A Day without a Mom

A door slams in the semi-light of morning. He’s three and hasn’t gotten the message that he doesn’t need to slam the door every… single… time… he… leaves… his… room. Normally this annoys his Mom, but today she’s MIA. He wanders up to the bed trailing the smell of pee, looking for a snuggle, but there is no mommy. Normally this would trigger worry and crying, but today, on a day without a woman, without his mom, he’s going to be weirdly happy with this turn of events.

                He runs with his drunken-sailor gait to his sister’s room and they marvel over the lack of the mommy, but soon forget in a bout of unrestrained bed jumping. The Little Guy even joyfully yanks the fan chain repeatedly, something Mommy never allows, until the fan crashes down on the bed. The children could die here, ten minutes into a day without mommy, but what fun would that be. Instead, Little Guy’s drunken-sailor gait kicks in at the exact right moment and he knocks his sister from the bed in the nick of time. There are bruises and tears. They sing “Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” as they apply every band aid in the box to their heads, but they’ve lived through the great fan crash.

                Now Squidgamabob, the first born, the sister, Squidge for short, has to go to Kindergarten, so they play for two hours and then eat a poorly peeled banana and some candy for breakfast. By this time, the Little Guy’s soggy nighttime diaper is leaking and everything smells like pee. Squidge gets him dressed, forgets his underwear and puts his pants on backwards so the drawstring looks like a tail (ok, so this happens all the time, mommy present or not). Inspired by the Little Guy’s tail, they play kitties for another hour before heading to school, leaving the garage door open behind them. They don’t know how to shut it and what could happen?

                They wave at the friendly white van with blacked out windows trolling the neighborhood for loose children. When the man asks the children if they want to see his puppy, they fortunately remember they are pretending to be kitties and hiss at the man before jumping into the bushes. There they meet up with the other feral children of the neighborhood. Apparently the school is closed because most of the teachers are women. The mommies are also women, as it turns out. Who knew there were so many women in the world, quietly going about their work? But little minds have small attention spans and with a shift in the wind, they are all squirrels, building nests and collecting acorns, except Julia who only plays sports games.

One child finds that trash is more satisfying to collect than acorns and before long, all the children are collecting trash for treasures as they move in a pack along the run-off canal to the creek. They find some cool stuff, but Damian wins the game and becomes the pirate captain when he finds an old Halloween wig in the mud. Olivia becomes the substitute mom when she finds a practically brand new bottle of water and gives everyone a sip. The children glean much satisfaction from throwing half rotted acorns into the creek, until two fall from the high bank into the mucky water below. The children run into the woods to find big stick to pull their friends to safety, but are distracted by a raccoon with half its fur missing. It hisses and they all run away. The Little Guy is hungry at this point so Squidge takes him home, through the poison ivy patch, but they won’t know that until later.

Seeing the white van in the driveway, they hide out in the hoarder house yard across the street until it drives away with the couch sticking out of the back. But that’s OK, since Mom didn’t like that couch anyway. The Little Guy scratches at the bites from his brand new flea friends. The foxes sure do love the junk in the hoarder house yard and fleas love foxes.

Inside their house, each child picks out a can of soup. Chicken stars for her. Star Wars noodles for him. But only mommy has the magic ability to open a can. Squidge is like her mom and improvises with a hammer. Boom. Pasta stars on the ceiling. Yoda pasta on the cabinets. And since magical mommy is the only one who can reach the soup bowl, into the microwave the tin soup cans go. Little Guy helps by climbing up on the stove next to his sister, accidentally turning the gas knob as he goes. Now gas hissing into the room and metal sparking in the microwave could mean flambéed children and no need to worry about the stolen couch, but fortunately, a nudge of a foot activates the igniter too soon before any real gas has built up. Gas erupts into fire with a whoosh, and down come two singed children, soup and all. Squidge defeats the gas monster with a quick-thinking turn of the nob; she has helped make Mac & Cheese, after all. Turns out cold pasta isn’t too bad… once they pick the cat hair off.

