Happy Pride!

Today is the first day of LGBTQ+ Pride month, so this evening J and I donned rainbow shirts and hats to attend the annual Pride flag raising at Newton City Hall, where a rainbow flag will fly for the month of June.

J and I are straight and cisgender, so Pride is not “our” holiday. But we both believe it’s important for everyone to show up (and show support) for LGBTQ+ folks. Every year, J and I cheer for the Boston Marathon runners who pass through our neighborhood, even though we ourselves are not runners, and being LGBTQ+ in a sometimes hateful world is just as grueling as running 26.2 miles.

I see June as being an excuse for everyone–gay or straight, trans or cisgender–to remember the basic human truth that everyone deserves the right to be who they are and love whomever they choose.

 

Lowlights

Every February, I lament the lack of color in a typical New England winter. Whether there is or isn’t snow on the ground, February is always gray.

February is gray, but it is not dim. The days are gradually lengthening, so there is more light now than there was at the height (or perhaps I should say depth) of winter. But in February, the sun is lazy, never rising high in the sky before it sinks back toward the horizon.

If you teach in a west-facing classroom at 2:30 pm in February, the westward light peers sideways through your windows, glaring into the faces of students and casting long, low shadows. This brief sideways-slanting light is precious: a moment of illumination that would be a highlight if it weren’t aimed so low.

 

Heliotropic

After last week’s rain and sloppy snow, today was brisk and bright. J and I went to the Peabody Essex Museum to see an exhibit of early photography in China, and after we’d had our fill of looking, we ordered lunch and ate in the museum’s sun-drenched atrium: the closest thing to al fresco dining you can get in January in New England.

Even though it’s been a mild winter in terms of temperature and snow accumulation, the days are still despairingly short. In winter, I am heliotropic, my inner sunflower turning toward the sun or any reasonable facsimile offering light, warmth, and color.

After we’d finished our lunch, J and I briefly browsed in the museum gift shop, admiring a display of Mova globes like the one J gave me for Christmas, each a beautiful ball that spontaneously spins through a combination of magnetism, solar power, and magic. My Mova globe sits on a shelf in my bathroom, away from electromagnetic interference from electronic devices and near a window where sunlight suffuses even on gloomy days. Every time I see it, my heart hearkens with recognition: keep turning toward the light, little world.

 

First light

When the days are longer than the light, you cherish every sunlit moment. Today J had to get up at 5:30 am for an early morning meeting, so I took this week’s yard waste to the curb just past dawn, with hints of sunrise peeking through a mottle of clouds.

I’ll use the extra hours to walk Roxy, write in my journal, and chip away at my paper piles before heading to campus. Years ago when I lived at the Zen Center and got up at 5:30 am every day, I used to say that like the Army, I did more before 9:00 am than most people do all day.

 

Longer than the light

It’s common knowledge that winter days are the shortest of the year, but that’s not true. In late autumn-into-winter, the days last much longer than the light.

By 5:30 pm, it’s been dark forever, and it feels like ages–a lifetime or two at least–since morning light. By 5:30 pm, it’s been dark forever, and my to-do list is as long as ever, there being many more tasks than there is available light to do them in.

 

Windshield time

This morning while doing my morning kitchen chores, I heard part of an NPR story about women long-haul truck drivers. Several of the women who were interviewed had become truck drivers in midlife, after escaping other jobs or abusive relationships. Although life on the road is lonely for women truckers, the story explained, these particular women found clarity and solace in a job that gives them lots of uninterrupted time to think.

“Windshield time” is the term the story used for the solitude drivers experience on the road. While driving for long distances, the women in the story had time to reflect upon their lives and decide their next steps. Steering a truck was a way for them to take control of their own lives: instead of asking Jesus to take the wheel, these women found agency and clarity in an occupation they never intended to pursue.

Early tomorrow morning I’m driving to visit my Mom in Ohio: my usual summer visit. In the years leading up to the pandemic, I’d fly to and from Ohio, but last year I decided to avoid angry people on planes and the threat of flight cancellations by driving my own car to Ohio and back: something I regularly did when I was younger.

I enjoy driving, especially after the hectic preparation leading up to any trip. For the past week or so, I’ve distracted myself with packing lists, to-do lists, and all the loose ends I need to tie up before being gone for almost a week. Tomorrow morning when I pull out of my driveway, however, all the planning will be done: anything I forgot to do before leaving will somehow wait until I return.

