CRASH COURSE IN DEMOCRACY

I went to my first precinct meeting today in my entry into what it’s like to be an involved citizen. The room was full to overflowing and we heard all the other precinct meetings were as crowded. I had the same wild joy I did at the Women’s March in Washington—so many of us, such fervent faces. Now I am meeting people outside my tribe. This is what I wanted: to get larger, to work in community, to hear other stories, to stop recycling my own.

Seems the only way to rise above the grief and dread I wake to every day is to be active, to be learning how to make change, not just talking about it. I’m such a newbie but I show up, I listen, ask questions and read—a crash course in democracy. I remember one of our chants as we marched down the Mall, “This is what democracy looks like!” It stirs my heart, seems one of the most creative ways I can channel all the feelings I carry around like an underground river that rushes beneath my waking consciousness…but I hear it.

Every conversation starts with the state of the country, not how are you or the weather. It’s as if we are pouring words into the chaos, pulling each other out, throwing lines. The more obvious river is the one we are all surging forward in: this new reality that is a flood. We are being carried forward and not to where my worst fears live. As I look at everyone’s faces at the meetings, I see others like me who care enough to show up.

That phrase, a thousand points of light, that’s us but a thousand is a modest estimate. I heard that there are over 7,000 Indivisible groups across the country and that’s just one of many organizations working for change. The sleeping giant has awoken. I hear its roar and that sound is music to me. We are not alone. I look around the tables to the faces of my neighbors, young and old, seasoned veterans and new recruits. Beautiful.

            I signed up to be a delegate to the County Convention where I can have a voice in the Democratic platform going forward: a new voice, one of many much needed voices. Who would have thought…

WILD & TENDER INNOCENCE

Declan, soaking wet, runs through the spouting jets of the fountain. His wild and tender innocence ignites a place inside me grown dry and sere, that he lights with his joy. It burns in my breast, brighter than the firecrackers we lit as kids. I’m so many years away from how it feels to be that alive, racing with joy into each unfolding moment and the next and the next, into the center of my own fire. 

The audience laughs and hoots but not from ridicule. Declan’s spontaneous play has reached inside where their young children still live and all of us are transported back in time. Can my heart hold all the love I feel for him? Will it break from joy and catapult me somewhere more real, more honest, where I say, “yes, this is where I want to be?” I want to be drunk on this love forever. I want to grab the world and bring it inside. I want to believe all of it is fine: the good, the bad, and what seems ugly. Can I go back that far, before I got taught what the world was? Will this beautiful young boy gradually be tamed and the only memory I have will be the video I took of him racing from one jet of spewing water to another in an impromptu dance of life? I want to play like that again—no filters between me and the moment, like a fuse that burns endlessly—no holding on.

When it’s time to go, he’s shivering but doesn’t want to leave. We pull him away. Enough, you are wet and it is dark and it is time to go home. He could run and squeal with delight until he drops. I love this little boy with all the love I was afraid I hadn’t given to my own son. In this way I am healed. In this way some huge shift has already grabbed me and refuses to let go. I am his Grandma GiGi.

Visit to Sloan-Kettering

March 5, 2012
archived

I left the hotel shortly after I arrived in New York. I left my luggage, wrapped a purple scarf around my neck and headed out to find coffee. I was on York Avenue, walking north against traffic, strolling with purpose, but what purpose?

The thought crossed my mind, I’m heading for Sloan-Kettering, and then I knew. I had to go, before anything else. Eighteen years had passed since I left there the night Jeremy died, carrying bags of his clothes, while he lay pale and quiet; his struggle over.

I walked up to the doors as a woman wheeled out her bald daughter. I took a deep breath and went in.

The same escalator moved ever upward. I stepped on and was whisked into the lobby. A woman slept on a chair; a man nearby ate lunch. The usual.

I felt like a sleepwalker in another world. Why was I here?

The elevators were in the same place. I pushed the button and waited. A group of white-clothed doctors got on as I pressed the eighth floor button. They talked about someone’s case. When I used to come here, I didn’t pay attention. I was intent on getting to Jeremy. Now I had nothing but time.

At the eighth floor, I followed the others onto the floor. “Excuse me, is this Pediatrics?”

“No,” the nurse said, “that’s one floor up on nine.”

When I got off, I saw glass doors barring my way and a colorful mural of animals and kids playing. Right floor, but I couldn’t open the door. I fumbled around looking for a way in. I wanted to turn away. Why was I even here? Someone came by and pushed a button I hadn’t seen and the doors slid open. I was assaulted with the familiar hospital smells of chemicals and ammonia. Nothing looked as I remembered it. I stood there, not sure of what to do. I wanted to see the room he left from but that was on the floor below.

I headed down the white hall past the nurses station. They looked busy; maybe they wouldn’t notice me.

“Excuse me, where are you going?” I turned and confronted a young nurse leaning over the counter.

I walked up to her. “My son was a patient here. I wanted to come back.” I came closer. “He died here.”

“What was his name,” she asked. I told her. “Just a minute.” She walked back to the nurses’ room. I could see them sitting around having lunch.

A nurse came out and walked over to me. “I remember your son. Was he around nineteen?”

“Yes,” I said.

“My name is Shelley,” she said. “Ann, will you take her on a tour of the floor?”

I had thought of this place for years. Now it seemed smaller and more crowded. We passed a series of closed doors with signs that said Bone Marrow Transplant.  Even the other rooms had closed doors. Other dramas were taking place here. Mine was long over. I realized that I couldn’t linger here so I thanked Ann and let myself out into the elevator bay.

I had visited the scene of Jeremy’s last day, a place I feared and dreamed about. I remembered well how it felt to be tethered to that life, those final hopes. Did I expect to find myself still wandering the halls going to fetch food from the communal refrigerator?

I had come back from another life in a southern city so I could stop pivoting around this memory and move on like my son had.