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The Aftermath part 1

January 16, 2025 by mountainmornings

As promised, this couple lost everything in the California wildfire. Kelsie and Jake are friends of my son and daughter-in-love and would so appreciate any help we can send their way. Thanking you in advance for your generosity. My Irish Nana used to say, “When you throw your bread out on the water, it comes back with jelly!”

We’re so sad to report we are writing today needing to raise money for our friends and fellow Angelenos, Kelsey and Jake, who are self-employed artist/designers experiencing first hand the current devastation in Altadena.

Their world has suddenly been completely changed so they will be using any raised funds for getting back on their feet to help better serve their new community so tragically effected by the Eaton fires.

Anything you’re able to offer to them would go a long way. Thank you.https://gofund.me/8dc86a06

This was us at a quiet time in LA

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Fire and Ice

January 14, 2025 by mountainmornings

Last Tuesday morning, the Rocker and Aunt Kiki called on their way home from the MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist) – they’re having twins remember! I was looking at the ultrasound on my cell, tracing the tiny femur of one and beautiful lips of the other while Bob was getting the details. They were in a yin yang position, feeling free to flip around at will. Weight and head circumference all perfectly normal as we enter the third trimester. Now I told Kiki she must rest, the baby girls will be growing exponentially.

What I didn’t expect next was an apocalypse – the most devastating fire to break out in Southern California’s history – that very afternoon.

“Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire….” Robert Frost

That evening I called my son. I was hesitant because usually we see the worst on TV and what I think is very close to them (an earthquake, a landslide, a flood or a fire) turns out to be pretty far away. But this time I could hear it in his voice; he had corralled the cats into their carriers and one wasn’t very happy about it, he was talking to Kiki who was driving home through smoke, and he’d call me back later. Later, the first thing he would grab when they left their home was Grandma Ada’s painting.

What would be the first thing you would grab?

This morning they are among the lucky ones, their home is still standing. The nursery they had been painting is just as they left it. The Altadena fire consumed my niece Lucia’s school, the elementary school her daughters attend and where she teaches music. We had just visited with them over Christmas break; the Love Bug huddling with her cousins. Wildfires are so fickle. They dance around until the wind takes an ember flying to the next place, and the next… and the Santa Anna winds are merciless. Joan Didion writes:

“There are a number of persistent malevolent winds, perhaps the best known of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco, but a foehn wind has distinct characteristics:  it occurs on the leeward slope of a mountain range and, although the air begins as a cold mass, it is warmed as it comes down the mountain and appears finally as a hot dry wind.  Whenever and wherever foehn blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about “nervousness,” about “depression.”

In the next few days I’ll be sharing their friends’ stories of loss, like Kiki’s friend in Altadena who just moved into her first house in December only to see it burn to the ground last week. Let’s not forget these people when the wind dies down, people left with nothing but whatever they could grab. I would grab the pictures of my past, the ones that were never in the cloud – Daddy Jim as a young Navy recruit, Nell and the Flapper on a NYC balcony, the portrait of the Rocker on his first birthday with his big sister.

This was us last month in LA.

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Pro Forma

January 7, 2025 by mountainmornings

As I watched VP Kamala Harris certify all the votes yesterday, I felt sick to my stomach. She was standing while the Speaker of the House was sitting, was this normal? People were applauding. And all I could see were the interns and clerks, the young people who have to haul and count and manage the certification of Trump’s election. No one objected to the results; it was done the way it has always been done, a pro forma procedure, with a few exceptions.

I wondered how many of the legislators and their staff were there on the House floor, four years ago, when they had to run for their lives from an angry insurrectionist mob.

I’ve felt betrayed and defeated before. I think about my very first vote for president in 1968 for Eugene McCarthy. I was a college student living in Boston, and it was a tumultuous time. Our leaders had been assassinated that same year, first Martin and then Bobby. We wanted the War in Vietnam to end, and Richard Nixon had promised to do just that. But he was a duplicitous, disingenuous politician. Only the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts cast all their votes for McCarthy! The only state in the Union to see through Nixon’s lies.

