Some things are black and white

I'd love to say I've been MIA for a reason other than grief, but I can't.

Again this morning, as with every morning since last Wednesday, I woke up with an aching, burning pit in my stomach. It is a fire born of heartbreak, grief, rage, worry, and disgust. It is a sudsing discomfort that sits with me all day, sometimes in the background, sometimes more prominently.

A few days ago, I awoke before the sun. Inexplicably, circling my mind was the word retarded. Years ago, that word, as part of an expression, often fit the bill of perfectly describing flabbergastingly silly things. Silly, largely inconsequential things. Things like Daylight Savings, most of Pepco’s decisions, and dry clean-only t-shirts were "so (fucking) retarded." 

I never meant my use of retarded to insult or harm. I grew up with it used as a common expression. I didn’t know, didn’t think about the deeper implications of incorporating it into my own language. I'd simply come to think of it a slang conveyance of superficially irritating grievances. This was a failing, and I am deeply sorry.

Only as an adult did I learn that many consider it an offensive and hurtful term. Only as an adult did I stop to think “what might it feel like to hear this?” At that moment, it was a no-brainer to stop saying it, not least so that my children would never hear and therefore inscribe “retarded” as a phrase in their own handbooks.

“Retarded” doesn’t directly hurt me, but it directly hurts many. It directly offends many. Were I to continue using the term, potentially passing it on to my children as acceptable and also demonstrating to others that I found it acceptable, would be to say to every person out there, who I know and don’t, with any sort of disability or challenge to which ‘retarded’ might refer or dismiss or mock, “your hurt, your discomfort, your sadness isn’t important to me. I don’t care. I like my word so you deal with your feelings when I use it.”

That is not respect, it’s not empathy, it’s not any showing of humanity. It’s an ugly display of privilege, even if it first came from unknowing. I couldn’t look at myself if I didn’t excise that expression from my repertoire.

In the days since the election, I’ve seen and heard about a shocking number of heinous racist acts: cars egged, swastikas drawn, children told to “go back to Africa” and “you’re getting sent back to Mexico now.” I’ve seen signs hung above water fountains in a public school: “whites only,” “colored.”

As awful, I have read and heard about, both first- and secondhand, people who voted for Trump saying things like, “I’m not a racist.” “Don’t blame me for X; I only voted for Trump because of Y.” “Trump is a great man.”

That ugly shit happened in Silver Spring, MD, slap dash in the middle of a seriously blue city and state.

grotesque!

While I believe that most Trump voters knew exactly what they were voting for (see above) and either supported that or decided other things were more important (like guns), I desperately hope that for some he answered another longing. I don't understand that, but I would like to try and imagine that some of his voters will now stand up and say, "I voted for you but I don't support your bigotry. I don't support you seating a white nationalist, anti-semite, wife-beater as your chief strategist. I don't support swastikas being drawn on school walls."

[See this article for all the hate crimes just in the DC-area since the election. See this one for the more than 300 such crimes nationally since last Wednesday.] 

Without such protestations, we who didn't consider Trump good for our country know even more surely where we stand: in a deeply divided country in which much of the populace refuses to reckon with the utter, absolute wrongness of racism, sexism, and bigotry of all kind.

Silence in the face of injustice is assent and approval of it. There is no middle ground. It's knowing you simply can't call something retarded anymore and so you don't, except it's that much worse.

***
For a moment of peace, listen to this. 

Scared

In late August of 2001, I was in a seatbelt-less car hurtling down a pock-marked dirt road lit only by our dim headlights. Sam and I were in the backseat, clinging to each other. I was sobbing. 

I don't remember the driver's name. I don't remember anything about him except his smile. He'd picked us up in Narok, and if memory serves, we were heading back to Nairobi. 

I don't recall ever having been a believer, but that dark night in Kenya, I crossed my fingers and issued prayer after prayer, begging for safe deliverance. Later, Sam admitted that he too had feared we might not make it home alive. To this day I can remember my terror. It is an uncomfortable feeling, such fear.

Two weeks later, back home in New York, the Twin Towers fell. I was shocked, stunned, unmoored and scared. But that fear I'd met in Kenya? I don't recall feeling that.

Anxiety and I have known each other for a lifetime, but fear is less familiar to me. The older I've grown, the stronger and braver I've gotten. Fear has become quite the stranger. 

