10 July 2020: Daily

As I know is true for so many of us right now, my feelings about coronavirus life come in waves.

Sometimes they are minimalist and gentle, little ripples of acceptance of the situation and gratitude for how well my family can forge ahead during it. These are the days during which I find it easy to float with the current, when I have reserve and patience and energy to seek out ways to help others and enrich the boys’ lives and experiences above and beyond the normal.

At other times, they sweep to shore with a rougher chop, churning up sand and spray, darkening in color, suggesting an undercurrent of power that might knock you sideways or wet the shorts you thought you could keep dry by only wading in to your ankles. The losses scratch at your legs, the reminiscences of Before tug at your limbs and hair.

On other occasions, the waves crash angrily against land, furious spittle arching up and over the forceful blow to the coast. Their tumult and torrent feel utterly wild, beyond all control; that, in and of itself, is nerve-racking, unmooring, never familiar even if it’s known.

To be in the midst of a pandemic without any functional leadership guiding us through with a steady hand and message of sobriety, fact, unity is to be in the more tremulous swells at all times.

I am reminded of the ways we would wait, in southern Louisiana, as hurricanes approached. Eyes, hands, hearts, hammers and boards glued to weather reports as the whirling eye stayed and jumped and resumed and altered course on its march through the Gulf. When was just the right time to board up? When would be too late? When should you leave? How could you ever really know until it was too late?

To wait in that netherworld of uncertainty is like standing eye to navel with the mightiest wave as it crests and begins falling in on itself, on you. It is difficult. Scary. Unsettling. Humans, generally speaking, don’t like unknowns, not least when their lives, families, livelihoods, and mental well-being are on the line.

A wave crashes and retreats, a hurricane meets land and loses power before dying out completely. Destruction remains in their wakes, but the attacks are over. Survivors can exhale, take stock. Sometimes, additional horrors await on the other side, but the event that wrought the mayhem is done.

This, now, Covid-19, is different, as pandemics are. The event persists, evades, mutates, and attacks quietly, quickly, forcibly. It takes great advantage of the unwitting, the nonbelievers, the thoroughly and often willfully misinformed, but it preys on us all with hungry whimsy. And in this divide of who believes and who doesn’t, community breaks as do poorly-built levees and earnest sand castles held together by the frame of a bucket long since gone.

Without good leadership and a collective sense of purpose and concern, things fall apart. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The gyre turns and rages.

Amidst all this, I try to remain a steady foundation. Jack turns 14, and we celebrate with family and friends, in socially-distant and virtual fashion. Masks are as natural as blowing out lit candles with scrunched eyes and a wish after a song of good tidings ends. It’s funny how quickly you can adapt.

Amidst all this, Oliver’s sink plants reward us with a first bounty. Amused, we delight in picking the reddish-black ones and eating them warm from the sun, wondering how some spat-out seeds from another part of the world survived, grew!, in a sunless drain filled with toothpaste, hair, and who knows what. If these tomatoes aren’t a testament to the will to live, I don’t know what is.

Amidst all this, I begin work with a new slate of students, high schoolers who have worked so hard and are hoping that life might be normal again when finally it is their turn for college. I try to advise those who were to be freshman next month, who are being asked to choose between two forms of a freshman year, neither of which looks remotely like what they anticipated and deserve.

Amidst all this, so many are struggling and dying and new hot spots are emerging and decreases are turning back to increases, waves cresting again with the promise of more destruction and awfulness on the other side.

Amidst all this, we have the most pathetic and incapable and sociopathic of leaders, propped up by sycophantic cowards and the people who profit off all of it. We have Karens and voter suppression and proud racism and a politicized Court landscape, and all those who have so assiduously abided by the pleas to stay home, wear a mask, avoid others are looking despondently to the months ahead with zero hope.

The rage I have felt at times during these months home rivals my most furious moments since 2016. Justice seems like some sort of alien concept, some sort of pipe dream that many have never had enough of, many miss desperately, and many desperately hope to see and experience again. Competency, too. My god what I would give for a competent leader in this time.

