It could be the waning light or the full moon, or my dog’s impending surgery, but things feel fraught and raw right now. We are also coming up on the one year anniversary of the election, which is the same day my daughter, Lucy, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty- two. She told me when she was picking up my grandson. I was paralyzed with fear and numb from shock. The election returns were coming over the transom, the tv was on, but it sounded like so much babbling to me.
I sat on the couch literally unable to move. I was home alone because Eric was working at the polls. Finally, I called Lucy’s biological father because the oncologist would need family history. It wasn’t reassuring. That side of the family has so much cancer. Even a male cousin died of breast cancer because it wasn’t diagnosed in time.
Fortunately, Lucy’s prognosis was good, they caught it early, but it was still hard on everyone. Lila and Finn were five and eight and Mommy had surgery Christmas week. We got through it all and Lucy was a trooper, as usual. The radiation was no fun, but manageable and now Lucy is back working hard, as she does. It’s possible I may not have properly processed this chain of events, but I’m so grateful for the excellent medical care she received and that life is normal again for my grandkids.
Usually I can stomach the news, but right now it feels overwhelming. Ukraine. Gaza. A judge’s home exploded with her family in it. Our cities are becoming militarized. Innocents are zip tied and abducted from American streets. Little kids are shot to pieces. There have been over 300 mass shootings already this year. As Shannon Watt says: when there are guns everywhere we aren’t safe anywhere.
Every time I open a container of food or medicine and have to peel off the tamper resistant packaging I become so frustrated. In 1982 seven people in Chicago were killed after using cyanide laced Tylenol. An entire industry evolved in response to those incidents. Of course we don’t want American citizens to be poisoned or killed! Clearly there was no financial
incentive to keep the status quo.
incentive to keep the status quo.
Perhaps we were able to reign in the lobbyists. Our congress people weren’t bought and paid for so directly. Citizens United opened the financial tap and it has only flowed more fiercely. Thanks to that 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2010, corporations were considered “people” and able to wield disproportionate influence and political power.
In the San Francisco area we have had some cruel Octobers. The Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Bay Area on October 17, 1989. The Oakland Hills Firestorm began October 19, 1991. Polly Klaas was kidnapped and murdered in October 1993. The month started to feel cursed and I began to dread it.
Perhaps I’m feeling sensitive and blue because I’m halfway through Fredrik Backman’s 448 page novel, My Friends. Backman has such a gift for simultaneously exploiting human brightness and darkness that it’s challenging to keep up emotionally. People are shit and treat others like shit. People are beneficent and treat others with beneficence. Back and forth.
These times are cruel, draining, frightening. When Jane Fonda and Joan Baez say these are the scariest times they’ve ever lived through, it makes them feel even more scary. There are all the normal irritations and tediums of daily life and then everything else on top of it. I think about Trump and Netanyahu and wonder how many people have to die and how much of this Earth has to be destroyed so two guilty, corrupt men can keep themselves in power and out of prison. And by the way, I still hate gas powered leaf blowers.
