A bit topsy turvy

Michelle Obama let it be known that she would not be attending the presidential inauguration next Monday, January 20, which happens to also be MLK Day. I absolutely applaud her for this, for knowing that she does not have to put herself through that, there is absolutely nothing to be gained by her presence there. When they go low, she ... disappears. CNN wrote an eight paragraph story taking her to task, and not once did the story mention that Trump and Melania did not attend Biden's inauguration four years ago. 

Elsewhere in the news, Vance is complaining that VP Harris has not invited his wife and himself to the VP residence as part of the transition, and to that I say, why should she? Vance called her "Trash" during the campaign, or did he forget that? Besides, Pence and his wife didn't invite Kamala and Doug to the VP residence four years ago either. The hypocrisy and sane washing by the media of the incoming administration is just galling. I refuse to watch the inauguration next week. I won't give that one extra point in TV ratings. Instead, like Michelle and Kamala, I'm choosing to protect my peace.

Closer to home, we will have a houseguest for the next few days. Harper's grandma, my niece's mother in law, will be moving into an apartment across the courtyard from us, the one that used to belong to my mother, which she then left to her grandchildren. My niece is buying out her cousins and moving her husband's mother Delores in, because Delores doesn't like living in Dallas. She had moved during Covid to be near to her son, but she misses her hometown of New York, where she was able to get around easily under her own steam, no car needed. The timing worked out because the apartment was getting ready to be vacant again, with both my kids now married.

For the past week I have been letting in painters and glazers to spruce up the place before Delores arrives today. The painters are a mess, dragging out the job that should have been finished in two days to five days and counting, so that now Delores will need to stay with us until they are finished. I got her room ready this morning, and housecleaned a bit, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I want to make Delores feel welcome. She is a gentle soul, possibly quite shy. My niece Leisa texted that Delores cried yesterday about how much our family was doing for her, "and they don't even know me," she said. I texted Leisa back: "We know Delores. She is Grant's mom. Harper's grandma. She's family." "That's what I told her," Leisa said.

Delores shipped her belongings and they are to arrive in boxes tomorrow. She will have to receive them while the apartment is still in upheaval from drop cloths and plastic sheeting and furniture piled up as the painters finish up the job. I'm glad I didn't recommend these guys! I did recommend the glazer, who looked like Mr. Bean and did his job admirably within a day. Meanwhile Leisa is rubbing her hands together with glee. "We're gonna revive Grandma camp!" she told me on the phone yesterday. "There will be lots of hands to mind Harper in New York!" "You should talk to my children about giving Harper some cousins to join her at Grandma camp, like you had," I said. "No," Leisa replied, "I will not be doing that." Oh well. I suppose my kids are on their own timeline. But Grandma camp with Miss Harper? Bring it on!

More duality

My daughter gave me tickets to a Broadway play for Christmas, as she usually does, knowing how much I cherish this gift that is the experience of spending time with my girl. Last night, we went to dinner and to see the musical Death Becomes Her, which was entertaining, but we both agreed it was not our favorite Broadway experience to date. The plot was funny, but shallow, however the company of my daughter was sublime and so I wouldn't have missed the evening for anything. I won't go on and on about it, though, because as we continue on with our lives on this coast, our city in a snowy deep freeze right now, people on the other coast are watching their homes burn, watching whole neighborhoods become twisted steel and broken char, smoke and ash like a soup in the air. Whole swathes of Los Angeles are in flames, peoples lives are in shambles, the images on our TVs show an apocalypse. “It seems like the end of the world," our friend there, Elizabeth Aquino, wrote this morning. Her son Oliver has been going out to work at the restaurant; all week he has been feeding exhausted firefighters. On her Substack, Elizabeth posted these links if you want to combat the helplessness that I fear so many of us are feeling. May she and her family remain safe, may the firefighters be protected, and may all those in the path of the flames find a way back from this hell. Amen.

Incoming

Did y’all catch that press conference with the newly certified (and certifiable) red emperor today? Did you hear all the talk of annexing Canada, forcibly wresting Greenland from Denmark, taking back the Panama Canal, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America? Hooo boy, it’s going to be a wild ride. I think we have no idea. 