Squidge decides to play on the computer downstairs (thankfully unnoticed by the robbers) while the Little Guy makes his post-lunch poop. After a half an hour of yelling ‘Someone, may you wipe my butt!” he gives up and does it himself. It’s not pretty. Meanwhile, the white van guys’ buddies have hacked the dreambox website and are chatting with Squidge on video chat. Squidge had to figure out how to remove mommy’s silly black tape from the video camera, but she’s learning fast. Upstairs Little Guy remembers to wash his hands but gets distracted by the soap squirty. The cat hops up on the sink for a drink, gets a taste of soap foam and freaks the ‘F out. Her violent exit launches the water bowl in an arcing cascade and with precision aim, floods the wall socket, tripping the circuit breaker, shutting down the wireless router downstairs (because old houses are wired like that) and saving Squidge from white van predators. Nice work kitty.

All over the hood, dads are coming home to their feral children and destroyed homes, but not Little Guy or Squidge’s dad. He’s away doing important things. He was supposed to call, but Little Guy played games on Mommy’s phone until the battery died. After a dinner of cheerios, the children pour a bath. Squidge manages to get the water turned on, but she forgot to turn it off and some water got out. It was only a little, but it rained in the downstairs bathroom… again. Mom is going to be mad, since it took the plumbers four trips to fix it the rain problem last time. The lights still weren’t working in the bathroom but, Squidge found ALL the glow sticks in the cabinet. It was the best bath ever. Stories by Squidge followed. It was a good thing she memorized so many of them since she still didn’t know how to read. The children decided to sleep together in Mommy’s bed and wait for her to come back.

Mom magically reappeared at midnight to carry each sleepy child back to bed, tucking them in with a kiss. She spent the next day scrubbing dried poop off the bathroom, scraping calcified pasta off the kitchen ceiling, filing police reports over the stolen property, flea bombing the house and listening to people on the news bash women who just want equal pay and to be appreciated for their contributions to society.

But the news didn’t waste much time on women’s rights, not when there were angry tweets to cover and a whole branch of the military exposing its ugly misogynist underbelly in an attempt to keep women out of its sacred masculine space. And her daughter comes home to tell her how a boy picked on her for dressing like her daddy for military day, because ‘girls don’t belong in the military.’

They start so young, pushing women out of the spaces of the world.

And women push back. She has the same conversation with her daughter she’s had before. Yes, girls can be Jedis. Yes, girls can be ship captains. Yes, girls can be president.

If they persist.

#InterNationalWomensDay #YetShePersisted #DayWithoutAWoman. #WomensHistoryMonth

See it - Fix it

If you were watching a race and a spectator tripped one of the runners, what would you do? If you are like me, your first thought would be the runner. Then, if the runner wasn’t gravely injured and if the tripper was still present, I would light into the tripper. “What the hell did you do that for? What is wrong with you?” My psychotic rampage might prevent a future incident or it might just make the tripper more cautious about committing that crime in front of witnesses, but it is too late to prevent the damage in this instance. Helping the runner to their feet might make them feel a little better because someone cares, but concern won’t heal the scrapes on their skin or restore their confident stride. This is what racial and sexual harassment is like. Even if someone steps in and defends you or helps you clean up graffiti or picks you up from the ground, there is still a mark on your soul from what the harasser has done.

                In the week plus since the election I have read story after story of people being harassed. These are small, first hand stories, such as a clerk who has worked with a woman for four years, thought they were friends, and is gutted when the co-worker says she can’t wait until she is sent back to Mexico. Or of a waitress harassed for the color of her skin, harassed because she wouldn’t confess her voting preference and then given no tip for her honest work. At any given moment I can go on this group page and read half a dozen first hand stories and these are the fraction I happen to see,

of the fraction that make it through the moderator,

of the fraction that are even written about,

of the fraction that happen to belong to this group,

out of all the minorities in this country.

                It gives me, for the first time in my life, a real scope of how many racist people there are in this country. I really had no idea. I was living in my bubble. If someone said something racist, I simply didn’t include them in my circle. I shunned them. And they, not receiving any kind of green light from me, moved on to their own circles. I believed minorities when they said they’d been harassed, but somehow I viewed this as a few super harassers going around harassing multiple people a day or something. Naïve, yes, but how was I to know?

