My friend, Julie, gave it to me a little over a year ago. I was happy to receive it, to push the flimsy wire frame into the soft spring ground, to step back and admire both the sign and the placement of the sign, to imagine people driving by or walking up, accepting the charge to Love More.

So, I bought one for my sister and for my daughter and for my parents. I thought we could all love a little more, or a lot. The idea of loving more appealed to me because the damned world seems, at times, so bereft of that sentiment.

But then again, sometimes I am too.

***

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. I have lots of excuses— but mostly it has to do with

politics.

Yep, I’m just going to go ahead and put 100% of the blame for my lack of creative output on donald trump or Mike Pence or Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Bruce Rauner, Betsy Devos, Sean Hannity, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Pick your crazy right winger and add him or her–the list goes on and on.

It’s silly, I know, to allow the bad people (yep, I’m just going to go ahead and call them the bad people) silence me. And yet, that’s pretty much what I’ve done. I tried to write about the election and the terrible president and the new administration’s continued and craven disregard for decency or democracy, but it just made me feel bad.

And I worried.

Yep, I worried what people would think, in particular, the people I love. Those who voted for, support, and continue to stand up for trump and co. I worried about the dehumanizing effects of my anger. I worried that I would sound bitter and pissy. I got so tired of all the snowflake bullshit.

The sign was still there, but I forgot to love more.

***

So here I am beginning again. (WTF? I mean, really)

The other day, home from a long walk, I looked up at my house from the street, and that Love More sign recaptured my imagination. Yes, I’ve been walking by it for over a year, and I stopped seeing it.

And maybe, just a teeny bit, I didn’t want to love more. After all, there’s an awful lot to be angry about.

An abbreviated and incomplete list of things to be angry and/or worried about:

• Tiny children separated from their mothers at the border and put into holding facilities (cages) by our government.
• An education secretary who thinks it’s a good idea to use federal funds to buy guns for teachers.
• A president who lies so virulently and so often that “truth isn’t truth” begins to make sense.
• Off-shore drilling.
• The dismantling of healthcare provisions for those who need them most.
• Renewed and re-invigorated racism.
• A culture that perpetuates rape culture and the abuse of women.
• The systemic sexual assault of young people by clergy and the subsequent cover-up by the Catholic Church (over and and over again).

I mean, Come On.

Love More?

***

Can we love more enough to make a difference?  I’ll be honest, I don’t know. And most days I doubt it. But what the hell–let’s give it a go.

***

It starts like this.

Love more

three kids and a kangaroo,

and love more

the tenacious dandelion in the tall grass,

and love more

the welcome grasshopper,

and love more

stupid awesome cousins,

and love more

a baby girl with a bucket of water,

and love more

an apricot pug snoring on the ottoman,

and love more

a boy with a beetle,

and love more

three baby robins in a nearly hidden nest,

and love more

a man and his granddogs,

and love more

nubby carrots from the garden,

and love more

a green and white moment,

and love more

this view from the front porch (do you see the deer?).