The faces we see on the TV, walking from country to country, the ones clinging to the sides of boats, the human beings fleeing all they know: they once had homes. Their walls were not strong enough to hold the world at bay. Their homes disintegrated in man-made storms of dust and smoke.
Love is ALWAYS easy. It may require us to be brave, or to work at it, or to feel loving while also feeling despair and worry, or to even forgive some great wrongs... but the actual loving part is easy, if we let ourselves do it.
So cry now if you feel like it. Hide in your bed all month. Sleep through the grey days. The world has enough shepherds and wise men out there to make merry and to rejoice at the gifts they've been given and to give gifts that no one really wants. You are welcome to stay here with me, nestled against the donkey's freshly rinsed belly, working up the strength for the long journey ahead.
I wonder what he’s doing and what it means that I’m letting him, but I don’t ask because when you’re sleeping with a married man so much depends on not asking why, about anything, to yourself or to anyone. You just roll with it because this is how things are somehow, and you are making choices but you also aren’t.
In the back of one drawer, I found a blue cardboard box that I hadn’t touched in a while and I felt a surprising surge of wistfulness. It was a box of tampons, for God’s sake, and I was teary-eyed! It had been well over a year since I’d reached for it which meant...I had officially gone through menopause.
I learned to withdraw while growing up with an often angry, violent, alcoholic father. I learned to escape. I learned to make safe places that he could not invade. I learned to protect myself and my sister. And this is what I’m doing now. I’m replicating all of that. I’m hiding and camouflaging – things I learned long ago to do to survive.
Most of us begin to develop a sort of predator radar where we can sense dangerous situations and dangerous men. We dodge and deflect and avoid being alone in the wrong place or with the wrong person. But it doesn't always work.
In reflection, I realize I had returned to the hyper-vigilance of my childhood, obsessed with checking and rechecking my news sources constantly, watching every move Trump made, as I would a snake, crawling through my yard. I grasped at straws and begged God and the universe to derail this incoming presidential administration. I had plunged into dread and the dark night of fear.
I urge you to keep your heart open to the surrogate moms who will be present in your journey — women who are older, but who can dart back and forth from youth to wisdom because they understand there is knowledge in all directions.
Outside the door is a hallway. At the end of the hallway are two doors and a staircase. Down the staircase, there is The Man –The Man who has always seemed more wolf than man.
