It’s funny — I always appreciate the flood of Facebook birthday greetings, but they feel different this year. More precious, somehow. (Precious is not a word I often use!)
This past year in America has been so hard, and so often, I come to social media and feel battered by the news, but force myself to look at least a little.
To look at the tearing down of our basic institutions, look at the destruction being wrought on science, on education, on healthcare, on the environment. To listen to the stories of the people who have lost their jobs and their family’s stability due to this administration’s wanton hacking and slashing.
I listen to my Berwyn neighbors (mostly Hispanic) — the shopkeepers look worried and say that sales are down so much, and it’s not just that everything is more expensive this year — it’s that the locals are afraid to go outside any more than necessary.
I try to listen to, and understand a little, the people who voted for this president, many of whom were consistently lied to by every authority they heard from. Many of whom are finally, finally losing faith that he will deliver anything that he promised.
And my Jewish friends, and my Palestinian friends — I’m trying to hold space for their grief and terror and sense of existential threat, I’m trying to acknowledge this is a complex and bloody history, and this isn’t my lane — I know very little of the specifics of it all, and I’m mostly just trying to give a larger platform to voices who have real knowledge and a real stake in the situation — while still hopefully being clear that I believe the killing has to stop. The starving of children is never okay.
It’s so much.
So I post my little crafting posts, and try to share domestic knowledge, maybe a recipe or two, lots of pretty pictures of pretty flowers. I hope that it helps. I hope that it’s clear that I am not turning away from the flood of pain and grief and difficult choices that need to be made. I just hope that I can help provide my community — all my communities — a little breathing space.
I’m fifty-four today. And my loves, I’m tired. I’ve just finished eight years as an elected official, and I honestly don’t know if I’d have the fortitude to do it again. That kind of public service requires a set of skills that I honestly think are not my forté.
For one thing, I get worried, taking on the larger issues, that I haven’t researched enough, that I don’t understand the situation thoroughly enough, that I’m going to advocate for totally the wrong thing because I skimped on my research (a doctoral program will do terrible things to your brain…)
I do better trying to speak truth. Truth to power sometimes, yes. But mostly small truths. Truths about sex, about gender roles, about parenting, about cooking and gardens, about love. Personal truths that I hope will resonate with someone else in a hard time, and make their life a little easier, and help them feel less alone.
That’s my lane. That is the work that I can do, that I think I can sustain. Sometimes that work is frightening too, since it involves exposing my own vulnerabilities, but that’s a kind of fear I think I can manage.
I’ve been doing that for a long time; being naked in public gets easier with practice.
It also gets easier when I feel like I’m talking to friends. Even though this wall is public, and all my FB posts are public, and occasionally a random troll does wander in and has to get whacked with my mallet — for the most part, I know the people I’m talking to. And all day today, this birthday, I’ve been reminded of who those people are.
With every birthday message that comes in, I’m reminded that someone cared enough to pause in all their difficulties and anxieties and wish me a happy birthday. People from elementary school, high school, college, grad school. Lots of SF/F writers — the tribe of my heart. The queer writers too, and the South Asian writers. The poets and the artists. My students.
And of course, all of my relatives, and my extended Sri Lankan family, kith and kin. And more recently, my neighbors, the ones who have watched my kids grow up, or walked past my house and garden, or come to a community event I hosted, or somehow got enough of a sense of me to vote for me and trust me to try to take care of them, to the best of my ability. I did try. I hope I didn’t get too much wrong.
It’s been like — little hugs, all day long. And I’m tearing up now, and that’s okay, sometimes tears are good.
I just wanted you to know, in this very hard year for all of us, how much I appreciate you and your kindness.
I worked my shift at the Shops today, and as I was leaving, I told a customer outside that it was my birthday, and that she should help herself to a present from the grab bag. It’s been the best part of my birthday so far, giving little presents to total strangers. A bookmark, a bit of soap or bath salts, a tiny clay pendant or earrings.
People were surprised, and a little reluctant sometimes, so I ended up doing a lot of explaining that it was a hobbit tradition, to give other people presents on your birthday, but eventually, they generally took something out of the bag and seemed happy, which made me happy.
I wasn’t sure if this particular woman understood me — she’d been speaking Spanish very fast to her partner, and so I tried to explain in Spanish, but I ended up stumbling over the word for birthday — cumpleaños, I hope, and for present — regalo, I think. She seemed to understand enough, because this look of delight spread over her face, and she wished me a very happy birthday, and then reached out and pulled me into such a nice hug. I wasn’t expecting that, but it was lovely.
I could use more hugs. I suspect we all could.
Let us be generous to each other. Let us reaffirm our bonds, and make new ones. Let us take care of each other.
Let us remember to wish our community members joy.
Let us remember that all children are our children.
In the end, we are all one community.
P.S. Yes, that’s a wreath on my head. There was a slow bit at the Shops, so I decided I needed a birthday crown.
I always appreciate your reflections about integrating the broader world’s grief and injustice with everyday work and presence. They always feel like little pieces of a map towards not getting too lost in either. Happy birthday, belatedly!