We Ride at Dawn

Old people have the power right here right now.

We’re the ones with the moral history. We’re the ones who leaned into civil rights and ending the war. We’re the ones who watched the Watergate hearings with babies on our laps and prayed for the country when Nixon was forced to resign.

We have seen civic havoc. Students getting shot by the National Guard. Heroes killed, hearses pulled by horses, widows in heavy black veils. Riots that put cities in flames for days.

We put our heads down and walked forward. We did the things citizens do. We met, organized, marched, voted, and then we went to work and paid taxes and got our kids to school on time. We mowed the lawn, washed the car, and took our old clothes to Goodwill. And when we did all those things, the ship of our country righted itself.

We were relieved, but we weren’t surprised. We knew the country would survive.

I still think that’s true. Ultimately, the country and our democracy will survive. But not soon and not without unforeseeable and unimaginable struggle. Right now, it feels like ten people are drowning and there’s one person standing on the beach strong enough to rescue them. But that one person is running up and down the beach calling for help and screaming their panic so loud that the drowning people can hear and nearly decide to give up and sink to the bottom.

Old people – we know how to swim. We know how to swallow our panic. We know how to do hard things, things that have made us pull over to the side of the road to put our head in our hands. We have lost children and jobs and homes, rebuilt families out of thin air, buried our parents, and started over in life a hundred times. We tell jokes about failure and wink at triumph. The skin on our hands is thin and bruises purple at the slightest bump, we lean in to hear and decide to quit driving at night. But we are indomitable.

This is our moment, old people. This is when we bring our moral authority and our thousand layers of resilience to the task of saving our country. That is what we need to do. We need to show up everywhere. We need to speak. We need to insist that those in power listen to us.

On Saturday, at a town hall held by my Congresswoman, Gwen Moore, the first person to speak was a very old man wearing a cabbie hat. He took the mic and was silent for a good long minute. And then he said, “I’ve never done anything like this before. But I had to come because we have to stop what is happening and save the country.” I loved him in that moment and loved myself, too. The old people are here, I thought, and I was so proud.

Old people – we have the power right here right now. If you haven’t started using your power yet tomorrow would be a good day. We ride at dawn.

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Photo by Melissa Walsh on Unsplash