Assessment

 My birthday is in June. The middle of the year. Often on the solstice. For years, mostly during my late teen's, my twenties and maybe my early thirties, I did a critical reassessment of how I was doing on my birthday and six months later on New Years eve. The thing is - I'm not an external goal maker. I'm not trying to run in a marathon or learn French. My assessments were always internal and abstract and tortured. Lots of hand wringing. I don't remember when I stopped or if it was a conscious choice to stop. 

I usually love those end of the year round ups. But this year. 

This year. 

I mean. 

I remember in March my goddaughter was bringing my grand-godson for a visit. I had not met him. She was in New Orleans where the pandemic was already killing people that she knew. She wasn't comfortable traveling. I thought she was probably right but I was so sad. People kept asking me if I was worried about the pandemic. I wasn't. I live in a small city in the middle of a gorge. People come and go but I'm not running around and I felt like it might not get to us. Or at least not in a big way. 

Shortly after the beginning of March the sports club closed down. No swimming. I stopped going to the store. I met with friends in the garage. Masked at a distance. At some point things opened again. I went back to the pool and felt safe because I was masked and there weren't many people there. As more people came masking became an issue. One woman told me I was a fearful person. A moment I will never forget. More and more cases in the country, in Oregon and in the Hood. I stopped feeling safe about the same time I stopped having a ride. No swimming. Friends were coming into the nest. Not many. We masked up occasionally if they'd been around a lot of people. Friends shopped for me. 

I continued with yoga and my bike pedals until my knee started spasming. My activity level dropped. I read books. 

The economy dropped and scared me enough that I stopped buying books. Which turned out to be a fun thing. I have purchased and been gifted many books. Looking at my book shelves was like having my own little store. I worked through shelf after shelf. 

Then the primary and the election. All stressful and annoying. 

The demonstrations. The deaths of Black people at the hands of police. 

It feels like 2020 will slip into 2021 with not much change. There will be more surges. There will be more violence. January seems grim. Maybe even February. Maybe longer. 

I know Biden isn't great but he is better. There will be things that get better. The vaccine isn't perfect but it's hope. I feel like things will get better in many ways. There is sense of momentum. There is also a sense of irreparable damage. Having a binary metric isn't useful. 

I am something. Something like happy. If I sound reticent it's because I am worried about the damage. I'm worried about all the best effort not being enough. Happy isn't something I'm used to. Nor was it ever anything I cared much about. Internal goals. Abstract and tortured. I always reserve a part of myself in some kind of awareness of everything, everybody around me. 

Small things seem to knock me down. Almost always having to do with a sense of people not doing what they should do. A mail person doesn't take the time to find a package, which becomes obvious when another one does. I feel a desire to demand accountability. It might be my privilege showing and it's also a sense that we all need to be doing what we can. That we are in a crisis. More than one. It may also be left overs from the time of taking care of the mommie. I only know that the desire to shout why is overwhelming. I feel weepy and a bit craven. 

In my life the damage has been repairable. I sit in my warm nest. Fed. Rested. New stack of books from Christmas. Something like happy. 

No critical reassessment. 

No goals. 

Can I say happy new year? Can I use that ebullient word and feel it? In the context of all the death and all the cruelty and all the loss? Can I feel happy new year? Can I let go of assessment and just hold a moment? 

Not sure. 

But something like happy.  

 

Billie

 I was fifteen or sixteen when I learned about Billie Holiday. I'm not sure how but it was probably reading liner notes. If you never owned an album (LP) you might not know what liner notes are. Records were in paper sleeves to protect them. The sleeves often had lyrics, names of who was playing on a given record, biographical info. When I got a new album I sat for hours reading the liner notes. 

I bought a Billie Holiday album when I was still living with the mommie. I was listening to it one day when my bedroom door came flying open. The mommie was used to hearing folk, rock and roll, Motown, pop, blues coming from my room. None of which she liked. Billie was singing her music. We sang together for a few tunes. 

The mommie and I had a long standing tradition of singing together. She would be in the bath and I would be sitting on the toilet while we sang Chattanooga Choo Choo. We kept that tradition during her days of Dementia. But in those teenage years we just didn't like the same music. 

Suddenly she stood up and said something about the people she had heard sing the songs were better and walked out. I was confused and a bit stung. 