Late last night, bottom of the 10th inning, two outs, Cubs up by 1. Martinez hits a grounder towards third. Bryant fields it with a golden glove, smiling. He knows if he can get it to Rizzo, the crown is the Cubs'. Bryant to Rizzo, clean as a whistle. Martinez is out. The game is over. 8-7 Cubs.

For so many reasons-thrill, fatigue, surprise, the emotion that is stirred when something has long been desired and is finally obtained-I began to cry. I threw my glasses into the recliner, jumped into the air with unabashed joy, and let the tears dance over my cheeks. 

I realized then, that I was also crying for the brief salve the greatest game of the "all-American game" that I have ever seen in my 40 years offered to the festering psychological wound wrought by this year's presidential election. Watching the culmination of teamwork, hard work, good sportsmanship, and grace (Rizzo anyone?) was a balm, not unlike the moment a numbing medicine kicks in. 

In this case, what was momentarily numbed was the fear I've felt in recent weeks, a fear that is all too similar to that I felt as we careened down that dark, choppy road fifteen years ago. It's the sort of fear that comes from considering that a time you love is coming to an end and you're not remotely ready for or desirous of that. Life, a functional body politic, those sorts of big-ticket items.

I pride myself on a relative lack of drama and emotionality about things I can't do anything about. I try to approach situations with some rationality and clarity: how might I be able to help or effect change? What are the things I simply can't influence or control? 

But I admit to feeling some straight-up panic lately. I have one vote and limited time and money. I've given, monetarily, as much as I can to the Clinton campaign. I am having the talks, urging people to vote, offering to drive. I am sharing factual information. I'm starting to see that facts don't carry the same weight as they once did.

I'm not sure what to make of a society in which large segments choose not to accept fact. Where does one go if 2 + 2 no longer makes 4? If an official birth certificate doesn't prove birth place? If one, three, seven investigations unanimously agree that no criminal action occurred but still more inquiries are demanded?

What happens to a society who ceases to value dignity and honor? To observe mores of decent behavior? Where do we go if evidence of mockery, sexual assault, illegality, and bigotry doesn't lead to punishment and justice served but rather to popularity?

What happens to a country when its meanest elements are unleashed and some cheer? When the KKK endorses the top of the ticket for one of our two main political parties? What happens now? What happens later? How do we explain this to our children?

What happens when some want to turn the clock back for all? What happens to those who have worked, died, for their gains? Are they expected to just hand it all back? Head into the back-alley instead of a safe medical facility? Shuffle back into disenfranchisement?

What happens when the media subordinates its own Hippocratic oath to a vapid desire for clicks and views? When journalists establish a false equivalency between two candidates of vastly disparate experience, knowledge base, and ability? Trump and Clinton aren't apples. It is an epic failure that too many in our media have pitted them as nothing more than varietals.

In 2004, Tom and I were grad students in Boston. I remember so clearly the concern that we and so many of our classmates felt about the possibility of a Bush reelection. That concern seems positively quaint now. I would be grateful for that degree of worry today.

Cubs, brown butter chicken & rice, Junior Botanist follow-up

Y'all, WHO watched Game Six of the World Series last night? It was so fantastic! I mean, how often do you witness a grand slam? We got the boys out of bed to watch the replays and plan to let them stay up for part of tonight's final match. Go CUBS!!!!!!!!!!

I was chilly all day yesterday and wanted a hearty dinner that would warm and comfort me. I also wanted it to be quick. My Brown Butter Chicken and Rice fit the bill to a tee. And, it's a one-pot dish. All the better!

I adore the interplay of the brown butter and lemon, the tender chicken that results from basically being poached in the oven, and the creamy flavorful rice that serves as the foundation here. I made a kale salad as our side, and we devoured everything. You should make both of these things soon!

Doesn't that look divine?

Do y'all remember the U.S. Botanic Garden field trip I took the boys on in late August? A couple weeks afterwards, Jack finished up the last of his Junior Botanist program pack, and we mailed everything in. 

Yesterday, he was thrilled to receive a huge bubble envelope from, you guessed it, the Botanic Society. In it was his official Junior Botanist certificate, an invitation to visit the Society's growing facilities, a clipboard, journal, and cool hand lens. I'm telling y'all, that is one cool DC opportunity for kids!