The Morning After the 2016 Election

When I went to bed on Monday night, the night before Election Day, I told myself that whatever happened in the Presidential race the next day, I would still go to sleep next to Marilyn the next night, our bedroom would still be cozy, our house would still be our safe haven, my immediate world would not change immediately. Even then, I knew I was telling myself a bedtime story. But I needed to sleep. And I did.

Now it is Wednesday morning, the morning after Election Day. The sun has come up; it’s a perfect, crisp, fall morning. Our Hillary sign is in the front yard, where it has been since the summer. And millions of us are faced with the inconceivable, awful reality—so awful that for now, I do not want to spell it out.

How do we go on?

For me, the answer for now has been to avoid the media, the analysis, and to follow my morning ritual of standing in front of the living room window, palms together, and recalling at least three reasons I am grateful. I managed to find three, even this morning, though I had to push much else aside. Then I picked up the grey Unitarian Universalist hymnal and read a meditation. I do this every day.  Today, I knew which one I needed: number 483, a poem by Wendell Berry titled “The Peace of Wild Things.” You can find it here: http://www.onbeing.org/program/ellen-davis-and-wendell-berry-the-poetry-of-creatures/extra/the-peace-of-wild-things-by

For now, it is giving me the perspective and the strength I need to go in and teach three classes and keep my devastation under wraps. Then I will face the rest of the world and probably let the tears flow.

How are you coping today?

It was difficult to reconcile this view from the living room window with the grief  and fear in my heart.

I had taken this photo early in the evening to post when HRC won.  Yes, I am that supporter, the one with buttons and bumper stickers galore.

I am grateful I went to this celebration of Votes for Women on Tuesday evening in downtown Champaign. I had hope then.

I Let in Spring

A year ago today, my best friend, Amy Winans, died. Today, in my grief, I have talked with people who love her. I have folded and put away piles of laundry--something I often did while on the phone with Amy. I have tried to understand again that she is gone, that if I talk to her, she won't reply. 

Still, I feel her presence around me, especially in the spring flowers. Amy spent hours gardening, and her letters often arrived on notecards with delicate drawings of flowers printed on them. When I attempted to paint purple iris in watercolor, I told myself I'd send Amy a painting if it turned out well. 

Today, when I didn't know what else to do, I went outside, where bunches of daffodils swayed in the wind. I cut some of them, arranged them in vases, and put them around the house. In memory of Amy, I let in spring. 

Letters From My Friend

This month, Amy and I would have been friends for twenty-five years. Half our lives. But Amy died eleven months ago.  This month, I didn't send her the annual valentine marking the anniversary of our friendship. Instead, I brace for the anniversary of her death. 

Still, Amy makes her presence known: I gesture or grimace and then exclaim, "That's an Amy thing I just did!"  Marilyn nods in recognition. 

And there are her letters, her words. 

"You have a letter from Amy!" Marilyn would call out, as she entered the house with the mail.  

Every week or so, a letter in a small green or ivory envelope would arrive with that familiar handwriting in black or green ink.  I almost took them for granted, they were that frequent.  But I didn't.  

Sometimes, I opened the letter right away, standing in the kitchen, reading quickly.  Other times, I saved it until the quiet of bedtime. I kept all her letters.  Now, I  turn to them when I need to hear her voice. 

Today, my daily poem from the Academy of American Poets was "February 29"by Jane Hirshfield, one of my favorite poets. I was struck by the last lines of the poem: 

"An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died."

November

The prairie on the last day of November.

Starting thirty years ago—when I moved to the United States after growing up in the warmth of India and Kuwait—November became the nondescript lull between the brilliant oranges of autumn and Halloween and the lights and sparkle of the holiday season.  Until Thanksgiving and my birthday arrived at the end of the month, November seemed merely grey and increasingly cold. 

This year, on a Saturday in early November, just when the trees had lost most of their leaves and the wind seemed to freeze my bones, this month of transition reminded me of the hope and faith it takes to move through our days. 

In the morning, Marilyn and I attended the church wedding of a middle-aged couple.  The ceremony was brief, but we could all see that the exchange of words had transformed the lives of the couple.  As they walked out of the sanctuary together, their smiles were wide, their faces nearly aglow.  With faith and hope, they had made promises that were to last them their whole lives.  Their whole lives. 