It felt like it was about race. I don't have the musical vocabulary to explain why I thought that. It had to do with the way Billie bent notes. She was not Patti Page. I liked Pattie Page. I just liked Billie ... better. I felt the music differently. 

When I interrogate the racism that lives in me it's often about absence. I grew up in White space. Black people were not in my church or school. They didn't live in my neighborhood. I saw them on buses and street cars. Black culture fascinated me. The music especially. I read Black writers. I read Baldwin although having recently reread him I don't feel like I got it. Black people were exotic. I knew about slavery although not in depth. I wanted to believe racism was in the past.  

In my twenties I spent hours in the bath tub. I had some kind of bath stuff that turned the water lime green. I went through a vodka Gimlet phase. Gimlets matched the water. I had a chair near enough to hold an ash tray and my smokes. My Gimlet. A small mirror on which a few lines of coke were drawn. And Billie on the boom box. Once a friend came by and found me passed out in the tub. He assumed suicide because he saw the razor blade I used to chop the coke. If it was suicide it was a passive act. I just wanted to get mellow and sing with Billie. 

That moment with the mommie in which we connected while singing I Cover the Waterfront and Embrace Me has been coming back to me. I know there are things packed into it.

November

I am not having the November I thought I would have. I had a nice election day. A friend brought me coffee and a breakfast sandwich to fortify me for the long day ahead. A book that I didn't expect for a few more days arrived early. Not that I could concentrate to read but it was nice to have it. A friend from Colorado called in the evening. We stayed on the phone and watched as state after state turned red. Nerve wracking. I had heard the red mirage theory so I tried to remain calm. As the days unfolded and it became clear that Biden had won. I breathed a little easier. The occupant's lies and refusal to concede are annoying but with each day it sounds more like a ridiculous drone. Two more months of it seems miserable but ... the end is nigh. 

COVID continues to be a frustrating heart ache. I have nothing to say that hasn't been said. It's a more significant drone. Over worked health care workers with minimal PPE and continuing rising numbers of deaths. My heart is always breaking. 

And. As I have said a few hundred times. I'm so glad the mommie isn't here for it. The last few Novembers have been about grief. The grief is there but ... I am really so glad she isn't here for this. 

So the month has been sad. But not as sad. 

I mean. It's a sad time. Food lines. Deaths. Political shouting fests. It's all sad. Sadness happens, 

A few years back I read an article about a woman who accidently texted a stranger thinking she was texting her grandson reminding him to be to her house for Thanksgiving dinner at 3 o'clock. A young man who got the text texted back and said she wasn't his grandmother but could he still get a plate. She said, of course. And a tradition was born. 

This year her husband died from the corona virus. And gathering for dinner is problematic with the  virus still active. The woman and her not-really-grandson got together for an early Friday night dinner. Just the two of them. 

A story like that one fills me up. Comforts me in ways I can't describe.

Only connect.

I have my own Christmas elf. She drags the boxes of stuff up from the garage and does most of the work putting things around. We've done everything but the tree. I have continued my tradition of buying a live tree. It's waiting at the garden center. After it's been my Christmas tree it will enjoy the rest of its life on the Oregon coast. A wind storm knocked down a bunch of trees where my elf has her trailer. My tree will be a new start there. 

Today I will eat a Turkey dinner from a hotel instead of cooking. The chef there is good so I'm confident. The pumpkin pecan pie will be from a local small baker. The sun has been in and out. I'll read. Maybe watch some more of the Queen's Gambit. 

Life. 

Will go on. 

Oak Street Halloween

I think I've written about this before. 

The first year I was in the nest the mommie came for a visit. She had given up traveling but she really wanted to see the nest and Hood River. She got on a plane and came out. She loved looking out the windows at the Oak Street goings on. Her only complaint was that it was hard to watch TV because Oak Street was more interesting. 

On Halloween I was about to put dinner on the table when I noticed people in the middle of the street, including children. She noticed too. I opened the door and looked up the street. It had been blocked off and families were beginning to wander about, many with costumes. In front of the shops people were sitting with bowls of candy. The ice cream shop up the street was giving away free ice cream before they closed for the year. Dinner was going to wait. The mommie was captivated. Since then it's been one of my favorite times of year. Hood River feels like a small town. 

