now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

So yesterday, my mom (‘Grams’) and I took Sean to see Santa. This was a very calculated decision on my part: by doing it so early, we not only avoided the rush closer to Christmas, but we also would flush out any oddball unanticipated requests from him (see: last year’s ‘Dog’) and I could address them in timely fashion. Plus, bonus, we got him out of Dad’s hair for a bit and the place that is NOT inside the mall and is instead a nice calm storefront.

It took all I had not to do a booyah dance, as I stood out of Sean’s sight, when I overheard him tell Santa earnestly that he would like a Star Wars Clone Wars book, please, and a pirate ship. Santa, I was confident, already had both requests well in hand and this would not be an issue. Santa, it must be noted, was completely charmed by his manners and by the fact that as Sean patiently colored while I waited for the photos (shut up) to be printed, Sean popped his head round the corner to check the exact color and detail of Santa’s get-up (are the buttons yellow or black? Are his eyes brown or blue?) to make sure he had an accurate, if blobby, representation of t’auld man, and was in fact so charmed that he gave Sean a gift of a full box of crayons.

Unfortunately, tonight Sean picked up the Williams-Sonoma catalog I was perusing. Why, he asked, was there all this fancy stuff in here? I told him it’s a holiday thing, when some people buy fancy presents for one another. He seemed to accept this, and kept flipping through, until his little hand stilled.

“Mommy?”
“Yes sweetie?”
“This is a whole big round of blue cheese.”
“Yes, it’s called Stilton, it’s a fancy kind of blue cheese, and some people give gifts of cheese samplers like on the other page there or a big wheel of one kind of cheese.”
“…..if someone loved me very, very much, they could get me…my own wheel….of blue cheese?”
“….”
“Mommy, we need to go BACK TO SANTA.”

Reply to this post, and I’ll tell you one reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

(the internets could use some lovin, methinks)

I managed to finagle my way onto an earlier flight home from a conference, one I was anxious and unhappy about going to thanks to a combination of stress at work (y hallo thar global economic crisis) and Sean being suddenly much sadder than usual about Mommy traveling. It’d been a breakneck 2 nights away, and I’d had to speak, and so I was especially grateful I got on the 5:30 out, even though it meant I was surrounded by overstimulated children at the end of their family vacations at the happiest place on earth, the goodies and loot spilling out of overhead bins.

Sitting at the back of the plane on the second leg from ATL to MCI, I watched the last handful of people huff on board, all with that classic Hartsfield Sheen o OMG We Landed At C 31 And This Flight’s At A 29. One gentleman in particular wound up two rows ahead of me, pinned against the window, and as he settled in the flight attendant came over and had a few kind words with him. It seemed gauche, somehow, hearing their discussion, an imposition, but there’s no privacy on a plane. As we landed and taxied to the gate, I fished out my keys, settled back, waited, it’d be a long time before I deplaned, people ahead already agitating to get up and get out. The flight attendant in the back flipped on the PA.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a gentleman here in the back who’s just arriving home from 2 years serving our country in Afghanistan, and I’d like to take a moment to recognize his sacrifice and the sacrifice of countless men and women who leave behind their families to go serve. And if you’d all be so kind as to remain in your seats, let’s let him off the plane first, please, so he can see his family again that much sooner.”

They were still there, having not budged from right outside the gate, not made it an inch closer to baggage claim, when I got off the plane. Perhaps his mother, looking on him with the hungriest eyes, as if the mere sight of her son hale and hearty and home was like milk and honey to her. A young teen, standing to the side with that bittersweet mixture of love and distance, two years a lifetime at that age. The sign, draped over the chairs, hundreds of signatures on it. National Guard. They had likely never figured the weekend warrior would be gone for two years, would come back ramrod straight with both training and exhaustion, would leave the grit of mountain dust from a country thousands of miles away on seat 27A as he waded his way home. They hugged their man in fatigues and were quiet, muted, no more cries of joy.

When I got home, I crawled into Sean’s bed and hugged his sleepy little body, and whispered a thank you that it was merely, self-centeredly only 2 days.

