Election Countdown

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Soon after Joe Biden was declared the winner in November 2020, my husband said, “I thought we’d at least get a mental health break, but I guess not.” Trump and his allies, who’d sowed chaos and seeds of doubt about fair elections long before any votes were cast, wasted no time in spreading the Big Lie and passing lots of laws to make voting harder in swing states. Although personally and even sometimes politically we’ve had many bright spots in the last four years—2 weddings, no funerals, and no red wave in 2022!—it’s been quite a psychological slog.

My mental health improved greatly on July 21, the day President Biden announced he was stepping aside and endorsing Kamala Harris to take his place as the 2024 nominee. Before then, and especially after his disastrous debate performance, I had pretty much felt on a glide path to doom. “At least there won’t be another insurrection,” I consoled myself at the thought of Trump’s re-election.

With the coming of Kamala, hope and joy returned, along with a fighting chance. I have reveled in cat memes, rising poll numbers, a pitch-perfect convention, Taylor Swift’s endorsement, Michelle Obama, Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, and all the Every-Identity-Group-Under-the-Sun-for-Kamala fundraisers. And whose mood didn’t improve watching an unraveling Donald Trump swallow the bait every single time in their September 10 debate?

And yet, here we are at essentially a coin toss. I feel cautiously optimistic, and also increasingly anxious. It all depends on the day’s vibes, my wish-casting, whether a new Times/Siena poll has dropped, and the number of undecided people who complain that they still don’t know enough about Kamala Harris’s plans, which I fear is a way of saying There’s no way I’ll vote for a Black woman. I feel good about reports of Harris-Walz signs in deep red towns, somebody’s ancient, rock-ribbed Republican uncle voting for Kamala. Then, on a phone bank to Michigan, a guy answers, “Are you planning to vote for Harris or Trump?” with “I would not piss on her if she were on fire. Have a good day!” At least he was polite.

So I’m pretty anxious, but living by the axiom, “Do more, worry less.” I volunteer a lot for Airlift, which raises money to support grassroots groups who excel at turning non-voters into voters in battleground states. I know a lot of people who are responding to Michelle Obama’s call to “Do Something.”

We’re doing what we can for our future. And for our mental health. Let’s bring it home in the next 35 days.

Passing the Torch

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My husband Jonathan and I had recently left the Denver airport and were driving along Highway 70 on the first day of our vacation hiking in the Rockies when the texts started pinging.

Jonathan checked my phone, and there was the news we’d been hoping for: President Biden had stepped aside. The 27 minutes between his announcement and subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had not yet elapsed, but by the time we stopped for lunch, Biden had passed the torch and the $96 million in the campaign chest to his VP. The cafe we chose had good chili and a comfy reading nook. There on the shelf was Kamala’s Way and Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, by Pope Francis. “From the Pope’s lips to God’s ears,” I said to Jonathan.

Now five weeks later, the Democratic Convention has just ended, converted quickly from what likely would have been a valiant but manufactured attempt at optimism to through-the-roof euphoria. On the first night, ear-splitting enthusiasm rocked the rafters as just about everybody’s lips sang the praises of not just the newly formed Harris-Walz ticket, but also and especially of President Biden.

“Thank you, Joe!” chanted the first-night crowd as they waved signs that reinforced the message. The ever-snarky New York Times political reporter Peter Baker wrote, “They were thanking him, yes, for what he accomplished during a lifetime in public service. But they were also thanking him, let’s be honest, for not running again.” He’s not wrong.

At the end of a long night, President Biden delivered his farewell address–reworked just a little, it seemed–from the acceptance speech he had hoped to give at the Convention’s crowning event. It was a poignant moment, and also a reminder that had Convention Joe shown up to the debate, he would still be the nominee, and we’d likely be Ridin’ with Biden over the cliff to defeat.

The most moving part of Biden’s speech came near the end, as he quoted a verse from a song treasured by his family:

What shall our legacy be,

What will our children say?

Let me know in my heart when my days are through,

America, America, I gave my best to you.