At noon, Marilyn and I walked to our neighborhood park, where an Indian family that lives two doors from us was planting a tree in memory of their beloved daughter and sister, who had died just before her twelfth birthday after a brief illness.  She would never marry.  She would not even be a teenager.  Her whole life was done.   

As I shoveled some dirt around the root of the tree and then watched her young friends and her six-year-old brother do the rest, I thought of the hope and faith with which we love the people in our lives. We plan for our lives together.  And then, sometimes, we are devastated by how our plans have to be laid aside. 

At the same time, I thought how planting that catalpa tree, which in November was bare, just a collection of skinny branches really, was an act of hope and faith.  In the spring, the tree will bloom.  In a few years, it will cast some shade.  Eventually, children may sit under it and have a picnic.  As we held hands in a circle around the tree, all of us, whose lives were touched by this young, bright, loving girl, imagined that tree.  One person had brought bulbs of white grape hyacinth to plant under the tree, and the children placed those around the roots, helped by the adults.

After the tree was planted and the kind men from the park district had set the memorial plaque in place and laid down the mulch, our small group hurried down the street to our neighbors’ house.  There we ate simple Indian food, sipped on hot apple cider, and found some comfort in being together. 

When Marilyn and I came home that Saturday afternoon, we worked on the annual task of moving the furniture from our deck to our garage.  As I moved the heavy umbrella stand in the red wheelbarrow, I imagined bringing it out again in the spring, imagined setting out the deck furniture and hanging up the backyard swing in front of the blue spruce trees.  I have faith spring will come again—and I hope it brings only what we are able to bear.

As I pushed the wheelbarrow, I noticed berries from the hawthorn tree gathered by November rain.

Towards equality

On November 20, Governor Quinn signed into law the bill that will bring marriage equality to Illinois. On June 1, 2014, three years after our civil union, eight years after our commitment ceremony, and fifteen years into our relationship, Marilyn and I will be able to apply for a marriage license as a same-sex couple. We will finally be treated as equals in our own state.  And the federal government will recognize our marriage, too.

I feel a range of emotions when I think of this progress: relief and joy that we have come this far; anger that the struggle existed at all, that my fellow citizens took this long to decide we are worthy; and sadness for those who died before this new law, leaving behind survivors who were never recognized as family by the state, and therefore will never receive the financial benefits.

Overall, though, November was a month to celebrate progress towards equality.  Below is a series of photos that chronicles the celebration.

On Tuesday, November 5, Marilyn and I followed the Illinois House debate online, looking for updates.  That afternoon, I was getting ready to grade papers and had just ordered a decaf Americano at the neighborhood coffee shop when this text from Marilyn came through: my first--and I hope, only, proposal of marriage.  It was all so exciting, I wanted to tell someone.  But I wasn't sure of the barista's views, so I didn't say anything while still at the counter.  In minutes, though, I was online, sharing the joy with friends.

This graphic was all over Facebook, and soon it was my profile photo.

Marilyn had said that morning, "If the bill passes, we have to have wedding cake."  That evening, she went to the bakery that had designed our commitment ceremony cake, a towering affair, and got this "wedding white" cake.  The proprietor, who recognized Marilyn, offered to write on it.  When I posted this photo on Facebook, we received dozens of messages of congratulations.

This was the front page of our local paper the next morning. It's striking how a newspaper headline can make progress seem more real.  

The Unitarian Universalist (UU) church we belong to had a celebration that weekend.  I took these cookies--quartered because they were so large--to the rainbow-themed potluck at the church.  

This was the cake made by the organizers of the celebration, who are among those who have lobbied for equal rights for gays and lesbians.  We feel so fortunate to belong to a church that works proactively for justice and equality.

When the newspaper did a story on the local response, our minister was interviewed and was on the front page.

The altar decorations that Sunday celebrated the marriage equality victory.  This is the sanctuary where we had our commitment ceremony in 2006.

Those are candles of joy and concern, lit silently during the service.  One of the few spoken joys submitted that day was about the bill being passed.

It's official.  And still a little amazing.

When Someone Dies Young

                       

                        Today I thought about how everyone I know

                        is sad, how amazing that the forests and deserts

                        and plains can hold us as we get up and walk

                        from one season to the next.

  --From the poem “Sadness in Spring” by RobinBecker

Yesterday, a thirty-six-year-old woman who loved life and loved her young son even more died from cancer.  And I thought once again how final death is.  We can’t rewind to before, no matter how much we might want to. 