This year it won't happen. I am overwhelmed with sadness. Which seems a little extreme. I think it's carrying the weight of all the larger sadness. The rise in COVID cases and deaths. The exhaustion of the health care workers. The stress of the election. 

It feels dysphoric to say but COVID gave me a gift. I am so glad the mommie isn't here for it. I don't know how I would have taken care of her. The news coming out of care facilities is terrifying. There is a place near by in which there were a few deaths. There had been a fall in the care giving because they couldn't get workers. Those stories hit me hard. Yesterday in the NY Times there was an article about senior facilities and the problems with care. Because of all of that it's the first time I've been able to relax into the fact of her being gone. 

Usually I start getting a little sad in November. I see the cover of a magazine with pictures of turkey dinners. I remember Thanksgiving dinners that I loved cooking. The pain in my knees makes it hard to get cereal and milk in a bowl. I won't be cooking any big dinners. The date of her death is just before Thanksgiving. I get sadder and sadder through the month. The day after Thanksgiving I'm ready to put up Christmas decoration. I'm still a little sad but Thanksgiving just feels like loss now. Once it's over I'm ready to have a holiday. 

I'm usually so caught up in Oak Street Halloween that I don't feel the sadness. This year I guess it's going to start a little early. 

I don't have the ... uh ... I dunno ... what ever it takes to buck up today. I'm trying (not entirely successfully) to stay away from the news and doom scrolling. Read my book. Take it one breath at a time. 

Systems

I've been thinking about Plessy v Ferguson. Random? Not really. That supreme court (1896) upheld the idea that racial segregation was constitutional. It has never been overruled. It sits in the shadows like some rancid, not quite dead snake, that keeps reeling its head. Brown v Board (1954) sort of over ruled it by stating that separate but equal was unconstitutional (equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment), at least in educational institutions. 

Eisenhauer signed the Civil Rights Act (1957) and LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. 

And. 

On Monday afternoon police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr.  He was ten feet away from them, holding a knife. He was shot multiple times.  

Black Lives Matter has been around for six years. In the streets. That is where my hope for change is. 

We're all worried about the Supreme court and we should be.  I am. Specifically because of Roe v Wade but on Monday the court ruled that Wisconsin can't count ballots if they arrive after election day. Justice Kagan wrote a dissent in which she said that nothing could be more supercilious or improper than refusing to count ballots because they arrive after midnight. It was a shot at Kavanaugh. Justice Ginsburg may be gone but the struggle continues. 

I've been thinking about the Jane Collective. From 1969 to 1973 they worked to help women find doctors who needed an abortion. They even learned how to do simple abortions. If the court overturns Roe, or just upholds laws that make legal safe abortion hard to get there will be a battle. 

I don't really know what the future will look like. I'm not sure what the battles will look like. I just know that through out history the courts and the congress and all the rule makers have done some terrible things. And people continued to fight. I think Justice Ginsburg was know to respond to defeat by getting back to work. 

I've been really nervous right before I go to sleep lately. I have mini panic attacks.  I feel like something is wrong.  And then I remember. Something is wrong. Lots of somethings are wrong. 

A group called Joy to the Polls have been working with various artists to get music to poll locations where people are waiting hours in line to vote. People dance in line. There have been drummers. And marching bands. The wonderful Chef Jose Andres has been providing food for people in line. People helping and bringing joy. 

This is what I hope it looks like.  

No Good Very Bad

The nest has three floor to ceiling windows in the front. When I first moved in they were covered with blinds that I almost broke the first night. It's hard to explain how I did that but I did. They weren't just cheap blinds. Every morning I walked the width of the room opening the blinds and then the reverse in the evening. After a year or so one broke. 

I wanted smart blinds that I could raise and lower with my phone. I went to a place in town that sells them and had a long conversation with a really nice woman about what I wanted. She showed me books full of samples. The ones I liked the best were super costly. Of course. She very kindly told me about a guy who could fix my blind. And he did. A year later they broke again. So I got the ones I wanted. They have a honeycomb shape that blocks sound and light really well. They are purple. A very light diaphones purple, of course. The wall is a dark green/blue. The blinds and wall look so lovely together. I often sit in the chair by the window and just stare at those colors and feel happy. I feel grateful. My little nest makes me so happy. I feel spontaneously grateful, often.