He did, over and over again, culminating in this final act of stepping aside. President Biden left the stage, left Chicago for a vacation in California, left the torch in the able and willing hands of a new generation of talent with an incredible candidate leading the way. Thank you, Joe.

Now it is Kamala’s way, a path to a better future. But let’s not just dream or pray about it—let’s work hard to make it happen.

Yosemite!

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After our daughter’s wedding last month, we decided that instead of a long slog home from LA on Interstate 5, we’d continue the celebration with a long slog on a trail in Yosemite Valley. So after the post-wedding goodbye breakfast, we drove to the cute town of Mariposa, positioning us for a restful night before an early morning entry into Yosemite. Since it was a weekday before the summer crowds descended, we avoided the need for reservations as well as swarms of people (though not necessarily mosquitoes–the price of being there during peak run-off).

Initially, we hoped to recreate a glorious hike we took 15-20 years ago, when we took the bus up to Glacier Point, then descended into the Valley on the long and scenic Panorama Trail. But since the bus hadn’t started running yet, we decided we would be the bus, using leg power to propel ourselves 3,200′ up the Four-Mile Trail (which is actually 4.7 miles each way) to Glacier Point from the Valley floor, then down again the same way.

As Google’s AI describes the hike, “it’s not for the faint of heart.” More enticing and poetic, the human who presumably wrote the park’s website notes that the Four-Mile Trail is where “Yosemite Falls gives you the full monty.”

It also offers “great views of most of the landmarks that Yosemite Valley’s famous for, and all from angles you’re not used to seeing on postcards.” These promises, unlike the mileage implied by the trail’s name, turned out to be true:

My husband and I met 40 years ago on a 15-mile hike, and have hit the trails together ever since. Which is to say that even though we’ve slowed down, we tackled the well-graded switchbacks with relative ease. After tooling around Glacier Point for a while and eating our lunch, we had the crazy thought: Why not go down to the Valley via the 8.5-mile Panorama Trail? Sure, it was twice as long as going back the way we came, but we had enough food and water, plus it was the hike we’d intended to do all along. Besides, wasn’t it all down hill?

Well, sort of. We forgot about the 1,000′ climb after descending to Illilouette Falls. But we were high on our spontaneity, and kept saying to one another that even though we probably shouldn’t have done it, we were glad we did. It’s easy to see why:

And so we happily proceeded to the top of Nevada Falls. Which is not the same as the bottom of Nevada Falls.

Or, for that matter, Vernal Falls, descended via the Mist Trail. Since it was early June–peak water!–it was more like the Carwash Trail. So we descended very slowly down hundreds of often-slippery granite steps, our feet feeling not quite as fresh as when we had started out eight hours earlier. Still, a rainbow is a sign of hope:

Eventually we made it to less vertical ground, the falls behind us, an hour to go on easy terrain to the Valley, our spirits and even our knees more or less intact, just in time for dinner.

That’s when we learned that the free shuttle wasn’t running at this particular stop until the next day. We ate our leftover lunch, then trudged endlessly to Curry Village, which looked like a tent-cabin refugee camp. But at least there was a shuttle stop, and then a shuttle bus, and then a short walk across the meadow back to our car, the golden light yielding to dusk. We had been gone eleven hours, and proudly sent a photo of our accomplishment to our daughters:

They were impressed, and jealous. Mission accomplished, we drove 2.5 hours to our hotel in Oakdale as the sky turned from orange to black, then tumbled into bed, exhausted but happy.

Just Married!

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We were beyond excited last July when Emma got engaged. It’s always great to have a wedding to look forward to, at least when you like the person your child is marrying. Which we do greatly, adoring both our daughters’ choices.

From the get-go, Emma and J wanted more of a party than a wedding. They live 5 minutes from LA’s Griffith Park, so they reserved a picnic area there early on, and didn’t sweat the details too much. Emma, her sister Ally, and I pretty much cleaned out Trader Joe’s flowers, filled some mason jars, made a bouquet and a couple of boutonnieres, and called it a day. I always thought of this wedding as a picnic with vows, which turns out to be an apt description and a whole lot of fun.