                A few months ago, I read an assertion that jarred me. The writer suggested America had never healed after the Civil war because the white slave owners had never apologized to the black slaves. I really couldn’t reconcile this idea with my world view. I would never have expected them to apologize. They were defeated in the war and any apology would have been mere words. A true apology is an acknowledgement of wrong doing, but the South never thought they were wrong. They were simply forced to conform to the northern laws. But I naively thought since that was over 150 years ago, it would have simply faded into a history lesson. Modern America does not live in its past or so I thought. I certainly don’t know what factors drove my ancestors to immigrate to America and it is not a driving force in my life. But I failed to realize that hatred can be passed down from parent to child. My ancestors might have had some hatred in their heart, but they never spoke of it since they probably left the source behind in their native countries. But in the south, there was never a separation. The objects of hatred, on both sides, were always present and the feud could never die out and be forgotten. So when the writer said white America never apologized, he meant that not only did they never apologize, but they never let the hatred die out and taught it to their children.

In my family, we’ve made this excuse for grandparents: at least they weren’t as bad as their parents were. Each generation has been a little better. Each parent sees themselves as a buffer between generations. And so our family is improving over time, with every generation. And I thought that was the mission of every parent. To be a little better than their parents. But so many people in this country have failed! They’ve raised their children with this awful burden of hate and make no mistake, it is a burden. Anger takes energy. Imagine carrying all that anger. It would sap your life away. If I wasn’t so afraid of what they are going to do our country and the people in it, I would feel so sorry for them. But they have been nursing this hatred in the dark for so long, I’m not sure what force would make them break the cycle.

                If we can survive this hateful regime of Trump without being torn apart, there is one good thing that has come of it. Trump is the sleazy racist light that has allowed all the cockroaches to scuttle out from under their rocks where the rest of us can see them. We didn’t know we had a problem, an infestation in this country, but now we are no longer blind. It is time to stop the roaches before they spread their disease.

                In the beginning of this post, I spoke of the runner. If only we could anticipate the trip and stop the damage. If only we could stop the slur before it polluted the air. If only we could see the future. But we can’t. We are only left to pick up the runner. However, graffiti is one of many ways the haters trip people up. It is one place we can prevent the trip and save the runner. If you see graffiti, can you fix it? Can you scrub it away before more people see it? Can you transform it into something else? Here are a few suggestions in case you have the chance to be the hero, anticipate the trip, save the runner and change the future.

Transform a Swastika #SeeitFixit

Or Turn it into a window and write love inside.

Transform a clan sign #SeeitFixit

Transform Words #SeeitFixit

For your closing visual, imagine, just imagine, if every time there was a klan march, someone accidentally scheduled a Color Run (http://thecolorrun.com/about/) at the same time. All those sterile white sheets…. they would be so improved afterwards.

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Best Day Ever!

Comfort in the Enduring History

The last two days this week have been spent touring the Capitol Building and the White House. These kinds of tours are set in motion months in advance and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen the week after the election of he-who-shall-not-be-named was elected to visit these most important places in our history. I no longer wanted to go, but I knew I should before it was all gilded in tax payer gold. But instead of experiencing the continuous sorrow over the impeding future, I was comforted by our long enduring history.

The capitol building has witnessed both dreadful times such as the Dred Scott decision and the very first blows that precipitated civil war after “the breakdown of reasoned discourse” and great leaps forward, such as the 19^th amendment where this country acknowledged that half of its citizens were indeed people after all and should be able to vote.

The dome of the capital building was raised though out the civil war, while America was literally gutting itself. If that isn’t a testament to the long endurance of this country, I don’t know what is.

One of the difficulties this country face is the separation of church and state. Our founding fathers did not make this a Christian nation. The white settlers of this country were fleeing religious persecution in their own country and it was a founding principle of our fore fathers, but a lesson our country has forgotten. To understand this, one only has to look up at the dome of the capitol. The Apotheosis of Washington. There is no Christian god painted there, but Greek gods. Our forefathers were admirers of the Roman Empire, not the Church of England and not the Pope. I hope the senators and congressmen and women look up every time they pass under that dome and remember this country is not meant for one group, one religion, one race. And that mural will be there long after they are gone.

And there were rainbows everywhere. In paintings. On the floors. No matter how hard conservatives try, there will always be rainbows in the capitol building, the heart of our government.