Serendipitously, I happened to be reading Eric Larson’s, “The Demon of Unrest” in California last week. I’d rather not carry paper books in my luggage, and so I’m left to catch up with certain books on my iPad’s Kindle App. I found myself settling back into Civil War history with Larson’s incredible narrative of the time just before Lincoln’s election to the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A period of just five months! All the intrigue, all the rebel-rousing, all the back room negotiating and the fear. The unbridled fear that a Southern way of life, based on slavery, was about to be extinguished.

” —a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were ‘so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”

It was pro forma for congressmen to carry pistols to the floor, and Larson tells us that if they didn’t carry one, they carried two! President Buchanan, Lincoln’s predecessor, was not just a lame duck, he was the Neville Chamberlain of his time trying to avoid the tornado heading straight for his administration. State after state would secede from the Union, and there reading on a deck in sunny California, I understood the fear, the demonic fear of losing something so fundamental. Like losing the civil rights my ancestors fought for; it’s an existential threat.

In the past few months I’ve been focused on my recovery and not on the fact that Mr T was re-elected. And just as my bones are healing, my psyche is coming to terms with the inevitable inauguration. We are heading into a bleak political horror show, just as a bitter, cold week descends on us here in Nashville.

I’ve started making soup again, all the washing and chopping are good therapy for my hands. These hands must get strong to hold twins! My friend Les brought me cranberry muffins yesterday and while Bob headed over to the Bride’s house to help hang some floating shelves, we got to catch up. Her son went back to college and her husband, a pediatrician, went back to his office. I thanked her for watering my plants while we were away, and leaving us a warm pot of black-eyed peas for New Year’s Eve.

We certainly need all the luck we can muster for the next four years. And ALL the Legos!

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Disingenuous

January 4, 2025 by mountainmornings

I’d like to propose a word for last year: “Disingenuous.” It’s a word that’s stuck in my head, like a piece of music can get stuck in your ear.

Maybe it’s just aging – the way one word slips out of your mind every time you try to recall it, while another word decides to stay awhile. Does this happen to you? I can never remember the name of my favorite drug for instance, it’s an anti-inflammatory like Advil or Aleve but it doesn’t start with an “A.” I can’t won’t take opioids for pain, but this little pill does the trick. And as you know, 2024 has brought me a lot of pain. Its brand name is “Celebrex!”

“Celecoxib is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat mild to moderate pain and help relieve symptoms of arthritis (eg, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis), such as inflammation, swelling, stiffness, and joint pain.”  https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/celecoxib-oral-route/description/drg-20068925

I call this my wonder drug, and yet its name still eludes me. Celebrex lasts for twenty-four hours and doesn’t upset the stomach as much as other NSAIDs, but you do need an Rx. OTOH, I just watched an ad on TV of a young guy falling down, injuring his back, and calling AMAZON to Facetime a doctor and have his prescription delivered right to his door – all while lying flat on his back on the kitchen floor. Doctor and pharmacy visit avoided.

I wondered if the MD or NP on the phone was an AI for a second.

Which leads me right to the next word – the one that is stuck in my head – Disingenuous. To be disingenuous is to be untrustworthy, dishonest, deceitful. You can tell I HATE AI. It’s enough to make me a Luddite. Last year’s election, and the time before that when another exceptional woman wasn’t elected President, has left me bereft. My physical ailments notwithstanding, I feel as if our country has lost its way. Maybe it started with “alternative truth.” Bob has a problem with putting a possessive pronoun in front of truth to begin with… so this is MY truth? Listen to ME! For me, a fact… is a fact… is a fact.

And aging is a part of this circle of life. I’m not injecting toxic chemicals in my body to “fight” aging, because aging always wins. As I enter the last quarter century of my time here on earth, I am determined to slow down and simplify my life. In a Buddhist sense, I want 2025 to be my “aimless” year – no more running after happiness, simply cherish the present moment. I – you – we are enough. In that mood, I don’t need another dog. After Ms Bean died, I started questioning that decision, thinking maybe a lap dog would be fun. But no, it would also create chaos.

And no more disingenuous people please. No more two-faced politicians, like that Republican Senator from Louisiana with an unlikely name, John Kennedy, who stood disdainfully near the podium at a news conference after the New Year’s NOLA terrorist attack. He ridiculed an NBC reporter, and suggested there was some conspiracy the federal government was hiding, and that pure “evil” exists in the world. Old fire and brimstone, just another old white guy giving us all a scolding in an affected voice like Foghorn Leghorn.