 

Montego Bay

That jetty in the distance on the left is right next to where I almost drowned when I was nine. It is not a unique memory. My brother, my cousins, and I each recalled almost drowning as children at this beach, and we marveled that our normally careful parents thought nothing of dropping us off there on summer mornings when we were only six, seven, no more than ten years old. They imagined they were leaving us in the care of our older cousins, who were fourteen and fifteen and far more interested in the teenage friends who came to meet them on the sand than they were in supervising little cousins rambling about. The last time I almost drowned, beside that jetty in the picture, my brother noticed me struggling and dragged me in from the deep. That was the day I decided I needed to know how to swim and so I taught myself by dog paddling in the shallows until I could put together a good distance without touching the sand. And then I asked my brother and one of my cousins who could swim to flank me as I swam out to the raft in the deep part of the sea. How I silently exulted when I made it there and back without flailing. That night I was so excited I couldn't sleep. I could hardly wait to get back to the beach the next day to assure myself that indeed, I was now a swimmer!

Some vacation pics:

This lovely man was my view at breakfast.

My much-loved sister cousin was also on the trip, with her husband and two sons. They live in Virginia but we met up in Newark and flew down together. Her former high school compatriots flocked to visit her each day. She, like my mother, has never lost a friend.

These are two of my nephews, one from Fairfax,Virginia, the other from Kingston, Jamaica. I look at t this picture and all I can think is, the dudes abide.

Late afternoon on Doctor's Cave Beach.

My brother and two of his kids drove from Kingston to spend the weekend with us at the hotel. Saturday night nine of us played rollicking games of dominoes around the pool while a steel band serenaded us. My brother’s daughter grew up in Jamaica as I did, but she lives and works in Brooklyn now. We usually see her in New York these days, but she was home for the holidays, and it was fun to spend time together in Jamaica. 

My cousin and her husband and their boys were our nightly dinner companions. One day their family did an excursion to Nine Mile, the country village in the mountains where Bob Marley was born and is now buried. For my nephew the musician, it was a pilgrimage. At dinner that evening, he was all lit up recounting all he had seen and thought and felt standing at the birthplace and graveside of a legend. I’d chosen not to join them. There was a steep narrow path and many steps carved into the mountainside, and I knew I could not manage them.

I caught up with my brother over lunch. He was searching on his phone for a picture of someone that he wanted to show me.

My man captured sunsets and the movement of stars from the balcony of our room.

My nephew's hair drew much attention from fellow guests at the hotel.

I went home to Jamaica and now I am back home in New York. Twas a good trip all around.

 

The blue of home

 

This is the beach I grew up on. The blue is the blue I remember. 

Here

Our flight was delayed so it was already dusk by the time we got to our room. The sky was overcast, but still beautiful. I’m starting to exhale. 

Happy Christmas from Harper!

Our little bright spark is wishing you everything merry and good for the season! I just love the picture. Had to post it. ❤️

Chemical Christmas

I'm sad and lonely for all the people I once spent Christmas with who have moved on from this place, this life, and I wonder if I will ever spend another Christmas not on the verge of tears from missing them. It's the only reason I can come up with for the sadness flooding me in this moment. I texted with my friend Jane and we both recalled sitting on her balcony one twilight and talking about how freeing it is the release expectations of how the Hallmark holidays should go, but I think I might be failing at that exercise of releasing expectations because I don't feel free, I feel heavy hearted and sad. Like I wish I could just disappear. Not really, of course. Not really, she hastens to add.

The man and I have already opened gifts. It was quite a haul. Now he is lying down and reading on his Kindle, and I am here, wishing all my friends in this virtual neighborhood a less chemical Christmas than I seem to be having here in the frozen north. Here's what it looks like outside my window today. It snowed twice this week.

And here is where I'll be three days from now, in Jamaica, on the beach where I grew up.

My daughter spent the last several days here with us, as she always does now before Christmas. Oh, we had a sublime time together, wrapping gifts, binge watching bad TV till the wee hours, getting mani pedis, going to the movies, sharing hearts, most of all sharing hearts. Then yesterday, on Christmas Eve, we delivered her north to her husband and his family, where she will spend the rest of the holidays. My son is spending this Christmas with his in laws too, and we probably won't see him again for the season as we're leaving for Jamaica and wont be back till the New Year. 

