Dancing While the World Burns

Way before the election results, I had booked up a bunch of outings with friends, going to gigs and hitting up artistic events. And, wow, I am so glad I did! 

A certain amount of this is just autumn in the Bay Area. Halloween is at least a month long, and that kicks in just after the school year starts, with all the events that entails, and then we roll into the holidays. Even in normal years, this is a busy time. 

But a prevailing theme amongst activists I follow is the reiteration of creating community, gathering together, and not isolating with one's own worry and fear. And I bumbled into a preset schedule that's kept me mingling, kept the conversations going, allowed opportunities to dance it out and give each other hugs and strategize for what comes next. 

In the aftermath of this extremely stupid electoral result, and the onslaught of chaos we're already enduring in the mere weeks that have followed, it's been really awesome to be out with people who inspire me, and to be reminded that human history is made of endurance through awful chapters, during which we still make art, still find love, and muddle our way through. 

I was really afraid of getting left behind on Baby Island, alone and overwhelmed with exhaustion as I tried to figure out our new family configuration. That's what I muddled through before, alongside the horrors of Trump Round One. So I aggressively packed my itinerary with events that lifted me up, and after the baby is in bed, many nights I'm out in the world living my own life, thanks to my lovely husband, helpful friends, and excellent babysitters. (Baby Island is also a really lovely refuge right now, full of tender moments and warm snuggles, but I don't want to be marooned.)

It matters more than ever now. Last night, I was out at a friend's show that was beautiful, cathartic, and open to grief and healing. It was a date night, and we brought friends who were new to the crowd. I hugged people I've known for half my life now, let the performers surprise me, and we closed with a powerful message from the event's producer about finding the commonality of life and unity despite everything. 

So, it's all serious, but we still need to play. We need to find each other in the mess. That is how we transcend the worst of it all, and cultivate the creativity that lifts us out of the muck. 

Go support your local artists, spend your money on live events, and embrace the moment as well as each other. Time is short, and history is long. I hope to see you on a dance floor soon. 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. 

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Sleight of Hand, Hands Full

Holding my baby last night, nursing him, I let myself retreat into the lavishness of that embrace, the peace and beauty of our quiet moment together, a safe space insulated from an outside world growing more chaotic and dangerous. 

And it was beautiful, though it also instantly and viscerally brought me back to doing that with my first baby, seven years ago. How it felt to keep him safe through instability, the heavy lift of making a happy universe of our own at home in the midst of the betrayal inflicted by the adult world. It felt like I wrapped myself bodily around my baby to protect him from a car crash that rolled on for four years.

At the end of those years, my body was aged from chronic stress. I had to sit back, rehabilitate myself, breathe deep and heal. I will forever be grateful to Joe Biden for providing the years of relative normality that gave me space to catch my breath and show up for my child less burdened than I had been in his earliest moments.

Now, it starts again, with my rights severely eroded, with a new babe in arms. I think the state of the country will be significantly worse, and I am braced for impact. I feel it, bodily. I have told these stories before, I know, but we keep staying stuck living through it, so I have to keep talking about it.

I have to say, I do truly hate Trump and his supporters for stealing so much joy from my parenting years. I don't see myself working on that feeling anytime soon. I doubt I'll have the space to do so, with the constant assaults to come. The nightmares of their creation have robbed me of bandwidth I would have otherwise devoted to more imaginative games with my babies. It’s hard to fully play when I’m so exhausted. They have kept me fighting, and have released such ugliness into the world that I have had to devote even more work to counter at home. I’m trying so hard to cultivate love and hope here, and they continue to exist as evil black holes, warping the gravity of our society as my children try to find their balance in life. 

I have to explain all of this as a mother, contextualizing the cruelty in age-appropriate ways, and it is tiresome, painful, and draining. It is also easiest with the babies, because I can be their world. As my eldest gets bigger, however, he sees this rot himself. It hits different when he needs an explanation for this lack of justice, these moral failures, this racism, sexism, and abuse. He is expected to cooperate, be kind, and respect others, even as none of that is modeled by the most visible figure in our country, who evades accountability at every turn, habitually defrauding and harming others in plain view. I can't hide this from my child; I can only continue to explain the pathology of it, and hope he embeds deeply a sense that this is not right.

The beautiful microcosm I’m building at home is sustained in a force field of my own creation, not impervious but impressively strong. The nucleus is portable; I can uproot us and plant the seed again somewhere else if I need to. I hold that strength in my heart, ready to expand for my children whenever needed.

But I deeply, deeply resent that so many of these tender moments have been tinged with the contamination of their larger context. I wish I could have spent more days with both arms wrapped around my children, instead of using one to hold the crushing forces of the world at bay.