The word for the New Year in our family is Twins! Congratulations to Aunt Kiki and the Rocker, their double feature is due in the spring. I’ve got a few weeks left of hand therapy and another baby blanket to knit, but I cannot wait to meet them.

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Mountaintop

December 24, 2024 by mountainmornings

It’s Christmas Eve in Tinseltown

I didn’t know a city could twinkle. Ever since we landed I’ve been pleasantly surprised – the orchestral music in the Uber, the view to Santa Monica with the sea beyond.

My son the Rocker and Aunt Kiki are nesting here among the red tail hawks. There’s an ancient olive tree bending over the hill, welcoming this Nashville branch of the family.

We are building new traditions. Abrahamic descendants baking date bread and frying latkes. My wish for your holiday is simple, be kind to one another. Leave room for love to bloom unrestrained from sarcasm and doubt.

Merry Everything

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Hands Free

December 17, 2024 by mountainmornings

Yesterday my wrist splint came off so I’m hands free! Still doing PT but feeling lighter, like a bobble head doll stuck in a cage and not so much a soft shell crab.

To celebrate, I made the mistake of watching Rachel Maddow last night with Bob. It was either that or the Menendez Brothers’ story on Netflix. She was all about the OLIGARCHS, a word I thought was Russian; but actually Aristotle first used the term in relation to a coercive, oppressive rule by the rich, as opposed to an aristocracy. Its modern day usage centers on the corrupt control of government after the fall of the Soviet Union by extremely wealthy citizens.

“…one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”

And what Maddow was saying last night was wake up and smell what’s happening right now in our country. We saw Elon Musk attached at the hip to Mr T, basically buying his way into political influence at a time when legislators are about to pass a bill about collecting (or NOT collecting) data on driverless cars, mostly Teslas. Maddow showed footage of a full self-driving (FSD) Tesla that stopped short in a tunnel causing a nine car pile-up. One FSD Tesla went around a stopped school bus and plowed into a child. There have been at least 13 fatal accidents since this hands-free feature debuted on Thanksgiving Day 2022.

I was reminded of the ability of gun lobbyists to keep the NIH from collecting data on gun deaths.

But for my own sanity, I prefer to think of all the things I can do now with my own two hands: I can knit, I can wash my own hair, I can open some bottles, and brushing my teeth is a lot easier! Maybe I should try flossing? I won’t be able to drive for six months but that’s because of my neck – another month in the C collar with no sudden twists or turns for me.

Maddow introduced a Yale Professor of History last night, Timothy Snyder, to discuss our current state of affairs. His current book, “On Freedom,” follows a seminal work about oligarchs titled, “On Tyranny,” and attempts to deliver strategies for democracies to avoid authoritarianism. He told us we must not keep looking back, but instead hold the GOP accountable each and every day for their twisted policies; you know like separation of families at the border.

“…he identifies five key determinants of a truly free society – and it seems highly appropriate that those tenets can be counted on the fingers of one definitely raised fist. Each one leads to the next. The foundation is sovereignty (not the resolve of narrow nationalists but the creation of political conditions in which individuals are safe and enabled to make meaningful choices about their lives, underwritten by empathy). That in turn leads to “unpredictability”, the freedom to behave in ways that authority (and algorithms) cannot control; and mobility (the possibility for young people, in particular, to “break free of the structures (and people) that allowed them to become [sovereign]”. That is only possible with the freedom of “factuality” (“the grip on the world that allows us to challenge it” – Snyder makes a particularly impassioned argument about the devastating effect of local news deserts on democracy); and finally, “solidarity”, the recognition that these freedoms are not just for the privileged 0.1%, but for everyone.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/23/on-freedom-by-timothy-snyder-review-an-essential-manifesto-for-change

So I am 2/3 free at the moment with just an Aspen aka Cervical Collar on my neck. I want to stay optimistic, I’m determined to keep typing, to keep you informed of my family foibles and all the while shine a light on our paradoxical politics. Merry Everything Everyone!

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Another Distraction

December 10, 2024 by mountainmornings

We are a distracted world. Look around you, wherever you go, people are looking down at their phones. In France, most everyone walks around tethered to their phones by a lariat around the neck, all ages and genders – exactly like Grandma Ada and her assisted-living cohorts.

