Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas sounded good tonight.
It's hot, and we don't love using the oven when it's hot, but I was out of other ideas. Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas come together so easily, and while I thought for a moment about making this delicious and giant summer salad that involves noodles and colorful sliced peppers and cabbage and cucumbers and this divine sesame dressing, making that beautiful and cool salad actually takes a lot more work than putting together these enchiladas. Even when I make the enchilada sauce myself. So enchiladas it was, because it was supposed to just be a chill Friday evening in July. I'm a big fan of "whatever we have, man" for dinner. I'm a big fan of boredom. I have actually never in my life been bored, but I believe heartily that kids should learn to cope with it and so we have wonderful "I don't care what you do, let me read" days in my household.
If I look back over everything I've written during the summers, especially since I had kids (so like 18 years), if I read all my journals and all my social media posts, a theme emerges: gratitude for the moment. I don't need -- or want -- more than I have. Slowness, stillness. My backyard patio. The freedom to read, to delight in simple things like swimming lessons (I read many books in the bleachers at my kids' lessons over the years, to the background of shouts and the slap of wet feet on concrete), or music lessons (this summer Isaac is taking lessons in both flute and saxophone, one for wind ensemble and one for jazz, and the smell of the music store takes me back to the summer of 1994 when I was trying out different trumpets before settling on the Bach Stradivarius, the same one my daughter plays now. There is something about the scent of valve oil and cork grease or the distant sound of a horn in a practice room that tugs at a deep nostalgia for me). These moments every summer are grounding, lovely, and necessary.
And I am grateful for exactly what I had today: hours to read in the backyard, my skin glistening with sunscreen because I am trying to prove Matt wrong -- he believes I will always sail into summer with a terrible sunburn because I missed a spot, and so far, this summer, I haven't. Endless glasses of iced green tea from Trader Joe's. A dog who loves to sunbathe on the crispy grass next to me. My quiet neighborhood. The view of Puget Sound, shimmering in the morning sunlight when Isaac and I walk that lazy dog. My daughter, home with us, puffy and sore from the removal of her wisdom teeth two days ago but home. With us. Recovering and resting and returned to us after five weeks in the hospital at the end of her senior year.
I've written a lot about gratitude, really. And I believe in this as a practice. But also, sometimes things are terrible and I think it's okay to just let that be real.
Sometimes the terrible things are really minor: say, my enchilada sauce forgotten and boiled over on a burner. It spilled across the stovetop and made a huge mess. The spill sizzled and burned, the rag useless, the bottle of olive oil and jars of cumin and chili powder coated and sticky.
Often -- every day, it seems -- the terrible things are major: say, the state of the country? The folks who literally want to erase the existence of human beings? I saw the signs held high by all these smiling white folks at the RNC: MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW. They were probably all in church last week and they'll probably be there again on Sunday.
I keep thinking of my first (but not my last) student to be deported after Trump took office in 2017. I've written about this kiddo more than once, but possibly not where everyone will see it. And deportations happen under ever president, but there's a monster gunning for the White House (again, WTF) whose followers hold up these signs and smile about it. Women's rights are also on the chopping block; Trump literally strolled out to "It's a Man's World." Obviously, LGBTQ protections are, too. This IS the Republican party now; none of this "I'll vote for the right individual for this particular job after careful consideration."
Marlon James posted today: If you think Trump was the scariest part of that Convention you weren't paying attention. Make no mistake, this is the youth who will burn crosses, tell date raped undergrads that they asked for it, send women back to the alley with a clothes hanger and erase every single protection gay marriage had brought, and they will outlive you. You might be scared about what's happening to America. But you might be scared at the wrong thing. I once took some relief in the idea that at least Trumpism wouldn't survive Trump. I've never been so wrong in my entire life.
So I was in a funk about all that today, to put it mildly.
I checked all my gratitude boxes: time spent reading in my backyard. My daughter, home with us. My son, walking the dog with me. My husband, dicing the sweet potatoes for me because he likes to help with dinner. The sunlight shimmering over Puget Sound. I will never not be grateful for the moments that make up my life.
But dammit, don't condescend. Don't give me platitudes. Don't REMIND me of what I already know, which is that I am lucky beyond measure.
I'm grateful, and I'm pissed. I'm grateful, and I'm baffled. I'm grateful, and I'm terrified. We can contain multitudes. My normally neat kitchen is a mess, and so is my heart. I'm seriously, stupidly cranky about the spilled enchilada sauce. I'm furiously heartbroken for the folks who feel rightfully terrified by what lies ahead. I'm grateful for my own senseless, stupid privilege, but I'm in a demographic that has caused a great deal of harm and I have to interrogate that. I'm also the proud mother of a fabulously queer kiddo, and fuck every single person who will vote for a monster who seeks to harm or erase any of us. I am a public school teacher in a state that hasn't yet outlawed my curriculum. I have to interrogate that, too -- how can I use what I love while I can?
It's all a lot for a hot July afternoon when I should just be relaxing with my book, but life intervenes, and the enchilada sauce might boil over and my kids might fight with each other over who gets what end of the couch for their viewing of Deadpool and I recognize that this ordinary fight is everything I actually missed and hoped for again two months ago, precisely because of its ordinariness. I'm so grateful for all of it. I'm so angry and so terrified pretty much all the time. But the world happens to all of us. We can have good days with terrible moments. We can have terrible days without trying too hard to find some superficial good in them. We can contain multitudes.