I cook another dinner, start the kids on fish oil, build a foundry with them, go swimming, kiss them goodnight, plead with them to just do the fucking typing lesson and ride the fucking bikes. I steal a moment, begging for it be uninterrupted in any way, take another yoga class, try to breathe and watch the birds and play with my cats and check on the neighbors and make another meal. I maintain hope for a sustained low tide, the boring sort you can just listen and relax to, the loveliest white noise.

Women, violence, anger, silence, enough

Have y’all read No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder? It’s not particularly uplifting, but it’s a powerful, meticulously-researched read and, in my opinion, a really important one. In the era of #MeToo, rampant abusers like Harvey Weinstein, trump, and so many more, Christine Blasey Ford’s powerful, truthful testimony (to no avail), draconian infringements on reproductive rights, and desperate vies for power and control, No Visible Bruises is crucial reminder that toxic masculinity, ignoring women, and the silence that comes from shame, stigma, and fear are an often lethal combination.

The longer I live and the more I read and listen, the greater my shock and gratitude that I have never been sexually assaulted. Harassed, yes, but even those experiences seem rather minimal in the grand scheme of things. My luck feels like some sort of massive break in the universal struggle of women. How sickening that I feel so rare in this way, for what does that say about what so many others endure?

In this year since one of my closest friends and I sat speechless and teary though the Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh hearings, I have thought about the ways women persist. How we pacify and quiet down and overcompensate and protect. How we too often sacrifice and diminish ourselves for the benefit and comfort of others, including other women and weighty social norms.

Enough.

This afternoon, I went to Politics & Prose for an author event: Jeannie Vanasco (new to me) would be in conversation about her new book, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, with none other than Rachel Louise Snyder. I brought Snyder’s book, bought Vanasco’s and a London Fog to sip on during the talk, and settled in in the second row.

I am so glad I went. Both women were so utterly real. So human and multidimensional and honest. They weren’t there to show off or curate their public personas or even, it seemed, to sell books. Both were there to think and reflect and educate and connect. Jeannie expressed mixed feelings and even a bittersweet confusion over why her friend, by all accounts a dear friend, did one exceedingly bad thing and to her. Rachel expressed anger and frustration, that which so many of us rightfully feel.

An older woman stood up to note that Kavanaugh’s behavior during his hearing was excused as righteous anger over being accused. I thought of Brock Turner being let off because he “has a bright future ahead of him” despite the fact that he raped an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. Another woman, younger than I, stood up to wonder if her anger at her horrifically-abusive father-in-law was ok even though he’s dying of prostate cancer. “It seems karmically right,” she said.

After meeting and thanking both Snyder and Vanasco, I clasped my now-signed books to my chest and shyly approached the woman with the sick father-in-law. “Excuse me, I said,” and she turned to me with kind eyes. “I think you have every right to be angry. I hope no one is shaming you for what you feel.” We talked for a few minutes, and her pain was so palpable. Her marriage is in dire straights in large part because of all the trauma perpetrated on her husband by his father. I squeezed her arm several times and wish I’d offered a hug. I saw her waiting by the bus stop as I drove out of the P&P lot and I hope she will be ok.

On my way home, I thought again, back to last year. I found this piece that I wrote just after the Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh hearings and thought I’d share some of it with you.

The powerful shrug of white male entitlement and anger that blew over Washington yesterday still hangs in the air, elbowing out the likelihood that Dr. Ford might truly be heard.

After dropping my children at school, I return home, slip my favorite women’s empowerment tee over my tense shoulders, and hastily draw my umpteenth protest sign—always crafted from foam core with different but equally fiery messages scrawled in black Sharpie Magnum marker on each side. This one turns out to be a favorite, with one side depicting three tearful female faces with blood red duct tape over their mouths and, below them, STOP written in thick letters. I grab the see-through mesh protest backpack that has accompanied me to every rally I’ve attended since the Women’s March in 2017: like the suitcase a near-term pregnant woman keeps close at hand, it is always at the ready. Since the election, there have been so many opportunities to use it.  

I call a cab and head to an 11:00 am gynecologist appointment made months before I knew who Christine Blasey Ford was, certain that I’ll have plenty of time to make the protest at the Capitol to fight Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. It begins at 1:00.

On the way downtown, I call my mother. We are both weepy.

“Mom, how can they ignore this? How can they want to appoint this man? I have to do try and do something.”

“I know. It is awful. Thank you for going, honey.”