Not me. I lose my phone on a regular basis. For awhile I liked the whole Millennial, ‘shove it into your back jean’s pocket’ approach; but after a near drowning in the toilet and the switch to yoga pants I’ve just given up. The worst is when I’ve switched off the ringer, which i do on a regular basis, then all bets are off. I might find it poised on the toaster in the kitchen, or buried in the bedsheets! Bob, the Saint of Lost Things, usually saves the day.

The Groom thinks losing my cell is a good sign, it means I’m not so attached to a screen. I thought it meant early onset dementia.

This morning I got a bit of bad news at the spine doctor’s office. He pulled up the CT scan from the day of my injury over a month ago and compared it to the one taken yesterday. It looks like the odontoid fracture of my neck (C2), isn’t healing as well as we all hoped. He wants me to wear my cervical (C) collar for another month and then we can reevaluate – surgery is still a possibility. Living in a state of flux, not knowing if I’m one wrong step away from disaster, is not what I wanted to hear.

“I don’t like the distraction,” the doctor said.

In orthopedic speak, a distraction is the separation of the odontoid via the longitudinal axis. It was a small chasm on the computer screen between the fulcrum that allows my head to turn. My eyes could see it, but my brain wasn’t processing his words. He was explaining the types of surgery he might attempt on my balsa bones and I’m sure Bob was listening but I’d tuned out. The holidays would go on without me.

Like Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll deal with that next year.

It’s warming up again here in Nashville, from 17 degrees to 57 in a few days, so I can walk outside which is my best therapy. We all walked to the Farmers Market on Saturday after a quick breakfast of Nutella crepes at the Bride’s house. It was a beautiful, sunny crisp day. She whipped her scarf around my neck to hide the dreaded C collar and we laughed to think I could look semi-normal. The good news is I can sleep with a soft collar now.

Have you heard that Australia is banning social media for children under the age of 16? That high schools that ban cell phones are happier places – less disciplinary calls and more student achievement? I think I’ll keep my phone on silent for a few days, let Bob turn his notifications on. Also, I’m less likely to be scammed. Let me know what you’re streaming since I’m all about distracting myself this holiday season.

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Pardon Me

December 3, 2024 by mountainmornings

There’s much ado about Hunter Biden’s pardon. One of the things I learned in Catholic School was to ‘put myself in someone else’s shoes.’ What if you were President Joe for a day – would you want to pardon your son with a history of drug and alcohol addiction who had turned his life around after a long political investigation? He lied on a gun form while high on crack cocaine and didn’t pay his taxes. OTOH, he didn’t intimidate witnesses or try to overthrow the government. So, YES, I’d pardon my son.

Then again, whenever I bump into someone in a crowd, I usually say, “Pardon me.” So I’m an equal opportunity pardoner.

It’s a habit I picked up when I was first living in Boston, Massachusetts in the 60s, and continued while living in the Berkshires. Back in NJ the usual retort was a quick, “Sorry,” but not for me. Maybe my old Catholic school upbringing was to blame; how many times had I blurted out in confession, “Pardon me Father….?” It just seemed a bit more dignified, maybe even a little royal, to pardon people. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word PARDON means to FORGIVE:

“to forgive someone for something they have said or done. This word is often used in polite expressions…. If someone who has committed a crime is pardoned, that person is officially forgiven and their punishment is stopped:“

Forgive me if i see nothing polite about the politics of this week’s Presidential pardon of Joe Biden’s son Hunter on gun and tax evasion issues is nothing new.

In fact, George Washington dismissed charges in 1795 against two Western Pennsylvania farmer/rebels, John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, involved in the Whiskey Rebellion! It would seem prescient that our young nation’s first crisis was a result of Hamilton imposing a tax on a domestic product that was grown and manufactured on the frontier – whiskey. The farmers refused to pay the tax and the resulting violent conflict was framed as a Federalist vs Anti-Federalist issue. Indeed, when Thomas Jefferson was elected President he repealed the Whiskey Tax!

