Yes, I Will Take You

The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

from Mules of Love (c) BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002.

Stargazers

There are a lot of things about this time under quarantine that will change me forever, many of them beautiful gifts. It reminds of me that last week before my babies were born. They were late, and each day the waiting was interminable, but I spent the time doing things I would never normally have done. Making friendship bracelets, shopping for mysteries at a used bookstore, going to brunch with my husband on a weekday. How to spend time in an innocent, innocuous, easy way when you are bigger than a house, it's hot as hades (July), you don't want to spend money, etc.

These days, when everything is closed (even the parks), money needs to be saved, and we are all together with no place to go, we are finding new activities, new patterns, new ways of being with each other, new hobbies, and new interests.

The girls have opened a bakery in the playroom and it seems whenever we bake one thing we bake two things at a time. So far Confetti cookies have been a big hit, but we've made our classic family Chocolate Chippers, sugar cookies dyed and marbled to resemble the planet earth as seen from the moon, Magnolia Bakery cupcakes (while retelling the story of when I wouldn't let Kris have a bite of mine when we were dating -- he ordered banana pudding instead, if you can believe it), and pound cake. We made a pizza out of potatoes. Kris cooked a turkey for Easter (our first bird).

We started out with family movies nightly, but that was when we had no kitchen or dining room and every meal was eaten huddled around our coffee table in close proximity to the TV. We watched a lot of classics from our childhood (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Back to the Futures 1-3, Ferris Beuhler's Day Off, A Princess Bride) and some contemporaries (Frozen 2, Forward, The Princess Diaries 1-2).

We've planted seedlings. We've weeded like we've never weeded before.

One night we went for a walk after dinner and watched the stars come out. It was dark, and I pulled the girls in a wagon. We looked at the moon, we noticed a bright star in the sky that turned out to be Venus. The longer we walked, the more stars we could count. We saw Orion's belt appear. It was exciting.

My father started coming over once a week to give astronomy lessons. I downloaded the stargazing app. You hold your phone to the sky and it shows you what constellations you can see. Last night we noticed two stars above the moon -- the heads of the twins of Gemini, Castor and Pollux.

To me, there is nothing more magical, an activity I imagine I'd take up in the best version of my life, and one I certainly wouldn't be doing if not for the quarantine.

I've often time found times of great tragedy and disruption to be teachers. It's uncomfortable to admit but sometimes when everyday life is grinding away I wish that something would disrupt it, snuff out all the momentum and hit the pause button. Unfortunately, I have found that only tragedy and waiting for babies can really slow time -- to recenter and refocus life. The hope is that we will carry these new, slower rhythms with us in the future.

Well, I Didn't See That One Coming

Coronavirus (COVID-19) started as a news item from a distant land called Wuhan, China. I was pretty sure it would stay there. I don't know why, except when these types of things have happened before, that's kind of how it's gone. Then it was on cruise ships. I would never go on a cruise ship so, still distant land. Then there were a few cases in Washington state and it got very bad in a nursing home, which again, seemed very far and didn't apply to me.

Then there was a man in New York who had it. Actually, he lived in New Rochelle and the more I heard about it (he went to a gathering at his temple and a lot of people caught it), at some point I realized he lives in the same town one of my best friends from college grew up in. Her parents go to his temple and live in the quarantine zone. They are ok. But still, all of the sudden, it was getting closer. 

And after living and working in New York City for more than a decade, I was clear that any kind of highly contagious virus that also has along life on surfaces was bad news. I started to worry. Not that I would get it, really, though I did stop touching things so much and start washing my hands like crazy. I started worrying about work. 

I work for a restaurant group that runs seven large restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We started upping our clean down protocols as per CDC recommendations. That was one thing. But then something funny happened that I never saw coming -- people in the news starting telling people not to go to bars and restaurants. People on social media started to say how irresponsible it would be to go out. Very quickly, the restaurant industry became a casualty of Coronavirus. It turns out that highly contagious viruses that become public health crises intersect with hospitality in a big way.