Tuesday was spent in a haze of being so nervous I felt like I could unzip my own skin, scamper out of it, and run gibbering down the street in an anxiety-stress-caffeine-and later alcohol meat puppet frenzy. Wednesday was spent in a sort of giddy fog, reloading websites and occasionally pinching myself to make sure it was real. Thursday was gripped by a stress release headache as years of tightness in my neck and back started to let go.

Today brings headlines with nothing to do with the election, and chirpy emails announcing this week’s yarn sale at Posh. Today is shockingly….normal. But it still doesn’t feel real. I am still holding my breath a little- what now. What do we do now, how do we take that energy, that engine we built and turn that power to further good. How do we make it through the next 70+ days? But that comes up against the normal of our lives- the frenzied Friday morning cleaning, the 5 year old who yells BOO at wake up time, the sing song of math in the car (alright, it’s still a little election focused: “I am 5 and I can’t vote until I am 18 that’s 13 more years and that is NOT FAIR.”)

It is a normal November now. That strange golden glow, that buoyancy that carried us through November 4, the brilliant 72 degree weather and sunny skies that allowed so many to stand in line to vote and a quarter of a million to rejoice together in Grant Park, has given way to oppressive grey skies and gritty cold wind. It is parent-teacher conferences, and finding matching gloves. It is stressing about money, and finding cheap holiday cards, and making the photo books. It is laundry and chores and getting out the recycling.

It is normal.
Beautifully, wonderfully normal.

Waking up on Wednesday morning, my first question to the Lad was “Is he still president?” I feel like there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said, or has not been said better by many others already. I covered my face with my hands and wept, wept to see my city explode with joy, wept to hear the pundits fall silent and the joy and tears of thousands- black, white, latino, native, every gender, every religion, every ethnicity and minority- speak more eloquently than any journalist could. I wept but smiled giddily, feeling as though my face would split open from the relief and the hope and the happiness, as I crept up the stairs with the Lad to wake Sean, since we had promised to wake him up and tell him the news if there was a president-elect before 11 pm. At 10:05 pm Central on Tuesday, November fourth, I had the humbling honor and privilege to tell my son his world had changed. To utter a phrase that meant any child in his classroom could dream of being president. My husband and I swept his hair back from his brow, kissed his damp forehead, and whispered, “Barack Obama won, baby, he won.”

I do not expect miracles. I do not expect cures. I do not expect it to be easy. But to watch the crowd and hear their response as our president elect said it would take hard work, and sacrifice, I could not help but think. Yes we can, and yes we will.

And now.

Now the harder work to repair what has been rent asunder begins.

The phone rings at 7:25
Slow, muddled, talking
A particularly kind but confused
lawyer through that piece of high-tech
called
a website.

“Sean, breakfast.” his father says
And I pretend to be so sleepy
I think he is telling me Sean is my breakfast.
Om nom nom!
“MOM!” comes the giggling shriek
“NO NIBBLING ME!”
I am threatened with timeout

Stir yogurt.
Match socks.
Find backpack.
Squint in the morning sun.
The pace of a morning, but colored
Laden
Burdened
“Tomorrow is voting day,”
I am informed gravely by a 5 year old
Who protests daily
“It is not fair that kids cannot vote.”

I hate the phone
But I have lost count
“I understand you may
be interested in helping to protect the vote.”
“I’m confirming…”
“Have you done training?”
“Thank you for volunteering.”
“I do apologize, I’ll take you off the list.”

Half a continent away
I wheedle, soothe
cajole, commiserate
Lining up people
To guard what is our right
To protect the public trust

“My son moved to Florida
And the stupid kid forgot to change
his registration.
And didn’t get his absentee ballot in
on time.”
Oh.
“So I had to spend $350
To fly his ass up here
On Monday.
To vote.”

We should not have to wait 6 hours
To vote
But we will
Victims of a broken system.
We share furtive smiles
In the school parking lot
Afraid to believe
8 points up.
6 points up.
Any points up.
As if our hearts might be broken again.
Wounded still.
Guarding ourselves
Ready to be disappointed.
But as we usher children
Into classrooms
Not talking about
the donkey in the corner
Holding our breath.

For one more day.