In the White House itself, there are so many traditions (some as old as the building itself) that the regime will be unable to change much of anything. When visitors come to the White House, they walk down a long hall and are greeted by portraits of the First Ladies, starting with Laura Bush and then by Hillary Clinton.  So people coming into this house in triumph are continually reminded that there is an ebb and flow in politics. When Lady Michele Obama’s portrait is completed in 2019, she will be the face greeting all the visitors. And it is the same at the main entrance upstairs. Every triumphant Trump supporter will have to stare down Bill Clinton and soon enough, Trump himself will have to pass the judging eyes President Obama, a black president he tried to deny for so long, every day in his place of work. And we can use these traditions as a thermostat for the future. If Trump is able to prevent the installation of the first Black President’s portrait in the White House, we will know how powerful his regime has become.

And my last moment of comfort came from a tree on the Capitol grounds. Judging by the girth of the tree’s trunk, it must have been here as long as the American government. It has lived through civil wars and the burning of the White house. It has seen so much and will live to see so much more, but only if we make that possible. It stands there at our mercy. If the climate becomes too warm for it survive, or droughts scorch the land, it cannot uproot itself and move to a better climate. The only way for this tree to survive is if we make changes in our consumption of our resources. 

#WhiteHouseTour #CapitolTour #USCapitol

The New Champion

Like it or not, Trump is the president-elect, but why aren’t his supporters calling him out on not keeping his promises.

                Over the last months I’ve tried to understand the appeal of Trump. One argument that repeatedly comes up is the idea of change. Rural America is looking for a change. This I can believe. I went home to Upper Michigan this summer and was shocked by the changes. The country I grew up in is dying. There are only 5 or 6 kids in the kindergarten classes. The businesses are closed. There is no industry. The world has left rural America behind and the government has done nothing to protect it.

                So the people are desperately looking for a change, a Washington outsider, and for some unfathomable reason, they’ve locked onto Trump. I won’t get into why he is unfit for this choice because it is beside the point. He is their chosen one. Their champion. Their knight in shining orange armor. Trump has spent his life as the aggressor against all establishments and rules, very much enjoys being the villain. He never expected to win. He expected to go on taking swings at HRC from his new TV network. He excels in this role. But with millions of checked boxes, red America chose him for a different and unfamiliar role. He is now their hero, their champion, their voice. He has to be as unnerved by this as blue America is. He has never been anyone’s advocate before in his life. He was always on the other side of the battle line. It’s like taking a berserker from the frontline and putting him in the war room.

                I’d like to think something deep within Trump will change because he was chosen by so many as their champion. I picture a scene similar to Tangled, when Rapunzel turns a bar full of villains into her protectors. Each one of them went through a profound change and I hope this vote of confidence will elicit a similar change in Trump. Maybe his little Grinch heart with grow a few sizes. Imagine what that man could do if he were fighting for a just cause, like revitalizing our economy. Imagine his fighting, angry energy used for good, to take on big industry who take the taxes breaks and bailouts from our government and then move their factories to other countries anyway. The idea of Trump going after big business makes me feel a little gleeful. Who knew that was possible? We can only hope.

                Speaking of hope, the motto of Obama’s campaign was Hope for Change. And according many talking heads, the underlying desire Trump voters was a desire for change. So for three elections running, the people of America have hoped for change. Ok, let me correct that. Two elections they hoped for change and the latest one, they demanded change, or else. Drain the swamp. Drain the Swamp. They chanted and Trump promised. Get rid of Washington insiders. But in an unsurprising move, Trump is busy filling his cabinet positions with, you guessed it, Washington insiders. Click that link and look at that list. Ignore the names and just look at their experience. Senators, mayors and governors, Oh my. Not draining the swamp there, are we? And the rest are big business. I bet they have the little guy’s interest at heart (sarcasm). Already Trump is failing at the one thing we have been repeatedly told underlies all those votes. Change.

                So Trump voters, if change is really what you wanted why aren’t you protesting these choices? Why aren’t you calling and writing letters? You don’t get to check a little box and then throw your hands up in surrender. You voted. You involved yourself in the running of this country. You chose your champion, now hold him to his word. Make him fight for what you want!

                And to end on an ironic note… Remember when Sarah Palin mocked everyone with, “How is that Hopey-Changey thing working out for ya?” There are rumors she might be picked as Interior Secretary. So apparently Hopey-Changey doesn’t work for her, but Demandy-Changey does. (Shaking my head).