The next 10 days felt like running from an avalanche that we weren't sure was an avalanche til about day 5. There was no leadership from our federal government. The state was slow to move also. The cities are restaurants were in started putting restrictions on our hours and operations -- same day restrictions. Which is unprecedented and completely insane. Also necessary, but I think we may never see a chain of events like we did ever again because people will look back and think, wow, we could have done that better. 

This is a confusing time for everyone on the planet. It just so happens that our industry and my company were at the front of the fallout (well, behind the healthcare workers of course). I have been super keyed in to it because unfortunately I had no choice not to. Now that I am home with my family quarantining and I have some time to process and reflect. 

It is challenging to support the company I had to lay myself off from while also homeschooling by two daughters who are 4 and 8. Their teachers threw together a remote learning program in 72 hours. They go to a Montessori school which is very much about a prepared environment and tangible learning materials. So it's possible that being stuck in my house which is also under construction is not exactly the best place to try and learn. We do what we can while also learning how to all share our days and our space in a constructive way. We practice simple Spanish over crudite platters.  

Half of our downstairs is cordoned off because after 5 years of living in this house we finally pulled the trigger on renovating our kitchen. So our refrigerator, amongst other things, is currently in our living room. And we are trying to stockpile food that will last us days. We are doing dishes in our bathroom. All things considered I think we are handling it much better than we thought it would. 

I know people who have gotten sick from it. It is scary. I don't want anyone to have to go to a hospital right now for anything. 

I have a similar feeling to how I felt on 9/11/01, when I was a student at NYU living in a dorm on Union Square, or when Trump was elected in 2016. I grew up in the 80s and 90s when it seemed like nothing mattered, nothing was ever going to happen, and history was over (there was even a guy who wrote a famous book called "The End of History"). And these events make you realize that you are very much living through history. Personally, I feel like this is 9/11 times 1000. 

We don't know how long we are going to be quarantined at home. We don't know how long our businesses are going to be closed. We don't know what the fallout will be from this virus -- the sick, the ones we will lose. The economic casualties. Will I be one of them?

I keep thinking of my grandmother who grew up on a farm in the Depression. There is a part of me that just thinks, if this is it, if all the boom-times are over, I can deal with that. It might be harder, but it might be simpler. I might have a clearer idea of where I stand. I might be able to focus on other parts of my life that have taken the back seat. 

There is another part of me that feels the calling to work in government. It has come up for me a few times in my life. One of them was at the Women's March. When I was leading people off the boardwalk into Bradley Park, I saw my brother and stopped. He remarked at how amazing it was. As thousands of people walked by me, chanting, empowered, I turned to him and said Jim, "I think I could be president." And he said, "I think you're right." 

Maybe that's ridiculous. But I believe government is important, really important at times like these. I believe I have a calling to serve. I believe I'm smart enough to figure out almost anything. I believe I can broker compromise like it's my superpower. I know how to communicate, and I can give a damn good speech. I don't know if I have the stomach to run for elected office, but I have such a yearning in me to be a part of that world, I think it will be the next chapter of my life. 

. . .

We started a coloring club at work to support the workforce that we had to lay of on Wednesday March 18 because of the government mandated response to COVID-19.

As a business, all our intention is on reopening when this is over. That will be a feat for many restaurants, many won’t survive. However if I ever had to bet on a team, I’d bet on ours at Smith. Pulling off the impossible is our specialty.

So many need support at this time. This problem is bigger than any one person, group, company, or industry. We are dealing with a human problem and all our lives are at stake. With this stunning cascade of events, in this international emergency, our 7 restaurants at Smith had to close their doors last Monday for the health of the public and our employees. Our biggest imperative is that we open up as soon as is feasible when this is all over. When? When. Until then, we are taking it one day a time. 

