Maybe Baby - Hope in the Current Political Climate

This past week, I felt sadder than I have in a long time. 

Image by Teece Aronin

I felt sad because so many of the people who share the U.S. with me are coming undone. Too many hate each other. Too many are afraid. Too many had great expectations and now are caught like cattle in the crossfire. 

And when it comes to politics, everyone is cattle, either all the time or part of the time; we just don't all know it. 

Cattle, for our purposes, are the innocents, the voiceless, the held back, the poor, the easy to manipulate, the under-educated, and the powerful. The word is not necessarily a slam. 

This kind of cattle has little to do with gender. A steer or a bull could be a woman, and a cow could be a man. The key difference between a bull and a steer is that the steer has been castrated. Hang in there; it'll make sense in a minute.  
Some cattle are calves: At the start of the Obama administration, calves stepped into the light, cautious and blinking, hopeful that their world was now safer. They are the undocumented, fleeing treacherous homelands. They are the LGBTQIA-plus community, victimized in disproportionate levels of gender-based or homophobic violence. They are the working poor, scrambling to live on less than livable wages. They are a lot of other people. Calves are anyone who is unfairly vulnerable. 

But back to the steers: Steers can be naive or easily led, and while most don't fully understand their part in the current political climate, many are convinced they know it all. Steers can hail from any party. When they are castrated, they lose their voices and the critical thinking skills they might otherwise have developed. They can bellow but not articulate. Steers have only wet coal in their bellies where there could have been fire. 

Next come the bulls. Bulls are anyone with power - educational, financial, political - anything that can get or keep them ahead. 

Cows are underrepresented, underestimated, marginalized, and economically disadvantaged people, many of them women, and sometimes they overlap with the calves. The over-simplified reason most cows are held back is because that's what happens when unscrupulous bulls are in charge. People of color, indigenous people, people who lack access to the internet, college educations, and quality healthcare free of bias, are pushed down, trampled, and left behind. 

Since the election, Donald Trump has expressed a willingness to use Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a framework for a restructured healthcare system, but many of the cows and calves haven't heard this news that might have given them a sliver of hope. 

That slow news drip down to the cows and calves is what makes developments such as Trump's seemingly softer stance on the ACA something like trickle-down economics. It doesn't matter if the news is good or bad or vitally important - because the cows and calves scrambling for survival can't hear it. They don't sit down to read The Wall Street Journal on smart phones over a sushi lunch because they can't afford a smart phone, can't afford sushi, or can't afford lunch.  

Singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen died Thursday at age 82, right smack in the midst of all this hoohah. His song, Everybody Knows summed up the bitterness many people feel about sinking systems such as ours. It would fit no matter which candidate won last week. 

Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

How dare Cohen die, leaving us in this mess when he was clearly so savvy about what caused it? The answer, I think, was to pursue his muse, Marianne, who died just three months prior. But that's a sad story for a sad essay and a sad day. 

Today, I am focused on hope.

To those of you who say of Trump, "My God, why all the stress? He hasn't even done anything yet," please understand that you probably support Trump and wait with anticipation to see what he does next. You can't imagine the fears of every cow and calf. 

Speaking as a cow, even I can't.  

If you are LGBTQIA-plus, undocumented, have a green card but don't know in which country you'll feel safe in a couple of years, are a working poor person, or one of any number of upended calves, your tender legs quivering in the air, take heart: 

We really don't know exactly what a Trump presidency will look like. Try not to worry. Instead, think constructively. Learn which rights you do have. Look for legal loopholes. Take strength from the like-minded, and respect those who oppose you with respect. Be a helper. Do everything you can to help yourself and others.  

No president delivers on every promise or threat made during a campaign. Trump might prove himself more even keeled than the persona he invoked to win the White House.

Maybe his beltway outsider status and business experience will give him an edge in fixing what politicians haven't. 

If you give him a chance and he still performs poorly, hope for minimal collateral damage and help to repair it.

If like Bill, you're still married to Hillary, maybe she'll get another shot. 

Maybe Michelle Obama will run for President. Thanks to the ground Clinton paved, she wouldn't be the first former First Lady to seek the Oval Office. 

