“Put your hands in your pockets and just keep moving,” I told her. It was January 20, 2009, and my daughter was a freshman at Georgetown. It was Obama’s first inauguration, and, maternal instincts notwithstanding, I encouraged her to play through the pain and risk frostbite. “You’re witnessing history,” I told her. “You’ll thank me one day.”
Were any of my children inclined to thank me for anything, my guess is it wouldn’t be that. My guess is also that she remembers that day, how she nearly froze her fingers off for some greater good that nobody, back then, could possibly have known would be so fleeting.
Tomorrow will not be a cold day in hell, if only because such a day is, by definition, a one-off, and this is, tragically and inexplicably, a rerun. But it will indeed be cold, even for those of us who remain indoors, and it will indeed be hellish as we watch the keepers of our democracy, however flawed they might be, turn over the keys to a most horrendous being and his equally horrendous — if somehow less “charismatic” — minions. The chill will be overwhelming, the grief for so many of us palpable.
For the past two and a half months, I have hoped for a January Surprise. Perhaps actual facts aired on news outlets that have been overtaken, before our very eyes over the course of decades, by right wing oligarchs-in-waiting. Perhaps a sudden revelation from an FBI investigation that had been somehow kept quiet. Perhaps a refusal by the Chief Justice to administer the oath. Okay, that was funny. Perhaps a gilded paddy wagon waiting to load up all the insurrectionists in attendance who let others do their dirty work while they thrive behind their castle walls.
Before November 5, 2024, I couldn’t fathom how the race seemed so close. Now I just can’t fathom anything. How countless individuals, many of whom were young women, risked everything to tell the truth, for nothing. How countless young people rose up to fight against gun violence, for nothing. How countless young couples bared their souls to share the tragedies of pre-natal health care of all sorts being denied, for nothing. How this horrible little man will be installed again as our president, on Martin Luther King Day no less.
My strategies have all failed. I don’t watch cable news, but I am not immune to newsy alerts on my phone. I shun all that support this tragedy, but I realize some are too close to home. I throw up my hands and give up, but I read articles encouraging me not to do that. I vow to do something, but I have no idea what to do.
The best I can do, at the moment, is keep the faith, and avoid the television screen tomorrow. (Thank goodness for the Monday Criminal Minds marathon on Mondays.) The best I can do, perhaps, is to “put my hands in my pockets and keep moving.”
