our preparations
for this moment of our lives
go beyond torrejas
beyond this sweet sauce,
this Christmas stocking for you,
beyond this moment
our preparations
go beyond twenty-two years
when we were babies
when we were in love
as only the young can be
and he promised me
what promise, you ask?
to open our home with love
when it is needed
first: the moon and sun
second: 8.5 miles
third: a fourteener
fourth: pomapoo strength
fifth: learning to climb mountains
sixth: altitude high
a cloud beneath us–
powder day brings heaven home
as flakes float our love
Where is my place in this America? It is the question asked by millions, and so frequently no answer is ever offered. Our collective experiences often lead us to both hate and love this country. It’s a balance, a scale, ready to tip as easily towards hate as towards love.
I am a white woman. It is a blessing and a curse. It comes with white privilege and preferential treatment. It comes with the burden of white privilege and preferential treatment. Because yes, these are burdens. I participate in the historical women’s march and am demonized for the privilege the protesters are allowed by law enforcement since the organizers and protesters are primarily white. I am reminded that “white women voted for Trump” even though I am not one of those white women.
I am trapped between feeling like I want to do everything to stop the hatred that has taken over the world and feeling like no matter what I do, nothing will change. Trump will continue to sign executive order after executive order (ten so far in three business days) stripping every last one of us from our human rights. I have signed at least 100 petitions since election day. I have posted on social media. I have spoken to friends and family about my beliefs. I have supported my students as best as I can while “remaining neutral” (a requirement of the school district). I have called the Department of Justice, my senators, my congress men and women (only to be blocked, to receive a busy signal, or be directed to a full voicemail box).
Where is my place in this America? As a mother of three daughters, a wife of a white man, a teacher of refugee and immigrant students, a Democrat, an atheist, an idealist?
Because white women have betrayed me. Defriended me. Voted for Trump (58% of them??).
Because mothers don’t seem to care that we have a president who brags about grabbing women by their pussies.
Because white men (nothing like my husband)–63%–voted for a man who publicly mocked a disabled reporter.
Because Democrats voted for third party candidates instead of Clinton.
Because I spend my day surrounded by non-whites from every culture and religious belief you can imagine, and I don’t belong with any of them, other than as a figurehead to the white world that is Our America.
Where is my place in this America? I can’t seem to find it. I search in my students’ eyes, my daughters’ artwork, my husband’s anti-government views… And no matter where I look, I feel homeless. Hopeless.
I am searching for what we have lost and will continue to lose. Seeking the solace of activists and friends. Pouring myself into research and writing. Studying law and politics and fact-checking every last piece of media. Taking the time to understand how horribly impactful the violation of human rights can be, how that violation trickles from person to person until the entire society buckles under itself.
And all I can ask, all I keep asking as I am surrounded by doubt and alternative facts and fact-checkers and protests and postcards and last-ditch efforts, is where is my place in this America?
Where is yours?
Siri failed me this morning. She didn’t tell me last night that my 4:44 a.m. alarm was only for weekdays. I woke before I heard a sound, in the dark of early morning, wondering how in God’s name had my body managed to wake before such an insanely early Sunday alarm. I lay there for several minutes, listening for the cars on Jewell. But it’s Sunday, I told myself. At 4:23, I thought.
Finally I looked at my phone, irritated that I couldn’t sleep longer. 6:06??? FUCK!
I rushed to the bathroom, hurriedly raked through my tangles, and put on my four layers of clothes. I started tea water, fed the meowing kittens who waited screaming at me outside of the bathroom, scarfed a banana, and threw together a PB&J for the road.
The road: warning signs lit up 6th Avenue. “Slow and go traffic from Floyd Hill to Empire exit.” It was 6:46. And the whole world rainbowed the highway with a string of red lights in search of snow.
I pulled into the parking lot at 8:19 after the harrowing icy drive over Berthoud Pass and backed into one of the final ten spots. I ran to the bathroom, rushed back to the Pilot, and began the tedious process of slipping dress-socked feet into hard plastic ski boots. I carried my skis and poles the thirty feet to the slope, clicked in, and headed 300 yards to the singles line.
Before 11:00 a.m., I had skied ten runs, a near miracle on a crowded day. I had chosen my lifts wisely, and I had only the snow and my speed to wait for. In the singles line, you don’t have to wait on anyone. You slide up ahead of large groups, of brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, young children, lifelong friends.
All day long you hear or partake in snippets of conversations.