Trump is rolling back much of the angry rhetoric. Besides claiming he will use the ACA as a framework for remodeling our healthcare system, Trump met with President Obama for what was expected to be 10 minutes but lasted for about 90. Unless one of them tied the other to a chair, it's likely there was a meaningful dialog. And when Trump promised to call on President Obama for future counsel, my heart soared. Will it happen? I don't know, but the fact that Trump said it at all gives me hope. 

The fact that we're all cattle isn't as bad as it sounds since cattle are among the finest of creatures. We should combine the bovine qualities we seek to keep with the higher intelligence, gumption, and purposeful kindness that come with our humanity. 

In the meantime, let's try to not kill each other.

The A-Team

The older I get, the simpler I get - and if anyone makes any jokes, they're out of the will while I'm still of sound mind. I blame the A-Team, but more about them in a minute. 

Silas treating the $29 bedspread much nicer than my

heirloom quilt - the little schnook. 

I've always gravitated toward the simple and the quaint but I'm finding that aging and animals have boosted that tendency big time. However, I refuse to allow beasts to completely ruin the House and Garden lifestyle to which I plan to become accustomed. Still, animals can get you simplified REAL fast if that's already your bent. 

Living with the kids and me are Hope, our dog, Kitt, our cat, and Silas, our kitten. Before the fur-clad A-Team (Animal Team) came along, I bought expensive bedspreads. I gave up on that yesterday and picked out a sweet little reversible quilt at a local discount store for $29, and a chair cushion for about five bucks. 

This chair is now squirreled

away in a corner of my

bedroom. Correction: This 
chair now helps make up a
charming little reading nook 
in my bedroom.

Oddly, it seems that cat fights and dog dances atop the bed slowed to a trickle with the new spread. Apparently, the cheaper my decor, the less desire the team feels to mess it up. Maybe they value the simpler things in life too.

I also moved two of my favorite chairs (purchased before Silas' arrival) into my bedroom because he was more likely to wreck them in the living room. 

But on the bright side, I hardly ever had comfortable chairs or a reading nook in the bedroom before, and now I have two - two chairs and two nooks. One single person can never have too many reading nooks in one small bedroom. Sad to say, however, I prefer to read in bed. 

And this is my reading

nook for sunny days when

no lamp is required. 

But the A-Team isn't only Hope, Kitt and Silas. Inspired by a book I bought, All You Can Eat in Three Square Feet, I put in a garden last spring. It became a food bank for every chipmunk, rabbit, squirrel and bird within a five mile radius. Now I have to make another plan - maybe with more container gardening and mesh next year. 

But again, looking on the bright side, outwitting the local fauna helps keep me sharp much as it did for Elmer Fudd. The entire yield of this year's harvest: three tiny radishes, enough lettuce for one small salad, and eight jalapeno peppers. 

But that's okay. I have plenty of dog and cat food, and that's what really matters. 

Brown Shoes

According to the Cole Porter song, Miss Otis Regrets, the lady is saddened that she's unable to lunch because she's just gotten hauled off to the hoosegow for shooting her lover. On Saturday I regretted that I was able to lunch - and even then, it was just barely. 

Brown Shoes by Teece Aronin. Available on products at
redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

I have a friend I'll call F. F and I have known each other almost two years and met through the miracle of social media. Because we live roughly two hours from one another, we have communicated mostly via the Face Book game Words with Friends and texting. We did manage to meet a couple of times, one of them for dinner. Maybe you've found yourself with the same problem: you like someone, but you live so far apart that it's difficult to date like other couples. 

So back to F. One or the other of us was always dating someone else or recovering from some star-crossed stupidity into which we'd gotten sucked. 

Anyway, there we were last week, messaging back and forth, and ended up planning a date with each other. It was for yesterday. Then, in one of those, "I-have-no-idea-why-we're-texting-about-this" moments, it was decided we'd share our first kiss. He seemed enthused about the kiss and so was I. I was to drive to his house and we would go from there to a wedding reception. 

Now, I was rear-ended a few weeks ago, and my back and knees waited until recently to start collectively killing me. I've been limping, playing phone tag with my medical claims rep and having a rough time getting things done at work because of the pain. The day before the date it was almost unbearable, so I went to my doctor. I had told F that I would dance with him, but could barely get out of my car. 

"I'm going to a wedding tomorrow!" I told my doctor who wrote me a prescription for a steroid. And then it hit me that I had nothing to wear. Actually, I have very few clothes period. I think some of them are still packed from when we moved last spring. Even at work I dress very casually. So I went straight from the doctor to Marshall's where I limped my way among the racks until I came up with something nice enough for a wedding but not too dressy for work. Then I went home and collapsed. 

