The Disappointments

Is this what happens when you get older or just when everything that was a lie reveals itself to be just that? Even with hope pumping hot through my veins, I peek with one eye opened each morning at any and everything and think Damn. I don’t even know if I am shaking my head anymore, know that I sigh with the dog as the two of us stretch and prepare to get up for the day.

Photo by Bill Nino on Unsplash

He doesn’t know to be bothered or upset. He’d just like me to get a move on so he can sniff things and eat grass and pee on everything and shit before we come in for his meal- 1/2 wet food, a scoop of kibble, some water, rice, and a little bit of medicine to stave off the gastro upset that has plagued him since his cancer diagnosis. He is not worse for the wear, but I watch nonetheless, knowing the time will come when a symptom of some kind will arise and we will start more closely monitoring.

We both yawn and pandiculate. I turn on the light and face the mirror to my puffy face squinting back at me, gray hairs framing my one-side flattened fro, the swelling under the skin, agitation and inflammation of midlife, itchiness wherever it might show up this morning.

Ice was on my block this morning. Neighbors were moving out. There is a concentration camp just miles away where there are bugs in food and rancid milk and beatings and it’s also sunny out with a breeze and I don’t have to turn on the air conditioning. There will be a blue moon tonight and though I am agitated, I still myself when I can with the reminder of epic change coming and still try my best to think of this as positive. So much of the current change is not. It’s often hard to breathe.

When I received the call that Ice was near, I ran to the bathroom, nerves getting the better of me, and I had to evacuate. I was scared shitless for real. I made the calls. I called my family, told them where I was going and that I’d locked the door to the house and had already walked the dog. Told them in case I wouldn’t come home. I got in the car and drove over, but they were gone.

This has been a long weekend even without today’s events. Performances for one of my daughters, settling in with the other, retiring from teaching dance, saying goodbye to a place that had been my home away from home for nearly as long as we have lived here. The astrology tells me to prepare for rapid change, for some of my familiars to no longer be so. To let go and fall back and trust.

Drinking my coffee, I stopped in on the painting at the easel each morning, no matter what piece, and look. The one today has balloons because it’s a birthday party scene. As I revisit these moments from my childhood, family, parties, celebrations, silence, fear, I take them to the canvas where they swirl with the unspoken.

There has always been so much unsaid. I knew not to so as not to upset the status quo which at my house was going along, getting along to get along, and never expressing grief or anger or sadness or fear or boundless joy, maybe a little happiness, never too much of anything in either direction so as not to make yourself a target to someone else’s dysregulated emotions. There were hungry ghosts and angry bullies ready to destroy, watching vigilantly for weakness, for the moment they could sense you wanted or needed something which became suddenly delicious for them too. I knew better than to show any feeling at all so as not to be exposed.

My poker face is more of a stony face, a wide grimace with eyes that do not make connection. Behind the sockets the electricity of my nervous system creates links and connections, and I turn the Rubix Cube trying to figure the algorithm that will keep me undetectable. Sometimes I slip up. Usually when I feel my children have been threatened.

Some shitty machinations from a young fool one of my daughters dated for thirty seconds, had me prepared to burn the world down, at least the connections between us and them, his family and mine. I fought the urge to tear everyone to shreds and was pissed at myself for giving a shit, reminded my girl that some people suck and they walk among us, and sometimes we love them and sometimes it is time to let go. Blue Moon.

Someone had to have called. The target was too specific. Our block is quiet and unassuming, how on earth could they have chosen this one out of an infinite number of suburban streets to threaten?

I walk these streets and neighborhoods every morning with my dog and, on the ones when I have more time, I try to explore those usually too far to walk on school mornings. When I heard Ice was here, I knew immediately where they’d gone because I’d seen the crew out there peacefully working many times, always with a smile or greeting. I always felt safe with them. I did always know that too many didn’t care about the kind eyes or familiar greetings. I knew there were always promises that would never be kept. Too many Miss Anns and Nellie Olesens and Laura Lizzies¹ in the wake of my life’s speedboat ride for me to completely let my guard down and toss back my head.

I still say good morning to almost all I pass, and you’d be surprised how many don’t respond and how many appear not to see me at all, how many only see my dog, Ivan and either embrace him “because they are dog people” or fear him because he is walking with me. To say that I expect either and am neither hurt nor angered is to tell myself the lie that I didn’t want more, after all the chances and promises.

Hope is certainly audacious, at least it was, and I have learned too so is the creeping, insidious cancer of hate and denialism that has people trying to explain away my reasons for being disappointed in my ‘friends,’ my colleagues, my community.

My blood boils so that were it to be drawn it would spurt as it once did after teaching a particularly rigorous dance class. I took a beat, then messaged, and knew it wasn’t enough. I got in the car and drove over. The same secret passageway I’ve walked or driven, a hideaway at the edge of the block, used as an ambush, a trap. Where we live. Where we call home.

The weekend had already been fraught. I’d begun to feel the fraying of connections, the loosening of ties, the sudden goodbyes and small steps on new pathways. I’d watched my children, now young women, live outside of the grip of my exhausting childhood. I witnessed their expansion, the rise in my chest near to exploding.

It was a group of teenagers that first spread the word, they are here. And there was no hiding. How incredibly disappointing to find that no matter the idyll, the bright blue sky and white, fluffy clouds, the children covering the baseball diamond learning to play ball, parents sitting in the grass watching and calling out in support, blocks away masked men were turning down our street to wreak havoc. How incredibly disappointing to find that not everyone who promises will step up and keep it.

I am less fearful of the men whose uniforms, hidden faces, and nihilistic aura threaten to throw the world off its axis. Believe me, they terrify me, the possibility of their imposed violence. But I am more afraid of those who swear we are in it together and never look us in the eye, don’t pick up the phone, or answer the call.

Today, so many answered, dialed in, and connected. The gratitude I hold for the text chain that would deliver messages of safety, guidance, and protection. When we feel most vulnerable, it is a gift to know someone is thinking of what we need before we ask. This is what we said we would be.

I have driven by three times this evening and put a blessing over the house. I prayed to them, keeping my hands on the wheel, that they are able to sleep through the night, that they have called the safe resources, that they believe in and trust in their community, our community. Us. I hope we can continue, that we won’t let go. That we won’t disappoint.

1. Miss Ann, a derogatory term for a white woman seen as condescending or arrogant, originated in the late 19th century. She wielded unearned power over Black people. Modern day, Karen. Nellie Olesen was the daughter of the Olesen family on Little House on the Prairie who was manipulative and sharp-tongued. Laura Lizzie was the racist leader of a group of high school girls who taunted Rochelle Zimmerman, a Black student, in The Craft, and eventually lost her hair.