In the meantime, I’ll have approximately twelve hours of windshield time to scan for good radio stations, listen to audiobooks, and watch the land gradually flatten beneath a widening sky.

 

Mistaken identity

Last night I took my 2020 Subaru Crosstrek, Trudy, to the dealership for a routine oil change and tire rotation. (Yes, I name my cars. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve owned three Subarus: Little Tank, Miss Bling, and now Trudy “True Blue” Subaru.)

Since I planned to wait at the dealership, I packed a bag with my iPad, a book (Richard Power’s Bewilderment), a notebook, and a packet of letters and blank notecards. I sat in the quiet waiting room, which has three desks, a handful of lounge chairs, and wifi but no TV. An older man sat in one of the lounge chairs, and a middle-aged woman with mid-length, graying hair sat at one of the desks, shuffling papers and folders into and out of a small tote bag.

As I claimed a lounge chair in the corner, I chuckled to myself. “That’s me without glasses,” I said to myself, remembering the ongoing joke J and I have about the stereotypical Subaru owner: middle-aged and female, possibly lesbian or at least tomboyish, with sensible shoes, no makeup, and at least one dog. The anonymous woman in the waiting room appeared to check all the boxes, as I do.

After I’d settled in to write the day’s journal pages in the notebook I’d brought, a service advisor walked into the room and approached the older man to update him on the status of his car. Observing proper waiting room protocol, the woman and I tried not to eavesdrop on the conversation. After the service advisor left, the woman packed up her folders and moved to one of the lounge chairs, where she busied herself on her phone.

Not long later, the same service advisor came into the lounge and walked up to me. “That’s weird,” I thought, “How does he know who I am since he wasn’t the one who checked me in?” The service advisor told me my car looked good, they were replacing the gear shift, but they didn’t have to replace the recalled airbags since that had already been done. They’d discovered a broken tail light, though, and he asked me if I wanted to replace it.

I said yes to the tail light but silently wondered why they had to replace the gear shift on a nearly-new car. Only after the service advisor left did I realize he’d mistaken me for the only other woman in the room, and I’d authorized service for her car.

 

Windshield

 

Moving on

This morning when I turned on NPR, they were discussing the experts named to President-Elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 task force, including Massachusetts’ own Atul Gawande (excellent choice). There was a story about vaccine trials and word that stock futures were up in response to Biden’s win. And then almost as an afterthought, mention was made to President Trump and how he still hasn’t conceded the election, his Twitter tantrums now pushed well below the fold. Go into the corner and pout, Donny: the grown-ups have work to do.

I won’t miss the news’ daily fixation on Trump’s Twitter feed: he’ll still post his grievances online in ALL CAPS, but nobody except his diehard fans will have to follow him. When the sitting President tweets, it’s front-page news, but when a lame-duck (and soon-to-be-former) President tweets, it’s page two, three, or even four material. How quickly Trump has become almost-irrelevant: still possessing more power than he deserves, for sure, but destined to be a historical footnote as a one-term President.

There are many pressing problems in the world–so many issues that demand complex problem-solving. For the past four years, worrying about the President and his latest abuse of power was at the top of the list. Now that the Resistance is no longer focused on the Bully-in-Chief, there are other, more important problems for us to tackle: climate change, racial injustice, economic inequality. The past four years of heightened political activism have been a training ground for an ongoing fight.

In the meantime, the news cycle, which for so long was focused almost entirely on All Trump, All the Time, has begun to move on. It’s about time.

 

The transition

When news broke this morning that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the state of Pennsylvania and thus the White House, it was almost anticlimactic: another notification on my phone, but this one with the magic number of 270+ electoral college votes.

“We should go somewhere to celebrate,” I told J, “but there is nowhere to go.” Instead, J took down the Joe Biden flag we’d been flying by our front door and carried it with us as we took our daily walk around our neighborhood, talking to neighbors, waving to strangers, and cheering as folks in passing cars honked and waved.

I’m still settling into the news that Trump will be gone in January: it takes a while to wake up from a four-year nightmare, and my inner realist knows there is much more work to be done. But last night, J and I were comforted as we watched the brief address Biden gave in Delaware, urging patience as ballots continued to be counted and expressing confidence that he and Harris would win.

As Biden expressed sorrow at the more than 220,000+ Americans who have died of COVID-19 and explained that he and Harris are already planning how to tackle the pandemic on day one, I felt a sense of relief that finally we will have someone in the White House who is empathetic, competent, and clear-eyed about science.

“It’s nice to have a President again,” J said after Biden finished speaking, and I couldn’t agree more.