Until next time. 

The Boohoo protests…but are they?

Imagine no one protested over Trump’s election. Not a peep. Imagine, for a moment what this would mean. Imagine if it were just another f’ing Tuesday.

Since Trump was elected, there have been protests all over this country. Some are saying these are the tantrums of the losing side (ironic since the Trumpsters planned violent protests if they lost). Even people on the Democratic side are shaking their heads, feeling embarrassed their side is out protesting like sore losers. But imagine if no one protested at all. Imagine the message that would be sent if there was no outcry. The implications of that are pretty horrible. So let’s explore how these protests are valuable for several important reasons.

                One of the strengths of left leaning people is they really try to understand the other point of view. They consider. They ignore name calling. They turn the other cheek. They investigate the truth of things. They try to walk in another man’s shoes. They often say, “To be fair,” and follow up with a mitigating circumstance or context, even about Trump. We are the Ned Flanders to Homer Simpson. We try to give the benefit of the doubt. We try to see the other perspective. Why else would we be running in circles trying to explain the inexplicable Trump victory?

We are trying to understand. We hear you rural America. We are trying to understand.

But this slow and considerate way of working through a problem has lead the deplorables to think the liberals are weak pushovers. Libtards they call us with great glee. They don’t realize that, while we are slow to take a stance and consider the angles and ramifications, once we decide on the right course of action, we dig in. We don’t budge. We meet fire with fire and we don’t back down. That is what those protests are demonstrating right now. The left is not weak and it is important for everyone to understand that. Show the Deplorables that the Libtards have teeth and aren’t afraid to use them.

                Probably most important, this violent eruption of #NotMyPresident passion against Trump assures minorities in this country that his attitude is not acceptable. Imagine how you would feel as a minority if Trump was elected and all the people shrugged their shoulders and went on with their lives. It would be even more frightening than when half the voting population in this country shrugged their shoulders and checked the box for Trump anyway. So get out and protest in every way you can.

                And another reason to protest…well... it’s pretty horrible but read on. Protest until Trump gets used to civil unrest because if he’s not used to it by the time he takes office, he will use the might of our military, now at his disposal against the American people. Remember all those Trump rallies where he had protesters tossed out and said to ‘knock the crap out of them.’ Do you think being president is going to suddenly change his vengeful disposition towards those who oppose him? If he does not get over his anger before January, we might add a Tianamen Square to our history. And if you are in the Military or law enforcement, you might take some time to consider what you are going to do when your orders contradict what you know to be right in American society. Protesting is our right as a free society. Who is going to take that away from us?

                Lastly, protest to make sure Trump and the Republican representatives understand that just because they are in the positions of power does not mean we will submit to whatever is their whim. Be so obnoxious it forces them to choose their battles. Make them choose only the most important battles so they cannot sweep the field. Remind Trump every hour and every day that he was not elected by popular vote. His seat of government sits squarely in blue country. He is away from his power base. There is no angry audience energy to feed off in the D.C. area. Don’t let him forget.

                If I could change one thing about these protests, I would give them a direction. I would set them loose on the empty seat in SCOTUS. We should all be going Hurricane Ned over this. The senate refuses to do its job and consider a justice for the Supreme Court and has done so for most of this year. In a time when our government is so wildly out of balance, tipping that balance even further with an ultraconservative judge will be catastrophic. It’s hard to see how to fix this issue though, but here are a few steps.

One: Sign any petition you can find on this. Petition     Petition 

Two: write to your representatives (Especially Republican) and emphasize how wildly dangerous this situation has become. At this juncture, even a mildly conservative judge would be better than those Trump is considering.

Three: Write to President Obama and beg him to submit other judges for consideration. Draw attention to the Senate’s unwillingness to do their job. Do not relent. Beg him to submit a new judge every day. Its too important to let pride get in the way.

                Thanks for reading. Tomorrow will be about why Trump’s supporters should be out protesting too. Yup, that’s right. Them too.

