Everything
On going forward.
On Election Day, I took my son on a picnic. It was 70-something degrees out—not typical November weather here at all, but I thought we might as well enjoy it. plan to treat myself to the kind of day I would want if I were a beloved family pet that needs to be put down, I wrote. I knew something terrible might happen. It felt possible, but I didn’t really want to believe it.
We sat on a blanket in the shade in the park by the river. My son rolled from his back to his stomach. He put his hands in the grass and put leaves in his mouth. I made faces at him and he laughed, brand-new, all little shrieks and giggles.
I wished for a moment there that I could stop time. That we could just stay in the park and that whatever was going to happen next would not. But, of course, I couldn’t. The shadows of the trees were getting longer as the afternoon waned. Let’s get an ice cream before we have to go home, I said, and scooped him into my arms.
The way it unraveled was nauseatingly familiar. Things seemed okay, then a little worse, and then not very good at all. I tried to go to sleep. I got up. Then, after an hour or so, I tried again. Around 3:00 am, I opened my eyes after some fitful rest and thought should I look? and I did.
For a while, I sat in a chair in the dark. Eventually, I grabbed a pillow and blanket off the couch and laid down on the floor next to my son’s crib, staying there and listening to the little snuffles of his breathing until morning.
I don’t know what to do next. I told C. that it felt, in many ways, like the day after my dad died. Something immense and irreparably broken, and at the same time, I’m at the grocery store because we need milk? What the fuck?
It can make this little project feel pretty pointless, but, I think, that’s also what the fascists and authoritarians and various grifters and hangers-on need us to believe—that there is nothing in this world of value, except what they define as valuable: power, money, vengeance, fame, going to fucking Mars, and that any amount of suffering in pursuit of those things is justified.
But they are wrong—as wrong as anyone could possibly be—and it’s important to remember it. There on the carpet next to my sleeping baby in the thin light of dawn, I was totally wrecked by how fucking precious he is. How could you not be overwhelmed by what a stupid fucking miracle every person is?
I want to live in a world where everyone recognizes that, but they don’t, and—let’s be real—they never did. Still, I don’t want to give up. I have to hold on to this idea that every fucking thing on this lousy planet is worthy of consideration, of care, of love. That’s all I’ve got.