I've never been enthusiastic about gratitude as a practice. I don't want to conjure it. There are days when gratitude is a child lost in the fog. I might be able to hear it but I can't see it. 

I am fierce about feeling what I feel when I feel it. 

These days feeling are hard to track. We are all exhausted, braced, uncertain. The election will be what it will be but we'll still have the two months after that and COVID is going no where. I slump. Sometimes for a short time. Sometimes for hours or days. Of course I do. Of course we all do. 

I'm buried in a book most of the time. 

Yesterday was no good very bad. Starting with a bunch of small problems so small it's embarrassing to document them. There were too many. I was too tired. I felt like everything was just too hard. The day didn't get much better. I didn't have the news on. I wasn't on social media. I checked in long enough to hear about the 345 children languishing at the border and the administration's inability to find their parents. That stirred up a wave of fury. But it wasn't that. It was more personal. By the end of the day my brain was spinning with thoughts. I couldn't get to sleep. 

I mean. It's just the way of things sometimes. 

Today is so so. Some problems that seemed to resolve. I'm still in the storm of rage about the children. And I'm probably going to watch the debate. 

The one thing I know. The one thing I count on, is a moment of awareness, in my nest. A moment that will calm the storm for a minute or two. I take comfort in the way colors randomly feed off each other. The rainbows on the wall pouring through the prisms on the chandelier. The fray on my rug. The lines of books on shelves. It doesn't change anything but it feels good. 

A Nice Day

 It had been a nice day. I was able to swim, which is always a happy thing. When COVID first hit the club was closed. At some point it opened and we went swimming. The friend who gives me a ride had some problems and couldn't take me for a few weeks. Then she was able to take me again but the smoke hit. After a few days of staying out of it we went swimming anyway. We weren't really out in the smoke for long. 

Things at the pool had felt safe largely because there was no one there. This week was a bit of a worry. More people. Not enough masks. I've been wondering if I need to stop going. But Friday was great. Mostly empty pool. Masks. The water felt great. 

Later a friend stopped by with brisket from a new BBQ place across the river. I got a piece of white cake.  Not something I would normally get but white cake by southern cooks is special. It was good. I had enough left of everything for the next day. 

I forget what I was doing when I found out. Reading probably. I checked Facebook and saw that she was dead. Justice Ginsburg. She was gone. 

I don't always react to the deaths of famous people. I felt sentimental and sad when John Prine died but I was not as done in as some of my friends. Famous people don't always feel close to me. 

When John Lewis died I felt tore up. It's hard to say why with out sounding trite. He was an important historic man. He fought. He took the blows. And he stayed focused. And he was joyous. I love the videos in which he is dancing. His fight changed the world. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the world. Again the words I have to describe my feelings feel too small. I would like to have just focused on the feeling of sadness. I would like to have mourned. But replacing her on the court has too many terrifying implications. 

 I resent how scared and angry I feel all the time. I resent how worried my friends are. Trump lost the popular vote by almost  3 million. He is in the office because of a political slight of hand that should have been done away with long ago. And he didn't even win by large numbers in the states where the electoral college gave him the presidency. His reaction was to look for voter fraud. He didn't find any. 

The words I can use to describe him are all foul and take me out of my heart. I don't want to be out of my heart right now. I am grieving the loss of a great woman. I want to be in those feeling and not be distracted by rage. 

And. 

That's not where we are at. 

My Facebook and Twitter feed are filled with the word fight. Because that is where we're at. 

The peaceful trasfer of power has been with us since 1800 when the election was as fraught as the one we are currently about to have. Trump people like to talk about the founding fathers but I don't think they have any idea how fractious they were. They broke laws. They destroyed property. It wasn't like they just all agreed one day and life went on. They believed that the arguing they were doing was making the country better. Trump has made it clear that he has no interest in the peaceful transfer of power. I doubt he understand the concept. 

So. We are all gearing up to fight. 

We are worried about our votes being counted. We are worried about bad faith. Elections should be dignified. 

That's not where we're at. 

So. I will swim again. There will be more BBQ and white cake. Life will. Go on. 

And I expect to feel rage for months.