And we usually want to.  We want to ask questions.  We want to hear a familiar voice.  We want to show our love.  Did they know, we wonder, that we loved them?  Did we tell them often enough?  Those questions are clichéd--because they are so commonly asked. 

The young woman who died, Jennifer Arnold Smith, was a colleague of mine before her illness changed her life.  Jen knew for years that her death was nearer than it should have been. She fought it, looked for treatments, but she knew it was likely she would die soon.  So she lived.  In the time she had, she really, really lived.  She called it “living legendary.”  She wrote and self-published two books.  She told her story.  She supported others with cancer.  She went on trips and talk shows.  A year ago, she took her son to school on his first day of kindergarten; she had wanted to see that day, and she made the most of it when it came.  A week before she died, she gave her son an early birthday present, a motorized scooter that made his eyes open wide.

When my brother-in-law Mo died by suicide this past summer, I thought of Jen, fighting to live.  Jen wanted more time, more life.  Mo was done.   He could not tolerate life anymore.  I wished they could have traded.  I wished he could have given her the years he had left, and she could have given him a way to go.  If only it could work like that. 

I miss them both, Jen's lively spirit, Mo's sense of humor, both their gorgeous smiles.  And I have no choice but to say goodbye to them both. 

Kay Ryan, in her poem “Things Shouldn’t be so Hard,” writes,

“And when life stops,

a certain space—

however small—

should be left scarred

by the grand and

damaging parade.”

Mo and Jen leave their marks on us and on our world.  And we feel them.

Grounding

           The landscape changing before my eyes—that is what I had hoped to see this summer on our twelve-day road trip through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, ending at the Grand Canyon.  On the way back, we were considering stops in Colorado and Kansas.  Thirty-six hours before we were to leave, our clothes were packed—unusually early—and most of our hotel reservations were made.  Then the phone rang, and the landscape of our summer and of our lives changed.  Marilyn’s brother Mo was missing.  Twelve days later, we found out that he had died by suicide in the woods not far from his home. 

            I know I have written about this before.  Those twelve days and the news we received at the end of them were so strange, so unexpected, so devastating that I expect I will write about them again and again, if only to try to make them more real. 

            Even as we cope with Mo’s death, we are figuring out how to ground ourselves in our lives, how to go on. 

            All through June, we made hour-and-a-half-long trips back and forth across the flatland on Route 72 to meet with detectives, to search for Mo, to plan the funeral, and then to attend the funeral.  The landscape did not change, but the skies did.   

            At the end of June, we drove west on 72 one more time, this time to celebrate Marilyn’s aunt Dorothy’s 90^th birthday; the invitation had come before Mo had ever gone missing.  We weren’t sure how we would do at a birthday celebration.  But seeing cousins and siblings again sounded comforting.  On the way there, we drove through a rainstorm—and then drove out of it, as is so common here in Central Illinois.  As I looked at the sky, ominously grey in the east and showing blue in the west, I realized I was once again seeking a metaphor for our grief. 

            The flatland grounds me. 

So does our newly remodeled kitchen.  Recently, I labeled jars and organized spices on the shelves of the narrow cabinet to the left of the stove.  I was proud of myself for tossing out spices that were old, for letting go.  And I found satisfaction in organizing what was left so that it would be easy to use.  I did all this on our new, bright white countertop. 

            This week, our nephews, ten-year-old twins, are visiting us.  This visit was also planned before Mo’s disappearance.  The countertop is now a place to experiment with the slime the twins bought at the dollar store last summer, when they were also here for Aunty Camp.  Boxes of sparklers and the twins’ novels and math exercises cover the kitchen table.  Occasionally, the boys break into the theme song for Gilligan’s Island, the 1960s TV show their “Aunty Mellon” introduced them to and which they now love.  Cutting up a peach for Sanjay and combing Sameer’s hair after his shower ground me.  I hear Marilyn giggling with them and am grateful for this reminder that life goes on, that we will all go on. 

 

The twins read every night.  They sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed.

The boys each have a cow they chose at the bookstore at Cedar Crest College, where they met me when I went out east for my 25th reunion.  The cows traveled to the Midwest with them and have had many adventures.  In a rare, quiet moment, Spotty here was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The children's capacity for play and delight has been a comfort to Marilyn and me.