Today is my birthday, and I woke up feeling good. The prospect of a day off with my family, and a tasty brunch awaited. But as the morning grew, the familiar sensations of chest-tightness, gloom and a rapidly disappearing appetite, set in. I know from experience that this condition can only resolved by the verbal vomit of a self-involved personal narrative essay the likes which the internet should be entirely tired of by now.
Thirty-three years ago my mother died, on Thanksgiving. I was seven years old, one year older than my daughter is now. My mother was forty-two, two years older than I am now. I’ve always harbored animosity toward the holiday, feeling distinctly ungrateful for its existence.
I love making lists. Who doesn’t? I have a million. I have them in my phone, on my computers, online… I have a list on my phone of eponyms, or aptonyms: people whose name describes their job. It’s impossibly common: Jonathan Buck from Fish & Wildlife, Emily Cook the chef, Jane Welcome the visit coordinator at UVM…. I have lists of gifts, lists of what to do, lists of movies to watch. On the weekends I like to make a paper list of tasks to get done. I keep it on the kitchen counter and I sometimes write something on it after I did it just so I can cross it off.
On September 10th, 2001 I stayed at work until 11pm desperate to finish a project, for no particular reason. I slept in on the 11th to be awoken by the phone ringing off the hook to discover I was in the midst of a national tragedy. Two airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center, just a couple miles away. The days that followed were piercing sadness. The social fabric had changed instantly. Everyone needed to see or talk with everyone they knew. We were unable to joke. There’s was only “are you okay? Is your family okay?” Work at our jobs felt meaningless. All we could do was talk about the attack. We collectively went through the stages of grief. Shock. Complete and utter shock. Denial: this couldn’t be happening. Despair for the victims. And then anger at the perpetrators. Sound familiar?
I was a winner once. I’m from New York, but now I live in Vermont. Yes, it really is like a fucking Garrison Keillor story here. We have town meeting days. Everyone waves at you and makes eye contact. And people walk down the sidewalks with hand-crafted ceramic coffee cups instead of normal travel mugs because nobody’s ever in a hurry.
Parents face the reality that a Trump presidency could create the scorched earth hellscape of our nightmares in which protecting our children will be impossible. Bullying will be modeled. Violence will be encouraged. All things Sesame Street will be a thing of the past.
I am a little obsessed with ballot measures. I was not a good student as a kid. I was actually a very very bad student. The thing is, being a cruddy student left a mark; now I have a self-inflicted obsession with being prepared for the next test, wherever it may lie. I still have nightmares about being given a test or quiz with questions I haven’t studied for. I hate when little questions pop up in my life I should know the answer to like what are the Sunday hours of the deli or what’s the population of Burlington.
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