Sweet Summertime Salve

thirty day rollercoaster recap

Welcome back, my dear friends and readers! As always, thank you for being here with me and blessing me with your valuable time, attention and friendship. I will never cease to be humbled that you fine people want to keep coming back and reading the words that I have pulled from my head and my heart and poured out onto the screen. If you can, please consider going paid for only $15 when you do a full year subscription. That is $15 per year forever, my friends! If you can't afford subscription, please do not worry. I will always be free to read. 😻bpnwc

(Bonus Antifa Cat Brigade pictures below!)⤵️

My dear friends, what a glorious, and at times semi-nauseating roller coaster ride this past month has been! I think my own household has seen every high and every low imaginable just in the short span of the past thirty days.

We had the Steam Powered Giraffe show on the 31st of May up in Portland, which just blew my mind! Those tickets were the first and only thing Alex wanted when the kid’s father finally sent them the first money he's sent them in at least six years, and I was only too happy to finally be able to oblige that request. As a side note, folks if you're looking for a fun and family friendly show with good music (not to mention steampunk robots) then I highly suggest catching a show if you're able! The entire trip was wonderful, even though I ended up last-minute booking the scariest motel I've ever stayed at in my entire life. The place was so trashy that the kids sat in the window intently gazing out at the lovely young couple across the way smoking crack in the open window of their room. The beds felt as if they had poured slabs of cement into the center of the room and covered it with a thin sheet. Ah, beautiful memories that will surely last a lifetime. Pro tip: spend the extra $30 on the hotel and don't risk becoming a statistic, kids. Funnily enough, one of the best memories I have with my mother involved she and I getting lost in Portland trying to find the facility my brother was, at the time, institutionalized in, driving like fools in circles around the redlight district, before my mother finally gave up for the night and found us a scuzzy little hotel room where I encountered, for the first time in the wild, both a trans person and a prostitute. I imagine my incredibly frazzled mother must have felt close to exactly the same way that I did on that sultry Portland evening. Time really is just a flat circle, folks.

Next up, and even more of a joyous occasion was my son Rick's high school graduation. Oh my friends, I am so very proud of the man my sweet boy is turning into. He is smart and kind and ever so audaciously brave. My pride at watching him walk up and grab that diploma was something fiercer and more bittersweet than I have ever known. Bittersweet, only because the world that he's stepping into has become such a minefield of hazards and contradictions and so much of it seems so fraught with evil and pain right now, but fierce because I know that I have raised a young man who is capable of being both strong and tender in equal measure when needed, and that fills me to bursting with a joy I cannot adequately communicate to you with mere words. As I watch him take those first tentative steps away from me, venturing further out into his own fullness, I realize what a sweet torture it is to watch one of your own creations preparing to leave your watchful eyes and begin their solo journey. It is both exhilarating and frightening.

That brings me to the No Kings protest that we attended just a few days ago, along with 12 MILLION of our fellow countrymen and citizens across the globe. It wasn't fancy or astroturfed, it was organic and it came straight from the people themselves. Just ordinary every day people like yourself and myself. No slick corporate sponsorships or fancy sign up sheets. And, oh my gosh, was it ever spectacular! We almost didn't make it there. At the very last minute- signs made, sneakers tied, Alex's clown makeup expertly applied- we bundled into Rick's car only to find out that his battery was completely dead. There is something wrong that is causing the dome light to stay on even when the car door is closed. I was filled with abject despair at the thought of not making it, especially after all that careful prep. It took some finagling (and a little lot of crying from yours truly) but we finally found a friend of Rick's girlfriend who was happy to swing by and grab us on her own way to the protest. Thank goodness, because I knew there was no way I wanted to miss it. And oh, what a historic day it was, my friends! A day we should all remember and cherish for the rest of our lives. Never before has such a beautiful and defiant mass of humanity rose up in such numbers with one singular voice and purpose to definitively declare ‘NO MORE!’ To tell the oligarchs who fancy themselves to be the rightful rulers of the world that they need to take a gotdamn seat for a minute and listen to the people, without whom they would be nothing. I am proud of you my dear readers, I am proud of myself and my children and of every single other beautiful and decent person who joined hands in solidarity to fight for what is right and good. There is a so much I could say about it, but what I want to focus on is the shining fact that the fabric of that day was woven through with so much joy and so much love it was almost unbelievable. The ascendant experience of finally being able to look around and to verify with my own eyes that we are not alone in how we are feeling nearly made my already blown out knees weak with gratitude.

And I'm not even done yet, folks. Alex's 13th birthday party will round out this month with a bang. We are having his party at the local boba place, which to me, beats the hell out of the skating rink or pizza parlor, and then we will be coming back to our place where we will host an overnight tent camping sleepover for 6-7 screaming and scheming middle schoolers. This is not for the faint of heart, my friends, but I'm just the kind of weirdo parent who thinks it will be a rip-roaring good time for all, myself included.

So yeah, when I stand back and I look at the whole picture with the wide focus lens instead of just narrowly focusing on all the garbage trash fires burning in our country right now, I realize that life is pretty damn sweet. Even with all those myriad troubles brewing in the background. That protest gave me hope, breathed some new life into my much abused spirit and set that fire in my belly alight once again when it had been flagging and flickering. All of the events I mentioned here did the same thing for me, just in different ways. I am so relieved, because my spark really was dimming and I was feeling the ragged edge of despair dogging my footsteps every day. This past month or so was exactly the fuel that I needed to get up and put my feet on the floor every day, to keep hoping and working towards a better tomorrow. So thank you one more time, my fellow Americans. Likewise to every single stalwart ally around this miraculous spinning globe. It feels like a turning point and possibly even the beginning of a return to the shared values and struggles that we have long abandoned or neglected at the very least. As exhausted as I have been (and oof! I am exhausted) I am filled with a strange and wonderful energy as well. The kind that I had almost forgotten was possible. A stirring within my breast and a quickening of my pulse, a poignant reminder of our intertwined and shared humanity and a deep burgeoning hope for tomorrow. Let's not let this beautiful momentum die anytime soon, my dear people. We are a country of the people, by the people and for the people and we can overcome this great evil only by linking our hands and holding that line together. That's our superpower, our secret sauce. And the other side? They don't even know what true camaraderie or care for your community looks like because they are too busy hating everyone who isn't exactly the same as them. Let's continue to show the entire world what a movement rooted in love and compassion can accomplish!

Until next time, my dearest friends and readers, just know that even if I have never met you or spoken to you, I hold a deep reservoir of love for you within my own heart, along with a freshly renewed belief that we can overcome this darkness if only we hold each other above the fray and with love and compassion. This is the way.

😻 bpnwc

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