As we hang up, the cab arrives at my destination. 19th Street. The driver, a man, kindly says, “I have sisters, a mother, daughters. In my country we respect women. I am so sorry for you feel. I am on your side.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.”

I’ve  known my gynecologist for more than a decade. If she reaches five feet tall, it’s only just, but her presence is formidable. She delivered my second son, helped get me the medication I needed during a difficult postpartum period, and is a magical combination of mother, sister, friend, and role model. We have a history of connection and mutual respect, and in her I have long seen manifested the strength and sturdiness I admire and actively work toward.  

As eager as I am to see her, I’m worried: She’s always running behind and I’m desperate to get to the Capitol. When I sign in at 10:50, I notice that the 10:00 patient still hasn’t been seen. A quiet jolt of dread stirs my stomach. The receptionist assures me it’ll be just a half hour wait. I take my seat, start charging my phone, and try to breathe deeply. 

Thirty, forty, fifty minutes pass, and I’m furious and frantic. I feel my blood pumping, my armpits sweating, tears burning hot in my eyes as I try to swallow them back. I hear myself demanding to know when my turn will come.  

I have to be somewhere. It’s important. Please.

I’m encouraged to give a urine sample.

 An assault victim bravely stood up yesterday, strong and sincere, scared and quivering, on behalf of millions. I want to stand beside her, literally, figuratively, but instead I’m being asked to pee by a nurse buying time for an unconscionably late doctor.

I wipe and pee and wash and breathe. I am taken back to the doctor’s office to wait some more. The tears aren’t threats anymore; they are actively marking my face and my shirt, and I think of my sign, forced to wait patiently by my mesh bag. Silenced women turned on their sides and shoved between chair and wall to wait. To wait until it’s their turn. They don’t know when that will be. If it will be.  

At well past noon, the doctor walks in.  My irritated posture and blotchy, damp face greet her. Because of our history, I stand up to hug her, and then am crying hard, as if I needed comfort and she was the first available. I haven’t seen her for two years. She doesn’t understand why I’m crying. Do I?

She asks if I am ok. I try to explain. I NEED to get to this protest. The need is primal, intense. I can’t articulate it clearly. I am angry that you’re making me late for something that feels so important, I want to scream.

 She surmises that I have been a victim of assault and that my history is bubbling up in the wake of Ford’s coming out.

 Her words anger me. I have never been assaulted. Even this feminist who raised a daughter who is now one of the only women in her engineering firm’s medical group seems unable to understand.

I am not crying for myself. I’m crying on behalf of women: those who have been assaulted, and those who haven’t. Those who have been ignored, demeaned, belittled, shrugged aside, seen but not heard, considered only in terms of their breast size or skirt length. Those who have been stolen from, whether their virtue, their ideas, their goodwill, the very things that we’re told make womanhood such a vaunted status. I am crying because I’m coming to think all that may have been a suppressive crock.

I am crying because a woman to whom something terrifying and intrusive happened decades ago now has two front doors in her home in case one is blocked and she needs to escape. I am crying because instead of applauding and honoring her courage, a cadre of white men actively seek to undermine and discredit her. These men want to give one of the biggest possible prizes to one of their tribe. I am angry. These tears are of anger. And I want, need to be giving voice.

“Does protesting make you feel better?,” my gynecologist says. “I admire that you’re involved, but is it healthy? I tend to put on classical music and bury my head in the sand.” 

I get that. But it’s not the way I operate.

…I’m finally outside and immediately see my friend, who’s meeting me.

In her I see a mirror image. She is floored when I tell her that I felt judged by my doctor.

 “What? We ARE angry,” she snorts, and I am grateful.

I tell her about a book I have been reading about women’s anger and how it often manifests in ways that aren’t “masculine.” We cry so that our anger is palatable. We cry so that men will see us as in need of protection, which safely perpetuates gender stereotypes, rather than as mad, hysterical women, which might make us look as if we think our anger is as valid as theirs. Anger crying is, I think, both a learned behavior and a way of subverting the system.

Enough.

