekily vowed an end to the household assumption of clean dishes and laundered attire until they noticed such   assumed niceties were gone. Maybe this time it would stick.

A strange calm came over me after the polls closed and the returns trickled in.

The numbers started to add up around midnight, then they flooded the room.

The outcome didn’t feel like a surprise, but the numbness I felt about it, did.

Some have called the election of a man who ran on a platform of racism and misogyny, who acted brutishly and unscrupulously at every turn, and who has been called unfit and a fascist by his former aides, was … unfathomable.

I had fathomed. More than once.

And though I still believe that my fellow Americans possess the potential to be intrinsically good, if not always consistent in deed or speech, I similarly believed that people would listen to reason and be on the side of basic, if not always enumerated, rights.

I don’t believe that last part now.

Not after opening Facebook the next day and seeing a post from one of the nicest ladies I thought I knew, congratulating America for choosing to be great again by closing borders and cleaning house.

So often, we hear that if we want a better country, we need to be better citizens. This sounds hollow, especially as the civic gains of the last century—the ones that inspired the idea of American Exceptionalism—are steadily being rolled back.

Our City upon a Hill will have only  decrepitude to show for its years ... its integrity degraded and all remaining luster dimmed by gaudiness.

I don’t believe there is anything the Democratic Party could have done differently … whether it attempted to be more populous or more centrist, or if it leaned further left, or courted conservatism. We can’t stay mum about the ideals we have long stated we share, such as the rule of law.

I can’t believe it when the choice between candidates was as clear as a career prosecutor or a convicted criminal.

By the strength of the election numbers, it is indisputable that the real America is Trump’s America now.

I spent most of the day after the election tuning out people with microphones who sought to make sense of the aftermath … like normalizing a car that had broken through a living room wall by making it a couch.

Perhaps we can admit mistakes made in a game of politics, but I will never agree there is blame to go around.

There is right and wrong just as there is fact and fiction.

But the fight against injustice and cruelty is perpetual.

That’s when my phone rang.

It was an auntie … on my mother’s side. The “bougey” one from D.C. The one I disdainfully acknowledged as a teen but who I relish now.

She is the one who holds steady.

“Do you have time to speak?  How are you doing? Thank you for sending the photographs of the kids. …. Wow, they look so grown.”

 

She is busier than I am at the moment. Calling between Zoom book clubs and poetry readings.

She tells me she doesn’t have long to chat. She has a friend who is struggling with some tough health news, and they are meeting soon to talk about poetry instead of politics. She just wanted to check in with me.

Neither of us is thrilled about the election.

I don’t try to pick her considerable brain on what to expect this time. I know. But she surprises me and tries to pick mine:

"How do we move forward," she asked, not expecting an answer.

But I had one ready. Something she had said to me eight years ago.

“I have come to believe that all we can do is work on being kind and focus on being of service. Just like you are doing with your friend.”

She thanked me for being her “counsel“ before she headed off to do her part in the service of kindness.

After reconnecting, I went back to the solace of work. Saddened anew that until the sun would continue to rise for some of us, and while it does our lives would resume as if nothing had shifted.

I would end my silent strike by folding the laundry and attending to the dishes left in the sink.

The job ahead is not the same as before, but it’s still there.

Lather, rinse, repeat.