“Look at that little girl. Not more than six on the double black! I didn’t do that till high school. And look–her mom can’t even keep up with her.”
“I can’t wait till Maddie starts skiing next year. She’s such a spitfire. She has no fear. She’s nothing like Miles, afraid of everything.”
“Once they open Vasquez Circle, the whole winter world will change. Only half the mountain heads over there because there’s 300 yards of road, and snowboarders won’t go near it. It’s all natural snow and just skiers. You’ve gotta try it.”
“I just finished taking a class at UCD even though I’m from Illinois. Sadly, this is my last day on the slopes.”
“Dad, how many runs do you think we can do before lunch?” “I can ski all day without stopping.” “Maybe five?” (At 10:36).
“Is this the singles line?” “Yes.” Long pause. Red beard below black goggles. Giant grin that glances toward the huge crowd entangled in the group line. “Aren’t we lucky to be single?”
Yes, yes we are. Never mind that my father hurt his shoulder and not one of my three girls wanted to get up and ski today and my husband doesn’t ski.
Today, I could have given in as everyone I know always does and always would. But I said I was going skiing, and damnit, I was. I missed my alarm, crammed into the traffic, and by the end of the day was soaked down to my skin from so much snow. My legs ached. My fingers were numb. I was wholly alone and wholly together with strangers all in the course of a day.
I learned that groups who were smart split themselves to make a long singles line. That way they could get through lift lines faster.
That people don’t care who they ride with or what they say on the lift as long as there’s fresh powder to carve down on the other side.
That I can be free and happy even if I’m alone. And in fact, because of it. I could choose every run I wanted, when I wanted lunch, I could skip back and forth between Mary Jane and Winter Park, I could stop at the gas station and fill up on tea, I could listen to an audiobook instead of moaning over a traffic jam.
I could survive, at least for a day, in the singles line.
In the crook of early January, three weeks since seeing my students, on a cold wintry Saturday morning I shlep across town to make lesson plans with three other colleagues.
Later I will heat water for hot tea and curl in my recliner with a book, wishing I could write a novel as lyrically beautiful as Caramelo as my children wander in and out of rooms, in and out of our house and the neighbor’s, in and out of wanting to be near their dear old mom.
This after two attempts to jumpstart the old Hyundai whose lights I left on in our trek to the grandparents’ house last night.
This after listening to dating tales and math updates and wondering what it would really be like to be a single woman in modern America.
This after coloring intricate books with the girls in the brief time between our latest tech argument and the neighbor’s reemergence.
So is our Saturday, chicken defrosting in the sink, chores done and Echo playing my Pandora playlist to suit the color of my mood.
No dog to walk, no true purpose to the day other than making plans for a class no one really wants to teach.
What sits in the back of my mind is how easily I want to be able to relax. To have a deep and thought-provoking conversation that is justifiably, blood-burningly exciting. To laugh until I cry. To live until I die.
To take these lonely household moments and flip them over or back or somewhere else, when my children were small and my Chihuahua never left the warmth of my leg, when my marriage was young and everything we thought and did was about each other, not some game or book or phone or faraway friend.
In the crook of early January, holidays left out on the curb waiting for a second chance at life (mulch me till I can be reborn!), the cold of winter settles into my bones. The winter of this year, of my children’s childhood, of my marriage, nineteen years in the making.
Even with the beauty of the flakes that fall, their demise lies in slushy streets and icy black pavement, ready to trick any masterful driver, so used to winter but not its ugly, dry-grassed truth that lies beneath the surface.
In the crook of early January, I wait for the sun to rise high in the sky. For the snow to melt. For the tree to be taken. For the hollowness that hides inside this nook to break open in me a new way of looking at the world. For the bend of this season to straighten out into a road I can see, wide and clear and as questionless as a summer’s day.
But in the crook of January, there are no summer days. There are only questions.
out on her sleeve,
plain as day on her face
she wears her heart
torn into bits
that spatter him with
the love she craves
but oblivion blinds him
from what he can’t understand
(she can’t understand)
and the salty droplets
mix with the blood
(the love?)
so that she can’t wash it away
his obsession preoccupies
the heart that he should hand over
and though she tries
to bait her hook
with the right words,
he doesn’t bite
(oh but he bites)
and she pines,
pieces sliding down her cheeks,
sleeve shredded,
for him to
spread open his lids,
catch her wounded words,
and restore her heart.
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