Monthly Archives: October 2018

Beginning Again

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It’s a beautiful fall day. The leaves are finally turning. Were you wondering, like I was, why the leaves were still green so late into October? I guess it has something to do with the hot dry autumn. But now they’re turning, and the bursts of red and yellow and orange in the tree tops make me glad.

I got to babysit for G this morning.

Housekeeping note: If you are a reader of this blog, you know that in the first couple of years, I gave my children and grandchildren pseudonyms, so as to protect their privacy, but I’m done with all that. Except for the grandchildren who will be referred to by first letter of their names. G is my fifteen-month old granddaughter. L is my three-year old grandson, and B is my 8 year-old granddaughter. 

G and I watched Shrek; ate cheese sticks, raspberries, and bananas; and played peek-a-boo and tickletickletickle. Nothing like spending time with a sticky and giggling baby to help you forget for a minute that the US government is denying the brutal murder of an American citizen by the Saudis and that transgender people exist.

I’ve written a lot about hope on this blog. Mostly because it seems so ridiculous to have any, and yet we seem to have a bottomless capacity for hope. Like the sun and the array of colors across the tree tops, this capacity makes me glad. In spite of all the bullshit and the fact that we also have a seemingly bottomless capacity for cruelty.

Walking home from G’s house, I thought about this blog. I thought about missing two weeks, and how it was likely that I was going to miss this week too because I had nothing to write about, when it struck me. I had to begin again. Shit, I was always beginning again.

But the concept of having to begin again grated.

I didn’t have to begin again. I got to begin again.

I get to begin again.

I have a seemingly bottomless capacity for beginning again.

For now anyway . . .

 *****

A few years ago, my husband was visiting his parents in the assisted living apartment they shared. His mother, who had always been an avid cleaner, was sweeping in the small kitchen while Eric visited with his dad.

Eric said to her, “Mom, why don’t you come sit down with us.”

“I have to get done, Eric,” she said.

“I don’t know, Mom. What comes after done?” Eric said.

It was one of those moments that stick with you. Eric came home and told me the story. He was always trying to get done too. And he couldn’t get over the revelation that when you get done, you’re really done. Life isn’t about getting done.

It’s about beginning again, right.

Living is about beginning, again and again and again.

I’ve been  meditating since January. I’ve tried my entire adult life to start a meditation practice, and just this past January it stuck. Who knows why.

I have a lot to learn, and meditation wants to teach me.

Meditation is about beginning again. It’s not about transcendence–at least not for me. I’m not transcending anything when I sit on the floor for fifteen minutes and try to follow my breath. Instead, I’m getting a nice fifteen or twenty minute lesson on beginning again. Every time my mind wanders, I get to bring it back to my breath.

Every time I put a load of laundry away, I get to begin again because there’s always dirty laundry around here.

Every time I sweep the floor, or make the beds, or mow the yard, I get to begin again because dogs keep shedding, and people keep sleeping, and grass keeps growing.

Every time I finish a blog, I get to begin again because Monday keeps showing up.

I won’t remember this. I never do.

I have a seemingly bottomless capacity for forgetting.

 

 

Where’s the Hope?

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A couple of remarkable things happened last week. Yes, I’m talking about the heated, contested, and often disheartening confirmation battle concerning Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

A friend of mine suggested that hope is blooming in the midst of this clusterfuck. I wonder. I have to admit, that I felt very little hope on Thursday as I listened to white men explain that they believed “something had happened to Dr. Blasey Ford,” but that there wasn’t enough corroborating evidence to indict Brett Kavanaugh.

It certainly isn’t necessary for me to cover the variety of ways these statements laid bare the republican senators’ craven determination to confirm Kavanaugh. That an indictment isn’t necessary in a  job interview is only one of the ways they sought to cloud the issue at hand which is simply this–he lied.

Last week, as the confirmation battle heated up, I began reading Rebecca Solnit’s new book, Call Them By Their True Names. Solnit writes, “Language can erase, distort, point in the wrong direction, throw out decoys and distractions. It can bury the bodies or uncover them.”

I like to read with a pencil in my hand because I can underline and circle and star words, sentences, or passages that strike me. This is one I circled, underlined, and starred.

Solnit’s assertion about language and the nefarious ways we use it drives a stake into the republican’s and Kavanugh’s attempt to not only side-step, but to confuse the issue.

Kavanuagh lied in a variety of large and small ways. That lying coupled with his outrageous and partisan opening statements and his utter disregard–no, his complete contempt–for the democrat senators on the committee disqualify him for a job of such magnitude.

So where’s that hope?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Because I want to find it.

Back in 2004, still smarting from the election that found George W. Bush continuing to occupy the White House (do you remember the scream that canned Howard Dean’s nomination–boy those were the days), I picked up Paul Rogat Loeb’s The Impossible Will Take a Little While. It’s a thick book of essays subtitled, A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear.

The book includes a short excerpt from a longer work by Václav Havel. Havel’s words are where I found the definition of hope that rings most true. It’s the “hope” I cling to.

Hope . . . is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Each time I recopy these words, I’m buoyed by the idea that hope isn’t optimism. I want to remember that. And when I do, I can make out the hope my friend was speaking of.

Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony epitomizes this sort of hope. She did the right thing, not because it would turn out well, but because it made sense–sense in her worldview of what is right and what is wrong.

Those women who confronted Jeff Flake. They gave their testimony in a public place because it was right that their voices be heard.

The women who blew up Chris Coons’s phone. They stood to gain nothing from sharing, but they shared because information is important.

That’s where I see hope.

Not so much in the necessary bi-partisan maneuverings of Flake and Coons. Sure, they did the right thing, but I’m tired of the optics–two white guys saving the day.

I don’t intend to downplay the importance of their actions. I’m grateful as hell. If nothing else, the FBI investigation offers a slight reprieve.  But, and it’s a big but, there would have been no action without the concerted effort of women determined to be heard.

Not just Dr. Blasey Ford, although her testimony blew me the fuck away. But all the women who’ve been speaking truth to power. Their refusal to shut up is contagious. Their voices rise as I write.

That’s hope.

May the cacophony continue!