The first time I met your boyfriend, the two of you were standing in the kitchen here, giggling over an elderly man getting hit in the head in his own home with a hammer. It made my blood run cold.
Almost every day after, I’d walk upstairs from the beach or my room to some sudden harangue about NPR, fake news, Sydney Sweeney, Cracker Barrel, BLM, trans kids, Amy Klobuchar, roaming Venezuelan rape gangs, DEI, Rachel Maddow, Zelenskyy, NATO, the deep state, Obama red lines, vaccinations, Britney Griner, Afghanistan, the border, The Biden Crime Family, Gay Pride marketing, Tim Walz, the lunatic left, Kamala Harris. It was fucking wild. To me, the liberal-libertarian, and every Never Trump Republican who wrestles with the American Idea of freedom, inclusion, truth and decency over power, vanity and self-enrichment.
And then MAGA won again, because Joe Biden stumbled over his own self-importance, on which I agreed, calling every ball and strike. But now, after over a year and a half, that barely credible thin veil has been ripped off. Non-MAGA Trump voters who won Trump the election are coming out every day with grace and dignity saying they were duped. Every promise broken. Everything more expensive. Everything more unAmerican. The long payoffs his voters are waiting on are an obvious con, they only enrich Trump & Co. We are the laughing stock of the world. We sound idiotic. Trump’s approval ratings are in the 30s. The war even lower. As a citizen, I dissent. Where are my tax dollars going? Killing 170 schoolgirls by mistake in a disastrous, megalomaniacal war of choice (that has only empowered our enemy and negatively impacted the entire world), and we refuse to admit the deadly error. For the first time in American history. Or murderous masked thugs with a budget bigger than Israel’s military, killing the innocent, hunting the hard-working. Family men. Nuns?? (An American, Alex Pretti, ran to help a woman who was thrown to the ground, for which he was shot in the back of the head, on his knees; he did exactly what your son or grandsons would’ve done.) Or infantile rigged election lies (over which FOX News paid a $1B settlement). Or the rule of law. Or incompetent defenders of our national security. Or violent insurrectionists who shit and pissed all over the people’s house. Or the sickening whitewashing of history. Or grants to only states that voted for Trump. Or Trump vanity projects. Or Trump petty grievances. Seashells?? Or prosecuting innocent private citizens. Or prosecuting the free press. Calling female reporters Piggy?? Did he really accept someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize? Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call shudder.
“I agree with everything this administration has done.”
These are whiny, white, cosplay alpha men. Cruel, corrupt, ridiculous children. With one unifying, self-enriching strategy: racism. And you are in thrall. Believing in every absurd boogeyman they invoke. Why, Mom? Where did you go?
You have always liked to mention that my default is to take the side of the underdog, sometimes cynically, for you to bolster a point. What was never said was that I would not blindly champion someone who weaponizes their insecurity to irrationally hate.
With your chosen representative holding power over all three branches of our government, you still rage at me like a victim. There is no space to be in the minority. Instead I’m “deranged.” By definition that makes you a bully. Yet I come back early to be with you alone to take it summer after summer. You followed me onto the porch to bring up your latest dark FOX/algorithm ragebait. A black-on-white killing. Until that point I had brought up absolutely nothing, having learned to stay far and wide of the dark contours of any potential collision. You had already brought up Jim Crow, gas prices, tariffs, Canada, Taylor Swift, DC polarization. And then of course your predictable fraught algorithm response to my enjoying The Odyssey. You, the English teacher. The educator. The dogged advocate for at-risk youth. There is a college dorm dedicated to and named after you, for which we all took great pride. I had already snapped once when you seemed out of your mind with anger, refusing to hear what I was actually saying, and I offered to squash. You refused. A mother. A son. This time I finally snapped for good.
For the last four days I ran, swam and read on the beach alone. Marveled at birds and bunnies and clouds and tides. I closed my eyes against the sun and watched the imperfections dance across my eyelids. I heard waves crashing and children playing. I was 12 again and nothing else mattered. As much as you revel in telling me this house is yours, this place is bigger than all of us. Your granddaughter will join me soon, and then your grandson with his lovely girlfriend from somewhere far, far away, a woman likely unaware of just what it is that makes us truly American. I cannot wait to share this magnificent wonder of America, of our shared planet, with all of them and just be. You can’t ever steal my joy here.
“Where did you go?” had me by the throat. I used to wonder when my own mother changed. Now I wonder whether she did, or whether I finally outgrew the story I needed to tell myself about her.
Gorgeous writing 💙