On their way!

 In just a few hours, they'll be here with us in New York!

❤️

 

 

 

The week before the feast

There's the rug I eventually chose. We laid it down this morning. It doesn’t add much to the room, but it’s inoffensive, so I’m okay with it. It a damp, gray day over here. With the brush fires we’ve had in local parks recently we need the rain. My cousin Nicky arrived from Trinidad two days ago. She’s here for Thanksgiving next week. We’re watching the new season of The Great British Baking Show. The Dallas contingent, including sweet little Harper, gets here on Sunday. I'm so looking forward to seeing that little girl. My kids and their loves, and our two nieces, will sleep over with us from Wednesday till Saturday, the better to partake in festive chaos. Over in Brooklyn, my daughter is busy making orders of her salted caramel apple pie. She sold out this year. Pie pick ups will be happening from our house next Wednesday. We’ll have nine people staying over in our apartment and about twenty people for the feast day itself. Here we go!

Being quiet

 

I have been feeling as if I don’t know how to write here anymore. As if I just need to be quiet. If you want to know the truth, all the analyses of the election outcome simply don’t add up to me. I don’t think Anne Seltzer’s Iowa poll got it wrong. Rather, I think in addition to all the voter suppression methods put in place over a period of years, there was something buried in the algorithm of the machines in the districts where the far right over performed, and certainly Leon (as I now call him), with his self driving cars and space rockets could have handled that “little secret”—perhaps it was the “little secret” Orange couldn’t help crowing about at his Nazi rally a week before Election Day. But of course, I sound as crazy as all the election deniers from 2020 saying that. And what even is the point, as nothing will be investigated or corrected. We are heading into the darkest of days and I feel a fair bit of dread. So I’m keeping my head down. Being quiet. Waiting to see what it is that I need to do. I’m not in denial or delusion. But I am in limbo. Suspended. Not knowing just how bad it’s going to get. No more unicorns and rainbows of hope. We’re beyond that I think. We’ll need clear eyes and true hearts now.  

Untitled

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” —Carl Jung

Back to work

The man and I have made a conscious choice to turn off the news. We are uninterested in post mortems about why Kamala lost, though I did read one compelling article that finally broke through to me about the degree to which most of the country is immersed in news coverage of the far right, that the things I hear and believe to be true, simply are not part of their universe of belief. It is as if we exist in two completely different realities. My son, who works with a lot of men who vote red, in firehouses where Fox news blares day and night, has tried to tell me that we are in a silo, that I have no idea of what most of the country is consuming as fact. I finally get it. And in this moment, there is nothing I can do about it but preserve my own peace, protect my own sanctuary. 

One morning a few days after the election, I looked around my house at the light pouring in just so, and I thought, well, the forces out there who would wish to do me harm are not inside this space, not at this moment, and so in these rooms, I will breathe full, free breaths, and I will live my life one day at a time, and meet whatever comes, and take whatever opportunities present themselves to make things just a little bit better in our hurting world. I’m remembering something an enlightened man I once interviewed proposed to me: It's a beautiful paradox, he said. You don't have to change the world. You only have to change yourself. That is how you change the world. So I'm over here, inside my house, trying to become immersed in the work that has been given me to do. The new book. To find the story's momentum. To lose myself there. To let the world happen as it will and as it won't. To be my own clay. For now, anyway. At least for now.

Within the all of it

The light in my house seemed somehow different this morning, as if I had awoken in a world that was not the same as the one I had gone to sleep in two nights before. And yet I was in the same country, only now all the masks, all the hopes and platitudes had been stripped away and the true nature of us was plain as the very day. Out on the streets, New York was dead quiet. People nodded to each other, bleary eyed and shell shocked. The only other time the city felt as hushed as it was today was on 9/11. 

As we all now know, Trump marched red across the electoral map last night, just as he did in 2016. I felt as if I was suffering from PTSD. I went to bed feeling weirdly disconnected from myself and I woke up numb. I was aware of emotions stirring in the depths but they felt papered over. Occasionally one feeling or another broke through. Betrayal. Grief. Disbelief. The bitter realization that so many in this country just did not care about those who their vote put in jeopardy. Anger at the bomb threats in some 40 heavily Democratic voting precincts in Georgia. Ballot drop boxes burned with votes inside in the blue states. Hundreds of thousands of mailed in ballots in battleground states that never showed. Untold numbers of voters turning up to find their names nowhere on the rolls despite their having registered. So many such stories. Were votes suppressed? I have no doubt, but here we are. What happened, happened. 

I sat alone in my house all morning after my husband went to work, the TV off, my thoughts swirling, and finally the salient emotion rose to the fore and it was sadness, deep surpassing oceanic sadness at the state of us, and the world we have bequeathed to our children. 

My niece in Texas texted the family chat that she did not intend to risk another pregnancy so we better love on Harper all we can. And we will. But why did so many not care one whit about the question of Trump's character? One Black podcast host summed up Trump in this way: “He is a masterclass in white privilege. He can't say enough racist things to be a racist. He can't commit enough crimes to be a criminal. He can't fail enough times to be a failure. He can't say enough stupid things to be stupid. The idea of him overshadows any reality. The “Christian savior" who doesn't know the bible, the adulterer who f*cks porn stars and steals from charities. It's the promise of the protection of whiteness he represents.” That's part of it for some people for sure. Another part of his win is outright misogyny. In the end, Kamala Harris is a woman, and a great majority of men, and as it turns out, most women, too, were just never going to vote for a woman. Not Black women, though. Ninety-two percent of us voted for the Harris/Walz ticket. It wasn't enough in the end.

And now—a luta continua.

But I’m tired, y'all. 

I might need a minute.

Little girl in costume

Her second Halloween. That precious little face. Also, a corner of innocence to keep in view while we wait for news of our collective future. 

At the center, love

This beautiful man who holds our hearts had a birthday on Monday just past. For some reason I love this photo I snapped a few weeks ago, when he was updating our children on some news about the impending sale of his childhood home in Antigua, a long and complicated transaction that, somewhat miraculously, will be accomplished this week.

The "kids" all showed up to celebrate his birthday, bearing cupcakes, wine, flowers, snacks, to add to a particular store-bought strawberry shortcake, his fave. He opened gifts and we chatted and told stories as uproariously as we do, and a lovely evening was had by all.

And now we are a mere two days away from election day, and everyone is barely drawing breath, waiting to see what will unfold. The only thing we know for sure is that whatever the outcome of the voting, there are hard days still to come, and may we be equal to them, may we be set on a path to a future in which we can move forward from a place of courageous reclamation, shared humanity, and above all, love. That may sound corny in the world we know, but that doesn't make it any less worth dreaming.