The thing I have grown to cherish most about the hospitality industry is that a healthy, thriving restaurant requires all different kinds of people in order to function like a well-oiled machine. The breadth of backgrounds, ages, races, professional and education experience, the hard-knock tales. The tales of incredible triumph and transformation. When given an opportunity, a restaurant is a place where a person can rise above wherever they came from to create a new future for themselves and their family. It's usually the person you never see coming who ends up being your champion.

The reality in this country is that most Americans have little-to-no savings for the kind of a head-spinning, lightning fast crisis like the one we find ourselves in with COVID-19. Not for medical bills, not for sudden unemployment. Which is why we wanted to put something out there in the world that might highlight the incredible love and generosity spreading around the world, and create a cushion for our staff in this time of emergency. 

I don't know how you choose where to give right now. I don't like having to ask for handouts. But I do like to color.

https://smithrelief.fund 

P.S.

If you made it this far, don't you agree now's a great time to pass Medicare for All? Call Congress now. 202-224-3121

More / Less

Inspired by Cup of Jo (still the best blog out there), in 2019, I'm seeking

MORE

Fun

Intimacy

Vulnerability

Day trips

Bath bombs

Reading 

Writing

Love in my heart

Organization

Home cooking

Trying new things

Kindness

Outdoors time

And LESS

Impatience

Instagram

Gossiping

Anxiety

Insecurity

Candy

Mental escape hatches

Let's see how this goes, new year.

I Am A Grownup

I found this draft from April 2017 and I am delighted by it.
Maybe I'm back.


I drink black coffee.
I have two children.
I make my bed more often than I don't.
I am on the fundraising committee of my child's private school.
I clean my dishes after I use them.
I pick up all the trash that rolls up on my property on a weekly basis instead of being too resentful of slobs that litter to pick it up.
People (multiple people) have asked me to run for elected office.
I have a LinkedIn profile, that I put effort into.
I make lunches.
I am in charge of flossing other people's teeth.

I stopped resisting life, in my better moments.

Clippings For The Scrapbook

One day I'm going to write here about my experience organizing the Women's March of Asbury Park. It feels like it's still very much going on, so it's not ready to come out yet. The facts of the matter are captured in the links below. A wild idea, a casual yes, and after less than one week of planning, 6000 people marching through the great streets of Asbury Park who got to experience catharsis, healing, strength, hope, and the beginning a movement that will change the course of the history of our nation.

It has already altered the course of my life in a powerful way. Rather than setting me off on a path I never thought I'd walk, it woke me up to the very power of the path I'd always been walking. I am the child of committed citizens who hung portraits of our greatest presidents on our walls. A 24-hour loop of NPR played in my house for as long as I can remember. I declared my major in History at NYU a few months before the Twin Towers fell, which I watched from my dorm at Union Square. I spent the first decade of my professional career at Quotable Cards, finding, editing, and designing the inspired words of some of the greatest writers, thinkers, and doers of our times. I've spent the past five years of my life at Smith, which has been a professional crucible for me, burning away the accumulation of learned behaviors that I used to hide and keep myself small. The people I work with have been as committed to me as my own damn parents, reminding me what a gift we human beings can be to each other. And I have found friends who are adventurers, up to big things, up to making a difference, who build community wherever they go.

(I'm watching the Oscars right now so maybe I'm getting a little swept away. But remember my old site, Iamunrepeatable.com? This is me.)

Sometimes when the light shines on you, you get a chance to see who you really are, who you've always been, and that you have always been enough. And that knowledge frees you up to know that you can do anything.

Coverage of our march from our local paper of record, the Asbury Park Press, with a short video.
http://www.app.com/videos/news/politics/2017/01/21/women's-march-asbury-park/96897838/

A short video of my remarks at the beginning of the march, including The Oath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCJETqadNBo

Our follow up letter to the editor to the Asbury Park Sun:
http://asburyparksun.com/gratitude-in-their-own-words/

Our Women's March of Asbury Park page, including our next event:
https://www.facebook.com/womensmarchAP/

v 2.0

I submitted my acapella rap to a production going on in Asbury this winter called THE AMERICAN FLAG: TRUMPED. Why not?! I revised it a bit so that it isn't so specific to the time and place it was born. Wanted to share it with you guys, since I'm not at open mics every Tuesday, and it was burning a hole in my pocket. 

