THIS is what democracy looks like!

Chants of "This is what democracy looks like! This is what equality looks like! This is what feminism looks like!" rang throughout downtown DC today as hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children marched on Washington. Pussyhats in every shade of pink spangled the crowd, while a vast array of sharp, creative signs bounced up and down like so many babies on mamas' hips. 

Over the past few days, it came to pass that my undergraduate thesis advisor decided to march in DC rather than St. Louis (she now teaches at Wash U). Marie was one of the best professors I had at Northwestern, a powerful, inspiring role model, and a sharp-as-a-tack woman with a real wit. She came into my life as I was really starting to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. To this day I am grateful for her presence during those years.

We have stayed in touch over the years, at times more regularly than others as happens with lives and children and moves, and the spot in my heart she stole back in 1996 has remained hers. So it goes without saying that when I offered her a place to stay while she was here for the march and she said, "I'd love that." I was thrilled. It'd been about fourteen years since we'd last seen each other.

This morning, as we donned our pussyhats, gathered up our signs, water bottles, snacks, and phone chargers, and headed to catch our bus with a thousand other supporters of Congressman Raskin (MDs 8th!), it occurred to me that participating in the Women's March with a woman who played such a role in the development of my self as woman was extraordinarily meaningful

As Marie and I marched, every bit of the heartbreak and sadness I struggled with yesterday was replaced today with hope. With the aggregate hope and determination and strength and fire of people who are appropriately outraged and disgusted and who know that we must be and are better than the petty, ignorant, pathetic, yappy toddler the electoral college elected.

The crowd, more than double what the organizers expected, was...gosh, words almost fail me right now. A huge, teeming mass of people with signs, strollers, even dogs, was polite, generous, friendly, determined. They were from all over this country, they were straight, gay, trans, they were young, old, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, progressive Christian, atheist. There was not a hint of violence or bad behavior (other than the Trump supporter who was sternly reprimanded). There was respect. They were happy. Together we felt hope.

Because hundreds of thousands turned out, we filled the march route without moving. The same was true in Chicago. The marching part of the march was called off. We became, instead, a glorious free-form rally, covering the Mall and blocks of Independence and Constitutions Avenues among many others. 

EXTREME hat tip to Chang W. Lee of the NY Times; please don't mind that I borrowed your gorgeous photograph (but of course if you do, I'll take it down.)
Women's March in DC

The real work begins tomorrow. The hope will at times be hard to maintain in the face of lies about inauguration crowd sizes and attempts to fully discredit the press, further investigation into Trump-Putin collaboration and the clown car of cabinet nominees bumbling through their hearings. In the face of the misogynistic backlash of tweets that has already begun. I pity and am sickened by those deplorable men, but their pathetic words can't diminish the joy and awe and anticipation I felt today.

In some way, I believe the outpouring of righteous reaction today changed the course of things (I hope, I think), started to right our dangerously listing ship. I am grateful to the organizers of the march, to everyone who either marched today or were with us in spirit, who knitted and shipped us pussyhats, who made signs, who inspired signs, who organized the more than 670 sister events both nationally and and internationally who remained calm and warm and dignified and strong.

We are the resistance! And we are on the right side of history.

Crumbs, dear friends, loss, strength

That is mos def one of the vaguest post titles I have ever written and will ever write. It's ridiculous. But so was today.

After a very emotional weekend which included an enormously beautiful memorial service for a friend gone too soon, one of my dearest pals arrived into town last night. This was a balm. I was covered in cat hair and wore no make up. Jack was raising hell about going to cotillion's Holiday Dining Etiquette class which, let's be honest, is the reason I registered him for cotillion in the first place. Eating soup with one's hands? Not appealing anywhere, and yet he persists. Oliver had just split his pajama pants from knee to ankle and was slightly overtired-manic after a perfect day at a pal's house. Tom was goggle-eyed because he'd been to memorial part deux until 2 am. 

If a friend can saunter into that fray, you know she's a good one.

As such, Anne and I celebrated with cocktails, and a large skillet of pasta, and laughter and the realest sort of talk. And then Oliver went to sleep, and Jack came home with a large pamphlet from National Protocol, LTD (OMG, that is so intense! But he did learn so much! Amen!), and Tom went to bed because he was drained, and then we exhaled and clinked glasses and felt the same gratitude- for good friends and bedtimes.

She and I are taking yet another online writing class together. That's how we met, and today found us beginning the fourth or fifth one anew. We wrote together this morning, quietly, at my kitchen table, and then parted ways for several hours.

During that time I saw another friend who lost her mother two months ago and her husband on Thanksgiving. The pain of 2016 is unceasing it seems. Oh, and Ben Carson is heading HUD? What? I am struggling to ingest this news. It's like every day brings a new presidential appointment or expose which is rather like ripping a whole body scab off each and every morning; they are all that terrible. 

Anne walked back in as I was snarfing salad from the mixing bowl and attempting to roll out large amounts of butter cookie dough to stamp before the boys got home to decorate them. Teacher gifts. It's a good thing I wasn't mainlining Xanax, for christs sakes. I mean, shit, 2016.

