I Wish I Wish I Wish
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
I haven’t seen it yet, but I know it’s there. As my husband stands outside surveying his half-built chicken coop and the little hummingbird sits on the oak branch just for a second and flies away, I know it’s out there. Bad shit happening to good people. I read about it everyday, but now that I’m back in another one mile bubble between this seat and school and the grocery store, I haven’t seen much in the last few weeks.
I am happy to see the student paper covering pride celebrations. I am in awe of how the professor who teaches my TA lecture course is able to navigate the political/ religious/ cultural view of 150 students and keep everyone open and debating and discussing, as you should. I love the students of different races and ages who sit near the front and sort through ideas as their beliefs shift excitedly in their brains. I love seeing the young people walking around en masse (there is 40+ thousand of them) like an academic Disney, even if they are all on their phones too much. I love leaving class at 9:30 at night and seeing the shadows of people in pairs or alone, wandering home.
When I’m home, I sit here and watch the deer defecate in my backyard and the hyper hummingbird who (because I am not wearing my glasses is often only a form in motion) sits then flits off again to feed. All is smallish-town beauty and ideas and freedom and chana masala on a too warm day. Just lucky. Luck is the woman at the pita place who brought us three sweet potatoes fries on a paper plate just so we could try them. It’s the default kind kid at the kolache shop who every time I enter asks me what I’m up to today, and never noticed or mentioned my answer was “moving” for weeks on end. It’s the new neighbor who offered to bring us fried chicken on move in day.
Despite all the luck, there are personal problems I don’t discuss. Upheaval with friends. Worry for family. Anxiety that loves to show up whenever I’m feeling most focused. All the more reason to feel guilty to be in this privileged place, a midlife crisis of education and exploration. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel what’s coming, what’s already here for so many.
The video of the student accusing a Texas professor for discussing gender in a children’s lit class… Even though you don’t see the student, it’s easy to see how misguided she is in filming the video. I do feel loathing (pity?) for the America that thinks like that and an administration who has empowering people to highjack places of learning, highjack the streets and classrooms with guns and self-centered isolation. And these so-called agents of immigration, allowed to maraud in masks, pulling innocent people who are just trying to get by, yanking them away from their lives and their families and a future that isn’t pocked with fear. Who is stopping them? Who are the brave people who will end the reign of these rich white men with their sexual abuse and trashy AI-generated tweets and their tax evasion and law bending and redrawing maps and their Department of Goddamned War and their rewriting history to their will and getting away with fucking everything?
I keep thinking about the German man we ate breakfast with in Scotland this summer who assured us, “you’ll get used to it.”
I wish I could come here and tell you about books and knowledge and art and movies and pottery and quilts and words and recipes for jalapeno jelly and all the shit I learned this week, but sometimes that feels frivolous.
Like today.