The difference is basically more cursing, more anger at the election post-mortems, and my admittance that I never did like Thomas Jefferson. (Listening to the Hamilton soundtrack has only reminded me of my first impression and confirmed my distaste.)

Hamilton State of Mind

My baby cousin’s

got this Hamilton-
non-fiction-
Rapping play on replay.
Michelle Obama,
Music Drama,
And it's on All day...

But we all got that upset-
Trump threat,
PTS - D OD.
It's liberal hell-
Can Lin-Manuel
Take all of this
pain away?

It's just a little hip hop,
Some say,
But they’d be wrong-
ALL Day.

Cuz we all know
That words matter.
The pen shatters
the sword-
Paper smothers the rock-
A bill could kill the glock!

Stronger
together?
There's still time-
Si se puede

Don't be shy.

Putin’s coming

for our democratic government.

The keys to our kingdom

Went to a capitalistic internet.

Wall Street’s getting richer,

While the poor die in the street.

Obamacare can’t save you-

“Live free or die” – Preach!

You think this is all the Davos Man?

Motherfuckin C’MON MAN.

You can’t kid yourself now.

You just thank me later--

Imma tell you how

This shit’s much, much plainer.

It’s so simple that you missed it.

You’re too close,

And now you’re twisted.

It’s that sado-misogynistic-

All-men-created-equal

Thomas Jefferson

hypocrite shit.

It’s ridiculous!
Can’t you see it?

America’s a dream!

So sobeit!

But there’s no rest for the wicked.

And without it, you don’t last.

Guess who invented “this too shall pass.”

Do you have land, for the taking?

Free labor from a chain gang?

Resources for the grist mill?

And/or a reproductive system?

Turn down your white noise,

Forget the Founding Fathers--

It’s that mythic City on the Hill shit,

That when it’s built,

you gotta build a wall around it.

Don’t play stupid with me-

And we’re way past denial,

And whatever you do –

Don’t you tell me to smile.

I’ll come for you softly

Like a hot knife through butter,

I don’t have time for fools,

I’m a full-time working mother.

And I’m done listening to other people

Hollering,

Hogging all the air in the room,

I stopped bothering,

Putting myself in the conversation.

So that’s it! This is my revelation.

I see now, you depend on my participation.

But who am I to say?

And what am I to do?

I’m just gonna to have to be me.

And you’re just gonna to have to be you.

And we’re going to Hamilton

the hell out of this,

And when we look back,

we’ll know we wrote for justice.

We were the voice of welfare,

and the blessings of liberty,

And it was done by little you’s

and little me’s,

From sea to sea to shining sea.

-->

A Very Rappy Thanksgiving

After Thanksgiving dinner my little cousin introduced the family to AutoRap, an app that takes anything you say and makes it into a top 40 hit (seriously, it almost could). It was the perfect thing to get past the tryptophan. The little ones were super cute, I sounded like Iggy Azalea, my jazzy uncle threw down with some baritone "Hello Big Bopper" (CLASSIC), and my mom spit a verse from "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening." It was so good it was stuck in my head for 3 days.

Those same cousins listened to the Hamilton soundtrack for hours on the drive up to Maine. This led us to watch Lin-Manual Miranda freestyle battle rap Black Thought from the Roots on Jimmy Fallon over Black Friday breakfast. Only watch if you want to see an electrifying display of genius-ness.

Coincidentally that night was our annual dinner concert, put on by various members of the family. It's usually a few jazz numbers, maybe a few Beatles songs, and lately the kids have performed a few numbers as well. My AutoRap little cousin was preparing an original rap over an instrumental, and told me he could be in his crew. I was honored, and pumped given all the hip-hop stimuli, but my toddler toddled off to another room and I had to leave the rap "studio" jam sesh.

