Pandemic Off-Ramp Friday Night Round-Up

A year of watching my own face in Zoom meetings for a year meant that when I finally met with someone in person, I was flying blind. I remembered Cromwell’s admonition to ‘arrange your face’ so I did that, smoothing my hair and raising my eyebrows, but remained ignorant to the effect because there was no mirror, only the person to whom I was speaking and her face revealed no judgement.

My honor this week was being asked to read a young woman’s valedictorian speech. The speech was about friendship and teachers and grief and hope. She wrote it as one very long paragraph, a stream of consciousness ode to transition, of emerging from high school and a pandemic at the same time, and I told her to create more paragraphs and talk about her hope for the future and she did. Then, I loaned her my ring light so she could video-tape her speech because, of course, it had to be virtual and not in person.

My dear departed dad, Mr. Republican, would flip out at all this voter suppression business. He, of the liars never prosper and cheaters never win generation, would shake his head at the Georgia, Florida, and Texas voter suppression legislation. My old man, he was all about fair play. He didn’t get it about equity and social justice and trying to repair the sins of the past. He talked about what was fair right now. You vote, I vote. That was his deal. Everybody gets one kick at the cat. I refuse to believe his was a dying breed.

My other old man, the guy I live with, just tried to make a meat loaf without touching it with his hands. Sorry, Gee. You got to mold it, shape it, make it a cute little loaf in the pan or it will be like a large hamburger. It’s meat loaf knowledge gleaned from years of Tuesday night, home late from soccer practice, I hate broccoli, stop hitting your brother, is your homework done practice.

I am wondering if this print of bullfighting is more brutal than the time I spent in Seville with my daughter was sweet. I consider taking it down but then I remember the week I spent in Sevilla with my daughter when she was a junior in college and every morning we went to the ‘hood restaurant’ and drank hot cafe con leche and ate thick toasted bread with jam and we admired all the women dressed to the nines in tweed suits with scarves around their necks who walked by pushing their babies in perfect strollers. And I leave the print where it is as if it is of a bouquet of flowers rather than a bull nearing its end.