Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Has It Only Been a Week Friday Round-Up
I’ve done my best this week. I made bag lunches. I went to my writing group. I swam with my friend Karen. I helped a friend with an upcoming political event. I gave a speech (a pretty good one, actually). I emailed my Republican U.S. Senator asking him to condemn the Jan. 6th pardons. I chaired a complicated meeting. I washed the dog’s blanket because the cat peed on it this morning. And, because I did these things, made myself do these things, I am no longer freaked out. Well, not as freaked out.
tgrffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff. There are other things that Herc the Cat wants to say but he ran out of paws. What I will say about Herc the Cat is thank God we have a cat! Despite his disgusting ‘statement’ on Swirl’s blanket, Herc remains steady and loyal, affectionate but generally undemanding. If I wake in the night and feel him nestled on top of the blankets, I am reassured like a five-year-old with a beloved teddy bear.
There are a lot of ‘true colors’ opportunities right now. A local TV station fired a weather person because she posted her negative opinion about Musk and his Nazi salute on her private Instagram. Latino elected officials are standing with Latino organizations in the defense of undocumented immigrants in our community, but other leaders seem to be waiting, for what it’s not clear. Meanwhile, local churches are standing up in unexpected ways, but not all of them. And so, we wonder. What does it mean to obey in advance? How do those of us, seemingly not at risk of the worst effects of the new Administration, find our way to a breach to stand in? Do we pretend that’s other people’s work?
I ordered a walking pad that is so heavy we can’t get it off the porch. Ordering it was part of my commitment to be hale and hearty so I can dance in the streets after the 2028 election. That we can’t get it in the house is a metaphor for a dozen different things. Our intentions are too weighty. Our belief in our own strength overblown. Tomorrow, we try again. We are determined to be strong and creative, use levers and catapults, rip open the box and bring the walking pad in the house, piece by piece. We will be undefeated by the walking pad and its unbelievable heaviness.
Every now and then, there is a photo on social media of my very successful daughter, and I am astonished that I am her mother because she is so beautiful and accomplished. The organization she runs posts the photos and, of course, I like every one of them and download them to keep like how my mom took every snapshot, blurry or bad, and pasted them in a scrapbook. Sometimes she wrote in white ink – who was in the photo and when it was taken. I label each photo of my daughter in my hard drive but it’s not the same. You can’t run your hands over the pictures and turn the scrapbook pages, ever so carefully, take it all in, all the beauty and aliveness. That’s not how we remember things anymore.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
keep on doing what you’re doing, stay involved in any way you can, and it does help a bit. 600 and some change days until the midterms. happy to read that my peeps in Ann Arbor, and those in Grand Rapids will also not help ice