Happy, Sad, Hope

The assignments are to write about a time when I was happy, a time when I was sad, and then a letter to a younger self. I have been overthinking all three of these, opening a veritable Pandora’s Box of memories as I sift through and ask, happy? Happy? Sad? Me at nine, me at 19, me at 35, me at 42… Instead, I scrap the writing and, after seeing a few clients and proofreading a book review for a friend, decide that baking would be a good next activity on this very long day. Happy and sad and letter-writing will have to wait. I put my AirPods in and remember the days when we had music on record players and tape players and CD players, then choose the chocolate-chip brownie recipe from my ex-mother-in-law, probably the last vestige of my connection to her (unless, of course, you count my kids). Three eggs, two cups of brown sugar, and 2/3 cup of melted butter go into the steel bowl of the sunny yellow mixer I got early in the pandemic, and I switch it on a slow setting while I measure out the flour, baking powder, and salt in a glass bowl. I feel something that is not happy or sad but something other, and in searching for its name, I realize it is hope. In realizing this, it dawns on me how sparingly I have experienced this sensation in recent years. Of course, life has continued, but the undercurrent of life as survival, life on high alert, life pummeled by violence, hateful policies, lies, a backdrop of brutality we have endured that has left many of us feeling traumatized, exhausted, angry, and activated. That activation, I’m glad to see, has driven more than 100 million Americans to vote, and for these few suspended hours before the pundits begin punditing and the early counts begin to roll in, I am dancing in my kitchen, I am mixing the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, I am imagining a future where we feel something is still salvageable, something like the democracy we dream of but have yet to achieve, something like justice for those whose lives are treated as less than, something like care for people and planet alike. I have no illusions that a win will be the end of this or that there is some wondrous thing we will “get back to.” The pandemic rages on and those who vow allegiance to the emperor with no clothes will not change their minds; if anything, I’m aware that things could get very ugly very quickly, fully aware that just when we think we’ve seen the worst, things can get much, much worse, but then the timer on the stove beeps giving me a one-minute warning and I pull myself back from that bottomless abyss and for just a little longer, another song, another breath at least, I want to stay here, imagining Florida and North Carolina and Texas going blue, blue, blue, up, up, and away, picturing Trump conceding and pretending he wanted it that way, letting myself have this fantasy, this wish, this hope I know now I am so desperate for it’s no wonder I have scarcely allowed myself a lick of it until now. Even as I write these words, children are wondering why their parents left them alone, too many families are mourning their Black fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers, babies, friends, nieces, nephews, cousins, neighbors, too many LGBTQIA teens are wondering if they can go on, too many parents are worrying how they will feed their kiddos tonight, too many have lost someone to a raging virus that could’ve been stopped and to gun violence that could have been avoided, too much loss, too much loss. I sit here, the blondies now cooling, and a quiet song comes on. The wanting is so big, and yet all day I have been preparing myself to not have answers tonight. What I have not prepared myself for is Trump staying in the White House. Not today, Satan. Today, the people speak. May our votes and our voices all be counted, every single last one. And may Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stand at the United States Capitol on Wednesday, January 20, 2021, taking the oath to hold the highest offices in the land, and bringing dignity and humanity to those offices. May it be so, may it be so, may it be so.