But armed with iPhone Notes, I was off to the races. Maybe it was the liberal bubble, maybe it was the love of family and the exuberance of the kids, but I started telling everyone I was going to rap at the concert. And I did. And it was so fun. I had red cheeks and tears in my eyes at the end. 

When I was 18, the apple of my eye asked me if I'd be his Robert Hunter. Hunter was the official lyricist for the Grateful Dead. This invitation was a blessed outside confirmation of both my deep love of music and my way with words. I was very flattered by the offer but never felt I knew how to write a song. It went nowhere. He's dead now. Not Robert Hunter. My friend.

I'm turning 35 this week. It's taken me as long to discover that figuring-out-how is a great stopper of things. It's better to just do, without worrying whether your output will be right, good, or perfect. Save judgement for after it's done, if you ever get that far. Donald Trump is our new president. I'm going to die one day. You are too. There's an opiate epidemic out there claiming people. There's global warming. Syria. What are you going to do? 

Remove your stoppers. Pierce through the blockage. Creation is an anecdote. It causes movement, makes openings. Pathways to other places.

So here's my acapella rap. Next up, beats. Imma let it flow.

Hamilton, The Sequel

Stella's got this Hamilton-
non-fiction-
Rapping play on replay.
Michelle Obama,
Music Drama,
And it's on All day...

But we all got that upset-
Trump threat,
PTS - D OD.
It's liberal hell-
Can Lin-Manuel
Take all of this
pain away? ...

He said we got 

this one shot-

One shot!

Yes we got 

this one shot-

One shot!

So we gonna

be like Steph Curry
in a hurry-
Melo be that ball hog-
Those Trump loners,
Selfish soldiers,
won't in it for the long haul...

We got 4 years:
grinding gears-
bake sales, epic fails,
Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin,
mass shooting, Portland's looting.
Black lives matter,
so do I, 

you do too-
White silence
causes violence-
Get up now,
I mean you.
...

Are we gonna stay here?
Drinking pour over?
While the fly overs
Are playing Red Rover?
No! -- 
We be those rabble-rousers,
Fist-shakers,
Trouble-causers, bubble poppers.

Revelation? Revolution!
It's a Pant Suit Nation
Declaration 

of Dependence upon
Common Sense--
Yes!!

Stronger
together?
There's still time-
Si se puede

Don't be shy.

Is this land your land?
Or my land?
His land?
Or their land? --
It's our land.
Don't forget it, regret it,
alphabet it--
From Z to A, and A to Z,
Bangor, Brooklyn and Jersey.
From The Golden Gate 

to the Tappan Zee.
We build bridges-
And democracy.
Yes it's our land-
from to sea to sea to shining sea-
To little you, 

to little me
Just sitting there, 

in your seat...

It's just a little hip- hop-
Some say-
But they be wrong-
ALL Day!
Cuz we all know
That words matter.
The pen shatters
the sword-
Paper smothers the rock-
A bill could kill the glock!

Can't talk dirty to me--
Throw my name in the gutter-
I'll kill a fool
Like a hot knife through butter.
I write the rules,
The rhymes, 

And the blues.
I'm standing here,
With no microphone,
Just a pen a paper-
Check that -an iPhone-
To say this ain't a house-
It's a light green home.*

We're here to stay,
And I'm here to say-
That I'm the D A double-L A S
Live on West Broadway--

Hey!!!!

*My uncle just got Midnight Green shutters, and is really excited about how they bring out the light green color of his house. This was my favorite part of the rap.

Snapshots From My Liberal Bubble

A large part of the allure of New England is its timelessness. The barns, the cedar shake, the rock walls, the colonial architecture. It's an unchanged, idealized, airbrushed snapshot of Americana to bask in while you eat your lobster roll and your blueberry (apple?) pie.

We're in Maine this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, 21st year running. We stayed three nights in Kennebunkport for a little R&R before the family gathering in Bangor. 

