One year later

Yesterday afternoon, the kids and I drove to the Elliott Bay Book Company. I had two specific books in mind to buy, one of which I've been waiting on for months, and one of which I've been pondering for a long time. I had a mission. And I like to support independent bookstores.

Matt had planned to meet us there after work, but we drove up a bit early. The kids busied themselves in the children's section, where they can read for a good long time, and I browsed a bit before settling into a corner of the cafe to write for a few minutes. In fifteen minutes I'd poured out three pages' worth of ink.

I feel so much these days. So much love. So much anger. Hope. Fear.

But really still a lot of anger. I look at the predatory white supremacist rapist monster sitting in the oval office and I think about people who will vote for him again in a few years and I think about how I do not want any of those people anywhere near my life or my family or my students or my stories. What a mirror we held up to ourselves almost exactly one year ago, and what an ugly reflection. We have to do better. We have so much work to do.

Since the last time I posted here, just a month ago, twenty-six more people were murdered in church. Shot. Slaughtered. Just another day in this great country of ours. It's still not the right time to talk about guns though, right?

I'm so tired of writing the same fucking thing here. I'm not saying anything new. I'm so sick of it, so disheartened.

Since the last time I posted, someone I once respected used the term "witch hunt" to refer to women coming forward with stories of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or predatory behavior by men. Anyone holding that opinion, by the way, is cordially invited to show themselves out. I can't stop you from reading my blog, I know that, but please go away anyhow. Unfollow. Unfriend. You don't want to read anything I have to say.

I have stories, too, but I also don't owe them to anyone. Though I did spend an evening mentally writing a post about the time a man greeted me at a party by giving me hug and promptly sliding his arm down my back to firmly grab my ass and squeeze it. We were friendly, but we were by no means close friends. I'd laughed at his jokes before this moment. I'd hugged him before. I wasn't wearing a short skirt. I'm pretty sure I wasn't wearing a particularly tight sweater. Should it matter? What I was wearing? Should it matter that I'd hugged him before, in similar social settings? What should I have done differently? Why does it fall on me to ask these questions? Why did he think my ass was his for the grabbing, especially when we were only casually acquainted? Would he offer the same kind of bullshit non-apology we keep seeing from all these famous men? This was such a small moment for me, really. I'm not scarred for life, I could have chosen a much bigger moment to write about, etc. Right? Or at least I've been conditioned to think that way. But I can't shake the feeling that it also captures so perfectly the entitlement of men. For what it's worth, I never saw this man again, but I did look him up on Facebook, and the sight of his face and his smug smile makes me angry even now, years later.

I think it's so interesting that Franklin Graham is so obsessed with sexual purity and sexual morality, and really bizarrely fixated on homosexuality -- like that's THE SIN in America, and not, say, institutional racism or the dehumanization and marginalization of our most vulnerable citizens -- but if he's called out, say, Roy Moore, or, you know, our Commander-in-Chief, I've missed it. Probably I should stop reading anything with Franklin Graham's name attached to it. He's the one who said last year's dumpster fire of an election demonstrated "God showing up at at the polls." I've said many times that I am probably a terrible Christian but I am an earnest one; if I believed that the likes of either Franklin Graham or our president represented the love of Christ I can promise you I wouldn't even try to set foot in any church, ever. As it stands, I believe God loves them just as much as anyone else and, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, has the tools to help them clean up their messes. But my heart really struggles with that. Because I still think they're flaming dumpster fires, as far as human beings go.

I know. I'm far from Christlike myself.

Anyway.

I am married to a man I love and we are raising a boy, and we absolutely must raise a different sort of man than this America expects him to be. This doesn't happen by trusting that because we vote the right way, or because we love him enough, or because we go to church, or because he is a "good kid" raised with quality role models in his life he will somehow transcend the toxic masculinity embedded in the very fabric of our country.

I don't want anyone near my life who isn't willing to wrestle with that statement.

I'm terrified because I do not know how to do this work well enough, and I don't have the answers, but dammit, this shit needs to change.

Complacency terrifies me. It also makes me angry. I'm really angry these days.

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So that's where my head is at.

I know I started this blog as a place to post cute stories about my toddler, to open up another little corner of the internet as a space to write.

I'm sorry if this is too political or too angry.

***

Or no I'm not. I'm not sorry about that.

***

But I also need to point out that my head is also here:

My children. My students. My life. The heartbeat, the everyday pulse underneath the greater heartbreak. I'm still a soccer mom, mourning the approaching end of the season. I love every single game, even in the rain, and last weekend, even in the snow. I especially love the night games under the lights. Tonight the referee was this fabulous grizzled old grandpa whose gravelly voice sounded like it was filtered through decades of cigarette smoke. He barked encouragement at both teams throughout the game: "Well done, yellow! Nice pass, blue!" And he turned to all the parents on the sidelines and said, "Girls this age, you don't get 'em under the lights like this very often. There's just nothing better!" One of the dads from the opposing team turned to me and said, "Have you guys ever had this ref before? He's a riot. Makes the games fun. We really enjoy him." And while we both shouted encouragement to our daughters, the night felt so friendly. Tonight my daughter's team took a loss on the field but my girl also scored a beautiful goal, and I was so proud of her, and when she climbed into the car the first words out of her mouth were, "I really love my team!"

My son takes Tae Kwon Do classes now, and watching him focus and breathe and kick and move and work so hard, so in the moment and so unselfconsciously himself, just makes me so proud. He bursts through his classroom door at the end of the day and tears across the playground, stopping just short of hugging me the way he used to in kindergarten. As we walk away, I hear kids call, "Bye, Isaac!" and one of his little buddies always chases after him shouting, "Hug attack!" and they run, backpacks thwacking against their little butts, shrieking with laughter.

My school district held conferences this past week, and that means what it has meant for several years now: my kids have to spend a lot of hours at school with me, but there's a part of me that loves how comfortable they are with that. I wind up absolutely physically and emotionally spent after meeting with my own students and their parents, but the truth is that these long days are also deeply important in terms of building relationships with these kids and their families. And now, as a mother of children in school, I appreciate them on a deeper level as well. It matters: to connect with the humans who teach my children. To look them in the eye and say thank you. To ask questions. To see them exchange handshakes and fist bumps and hugs with my kids. To see that my children are known and loved and seen.

Both of my kids are learning important lessons they cannot learn from me. That's a thing that seems to threaten some parents, but it just makes me so grateful for my village. It's the thing that makes me hopeful, I suppose, despite everything.

Sometimes I feel so hopeless, but I am also so deeply privileged to live a life that give me so many opportunities to hope anyway. And love always.