But we had to practice for the picnic with vows, so the day before we had a walk-through and a fun rehearsal dinner with delicious food:

The real thing came the next day, June 1. It’s great when the officiant is your childhood friend (whose mother is a minister, so she had more than online-credential cred). The flower girl was the 2-year-old daughter of one of Emma’s best friends from 2nd grade. “She probably doesn’t know how to walk in a straight line,” Emma said, “But who cares?” (Note: The flower girl DID know how to walk in a straight line and loved sprinkling petals from roses randomly stolen from neighborhood bushes. She did NOT live up to the warning Meryl Streep issues to her daughter as she crams in all the advice she can think of before she dies of cancer in the movie One True Thing: “Don’t have a flower girl–they always ruin weddings.”)

Down the aisle we go!

With hugs before the hand-off:

Then the exchange of truly impressive vows (both bride and groom are from families of writers) and rings:

And the deed is done!

In case you’re wondering about the bridal footwear, Emma is an artist, which means she can get away with any dubious aesthetic choice she wants under the rubric of artistic flair. Emma had warned me beforehand: “You won’t like my shoes.” She got blisters (no comment from the mother of the bride):

Luckily, it was a footloose and fancy-free kind of wedding:

Toasting the happy couple:

A taco truck and appetizer trays and salads from Whole Foods provided sustenance. I volunteered to do all the desserts, which worked out pretty well, especially since my husband Jonathan hand-dipped and hand-sprinkled every single one of about 9 dozen chocolate-dipped pistachio shortbread cookies (the bottom two photos–Key Lime Blondies and Bittersweet Brownie Shortbread–are lifted from online photos; mine didn’t look nearly as professional, though they tasted great):

And, of course, there was cake:

Our baby girl, a bride!

Best of all, we are now grandparents. Not just to J’s pre-existing kids, but to 7-week-old kittens:

From Whales to Redwoods

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One of my best moves as a mother was to keep a journal through my kids’ childhoods, writing at least every month birthday and on special occasions, like when they said really funny or endearing things.

My husband and I recently discovered one such gem while reading through Emma’s journal, in preparation for our toasts at her upcoming wedding.

When Emma was seven years old, she declared, “In my second life, I would choose to be a whale, because they stay with their mothers their whole life.” This charming sentiment saw some revisions as Emma grew older. And a good thing, too, since it means she has instead wisely chosen someone else to spend the rest of her life with.

J proposed to Emma under the redwoods not far from her childhood home because, he said, redwoods grow strong and tall as they reach for the sky, live a long time, and are deeply interconnected with each other and their entire community.

Emma said yes, because how could anyone refuse such skill with metaphors? Not to mention J’s countless sterling qualities that complement her own.

Their deep love and comfort with one another is palpable. We have never seen Emma so happy, and are glad she traded in whales for redwoods, and me for J.

May they always reach for the sky, growing ever stronger together with deep love, interconnection, and happiness. 

Total Immunity

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In January 2016, some writing friends and I rented a house at the Russian River so we could concentrate on our writing. Naturally, we did anything but—instead we napped, cooked, browsed the internet, stared into space. I was in the kitchen when my friend who was reading the news looked up and announced, “So now Trump says he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing any voters.”

I burst out laughing. I was one of the many back then who regarded Trump’s candidacy as a total joke. At times I found him quite funny, and thought he could have made a go of it as a stand-up comic, what with his innate feel for the audience and sense of comic timing. Yet I couldn’t imagine him getting the nomination, let alone becoming President.

The joke’s on me. It stopped being funny long, long ago. In fact, most of the time I feel terrified. Not so much by Trump, who has always made it perfectly clear that he’s a total fraud who has no business being anywhere near elected office. What alarms me are those voters and so-called adults in the room who have continued to support him no matter how many shots he takes in broad daylight. Even inciting an insurrection hasn’t deterred his tens of millions of fans. Or most of his fellow Republican politicians and nominees who hate his guts but will still vote for him.

