Last week, the girls and I met up with my friend Ellen at the National Building Museum in D.C. to check out a dollhouse exhibit.
We were talking about the election while wandering through another exhibit that showed artifacts from decades of home life — old wood stoves and vacuum cleaners, pink flamingos and baby pools, grandfather clocks and sleds. Everything felt blanketed in coziness and safety – scenes from simpler lives in simpler times.
Of course, that wasn’t the reality. It’s so easy to look to the past so wistfully while sitting in the hideous present. It’s always been complicated here. Always messy.
As we were museuming, Ellen requested I write a blog post about the election results. I groaned and told her I couldn’t. I’ve specifically avoided the topic, for what I feel are obvious reasons. Also, because I don’t know that anything I have to say about it would be especially original or novel or insightful. There’s been so much said already. All combination of words have been used to try to make sense of what happened two weeks ago. (It’s already two weeks ago? Can you believe that?)
So I’m not going to write about the election. Not really. But I will write about some thoughts I’ve had since the election. And while you’re welcome to read them, too, you don’t have to. They’re for Ellen because she asked so nicely (and because she indulged my kids by pretending to be a waitress in the middle of the museum and because she didn’t steal their pizza when we were in the bathroom – something I know was really, really hard for her.)
Dear Ellen,
Thanks so much for meeting up with us in D.C. The museum was a great suggestion – the girls still talk about how they want to go back an play restaurant again, I appreciate you humoring them. It’s always funny to see how they react to different people in my life – they took to you as if you’d been friends for years – they’ve always had a good barometer for kind hearts.
Remember how you said you wanted me to write my thoughts post-election? Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I have wandering thoughts.
I find myself wishing I could talk to my grandmother who passed away when I was in high school. Nanny was born in 1913, which meant she witnessed two world wars, the Depression, the Korean War, the Cold War, Vietnam and the first Gulf War. She lived through Prohibition, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Kennedy Assassination, the Moon Landing, Watergate, Woman’s Lib, the War on Drugs and the fall of the Berlin Wall. She was Lily’s age when the 19th amendment was ratified, giving women – her own mother – the right to vote.
We like to put ourselves in the center of the universe. To magnify the problems of our world to the 100th power without the context of all that happened before. We want to know the hindsight of history while we’re still living it. Which is, of course, impossible. For better of for worse, we have to just wade through it.
So here we are, wading through the stuff our own grandchildren will want to ask us questions about one day. “What was it like?” They might ask. “What did you think about it?” And what would we tell them? “It was a total surprise.” “People were protesting in the streets.” Will we remember where we were when we found out the results of the 2016 presidential election the same way we’ll always remember where we were on 9/11? Maybe. But I think our memories will be sanded down by years of experience. Reshaped by what happens next. What feels massive today will be tempered by passing time.
Life is short and precious. It’s just as short and precious for Trump supporters as it is for Clinton supporters. For Muslims and Christians and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus. For straight people and gay people. For black, brown and white people. Right?
And so here we all are, shaped by our various families, cultures, religions, countries and history itself, doing the best we can to make the most of our short precious lives along side the 7 billion other people trying to do the same. Sometimes we’re pretty good at it. Sometimes we let the car into our lane and spend an extra five minutes listening to a co-worker gush about her obsession with bulldogs. And sometimes we’re not so good at it. We spend more time looking at our phones than looking at the people surrounding us. We spout off awful things about people whose political views don’t match our own.
Ideally, overtime, we grow as a society. But this growth is painstaking. We want it to happen at the speed of the next iPhone release, but it’s slower – more like at the speed of a generation. Right now it feels as if we’re stuck in the adolescence — all raging hormones and self righteousness. But we’ll settle into our acne-prone skin. Our voices will change from shrill to steady. And the mood swings of our youth will stabilize.
Months ago, in the midst of my move, I wrote about that yoga class I took where the focus of the class was transition and the lesson I learned was that I was exactly where I needed to be. I was reminded of this again, when a new friend handed me a gift that was unexpected, but well timed:
This is applies to me as I settle into my new life in Virginia, but I think it also applies to our country as a whole. We are exactly where we are supposed to be. That’s not to say we’re exactly where we want to be. Or exactly where we will be forever. It’s just where we are right now, and right now there is work that can be done.
If the past two weeks — or the past year or more even — have taught us anything it’s that there is a lot of pain in our country. There are voices of all stripes that are aching to be heard. People who feel as if they haven’t gotten a fair shake. Haven’t been able to live out their short precious lives in a way that’s fulfilling for them.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We, as a country, feel as if the very foundation on which our country was built is being shaken. But maybe we need to be reminded that we can’t take these ideals for granted. They’re a skill to be learned, not just written about. Sometimes the most important lessons can happen in the most painful ways. We’ve all just put our hand on the hot burner. Now we need to heal.