True Colors

Living the length of our days

I walked into Big Y only to see my parents standing at the checkout. I went up behind my mom and put my arm around her. My dad looked up from paying; a smile filled his face. What a nice surprise. What a miracle.

At the post office, I addressed mailers, the puffy ones they sell there, each just the right size for a book, each book inscribed to someone who contributed to the book becoming a book. I sent them media mail since it’s about half as much as first class.

Does your package contain any liquids, fragile items, perishable items, or potentially hazardous materials?

No, it does not.

Just a book?

Yes, just a book.

No advertisements?

Nope, just a book.

Media mail is subject to being searched, José tells me.

Will we even continue to have regulations about what can be mailed? Will we even have mail? Everything feels up for grabs, on the brink of being snatched away.

Monday. I overslept and then couldn’t quite figure out what day it was. My sense of time snow-globed.

Meanwhile, the handyman spent much of the day at the house. Who knew weather stripping would bring such satisfaction? I can’t stop fascism, but I can stop the draft from coming in from around the edges of the doors.

Something

Robert B. Hubbell

wrote this morning brings a needed correction to the magnetism of powerlessness: “…to pretend that the people have no say in the outcome is an oversight of profound dimensions.” (Read that here.)

My old friend, Pastor Gail Henderson-Belsito, offers this encouragement: "Take exquisite care of your beautiful body, your unbreakable spirit, and your boundless soul." (Read that here.)

M.J. and I sit at the dining room table and share our high points from the day. One of my kids texts me. The other calls. All the kinds of days. A great day. A meh day. A long-ass day. An energizing day. An autopilot day. A breakthrough day. A curl-up on the couch day. A snow day. A woe day. A blessed ordinary day. All part of a whole life. My heart burns with love. May we live the full length of our days.

I remember the revelation I had one day last summer during a therapy session: Pain and love. That’s all we have. Everything is an expression of one or both of these. It seemed profound then. Maybe it is.

Everything is so fragile. Everyone is on edge or over the edge. Except are they? It’s equally strange to run errands. Attention shoppers, there is a hostile government takeover in Aisle three. Take 30% off for Presidents’ Day while supplies last.

Over the Edge – did anyone else see that movie? It came out in 1979 when I was five, so I know I didn’t watch it quite that young, but I don’t think I was older than 10 or so when I saw it. Looking back, it was that movie and The Outsiders, actually all of S.E. Hinton’s books, that spoke to me, followed shortly thereafter by Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries and the memoir Nancy Spungen’s mother wrote about losing her daughter to a life of Sid Vicious and heroin.

What was I, a child in a stable, academic, middle-class family, doing identifying so heavily with nihilistic, disaffected teenagers? This was not unusual, it turns out, in my college town. The question follows: Did we grow up to be nihilistic, disaffected adults?

I used to wonder what would be the thing my kids will tell their kids they did or didn’t have that the next generations wouldn’t be able to imagine, akin to my kids not being able to imagine life without Google or GPS or cell phones or email or streaming or weather apps. I hoped it wouldn’t be that they had this thing called Democracy.

We must keep living. Our ancestors would attest if they could: To keep living is a powerful form of resistance.

Remember that surreal feeling in the early days of the pandemic? That sense of being in the house while out there in the world, something big and menacing was happening, which it was?

Which it is.

So I bought the pot of baby roses. So the handyman came and put up the pretty new towel bars in the bathroom. So I hug my parents and love on my kids and share high points with M.J. over Trader Joe’s meatloaf. So we hang the star Pearl gave us for Hanukkah; its light sprays across the walls. Let each little light be a spark, a prayer.

I make my home as warm and beautiful as possible. I answer the phone. I put on music and dance my way through emptying the dishwasher. I remember my youth and sing Cyndi Lauper songs. Past, present, future. We are so precious. We are all so precious.

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