We caught up from our days, and I was starting to feel centered again and then two hours later, there was a debacle with an over-frosted cookie and a brother and awful words were screamed from one brother to another, and one ended up with a swollen ear, and both were crying, and I just sat in the kitchen like someone who'd just dared look Medusa in the eyes. Frozen. Stunned. Immobile.

Tears coursed down my stone face, and rage through my icy veins, and I was surrounded by crumbs of the cookies I'd just spent hours rolling and baking and cooling, so thoughtfully and hopefully. And that's really the worst of it, I think. That hope and time all in smithereens on the floor around me with kids crying amidst it all and a friend watching on. As if anyone should see the inside of the sausage.

But of course we all see that, just not together. And we should, and Anne did. And she said, "Well, my goodness, I am right at home." Which is, of course, just perfect because she meant it so sincerely and with such love. Because she, too, has found herself crying and surrounded by crumbs and  fighting children and a complete shock at just what the fuck happened on a random Monday night for which you had planned and had such hopes.

It is an hour later now, and I have stopped shaking from rage. I have had some wine. One cleaned the smashed cookies, and I put the others are in Tupperware. Ben Carson is still head of HUD but everyone is standing up for Comet Pizza (as they should), and so many are brave in this fight for our country.

I think about the historical arcs which great countries summit and bend round. I think about how imperialism died and dynasties fell and greatness was vanquished, and I wonder if this is not our time to fall so deeply and so hard. I wonder if the cookie crumbs are the hopes of American progressives, who see the better whole we could be but aren't. Sometimes, hard landings are the only way to learn. 

I think about the resistance, the fight for better. Hell, the fight for good. The fight towards a better, more cohesive tomorrow. And I think about how I will always fight for that, even when I am covered in cat hair and my crow's feet are pronounced and my kids are melting down and I am ashamed of my country's leadership-to-be. This is precisely the time to fight, to resist, to march, to stand up and speak out. It is the time to "feel at home" and to find strength in that and to make the perpetrator sweep the crumbs and to all work hard tomorrow. Damned is the one who won't, for he will lose in the end.

On painting and gloss

A repost because the sentiments largely stand and I did, in fact, paint a room today!

Under the Gloss

Originally posted Oct, 2015:

For the past several months, the color of our basement bathroom's walls has made me feel peevish. I get a burr in my butt every time I go in there.

The lovely shade of green I once found peaceful and whose name, Sweet Caroline, I continue to adore, lately smacks of institutional hallways in need of scrubbing and better lighting. 

On Tuesday, Jack stayed home with an upset stomach, and during our hours together, I began outlining the dingy green room with thick strips of bright blue painter's tape. Pull, rip, align and press. Pull, rip, align and press. And on and on, in fits and starts, long strips and short ones, around the corners and up and down.

Yesterday, I finished the first coat of Smoke Embers plus 25%, a soothing dove gray. Already I feel the burrs slinking away.

I love to paint walls, or any flat expanse really. There before me lies the proverbial empty canvas, ready to be given new life with little more than a clean brush and a freshly shaken gallon.

Up and down I roll the brush, pausing only to dip it in more paint or check for spots I’ve missed. It’s meditation in action. Not only is a room transformed, colored anew with promise, but so too is my mind, blissfully unfettered now from having focused on just one repetitive task for the unknown number of minutes that have swept by.

This sort of focus, on a basic job that requires concentration but little other effort, allows me to both lose myself and remain present. My subconscious mind can flit and flutter, processing all manner of idea and query on which I may have been noodling.

During the brief, intimate time I spend with the walls, I see cracks and imperfections that I didn’t before. I run my fingers over slightly protruding nails, the drips and scuffs, the unknown gunk that landed on the surface one day and decided to stick.

It's not a perfect plane underneath an aging coat of shine but rather an imperfect thing that's been added to and taken from over the years. It has supported and weathered, been asked to hide and also to bare itself completely. I like being reminded of this. I like knowing these walls better.

The walls are much like people really, even those who seem glossy and impervious to bump or fault but who, of course, aren’t. It’s worth taking time to get to know people, and it’s worth letting people really get to know us.

In all the ways society today makes us feel more connected, I think it often does so only superficially. It’s so easy to show and share only what we want others to see; impressions more than selves. A coat of paint rather than the supporting structure.

But what’s lost is depth. History. Knowing. Being known. Being proudly unique and proudly fallible, for each of us is both original and imperfect. That’s what makes us human.

Three girlfriends came for breakfast this morning. One brought fruit, unwashed and still in the plastic clamshells, and apologized for that. Another teared up as we talked about our kids and our pride in and worries for them, and she apologized for that.

But I couldn’t have been happier because plastic clamshells and random tears are just real life slowing down long enough on a busy Friday morning to wash fruit and share a Kleenex or two with unvarnished friends. That’s what’s under gloss. No apologies needed.