In the months leading up to the election, both my mom and my dad said to me in separate phone calls from Canada, “I think he might win.” In conversation we used the man’s name but I refuse to do that here, to taint this space with the name of a misogynist, a racist, a liar, an abomination. Both my parents followed the campaign and they were both concerned. But each time I responded with an adamant no. “It won’t happen,” I said. “A country that elected Barack Obama twice won’t elect this man. It’s not possible.”
On the night of the election I shared a photo on facebook of Hillary Clinton in a suit and rainbow sunglasses, riding a unicorn. “Let’s do this,” I wrote. Here was a woman who had spent her life serving others, a Yale-educated lawyer who worked with disabled kids while at the Children’s Defense Fund, who became the First Lady, a two-term Senator of New York, and the U.S. Secretary of State. I had watched her opponent, a narcissist with limited intellect and zero political experience, slag her repeatedly to his followers, physically stalk her on a debate stage, struggle to speak in full sentences, and spew hate and ignorance and lies over and over again, encouraging his followers to do the same. I had watched him mock and demean women, people of color, a disabled man. I had heard the tape of him bragging about sexual assault, and then after, the voices of his supporters defend him. I was disgusted. I was ready for the country to vote and in doing so to silence him, to show the world that this isn’t who we see as a leader, that this isn’t what we want for our future.
We took this photo (or, rather, the young couple also pulled off on the roadside in front of the California Welcome sign took it) on June 22nd. It was a Wednesday. We were nine days into our 13-day camping trip, our hatchback close to bursting with gear and my legs almost certainly unshaved. We were headed to the Redwoods, which proved to be the highlight of the trip, their 200 and 300-foot treetops existing in another ecosystem from the one we stood in, tilting our faces up and squinting.
The original title I had written for this post was “On Moving to Vallejo”. But as I am currently sitting on the floor of our bedroom, the contents of our apartment stuffed into two storage pods parked outside, on our final day in the city that we moved to three and a half years ago, what feels most relevant is that to actually move to Vallejo…we have to leave Portland. And we love Portland.
Sometime in the last few years, Joe and I started a tradition of giving each other ‘experience’ gifts for Christmas instead of tangible ones. We each plan an activity/date to do together and then present the gift in some sort of creative way.
Which, in thinking about it now, is a pretty good metaphor for marriage. Life can be tough, right? Having Joe alongside me to weather the ups and downs really does feel like having permanent shelter.
How’s everyone doing?
Starting a story about California with a picture of palm trees is highly unoriginal, but I decided I don’t care. I like palm trees. I like the wild shapes their leaves make against the clouds, and the patterns of the bark, wrapping in circles from the earth to the sky, and how their refusal to look like anything else on the planet makes you feel like you’re somewhere exotic when you spot one, even if where you are is a city on the west coast of America.
When I was in high school, one of my big dreams was to live in San Francisco with my friend Stu. We had some sort of 60s-era fantasy about being wild and free flower children, letting our creativity blossom and our destiny flow.
How’s everyone doing?