Three hours later, F texted to say the couple getting married hadn't received his RSVP so would I like to just meet for lunch? I was disappointed but relieved. I'd had mixed feelings about getting all dressed up and mingling with a lot of people I don't know while walking like Walter Brennan. So lunch it would be. 

That night I was feeling a little giddy about the next day, and the idea of the kiss - which in my mind had become not just the kiss, but the KISS. 

We met at the restaurant, oohed and ahhd over the pot stickers and each had a sandwich and a beer. When the bill came I asked if I could help and he said I could cover the tip if I liked, so I did that. He walked me to my car where I instantly regretted not getting to my mints beforehand. 

It occurred to me that we'd each driven more than an hour just for lunch and that maybe a first kiss in a parking lot wasn't what he'd had in mind, so I said, "I don't know what your schedule's like, but would you like to go do something else?" I was thinking a movie or a park might be a good idea.

No, he said. He had to let the dog out and a buddy was taking him out for his birthday (I had wrapped up a small birthday present for him, but forgot it at home). Then he said, "Well, I'll be seeing you," and started for his car. 

"F, would you like to kiss goodbye?" I asked.

"No, that's okay," he said, and kept walking.

I sat there for a second, a little perplexed then went after him.

"F?"

He didn't seem to have heard me and kept walking,

"Excuse me, F!" 

He turned and saw me and continued getting into his car. When I caught up to him, his car door was still open. I bent over and looked in.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"No, nothing's wrong."

"But you wouldn't like to kiss goodbye?"

"It's not imperative," he said, not moving except to look at me.

I straightened up, walked back to my car and got in. He was long gone before I'd even managed to get my keys in the ignition. 

I tried to keep an open mind about what just happened. We'd met before, and he had been open about his attraction to me and wanting to kiss me someday, so I didn't think it was an attraction problem. Then again, maybe it was. I started that losing battle so many of us wage in these situations, trying to think what I'd said or done to offend him. There was nothing stuck between my teeth and nothing up my nose. There were no lulls in the conversation and a lot of laughing. What happened?

Then I just felt bad and drove home. 

It's probably not fair to write about this when F and I've not talked about what happened, but for all I know, he doesn't intend to and might have no plans to discuss anything with me again. And besides, if I don't write about things like this, they pile up inside and who needs that? 

Also, F deserves the benefit of the doubt. For all I know, he chipped a tooth on a pot sticker and was too self-conscious to kiss. Or maybe he really does still like me, but didn't want the kiss to happen over his doggie bag. Or maybe the woman he'd just started dating who so far was two for three on date cancellations, texted him while I was in the ladies' room and proposed marriage. I joke, but truly, some very good reason might have occurred to him that made him change his mind.  

And like women, men have the right to change their minds and they also have the right to say no to unwanted advances. 

Imagine all the times Donald Trump must have fought women off. 

Never Depend on a Goose

One of the saddest things I can think of is an animal lying dead by the road.

However, an animal which is probably dead, lying in the grass near the road is worse. There's the possibility that instead of being dead and dragged there by a driver or pedestrian, it dragged itself there and is alive and in pain. Or someone else might have dragged it there assuming that if it wasn't dead yet, it soon would be.

Throw in the misery of a cold, rainy day and someone who doesn't have the sense to just keep driving, and you have the makings of a truly rotten experience.

I had been on the road all day, it was close to 7 p.m., and I desperately wanted to get home to my kids. Suddenly, there was no missing it: about 10 feet from the curb on the lawns of a church was a black goose sprawled on its belly. Other geese trundled by as the rain poured down on all of them. 

I pulled into the church parking lot and thought about calling Animal Control. If it were dead, the goose needed to be disposed of and if it were alive, it needed to be tended to. It took four calls before I got a hold of someone. He said they didn't have anyone on duty at the moment but could tell me who to call, a woman who volunteered for things like that. Her name was Lillian Plentworth. I called the number. 

Ms. Plentworth answered the phone after two rings and within seconds my mental picture was clear: seventy-ish, no nonsense but pleasant, sensible haircut, short fingernails, no polish, and a rain slicker with a pair of waders in the hall closet.