“Residents viewed this tax as yet another instance of unfair policies dictated by the eastern elite that negatively affected American citizens on the frontier.” https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/whiskey-rebellion

Let’s jump ahead, past Confederate and Jimmy Hoffa pardons, to the one I remember in September, 1974. I don’t remember where I was at the time, but I do remember the feeling. Like our nation had gone through so much pain with the Watergate hearings and someone had to pay for trying to interfere with our election. When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon I felt betrayed, not just because of his covert shenanigans, but because he had lied about stopping the war in Vietnam. I actually hated that man!

Deep down I knew that Ford was right by not being vindictive and preemptively saving us from a long trial. After all, Nixon resigned.

Today we have a twice impeached, convicted felon about to re-enter the White House. Mr T never thought to give us the courtesy of resigning, instead he sat idly by while insurrectionists attacked the Capitol. He wanted his Vice-President to overturn the will of the People. And one of his most controversial pardons was issued to his Son-in-Law’s father, Charles Kushner in 2020 after being convicted of “… tax fraud, witness tampering and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.”

Just knowing that one of Mr T’s first acts as President may be to pardon the Jan 6th rioters makes me sick. But like the BBC once said, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. It’s just that ever since a hanging chad in FL and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the five week fight in 2000 of Al Gore vs George Bush, I’ve been disenchanted with our Electoral College. Gore won the popular vote by more than a half million votes. I wonder where we would be now if Gore had been elected when 9/11 happened?

My point is, Democrats didn’t storm the Hill and defecate in the halls of Congress.

My idea of ‘freedom’ certainly differs from the MAGA crowd. They want to be free of government interference, but the funny thing is so do we. We don’t want legislators in our doctors’ offices and they don’t want them in their business either. We also don’t want religion in our public schools or censorship in our libraries, conversely MAGA wants more God in our public places and they love pulling books off shelves.

I’m nostalgic for the good ole days when Washington DC could function, when deals got done and a consensus was reached. When senators went out to lunch together and congressmen and women played baseball together. When truth and trust were collective values. Pardon me for thinking we might return to a more congenial, centrist government eventually – a time when the farmers and the cowboys, the coastal elites and the working class middle of the country could be friends.

Here is the Bride’s Thanksgiving American pie!

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Talking Turkey

November 26, 2024 by mountainmornings

I’ve been accused of falling to avoid cooking for Thanksgiving; it is always said jokingly, and I usually laugh along. But I’m missing the whole chopping and shopping and planning phase because for me it’s all about the sides and the table decor! The Bride’s Virginia in-Laws have already arrived and will be picking up the slack, but she has tasked us with cooking the turkey. There is a cute little Butterball defrosting in our refrigerator, and today we will bake a loaf of corn bread for the stuffing. This is our traditional recipe, classic corn bread stuffing cooked in the bird and not in a casserole dish.

My left hand is pretty free these days, the splint goes on only when I’m outside or around children and dogs. You can barely see the surgery scar. My right hand has to wear the splint all the time for the next three weeks. I’m not supposed to lift anything or exert any force on any one hand – so trying to pull the microwave door open was a mistake. I can push down the seatbelt to unhitch, but I can’t push it in. I feel like Goldilocks, forever looking for that sweet spot between comfort and pain.

My plan is to have Bob chop up all the vegetables for the stuffing the night before and Thanksgiving morning we’ll begin – I will pick parsley and sage in the garden, and I will be able to crumble the bread into the sauteed mirepoix. In fact, this will be hand therapy for me! But Bob will have the heavy lifting; he’ll be brining the bird and assembling the stuffing and getting ole Tom into the oven. Which is fine with me. The Bride is in her happy place baking up a storm of pies and biscuits.

I was invited to see Wicked last weekend with the Bug and I couldn’t resist. Three generations at the movies with candy and it was a marvelous escape, the seats even reclined! Still, it was hard to feel engaged, my head was stuck in its Aspen collar looking straight ahead so I couldn’t gauge the Bug’s reactions. Every now and then I’d throw my splint across her body and I never knew whose hand I was holding. But we all loved it, the costumes, the singing, the fantasy of it all.

I held my box of Goobers with my right hand and carefully picked out one nut at a time with my left – hand therapy with rewards!

On the way home I asked the Bug if she ever felt different. Like Elphaba, did she ever feel the need to defend herself? I said that I always felt different as a child: my last name was different than my foster parents; I had blazing red hair and I wanted black hair; plus I had the whole two mother, two separate families thing. She thought about it for awhile.

