One for All

It’s not that I hate surprises, it’s just that I tend to feel better when they aren’t … you know … around.

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Surprises that so “lurk” are usually not in the form of a few dollars you may have left in a pocket before the wash, or the delight of an adult-presenting child who comes back from college on a random weekend just to bask in the refrigerator light of “home.”

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Surprises shouldn’t be skulking about in the form of some new horror interrupting our lives randomly as Breaking News.

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They shouldn’t be accompanied by a video of a shirtless Secretary of Health and Human Services swimming around a plunge pool, wearing jeans, while his workout buddy - a scraggly-haired rocker who performed a segregated half-time show in dishonor of the Super Bowl, gives the camera his middle finger.  

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Nor should there be actual footage of the person who leads the agency tasked with protecting the health and safety of the nation, bragging to a podcaster about having no fear of infectious disease because he “used to snort cocaine off toilet seats.”

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But here we are.

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Turning on our televisions, watching as paramilitary forces hide their faces as they cause chaos across the country: swarming people as they try to do their jobs, or fulfill the requirements of their requests for remaining in this land. We’ve seen anonymous forces use chemical weapons at point-blank range on people who were brutalized, pulled out of cars, tackled and shackled, sometimes in front of their children.

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We are enraged that these federal forces, often multiplied by our local police, don’t even take care to know when they are trampling on the rights of citizens.

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Human rights and due process should be for all who inhabit this land. We might forget that the Constitution does not differentiate between how people are treated under the law, whether they were born here or just visiting. Without it, no one will ever be safe, let alone free.

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At what point will we allow ourselves to imagine what could be possible if we reprioritize our needs? If we consider the alternative, what truly makes us safe does not include rounding up our neighbors and locking them away in a concentration camp.

The New York For All Act, legislation aimed at protecting immigrant communities by prohibiting state and local resources, including law enforcement and government agencies, from assisting in federal civil immigration enforcement, would be a start in the right direction toward allowing our neighbors to live as the Constitution demands, as well as ensuring our police are truly protecting and serving the community.

Bryan MacCormack, Co-Executive Director, Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, explains, “There is a long and growing list of documented collusion between New York State and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including a coordinated and grant-funded seat-belt checkpoint with the DMV, State Troopers, Albany County Sheriff’s, and Cohoes police department. Words of indignation will not prevent New York from aiding in the separation of families, deportation of our neighbors, and terrorization of our communities. Only New York for All can do that.”

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The act would not only ban the formal agreements – known as 239 (g) agreements – that enable local law enforcement from assisting federal immigration agents permanently, but it would also prohibit all state and local agencies from sharing information pertaining to civil immigration law; as well as ban information-sharing and custody transfers that funnel New Yorkers into ICE detention; and require a judicial warrant before ICE can access government information or property; and finally, create consistency so protections are uniform statewide.

“When parents are taken at traffic stops, or workers are detained because local agencies share information with ICE, it is not just a policy failure — it is a moral failure,” said Rashida Tyler, Acting Executive Director, New York State Council of Churches. “Our houses of worship see the fear in our communities. Children are afraid to go to school. Survivors hesitate to call for help. Trust in public institutions erodes. New York must not participate in a system that tears families apart. The New York for All Act offers permanent, statewide protections rooted in the simple truth that our government should serve and safeguard all New Yorkers, not act as an arm of mass deportation.”

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Justice is the underpinning of democratic freedom. We need to fix what’s broken to ensure those freedoms don’t slip away.

We shouldn’t endure any more unwanted surprises. We can’t allow it continue and remain surprised at where it leads us.

Making Plans

I often think author and activist Arundhati Roy introduced me to mortality in her novel, The God of Small Things. Since reading her haunting, poetic prose when the volume was published in 1997, I have had her words – Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable die-able age – ricocheting around in my psyche ever since.

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It follows me when I travel, even for short distances, and it causes me to be leery of making long-range plans. It reminds me to think (but not speak of) hidden prayers no better than anxious superstition.

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But we have reached that viable die-able age when I have to tell my husband to hold off on booking that pricey vacation he’s been fixating on until after I get the results of the annual mammogram.

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Now that we are well into our viable die-able years, we have to plan accordingly.

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The night before only offers a fitful sleep. Nerves, I think, wake me up, prodding me to reread the same two chapters of a book I’ve been belaboring before exhaustion reclaims my consciousness. In the morning, I will find a half-charged phone on the floor where it had flopped for the last time. The page I was reading is still alive as the screen lights up in my hand.