There are no awkward dinner conversations across party lines here. It's a retreat to our family bubble. And you know what? For a vacation, for this week, it's fantastic.

Government

The global nightmare of what I've been referring to as #Trumpocalypse has been upon us for almost a week now. I can best describe my feelings about it as an elevator of sadness, because there are so many levels to my upset and disappointment. I won't spell them all out for you here, because if you are reading this, odds are you already know too well what they are.

I heard a journalist on "The Run-Up" describe the surprise of Hillary's loss as "a failure of expertise on the magnitude of the fall of the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War." 

Yes. 

Media failed us. The Information Age failed us. In the oppressive nowness of the Internet, data, social media platforms, and our so-called "smart" phones, we’ve lost something. Our heads are down, glued to the shadow play of our screens. We’ve willfully surrendered a dimension of our reality. We've been flattened. 

In the election post-mortem, a slow-mo replay of the sucker punch, the dominant narrative looks like it's going to be that Hillary didn't do anything to connect with the white working class. I think when it's written in the history books, they'll tell a different story. A more obvious one. 

My husband, who makes Bernie Sanders look like the center-left establishment, has this theory: no one has done anything really to help the poor in this country. The Democrats have aligned themselves to welfare and bureaucratic assistance programs, which, when you get up close to them, are horrible. Better than the alternative Republican philosophy (survival of the fittest), but no way to live. Dispatches from your local community organizer. 

The thing is, I am a partisan Democrat. I was brought up on NPR, PBS, and LWV. But the reason why I vote Democratic down the line is because I believe in what the party stands for. It's not perfect. It may get perverted or watered down in practice, or lead to bloated government, but the Democratic Party in my lifetime has stood on the side of good more often than not. While the Republican Party is out there capitalizing on religious fervor, racism, and xenophobia, we're making room in the tent. If that is going to cost me a little more in taxes, sobeit. I was raised to believe that those who can spare some should. 

What I got from listening to my husband is that I have the luxury of worrying about the optics and the principles of my politics, while families living in poverty may not have the time. So I've made a commitment to myself to spend my time more wisely. Less Netflix, more politics. 

Wake the fuck up, Dallas. Be that change. 

I didn't fully realize how much Hillary Clinton meant to me until she didn't become our next president. All those people who hate Hillary so much... Why? Would they feel that way if she were a man? To be that determined, focused, unwavering, calculating, and hardened... Every quality that got her to be The First is every quality that was hated about her. It's a goddamn fact, and I had to look inside myself and see how I have been living into that paradigm. Always be likable. Don't go too far out on a limb. Don't let people judge you... 

It keeps you small. 

The first time I told my 5 year-old daughter who was running for president, she got to say “I want the girl to win.” I never had the chance to say that. That is a big deal.

I was out of my mind when Beyonce endorsed Hillary. Beyonce is the embodiment of female empowerment in pop culture today. She spoke of the importance of her daughter seeing a woman leading the country, less than 100 years after women gained the right to vote. I reposted a picture of the moment on Instagram, and an aunt of mine commented with a “thumbs-down” emoji. HRC would tell me not to take it personally, but I did. It's shocking to me how much women reject their own identity politics.

Like I said, so many levels. So many levels. It's a long elevator ride. 

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly… Some of us believe in government. Which is why the election of a man who, thus far, has shown no respect for it or the office he will hold is so deeply troubling. I can only hope that the weight of the office, and the burden of carrying the entire country on his shoulders, will shape him more than he will shape it. 

There, I mustered up some optimism.

I went to the DMV today to renew my driver’s license. Margot and I were there for almost two hours. As tedious as it was, it was also restorative. There, in a government building, filled with a cross section of our citizenry -- all nationalities, all races waited patiently in line, chatted each other up, answered each other’s questions. We got our papers, got back into our cars, and went back to where we came from. 

Six days after, it was a minor miracle for which I give thanks.