“Well Nana, I really don’t feel that different,” the Bug said.

And I felt a calmness seep into the car because we talked about her girl friends and her height and all the tween drama that’s happening. And I understood that this one has a bit of her Grandma Ada’s energy – a willingness to help, a compassionate perspective. It’s almost like the Bride’s yoga study and Ada’s counseling skills found their match in this next generation. I know these are the Wonder Years, and we have high school on the horizon next year, but dear God please keep this child safe.

And thank you for not killing me when I slid into the end table! Here is my left hand at occupational therapy… and Happy Thanksgiving All Y’All!

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Fingers OUT

November 19, 2024 by mountainmornings

The past two weeks have been surreal. One moment I’m toiling away happily at the NYTimes Strands puzzle, and the next I’m laying flat out on the floor. Time and bones fractured. I like to blame things for my maladies – the mosquito for West Nile, the coughing stranger on a plane to Nice for Covid. But this time, I can only blame myself. It was early morning, I was holding my phone and rushing to the door to corral an escaped Little Emperor when my Ugg slipper caught on the rug.

The day before the election I spent in my daughter’s ER. That whole day went by in a blur of x-rays and a neck MRI. The spine NP wanted to admit me, but the neurosurgeon showed up and discharged me into the care of two ER docs! The next morning I woke to the election results – “President Elect Donald Trump.” My cervical collar, my splinted hands, was this all a nightmare? Was I still dreaming? I didn’t want to believe the news and so I told myself that I’d wait until all the votes were counted. Besides, I was due in surgery for my left hand, no coffee no food just Gatorade. I turned off the TV. I couldn’t handle (get it, handle) anything other than the next step in my recovery.

We had to wait a week for repeat scans, thankfully I wouldn’t need neck surgery.

Denial is a powerful tool. Bob would not listen to any election post-mortems, and our daughter is following suit. I’m not willing to go into the weeds of WHY Kamala lost – numbers, ethnicity, socio-economic standing. But this is who we are… this is who we Americans are and where we are right now. The Bride helped me to understand this on a cellular level one night early on when I was going out of my mind with panic, feeling choked by the C-collar and imprisoned by pain. She talked me through in her physician/yoga voice, telling me to embrace my suffering because this is where I am right now... right now… but not forever.

We are still on a news sabbatical, watching Netflix and The First Ladies on PBS, walking outside for exercise whenever possible. I have the best neighbors, delivering the most delicious soups, breads and treats and of course the Bride shows up every day mainly to support her father who has been the real hero in this drama. Along with my left hand, my right wrist is also fractured so Bob right now is both of my hands.

If you recall, he had to wear a C collar for months after his neck surgery that resulted in a cerebellar stroke and I now have a new respect for his strength and resilience. If all goes well, I should be out of my ‘cone of shame’ by mid-December. Meanwhile, my emotions have run the gamut from self-loathing for wearing fancy lug-soled Ugg slippers, to such incredible gratitude for my network of friends and family.

I heard one interview on CNN of a middle-aged couple who came here illegally from Mexico and were granted asylum under Reagan. Their adult children were living the American dream – college educated, good jobs etc. when the reporter asked them why they voted for T they said, “Because these immigrants are criminals!” Can you guess where they get their news?

We Democrats are all suffering through the stages of a collective grief; but my reality right now is singular. I am grieving the loss of my youth when I could slide into second base at Camp St Joseph with ease. I remember vividly twirling around on my knees and sweeping the floor with my hands at the Martha Graham Dance Studio. My body has betrayed me and now my country seems to be hell bent on doing the same.

The only other time my body wouldn’t cooperate with my brain was when we were trying to have baby number two. I had to learn to let go, I had to become the trapeze artist and trust in the safety net beneath me. The Rocker’s birth was a miracle and I have future grandbabies to consider, I need to practice dancing to Adelaide’s lament. “I love you a bushel and a peck you bet your pretty neck I do.”

We took the Harris-Walz signs off our yard but kept the American flag flying on the porch. You can still love your country even when it seems to be slipping away from its foundation right now. I can remove the left splint and move all my fingers so I decided to get a manicure – a rare luxury for me. But we must practice gratitude this Thanksgiving and every single day. Now more than ever.

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