Of course, Trump has lost voters, which is why he’s no longer president. But still.

My mind has been boggled and broken thousands of times by what Trump has gotten away with.  His latest legal claims of total immunity take the cake. They are as ludicrous and laughable as his becoming president once struck me. But once again the joke’s on me.

So I guess it’s true that Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing any votes.

I just never imagined that the conservative members of the Supreme Court would be driving the getaway car.

Spring in Our Steps

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My husband and I took advantage of a break in the rain and our schedules to head out for a quick getaway for some early Spring hiking. We always feel the most rejuvenated by short getaways for a night or two–no airports, no need to stop the mail or water the plants, no hours-long traffic to wipe out every moment of hard-won rejuvenation.

We found what we were looking for in Sunol/Ohlone Regional Wilderness. We’ve been many times before, and it’s always a winner. Even though it’s a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley and the massively congested Highway 680, Sunol/Ohlone lives up to its wilderness moniker. Such intensely green hills!

This time we explored some new areas off of Welch Road. We didn’t see a soul–at least not of the human variety, but of course my cow-whisperer was his usual magnetic self:

On our way home, we checked out the new-to-us Vargas Plateau, at the base of Mission Peak in Fremont, overlooking the South/East Bay metropolis:

It was a little early for wildflowers, but there were definitely some great harbingers of the peak season to come:

And, of course, the Johnny Jump Ups have us jumping for joy on this first day of Spring!

Happy Groundhog Day: A Celebration of Same-Old, Same-Old

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I didn’t happen to have a groundhog on hand today, so I used my own shadow as a proxy to predict the future. As usual, results were mixed: Under sunny blue skies, I entered the grocery store to pick up some fruit, and emerged not three minutes later into a downpour. Shadow, then no shadow. So spring around the corner, or six more weeks of winter? Where I live, in northern California, winter and rain have become obsolete concepts, replaced by “God, how can we bear this 40-degree temperature?” and “atmospheric rivers.” So I guess today predicted Sprinter and Wing, and lots more of it. Which is not that surprising, since the daffodils are out while the creeks run high under cloudy and blue skies. Per usual.

Per usual is the point of why Groundhog Day is one of my favorite holidays, or at least one of my favorite movies. Nothing else quite captures how one day is much like another, on and on. Our routines are both deliriously comforting and maddeningly monotonous. A creature of habit, I quite like it that way.

Groundhog Day strategically falls right as January’s flush of new resolve–“This year, things will really change!”–gets flushed down the toilet. Who were we kidding? It feels good to burrow under the covers instead of rising early to write, and who wants to down a green energy drink instead of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia just when it’s getting to the perfect melty stage? Out with the new, in with the old.

Speaking of old, you may have heard there’s an election this year featuring two old guys who’ve both been president.

One’s a malignant narcissist who tried to overturn the last election and prefers an address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over–Oh, let’s say–a prison cell. The other’s a decent guy who’s gotten a lot of good done despite massive obstruction, a stammer and stiff gait, and some questionable embraces that are not of the sexual-assault type favored by the first and former guy.

The election’s actually a do-over of 2020, only worse, which has a lot of people far more upset than the do-over Bill Murray faced day after day in Groundhog Day. Bill Murray’s plight had a Hollywood ending.

As for the ending of our Same-old, Same-old election contest in November? It all depends on voters whether we’ll be cast back into the shadows or emerge into the light.

The Cruelty of the Forced-Birth Movement

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This picture haunts me. It’s of Brittany Watts, a 34-year-old Black woman from Ohio, at a court hearing last month, where a judge ruled she could be tried for the felony charge of abusing a corpse after she miscarried. Such things have happened before, especially when the targets are poor or of color. But there’s no doubt that anti-choice fanaticism in the wake of Roe’s upending contributes mightily to this obscene persecution. Here’s the backstory to this picture of a woman caught in a nightmare.