I miss my children, but I am also happy they have other people who wish for their presence, especially since we don't really do anything for Christmas. As I told my girl when she and her love made the deal to do Thanksgiving with us in the city and Christmas upstate, better she fold in with the family who does holidays up in a festive way, something I never figured out how to do. We’re invited, too, but my husband enjoys waking up in his own home on Christmas morning. Here is a picture I sent to my girl to say how much I love the colors of the circle scarf she gave me. Her dad in the background is tinkering with one of the toys our son gave him for Christmas. He had no idea I was taking his picture, and shirtless too, so considerate wife that I am, I've lightly blurred him out. 

I know the holidays are going to be hard for my daughter and her husband this year. Their sweet dog Munch loved being upstate. We joked that it was his version of a spa, where he could run in the yard and romp in the snow, and be doted on by his other extended family, including my son-in-law's sister, who was probably Munch's favorite person in the whole world. Everywhere they look, they cannot help but see and feel his absence. They made a donation of food and dog toys to the local rescue shelter in Munch's name for Christmas. That little guy lived balls to the wall, and then he was gone. My heart is quietly sore for my girl and her love. But, as my mom used to say, "What cannot be cured must be endured." Gahhh, I miss my mom. And now I am full on crying.

Worlds side by side

The leaves are almost all gone from the front of my house. But on the side, in the corridor between two buildings, the golden trees still sway and shimmer. Nobody told them winter is here. I sit in my house, contemplating the gold, in awe.

I’ve been comfort watching Call the Midwife, which often has me in tears. For those who know the show, Sister Monica Joan is one of the most wonderfully drawn characters I’ve ever encountered on the small screen, a poet and a philosopher, who feels so keenly the suffering of the world, and somehow, in spite of her sometimes tenuous grip on what is real, and also because of it, she is able to transmute pain into the purest hope. It really is a beautifully written show. I pause so often, just gobsmacked by a line spoken by one the midwives, wimpled and not, who attend the thresholds of birth and death with such fierce and unstinting courage, feminist warriors for other women, for families, for love. 

Also, I got dressed up last Saturday evening to see the Justice's star turn on Broadway. I put on make up and lipstick and even blended on concealer and blush with a brush the way my glam young friend Gabbie showed me, so we took a picture. Then, this morning I read a poem about Gaza by Joseph Fasano. It broke me all over again. The children are still dying. The land still burns. What will become of our souls?

 

Our Justice is a Theater Kid

I was in the audience last night to witness Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dream come true. In her Harvard college essay, she had expressed her goal of becoming "the first Black female Supreme Court Justice to appear on a Broadway stage" (Lovely One, page 103). She attained the first part of that dream when she was appointed to the Supreme Court on June 13, 2022. And last night, in a one-night-only walk on part in the musical "&Juliet," she got to experience the second part of that dream. In a part written expressly for her, she performed to a full house that thundered with applause and cheers when she appeared and delivered her lines, even singing one song with the cast. She was brilliant and clearly enjoying herself. "She's just a Theater Kid like us," one of the lead players said, introducing her. As she shares in her memoir, theater is her road not taken. She appeared in plays and musicals throughout her college career, an engagement with stagecraft that she necessarily paused when she chose the Law. Last night that long hiatus came to an end.

"&Juliet" re-imagines Shakespeare's famous tragedy, exploring what might transpire if on awakening from her sleep potion and finding Romeo dead, Juliet decided not to kill herself, too, and instead went on with her life. It was a funny, inclusive, empowering feminist vision of an alternate ending to the bard's play. My friend Lisa came with me to the show, as my usual Broadway buddy, my daughter, is off exploring Quebec City this weekend with her husband. I was just as starstruck as everyone else when the Justice appeared. And the Theater Kid crushed it.

Watching the performance, I felt a secret thrill that our Justice has these other dimensions to her persona, that she could replenish her spirit from what must be a brutal day job with an interlude of the purest joy. When she shared her goal of one day appearing on a Broadway stage in her book, I was sure someone would read it who could make that dream come true. And last evening at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, she acted her heart out, and she was glorious.