Me: Hello, Ms. Plentworth. I was just driving down Raleigh Drive in Birktown and saw a goose lying on the lawn in front of First Presbyterian Church. I think it's dead but I can't be sure. 

Ms. Plentworth: Well, is it breathing?

Me: I don't know. I got out of my car and tried to check a few minutes ago but I couldn't get close enough. 

I didn't mention to Ms. Plentworth that I couldn't get close enough due to a years-long bird phobia, and having the birds be dead and soaking in the rain just makes it worse. 

Ms. Plentworth: Well, run over there and look again and call me back.

She hung up before I could so much as whimper. After she hung up, I whimpered anyway. 

I got out of the car and walked back to the goose. I'd forgotten my umbrella that day and was already soaked from my first failed mission to assess the goose's condition. 

Looking closer, the goose was probably dead, but I couldn't shake the notion that it was shallowly breathing. And since I'd gotten as close as I could without hyperventilating, I scurried back to the car and called Ms. Plentworth. 

Me: I can't tell if it's breathing or not. 

Ms. Plentworth (sighing): Well, ordinarily I'd come out there, but I just rescued a turkey and now I'm about to take some soup off the stove. I'd rather not come out there if it's dead.

Me: Then I don't know what to do. I mean, someone needs to come get it either way, right? 

Ms. Plentworth: That's true. But if it's dead, that would be someone else's job. I collect them when they're injured, not when they're dead. If I told you where to take it, would you go pick it up?

Me: I'd rather not. 

Ms. Plentworth: Well, let's just assume this one's dead. I'll let Animal Control know to send someone out in the morning. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my soup. Have a good night!

I peered through the downpour, over the shining wet blacktop of the parking lot, and across the expanse of grass, vividly green from the rain. There lay the goose. It's brother and sister geese seemed unmoved. Shouldn't they perform CPR, or if the goose was religious, scratch together some kind of a service? Shouldn't they be conferring over a place to bury him or her?

I had the sudden realization that one should never depend on a goose to hand one an emergency bottle of nitroglycerin tablets. On the other hand, it also seemed sensible that one could use a goose as a model for how to stay calm in a crisis. 

'Okay,' I thought. 'That goose is in no condition to attack me so there's no reason I can't get close enough to it to make sure it's dead. If it's not, I call Ms. Plentworth back and tell her I don't care if her soup gets fried; she needs to come out here and collect that goose. If it's alive, it must be dying and at least a vet could put the poor thing out of its misery.

I approached the goose one more time.

It had probably been a good 20 minutes since I'd first spotted the goose from the road. I took a deep breath and stood a little closer this time. Clearly, it wasn't breathing. If it wasn't dead before, it was now.

Geese can't count on us either. 

Penny Smells Like Bacon

For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her Penny.

Multitasking Me by Teece Aronin. Available on products at

Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter in the Colorful 

Mod collection.

Penny is one of my best gal-pals and yesterday morning, she became a shining example of what can happen when we multitask.

Remember a while back when I was talking about how part of being mindful means less multitasking, and how researchers are saying that multitasking probably makes us less effective?

Enter Penny. 

Penny had received a faulty communication from a creditor which needed to be straightened out before the next billing cycle. It was morning when Penny called them up and proceeded to spend the better part of an otherwise lovely fall morning navigating voice prompts and hanging around on hold.

Efficient and resourceful, Penny decided to make breakfast while she waited, and fished a package of bacon out of the fridge. After she'd peeled the slices apart and laid it in a pan, her dog followed its nose into the kitchen.

Penny, like a lot of us do with our pets, talks to her dog as though it were another human being. And Penny, like a lot of us, gives her pet all the attention she might give a human being when it walks into the room. So Penny, whose attention was first on the phone call and then on the phone call and the bacon, was now focused on the phone call, the bacon, and the conversation she was beginning with her dog.

Telling me about it later, Penny confessed that it wasn't a high, squeaky, puppy-mommy voice she was using as her dog sniffed her fingers, but a deep, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice. 

That was when Penny was prompted to leave a message, but because she couldn't hold the phone call, the bacon, the dog, and the conversation with the dog all in her head at one time, she didn't notice the phone prompt. 

And in her low, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice she said to the dog:

"Does mama smell like bacon? Yes, mama smells like BAcon."