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I will choose my clothes as if I were fate’s bride. Something old from my daughter; something new from my son; something borrowed from my husband, something blue from someone who has gone before me.

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I pretend this works despite the time a phone rang telling me they needed more pictures … and more tests … and then scans closer together until it was all fine again a year later.

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“It WAS fine,” I think, “but it WON’T BE someday.”

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I wish I were able to tamp down such tensions. I know worry doesn’t prevent bad things from happening any more than it helps good things to flourish. It’s just anxiety sending thoughts in circles.

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I count how many traffic lights I have to stop at along the way to the appointment, but I don’t know what to make of the number.

I find a parking spot right away, which is unusual. I chose it instead of winding my way to the top of the parking structure.

When I take a seat with a receptionist, the place starts to warm in a way I am not used to. The woman informs me that we are birthday twins, although several years apart.

All of the business questions she asks after that seem more personal and pleasant. When I get up to head to a waiting room, she asks me if I have plans for OUR birthday. I tell her my husband has out-of-town business, but that he’s asked me to go with him.

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“If it’s a good place, you should go and enjoy!”

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I thank her and tell her I think I will.

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And then I think of her as I put on the robe, and sit in one waiting room to get squished, and another waiting room to get scanned. I think of her on the way home, and when I park and notice an email has arrived in my inbox, heralding test results that may not have been reviewed by any medical professionals.

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And I think of her when I get the All Clear.

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But I say a silent thanks when I finally start to make plans.

One, two, three

 I had been asleep. But now, it was 12:01 a.m., and I was wide awake.

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As my husband snored, I scrolled through a certain Paper of Record on my phone:

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I had already spent days soaking up the unending stories of mortal wounds the Trump administration is choosing to inflict with vengeance on the inhabitants of this nation.

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I needed to do something more active than just being thoroughly steeped in existential misery.  

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Which is how I started indexing past all the headlines describing the mounting horrors replicating around the country, and landed on a story about how a person can age gracefully with just a few simple tests of basic fitness.

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Which, I noted somewhat arrogantly as I scanned the listings, included the ability to balance on one leg! Which, I surmised, is something I could do because I had read about it several years ago in an article, probably a cut-and-paste clone of this one, and when I wobbled a bit during my initial experimentation. Failed? Failed?!

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So I did what only an obsessive-compulsive would do; I kept testing myself at least three times a day for the last four years until I could confidently stand on one leg and not look like a physical comedian accidentally saving myself from a pratfall while I did it.

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Truth be told, my skill was merely passable despite the effort and the unearned sense of achievement. I knew I hadn’t worked my way up to proficient.

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This time, the challenge was to sit on the floor and stand up.

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That’s it; sit and stand on a flat surface about two feet lower than a chair. My twenty-year-old-self snorted at the challenge as my forty-year-old self read the passage to the end and found the rubric maturity taught her to seek: “subtract one point if you have to use your hands or knees at any point as you sit or rise.”

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Mid-fifties me threw back the covers and made my way in the dark to a patch of floor that promised a rug for a soft landing. This version of me - still standing in the dark - suddenly realized it had been at least a decade ago when I’d even attempted to sit on the floor without the assistance of at least one limb if not all four.

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Still, I was awake after midnight and out of bed, my mind subtracting points from my fitness score that threatened to subtract years from my life.

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So when I managed to hover close enough over the floor to flop down with only a minor thud, I was pleasantly surprised.

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It wasn’t the smooth transition I swore I used to be able to manage, but I claimed the full ten points. If I could manage to reverse the maneuver, I’d keep the perfect 10.

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Up I go … nope.

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Try again: Criss-cross apple sauce. Nothing.

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I windshield wiper my knees, placing one patella against the floor and using the tips of three fingers, I cantilever myself to standing.

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How many points do I really have to subtract? One? Two?

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That would still put me at 8; a respectable score for a spry … sixty-year-old?!

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I mean, I hadn’t made a sound. Couldn’t I just add two points for managing to sit down and stand up without disturbing  my still-sleeping husband?

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Try again.

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Down, still a flop without hands.

Up? No no no no …

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Hiss into my phone: “Siri, show me how to stand from sitting without using my hands.”

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The woman in the video Siri sends to my rescue rolls back onto the floor, crosses her legs in front, and rocks forward with enough momentum to spring to a mid-way squat. Then pushes all the way up to a standing position.

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Now I try. Miraculously, I manage to replicate the series of moves without pulling any muscles that had up until now remained blissfully unaware of their decrepitude, and just like that, I am standing.

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I award myself 1,000,000 points before I decide go back to bed.

I need to rest up for the rematch.