                

Just Another F’ing Tuesday

Yesterday I wrote about the strong reaction my son’s gymnastic teacher had to the election of Trump. We were both having a hard time keeping it together. At least I sat on the sidelines where I could discretely use a Kleenex. And like so many, I had a hard time putting one foot in front of the other on Wednesday. My daughter wanted to stay home from school. I wanted to let her, but I knew it was better for her to be in her normal routine rather than being stuck with me and my sniffles. So I made her put on her big girl pants and I put on mine and we went out into the world to adult to the best of our abilities. Grocery shopping was on my adulting list. Thankfully I wrote my list before my brain turned into the post atomic sludge after the election nuclear bomb was dropped on us, otherwise I probably would have come home with two rutabeggas and a crouton.

                I shuffled through the store avoiding eye contact. I was so in shock over the election that I was regarding everyone with fear. Every person in that store was a potential Trump voter. Every person was a potential minority hater, a gay basher and a pussy grabber (ok, the women probably weren’t pussy grabbers). I was afraid of every one of them. Then I encounter two black women. I expected them to be in the same state as I was, as the gymnastics teacher was, but they weren’t. They acted normal. They even asked if I was a Fairfax County mom and if the kids were in school on Friday. I didn’t understand. Didn’t they know the world had ended? How could they not care?

                I mulled this over for a while. Maybe they didn’t vote. Half the people in this country didn’t. Maybe they voted for Trump. Some minorities did. But then I remembered a story from the set of Django. Leonardo DiCaprio was having a hard time playing the role of a racist asshole in the movie because he’s not an asshole in real life. He couldn't say the words and names in the script and Samuel L Jackson said to him, “Hey, M.F., get over that. It's just another Tuesday for us and let's get going.”

                Telling words. It’s just another Tuesday. One of the puzzle pieces in this election was why the black voters didn’t get out for HRC like they had for Obama. I remember thinking in the week before how much HRC and Trump had in common in the looks department. Blue eyes. Light hair. More white people. Maybe black people couldn’t get invested in this election because to them it was just another Tuesday with white people running the show. Or maybe those women did care on some level, but they hadn’t bothered to get their hopes up because it was just another Tuesday.

                It’s telling that I am absolutely crushed by the outcome of this election (which may actually have little effect on me as a white person), while others who are in real danger are acting like it is just another Tuesday.

                The other lesson I brought home from the store along with my groceries, what it was like to fear everyone around me. As a woman, I thought I understood. We are always on guard, categorizing men as potential pussy grabbers, knowing that at any time one of them could make us feel like shit. But there are limitations to this fear. It probably won’t happen while I have my kids at the grocery store. There is a pretty good chance that someone else will shut an asshole down before it gets too far. Those incidents are rare enough that I still feel safe most of the time. While I was walking around the store in a post trump world, I did not feel safe. Half the people voted for him. Half the people said his actions were fine by them. I tried to console myself with the idea that only 30% of the people in my area actually voted for him, but it didn’t stop the fear. And I realized this perpetual fear was what it was like to be a minority in a hostile country. You never know who is going to smash you down. So everyone who is as stunned as I am by this election outcome, take a moment to feel this fear. Take a moment to remember it, impress it in your mind, so you can truly understand what it is like to be a minority every day. White people will never truly understand their fear, but this may be as close as we can get.

                *Yesterday I wished for a way to show my support for minorities in this increasingly intolerant country I found it. A simple Safety Pin on your shirt and jacket. Read why here.

                *Next I think I will write about the current #NotMyPresident protests and why they are important. Some are regarding it as a tantrum, but I think it has a very important purpose. 

Standing up

One of the greatest regrets of my childhood is that I did not stand up to bullies. I did not stand up for my special needs brother. I did not stand up for the kids being tormented over their father’s suicide. I did not stand up for myself. I regret that, but I can only change my future, not the past. However, that regret causes me to reject all this talk about healing for the good of the nation and getting along with the deplorables. They are out there now, on every social media platform bullying. If this were a sports game, they would be called out for their despicable behavior and unsportsmanlike conduct, but they were bullies to start and that will not change just because they won. There are already instances of women in head scarves being attacked, women on public transport being grabbed by the pussy, marches of the KKK and Trump hasn’t even taken office. I will not play nice and pretend that everything is all right, because it isn’t. My America isn’t dead. By popular vote, it isn’t even defeated. I will call out the bullying where ever I see it. I will do my best to stand by any minority.