On September 19, 2023, Ms. Watts had gone to the hospital because she appeared to be miscarrying 21 weeks into her pregnancy. Although doctors recommended inducing delivery of her non-viable fetus, she was kept waiting for 8 hours without treatment while the hospital ethics panel debated her fate. She returned the next day and again left without treatment. Soon after, she passed fetal tissue into the toilet, which clogged when she tried to flush. Upon returning to the hospital, a nurse called the police. In October, Ms. Watts was arrested and charged with a seldom-used law against abusing a corpse despite evidence that the fetus died in utero.

Imagine being denied treatment, miscarrying alone at home, then facing charges that could have resulted in a year’s imprisonment.

Fortunately, a grand jury recently ruled against proceeding with this persecution prosecution. The legal case may be over, but the anguish on Ms. Watts face speaks to the indelible horror of our post-Roe abortion landscape.

And this wasn’t even an abortion! But it did occur in the midst of Ohio’s ugly climate as forced-birth proponents in the state legislature tried (unsuccessfully) to severely restrict, even criminalize abortion. As Wendy A. Bach, a law professor at the University of Tennessee noted in the New York Times, “This is part of an ongoing and increasing trend to use the criminal law to punish reproductive health in this country. . . [Ms. Watts’s] punishment started the moment [the hospital’s ethics board] had to debate what to do with her rather than provide her with medical care.”

The cruelty is the point.

But it’s also backfiring. In state after state, voters of all political stripes are rejecting the wet dreams of Gilead. Abortion rights advocates have certainly capitalized on horror story after horror story of what the loss of Roe has meant: a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped being forced to seek an abortion in a neighboring state; her doctor facing egregious threats to her medical license, liberty, livelihood, and reputation; a mother and her pregnant teenager facing charges based on their Facebook messages; women like Texan Kate Cox who desperately want their babies but are unable to get the care they need when the pregnancy goes awry; ob-gyns leaving red states because it’s become impossible to deliver quality care without fear of prosecution in the legal morass of abortion bans.

These, of course, are the stories that generate sympathy and the will to fight back. My heart breaks for the hardships these people face, and I’m grateful to all who have come forward.

But even though the strategy of amplifying such stories has been highly effective at the ballot box, I’m also ambivalent about the hyper-focus on these relatively rare “sympathetic victim” cases. 

After all, the vast majority of those needing abortions don’t fall into this category. They shouldn’t have to. Failed birth control, no birth control, casual sex, awkward sex, great sex, acquiesced-to sex, immaturity, drunkenness, having other goals that don’t include childbirth are no less deserving reasons than a tragic turn in a wanted pregnancy or becoming pregnant through rape or incest. There are no categories of deserving or undeserving people when it comes to the decision of whether or when to bear a child. Everyone deserves the freedom to choose.

So come November, choose to overturn the cruelty of the forced-birth movement. Vote blue.

All the Light We Cannot See

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Candle in the dark

It’s a wonderful novel, a so-so Netflix adaptation, and an expression that captures the essence of this winter solstice season.

This longest night of the year caps off a year of much brutality: Ukraine; the Israeli-Hamas war; a world on fire; so many people hungry, unhoused, desperate; casualties mounting in our gun-obsessed culture; an extremist Republican Party that has enabled a man who should never have been President and is now a coin-flip’s chance away from ascending once again to the Oval Office even as he should be headed to prison. Personal and hidden sorrows that don’t ever make it into the headlines abound. It is sometimes hard to see any light.

And yet it is there: the millions who have not given up on peace and compassion, on seeing the humanity in the other. Those who know that despair is an enervating strategy, and who thus work—tirelessly or tiredly–for change. Hard work bearing fruit. The green fuzz emerging on the gray-brown hills as rains come to the parched earth. Babies and young children whose joy and urgent demands insist on life and laughter. A consoling casserole, an embrace.

The stillness and replenishment of these dark times yields to light. Hope is the light we cannot see.