I Need A Day

I have a greeting card in my desk with a picture of a giant porcelain toilet bowl on the front.  Inside is written “If men can miss such a large target at close range, then why are they in charge of the world’s nuclear weapons?” I bought it a few years ago at an art museum gift shop without any occasion or recipient in mind, but simply because it gave me a chuckle.  Today I am not laughing.

Earlier I watched Hillary Clinton’s concession speech on CNN and she is more magnanimous and gracious than I.  I am all for unifying the country and a peaceful transition of power and approaching the next four years with as open of a mind as I can muster, but for goodness sake, I need a day.  I need a day to wallow in grief and shake my head and hover over my steaming cup of ginger tea, staring into oblivion in my slipper socks. I need a day to curse at the uneducated white males in this country, sob in the shower, and fantasize that last night was only a misguided spoof on Saturday Night Live. In the words of the Dixie Chicks: “I’m not ready to make nice.”  I need a day to get it together.

    

My 91-year-old grandmother demanded she vote early this year because she said when you are 91, you can’t afford to take any chances. My mom told me she left the booth giddy and gliding, shaking her cane at the line of people waiting to vote and proclaiming, “I just voted for the first woman president!”  This morning on the phone she broke down into tears and implored me, “Emilushka, what is happening to my Dreamland?” This is a woman who fled her German-occupied homeland during World War II. She was an immigrant who, to this day, is profoundly grateful to my grandfather for bringing her to this country. She learned English, embraced American values, built a home, and raised two successful children here. She put down roots and today the soil resembles sand.

   

I glimpsed a post on Facebook earlier that read: “Worst Day in America 9/11.  Second worst day in America 11/9.”  This morning’s shock when I awoke to the official news had the impact of an assassination.  I will remember where I was on this election year.  I will remember Bridget’s crestfallen face when I shared the news and my blundering attempt to explain to a five-year-old how someone who spouts such hateful things can be a decisive winner. I will remember many of my friends admitting that they were curled in the fetal position or calling their mothers to cry or praying for the first time in years.  I will remember my daughter holding up her laminated map of the United States and asking why there were not more states she could color in blue.

As a friend in St. Louis reminded me this morning, we went from electing our first African American President eight years ago to one last night who was endorsed by the KKK.  Our next Commander-in-Chief is a man who has insulted every possible faction of society who neglects to mirror his own orangutan-esque appearance or beliefs (apologies to our primate cousins for that unfortunate comparison): Muslims, women, Latinos, African Americans, Asians, POWs, and hell, even Iowans, my husband’s home state.  It is a slap in the collective face of this country. 

I am still attempting to digest the vile truth that we voluntarily elected a man to our most elite position of power who brags about grabbing women by the pussy.  I am still dreading all the social progress that may be unraveled and bulldozed after four years of his leadership.  I am still reeling from the realization that his Supreme Court nominations have the potential to cripple the rights and freedoms of my daughters for decades to come.  His extreme smugness and blatant narcissism I resent being rewarded, but that is not the worst part.  What horrifies me the most is that his hateful rhetoric is what precipitated his election. His ascent to power came at the expense of trampling those with weaker voices, in smaller numbers, and with everything to lose.  The rural white populace swallowed the Kool-Aid and somehow believes that this one person with a sweep of his magic orange toupee is going to eradicate Islamic terrorism, put cash in their pockets, and construct a wall to keep out all the drug dealers, rapists and abhorrent immigrants soiling our American innocence. They believe this entitled, conniving dipshit with a gold-plated spoon in his mouth is going to actually roll up his sleeves. To all the coal miners and steelworkers out there, Trump’s hands are soft and supple– it is his conscience that is calloused.

   

As I fumble through my day today, keenly aware I am marching through the well-documented stages of grief, I linger on an over-arching cloud of sadness. I think about last weekend when my mom, sister and I spent a few days in Manhattan, taking in the sites and foot traffic and carb-laden bagels. One of our favorite stops was exploring the 1.5 mile High Line, an elevated linear park built out of the old train line.  It was Marathon weekend in New York City and as we walked through this beautiful garden of trees and shrubs, we encountered so many from around the globe, basking in this rare green space. The sun was shining, teasing the air to a perfect crisp 60 degrees and around us the leaves had morphed into hues of rust and cranberry.  I heard fragments of Mandarin, rapid directions in French, and a toddler exclaiming in Spanish while pointing excitedly at a sparrow.  I relished in the shared experience of accents and took a photo for a family from England who was traveling with their teenage son in a wheelchair.  I thought, yes, we are a melting pot.  And the colors intermixing are magnificent. There were no walls. No barriers. Just trees.

So, as I said, I need a day to be a sore loser.  To fantasize about his impending failures, but at the same time to be utterly vulnerable in my love for this country.  After our stroll on the High Line, we headed uptown to Central Park where we had a lunch reservation.  We had almost canceled it the week prior when we discovered the restaurant was actually in the Trump International Hotel.  We decided we could stomach the indiscretion at the expense of Jean-Georges’ French rolls, but on the way out, the three of us joked about hiking up our skirts and publicly urinating on his ostentatious gold sign.  After breakfast this morning, my sister lamented to me on the phone that she wished we had done it when we had the chance.  I happen to agree and something tells me we nasty women would have had pretty good aim.