                Yesterday in my son’s gymnastic class, his teacher, a wonderful woman who happens to be a person of color, was almost breaking down and had to continually paste a smile on her face so the little children wouldn’t understand how scary the world has suddenly become. I wanted to help her, to reach out, but I felt helpless. The best I could do was to send my son in to give her an extra hug. That was it. That small thing was all I felt capable of doing. So to my minority friends and even minorities I don’t know yet, please let us know what we can do to help. The small things. The everyday things. You have to understand that so many of us are stuck in this limbo of wanting to help, but not wanting to be patronizing. Not knowing what we can do to help you as the individual. I wish there was a symbol I could wear to show you that I am on your side. If you need someone to walk with you through a threatening situation. If you need someone to smile at you because we are all humans. If you just need a hug. If you need someone to tell someone else to just shut the fuck up. If you need a sidekick for a little paint ball practice on people wearing long white sheets. I am that person.

                I’ve had several people tell me to just chill. Our government is built as a system of checks and balances, so Trump can only do so much damage. But they are wrong. With both the house and senate in republican control and the current republican’s refusal to even consider a judge for the Supreme court until a new administration can appoint someone of their choosing, there is no balance. There is no check. The damage this administration will do to our country, socially and economically will reach far into our future. People will suffer and die because of this administration. Don’t believe me? The attacks have already begun. And when Trump trashes Obamacare, there will be many people with pre-existing conditions who will die because they can’t get medical treatment. It’s only the tip of the iceberg.

For a brief time this year, I entertained a hope that rape culture that exists in this society would get the proper attention it deserves. I hoped that when my precious daughter goes to college, the statistic where 1 in 5 girls are sexually assaulted in college would have dropped, even a little. Maybe instead of a 20% chance she will be raped, it would only be 10%. (Isn’t it ironic that a mother hopes for a 10% chance her daughter will be raped.) But this will not happen now. Things will get worse before they get better, if they ever get better. How will a man who regards his own daughter as a piece of ass ever protect mine?

I am not going to talk about the damages he will do to the minority members of our community (others will say it better than I), but they will be as far reaching into the future as well. Even if he is unable to pass the laws he would like, his attitude will give license to all those deplorables to act without fear of consequence.

I will do my best to fight this on every level, but in an attempt to take a step back and put this all in perspective, to view these horrible things as ephemeral, temporary and passing, I came to an eye opening realization. They ARE only temporary. We as a society can change it all back. We can fight it. We can reverse the laws. It will take time. And people will suffer abuse. Some will have their lives irrevocably changed. Some people will die. And my heart bleeds for them. For us. For my children. But this deplorable social intolerance will pass. We will change it back. We will crush it.

But… and here is the real revelation…we will not be able to fix the damage the Trump administration will do to our natural places and to our planet. Once a park is plowed under to make a golf course, you can’t ever bring it back. Once all the bees are dead and our agricultural industry is crippled, you can’t bring them back. Once the sea levels have risen and flooded our coastal cities, (including Norfolk, the home of our Navy and our defense against all those scary foreign powers) you can’t unflood them. Once the climate is out of control and forests that have evolved to a particular climate die out, you can’t bring them back. Once an area’s water supply has been poisoned by fracking or oil spills, you can’t wash it clean again.

And if you think Trump will have one scruple against destroying something that is precious to others, you haven’t done your research. Here is just one example of many about how Trump treats the things anyone else values. He already plans to dismantle the EPA (the P is for Protection in case the acronym EPA has become a dirty word in your mind) and appoint climate change deniers into key cabinet positions. Every plan he has points to removing roadblocks of big oil/coal industry and those roadblocks (Clean Air act, Clean Water Act) protect the environment for the rest of us. And I can guarantee you that those big industries leaders won’t be sticking around in the places they’ve polluted. And long after Trump is dead and buried and even after his horrible social agenda has been shoved back into the last century where it belongs, our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will be dealing with repercussions of his environmental policy. Or they won’t because they may not survive the pollutions and poisons.

So my take home message is this. Fight Trump on every social injustice you can. Support your friends and neighbors. But if you only have energy left to fight one things, fight for our planet so there is something left after we are all gone to ashes and dust.

Please share if this has been of any value to you in these troubling times.