On the Basis of Sex and the Open Discussion Project

The boys returned to school on Monday, and today Oliver stayed home sick. He is the easiest, most darling sick kid ever, and as today was frigid, we enjoyed a roaring fire while reading for book club, doing homework, and so forth. I got a bit of work done, though not as much as I’d hoped or planned. I am lucky that that’s OK, but it can be hard to not feel disappointed at times- at the loss of time, of the quiet hours counted on but taken. Tom and I showed the kids The Pursuit of Happyness last weekend, in part because it’s such a good movie but also for perspective; how on the line so many people are constantly, and the stress in that. It’s excruciating.

I didn’t think about it all too much until we picked up Jack and a friend and, as everyone had finished homework, went to see On the Basis of Sex. I felt this intense determination to see it. Today. I bribed my children with candy; Jack’s pal said, “Oh, that sounds wonderful. I’d love to see that.” I swear to god sometimes being with other people’s kids makes you believe that while you may not always see your lessons coming to fruition in your own spawn, you can have some faith that they are and will. Interacting with other kids with good parents lets you see that they can and do apply their skills and loveliness when the time is right. I see this all the time in my students too. Ah, parenting.

Anyway, after plying the children with all manner of “food,” we settled in to our seats, and I exhaled deeply. I’ve felt fitsy all week- tired, and an unsavory blend of worried and furious. The shutdown continues, hurting and stressing so many Americans. It continues because of an ignorant, mean man and the craven, pitiful people who enable him. It continues because of a greedy desire for power, nothing more. This shutdown has nothing to do with protection, nothing to do with security. It is wasteful and rude and the wall is stupid and ineffective.

I mention that because on Sunday I begin participating in the Open Discussion Project. I am both thrilled and honored to have been selected to do so, and yet, as the time approaches, I find myself nervous. The ODP, a joint project of six American bookstores, including my beloved Politics & Prose here in DC, is an effort to talk over the chasm of polarization dividing our country. You can learn more about it here, but in short, it brings together groups of people from across the political spectrum to talk and read books about current events and discuss them. “The goal of this effort is not conversion but conversation and understanding.”

I applied as soon as I read about the opportunity. I exclaimed aloud when I was accepted. I have studiously read our assigned book, highlighting and making mental notes all the while. And yet, I am nervous. I’m nervous because I’m furious. I’m nervous because although I value emotion and fully believe it comes from places of feeling and love I also recognize that it can counter reason, inhibit objectivism, and cloud and fuck things up. Emotion has always been part Achilles heel for me, part gift. We have a skeptical relationship, I think it’s fair to say.

In any case, I admit to feeling extremely correct in my belief that our country is in seriously bad straits, and I am sick to death of racism, sexism, bigotry, religion, and exclusivist conservatism cornering the fucking market on “real” and “salt of the earth” Americans.

No.

I, too, am a real American. A patriot. I am an atheist, an active anti-racist who recognizes that I will always have work to do, a feminist, and a proud progressive. I do not want walls built, on our borders or in our society. And so I worry that I will be unable to hear arguments for the wall. I worry that I will react badly to support for this “president.” I will try to listen, try to understand, but I’m nervous.

Back to the movie. We all loved it, the 7th graders and me especially. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a boss. Incredible human. I cried at the end and found myself struggling not to cheer or retch aloud several times throughout.

“Please introduce yourselves and tell us why you deserve a spot that would otherwise have gone to a man.”
”You used to be pretty and so smart. Now you sound shrill and bitter.”
”You’re just not a fit. I mean, our firm is a family. The wives get jealous.”
”The natural order of things…Caretakers are women.”

Jesus christ. It’s enough to make me insane. Talk about rousing emotions. I was nearly apoplectic at times. And yet still, women carry the bulk of the familial load, the mental load, the emotional load, and so on. We manage the expectations of how to look, how to act, how to be. But most women can never actually win. Not really. Can never strive without seeming strident. Can never assert without seeming shrill. I mean, just look at “grab them by the pussy and take what you want” having zero consequence versus “I want to impeach that motherfucker” being talked about ad nauseum for days. (Trump, Tlaib, respectively.) Really?

I think I carry all this with me into the ODP. I am mad. And driven. And worried. And strong. But that leash of propriety is still around my neck, yanking me back at times. Into expectation or submission or appropriateness or whatever.

It’s infuriating and in instills fear, often simultaneously. And I’m white.