MIXED GRILLE

MIXED GRILLE

The whole system works because we are not all nuts on the same day.

Some mornings you wake up and even though there may be fog or clouds, you remember that the dome of sky is always blue, and the clouds will blow away. When friends call or text that it is all hopeless and the country cannot bounce back from the destruction, and that nothing is fair, you’re able to reach into your hobo’s brindle of hope and good cheer.

You tell them that yeah, they may be right, but your dad used to say that fair is where the pony rides are, so maybe we just put that aside for now. You remind them to lower the bar of expectations, which are premeditated resentments. You tell them you love them, that we are all in this together, and that they might consider taking the next right action: a small check to the ACLU or to my fiancé Sherrod Brown (don’t tell Neal.) What about a short walk through the neighborhood, picking up litter and waving to people. It’s early summer, and the gardens and bushes are still filled with flowers? What about taking milk and Oreos to the food pantry?

If they don’t metaphorically slam down the phone, they may have lightened up and laughed a little with you, and that is a sign of resurrection.

Other mornings you wake up in a fever dream, of the war and Trump’s arch getting built and too many papers on the desk plus phone calls and emails to return, the Confederacy rising and the terrible traffic plus late last night you consulted Web MD and it diagnosed the new ache as almost certainly being cancer.

So some days you get to be there for people who are suffering, mostly by listening and making gentle sounds of commiseration, and other days you remember that your mind truly is a bad neighborhood  that you should not go into alone, and amazingly, you reach out.

(Perhaps now is a good time to repeat the story I always told my Sunday School kids, of the terrified girl who can’t fall asleep in the dark, whose mother keeps coming in crankily to say that God is right there in the room with her. After three of her mother’s pep talks, the young girl finally responds, “I need someone with skin on.” This is what we all need sometimes, evidence of goodness that has skin and socks on. )

Every sober alcoholic I know, including my tiny princess self, has a hard time with the mixed grille. Of course we are happy and grateful when things are good, when our work is going well and our families are doing okay and we stop to notice the expansiveness of the summer day into the evening, and into the diamond lights of the sky. (Yay.) And old age and sobriety have given us tools to survive and help when times are tough. But it is when good and bad are swirling together, which is (let’s face it) a lot of the time, that people like me are apt to become big whiny babies.

This is what it is like for me these days. I cannot bear what has happened to our country, and yet the warm air of early summer feels like a gentle warm stroke on my arm. It is going to get hideous hot soon because of the climate emergency, but today the weather is saying, This is a ideal climate for you. Rest into it; dig it, baby girl.

But tomorrow, I protest, it’s going to rain right when I was going to go for a walk with my favorite nun, who marches in No Kings rallies with me. Sigh:  you can't raise your fist at the sky and say shine upon me, Dude—but not too hot, please. Right? Being a grown up means you handle not getting your way with at least a token amount of grace.

Even the frogs are finished. They’ve gone quiet. Their mating and breeding season is over. They are all lying in bed having cigarettes. No more croaky frog serenades. The birds have stepped in, though, and gotten extra loud. There was one strident bird singing at the top of its lungs last night when I went to check out the moon with my grandson, and when I went to let the dog out to pee early this morning, I’d swear that same bird was still going at it, an antidote to all the bad noise, changing the sky.