Whoever listened to Penny's recorded message probably understood it better than Penny's dog did - the words anyway. But Penny's intent at the time she uttered the words was anybody's guess - anybody who heard about it at the company, which, by the end of the afternoon was probably everybody at the company. And of course there's always caller I.D. to keep the mix-up from remaining anonymous.

From now on, whenever I talk to my dog, especially if I'm saying something along the lines of, "Young lady, you are not leaving this house in that collar," I'll double-check that I'm not also on hold. And frying bacon.  

And that I'm not using my purry, rumbly voice. 

Timing is Everything

Sometimes awful things happen. Not awful as in complete tragedy, but awful as in extremely unfortunate and highly ironic in a very awkward way.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin. Available on

products at redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

I had just been offered a blogger position where I would be given plenty of leeway, and since my then-husband had cerebral palsy, disability awareness, inclusion, and equity were themes I wanted to shine light on.

The night the job came through, my husband and I took our kids, Syd and Jon and my mother out to celebrate. Jon was about seven and Syd was nine. We were gathered around a table in an Italian restaurant with Jon to my immediate right.

This was before cell phones were in every purse or pocket, and since I never wanted to miss a moment, I always had my little digital camera with me. Jon asked if he could hold it. 

As I handed the camera to Jon, I was gabbing away to my mother about how excited I was about this job. 

"I'm telling you, I can't get over how much freedom they're giving me to write about something so important. This is just so perfect!"

"Mommy, can I take a picture?"

"Hang on just a minute, honey."

"And to think I can work from anywhere. I can be home with the kids and still supplement our income!"

"Mommy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"Can I take a picture?"

"Sure, honey. But honestly, getting to write about disability awareness is such an amazing opportunity!"

Jon took a picture of his sister and when the flash went off, a waiter about 20 feet away was immediately launched into a seizure. He fell and the tray of dinners he was carrying crashed to the floor with him.

Everyone gasped and sat motionless except for the manager who was trained for situations like this. He charged from the kitchen, trying to calm the alarmed patrons while he hurried to the downed waiter.

"It's okay, everybody! It's okay! This happens sometimes!"

Then, as if speaking of the scum of the earth, the sub-scum even, the manager loudly sneered: "Someone here probably just used a FLASH CAMERA!"

Jon froze, his eyes huge. The little hands holding the camera immediately lowered to his lap and under the table. Then slowly, like one prisoner sneaking a shiv to a fellow prisoner, he slipped the camera over to me.

And like a fellow prisoner who just happened to have a large handbag on the floor by her chair, I hid it.

The waiter sat up, shook it off and laughed, saying he was fine.

But our table conversation around disability awareness came to an immediate halt since each of us was plenty aware for one night.

Chimes

Aunt Ki had chimes. Doorbell chimes. Long, tubular, brass doorbell chimes - three of them. They hung in an intriguing little wall niche where as a child, I was enthralled by them. 

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

This exotic little altar at which I beheld the "miracle of the bells" every time I visited Aunt Ki, was located in a postcard-sized spit of hallway from which three steps would take you into Aunt Ki's bedroom, two steps into Aunt Ki's sitting room, and another two steps, straight to the sink in Aunt Ki's pink-tiled bathroom. 

Chimes like those were not uncommon in homes built from the thirties into the sixties, but Aunt Ki had the only ones I could get close to. I would stand in front of them, gingerly bumping the shortest one against the middle-sized one and the middle-sized one against the longest one. Then I would ponder the different notes they would intone. 

The chimes were whimsical, like something one might find in an enchanted art deco cottage or a 1930's Constance Bennett movie. Yet they were important-looking, perhaps having first worked their imperious magic inside a mansion vestibule.

Recently, I bought a house built in 1958, and while there's not a wall niche, there is a tiny foyer and a quirky little cove where two walls meet perpendicularly. That gives me two options for installing my own chimes one day.

I found a company online called Electrachime which manufactures these all but extinct melodious miracles. When my budget catches up with my tastes, I will order some. That's not to say Electrachime's products are pricey; they're not. But right now I have to be frugal.

But I'll have them one day. I keep a budget and pay myself an allowance right along with the kids', but something always comes up to keep me from my cherished chimes. Life and elusive chimes are like that.

But that's okay. It will happen. And when it does, peals of welcome will dance across the land - even if I have to stand on the porch and ring my own bell.

I've done it before.