Tag: family

My Picture in the News!

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ten-years-of-trump-with-a-bit-of-light-ahead-no-kings-resistance-military-iran-israel (Photo from The Bulwark William Kristol, Andrew Egger, Will Selber, and Jim Swift Jun 16, 2025)

Since November 2024 …I descended into hopeless despair—negative, alone, bothered, burned, depressed, stuck, furious, cynical, listless, suffering from malaise. I banned the news in any form, left for Canada—a frozen hide-e-hole full of generous people who patted us on the head and said, “We are so sorry.” It didn’t help.

On our return, I buried myself in Swedish Death Cleaning, writing about death, scribbling angst in notebooks, scrubbing out the dreary washing machine. I attended boring, useless meetings with friends suffering the same as I. No spark, no hope to fix it. I assembled three enormous jigsaw puzzles. I plugged my ears when others brought up my banned topics, read only ancient literature about far-off lands and books about fictitious detectives with chips on their shoulders.

Nothing, nothing could alleviate this, I thought. Impossible to change it, we were doomed, my grandchildren were unwitting victims of a devil. The workman tnext door shouted, “Es un demonio! Es el diablo! Que vamos a hacer?” I told him that I had no idea what to do, that perhaps we are destined for ruin and should just accept it.

But just the other day—I sensed a glimmer of a long-dormant sensation—a childish twinge of excitement. Before, I’d felt worried maybe, apprehensive, yes, but excited—not in the least. Yet here I was, actually bursting.

Why? I am embarrassed to admit…

In a rash moment, when no one else did, I volunteered to help carry the banner that led the  No King’s demonstration. Me, way to long in the tooth, carrying the banner, right in front!

How ridiculous, I thought, I’ll probably be the one who is blown to bits!

 Of course I’ll fall and take everyone down with me—

I’ll be too slow and the younger banner bearers will get annoyed!

I fervently regretted it the moment I volunteered. But . . .

We arrived early at the march’s launching point so we could set up and be ready promptly. My companions went off to various activities. At the stage, as the program of speakers started I walked around in my volunteer vest feeling important, answering questions. I even officially blocked the men’s room so the women’s line would be eased. Nothing like a vest and no authority to make a person heady with power..

I thought maybe a few thousand die-hards would show up, the old guard—all of us who got tear gassed in the 60’s—with our gray hair, walkers, and our new hips.

I looked up and stood in stunned awe. The arriving crowd! Thousands and thousands of people headed my way down into Waterfront Park. They were young, old, brown, black, white, gray-haired, bald, blonde, and tattooed. They had on funny costumes, t-shirts that expressed their views. Angry, hilarious, artistic and slapped-together signs. Hundreds, thousands—Hand-Maid’s Tale women, monarch butterflies—the only monarch’s allowed—polite signs in Spanish, rude signs in Spanish. There were Pride banners, and signs that cried “No to Kings but Yes to Queens!”   60,000 plus of them.

And there I arrived in the very front. Sage smoke drifted over me as the Kumeyaay people did their prayers for our march. I felt joy, a rush of it, a shower of joy, a gall darned-rainbow-colored wash of happiness like I haven’t felt in months. We yelled, chanted, wiggled the banner; we clapped, laughed, cheered and danced.

And this a lesson I need to learn and relearn and remind myself of the rest of my life . . . that joy and the best of us are always just around the corner when you least expect it.

Selling the House

It’s been over six months since my mother died. The worst of the necessary things we had to do after she went have passed, I have helped arrange a Celebration of Life, divided up most of her property, dealt with my irritating step brother, kept the peace with my siblings.

All that is left is the sale of her house.

My siblings are eager to get it sold, off our hands, no emotional connection to it at all. Whereas I find it the most painful  part of all this after-death business. A little miffed that they are so cavalier, I began to think about it. They never really lived in that house. They were off to college, European trips, busy with friends and starting new independent lives. When we moved to that house, I was still a kid in junior high.

It was in that house that I lived alone with my two parents, suspiciousof the decline in my father’s health. It was in that house that I survived the aftermath of his death, the shock and horror of his demise at forty-two. I also lived through the horrific death of two friends, survived the death-like grip of anger at my mother’s new single life. It is there that I coped and wilted while she vanished to New Zealand for a while. I experimented with marijuana and drugs in that house and had sex for the very first time there. I fled home to that house when college became intolerable.

None of this was part of my older siblings’ lives.

The house sale is different for each of us, but I have been surfing on waves of sadness.

Goodbye house.

Odds are you will be “a scraper” and all your bits and pieces will be ripped and smashed and tossed in the landfill. A new house will rise on the spot. One without the leaky basement, the metal window cranks that don’t work, the unusable fireplace, the rickety shed in back.

I hope though, that the ghosts of our dogs, Gus and Rollo, skitter invisibly around the alley, that the buzz of passionate human endeavor—the laughter and the tears—float somewhere above, going about their business; that my dad is still hiking to the top of the first ridge and inhaling the dry Colorado air.

All this happens as  I have finished the first draft of my book about my life with my father. When the house sells and the book is finished in whatever form it will take, I think I am going to feel a burden lift. I’ve carried it around for far too long. When the house goes, it will be like when a kite string has broken and the colorful kite has slipped away into the distance.

Only I am the kite, and I will be set free.