Montezuma's Revenge

It's my first trip to Mexico since we started building walls.

Back in the day, for a brief moment, I may have thought it best that I stay on my side of the Rio Grande, but that was about bacteria, not people. Montezuma sent me fleeing northward a bit early on my honeymoon, but I've long since recovered from that case of the runs, and have happily returned to Mexico countless times since then.

Bad chicken salad. A failed marriage. All distant memories, blurred by the rosy haze of time. I was young, with so much adventure still ahead, and only a handful of bad decisions under my belt. Like the chicken salad and the spouse, I suppose. Mostly, I remember the cloudless skies, the flower petals in the pool, and then, building life, expanding our brood, learning about what really mattered.

Mexico remained a staple -- sometimes for much needed adult getaways, more often for family vacations. The sounds of birds chirping on early spring days in Chicago bring to mind fond memories of morning strolls with babies, before the sun got too hot. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the whisper of the ocean in the whirr of traffic. The mere hint of a Spanish accent gives me a tequila like buzz.

The walls are intended to keep them out of here, not me out of there. But I wonder whether I will feel as welcome this time when I land, once I get past all the time share hawkers. The citizens of Mexico -- particularly in the beach towns -- have always appeared happy to see us. I know it has a lot to do with cash, but still, there has always seemed to be a genuine dose of warmth attached to the transactions. We are friendly neighbors. Were.

On every beach, there has always been at least one man who walks the length of shoreline all day, a mountain of hats balanced atop his head. I marvel at his endurance as I sweat wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and a little bit of sunblock. I marvel at his work ethic, and I wonder how he makes enough money each day to feed his family. Somehow, he does, and, somehow, he is always smiling.

I wonder if the man on the beach wearing all those hats will smile at us this year, or whether there will be an air of distrust, or betrayal. I am, for the first time in my life, embarrassed to be an American -- and not just because I am loud and entitled and expect everyone in foreign countries to speak my language. I feel that if I am still welcomed with smiles, it is undeserved.

I will be asleep by the time we fly over the Rio Grande, and will miss any signs of a glinting wall. The idea of it, though, makes me sad.

With Cinnamon Rolls Like These....

Years ago, I was strolling past the Swedish American Museum in Chicago with a friend. Never trust a Swede, my friend told me, laughing. His mother had always told him that.

He had never taken her advice seriously, but the narrative had stuck. As far as he knew, mom had known one Swede one time who had behaved badly, at least once. Given that I know very little about Sweden or its citizens, I felt unqualified to weigh in on the validity of my friend's mother's opinion, but I was skeptical. Moments later, undeterred, I wolfed down a few of the best cinnamon rolls on earth (in my opinion) at Ann Sathers, my favorite (only) Swedish greasy spoon diner, just down the street.

With Sweden now on 45's no fly-to list, I'm starting to wonder just a little bit about the new President's relationship with the facts. Especially since he has since attributed his allusion to extreme catastrophe in Sweden to a news report he saw on the telly, and he has pretty much told us that all news is fake and the press is public enemy numero uno. Bad hombres.

I remember watching an interview with Reince Priebus a lifetime ago, before he crossed over from being just a garden variety politician to the president's chief harlot (with no offense intended to harlots). I figured he couldn't be all bad, with his loving wife whom he met in church and their seemingly well-cared-for children. Now I wonder who will take care of his brood when he goes down in flames with his boss. I watched him yesterday, twisting himself into a pretzel to explain how all negative press about his pimp is bogus, distracting the rest of us from important issues. Like how Sweden is under siege? I wonder if Reince yearns for the days when he was just a low level political hack.

45's crack team of advisors has supplied him with countless out-of-context quotes from former presidents so he can support his condemnation of the press as an institution and stoke the outrage of his gaggle of supporters as they follow him down the dirty path to autocracy. If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. A misguided strategy, to be sure, but certainly expedient.

I have a sudden craving for sticky cinnamon rolls, Maybe I'll top it off with a bit of shawarma and a side of tabbouleh. Surprisingly, I haven't lost my appetite.

One State, Two States, Red State Blue State

Dr. Seuss, roll over.

One fish, two fish; one state, two states -- apparently, it matters not, at least not to us. "Our" new president, putting the artfulness of his deal making on full display; "our" president, consensus builder, Mr. "Let's Just All Get Along." Whatever makes both sides happy. So nice.

A friend of mine who has been far more judicious and quiet on Facebook than I was moved, yesterday, to shout out a well-earned atta boy to the Fox news anchor who came out swinging at fake news and, more pointedly, our pathologically lying president. Amid the many thumbs up and the approving comments was a harsh rebuke from a "friend" of hers. Stop all the mean talk! Barack Obama was a complete idiot, and nobody complained about him this way. Note to self: research lunatic rants from former U.S. presidents other than Nixon.

My friend, meanwhile, did not engage, other than to mention that, as Americans, we have always enjoyed a right to voice our opinions and out dissent. I have long admired her for her wicked forehand, her punishing backhand, her keen and self-deprecating sense of humor, and her fierce devotion to her family. Now, I just love her a little bit more.

It's bad enough that we somehow have a president who is perfectly happy to tell journalists to shut up and sit down when they fail to ask a "simple question" (i.e. one he likes), who proudly reveals his assumption that all black people know each other while proclaiming he is the least racist person he knows, and who responds to most questions with rambling reminiscences of an exaggerated electoral college win. A president who has called all journalists liars. Nixon on steroids: I am not a crook. Everybody else is a crook. It's bad enough that we have an emboldened Republican Congress that is too busy drooling about its agenda to care that it is endorsing and enabling an unprincipled megalomaniac who has bullied his way into the Oval Office. It's bad enough that there are enough folks out there in this country, our country, who have been liberated by this man, unleashed to voice their racism and hatred and staggering ignorance because a shameless privileged man-child in a tuxedo has somehow convinced them he is on their side. Sure, he gives a shit about them, to the extent they handed him a golden ticket to the ultimate notch on his bedpost.

Yes, it's all bad enough. But what makes it worse -- far worse -- is that so many other people have decided it's okay to look the other way. We have become a nation of folks who think it's okay to look out for number one, even at the expense of, well, everything. Liberty, the planet, civility, for starters. Another "friend" of a friend shouted a response to a Facebook plea for an end to the insanity: Look at the markets! He's doing a great job. Give him a chance. Stop being a sore loser. 

The markets. I think about Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, twirling precariously on rotted beams in an old barn while a hateful government works tirelessly to make him and his ilk disappear. If I were a rich man....  He fantasizes as he tap dances on the precipice, of life as he knows it -- not well heeled, but well lived. "Our" president pops into coal country on his way to a weekend of exclusive clubbing, beckons miners to the podium to attest to his greatness. Do they really believe that he will make them rich? And, more importantly, do they really believe that is the answer? Tevye knew two things: he would never be rich, and, even if he were, that would not solve the real problem.

One state, two states? Let them do whatever makes them all happy -- he actually said that, as if that is  a thing that exists. Why take a side when you can be on everybody's side? The truth is, he is on nobody's side -- except his own. We need more brave souls to stand up for what's right, red fish and blue fish seeing past the colors, past the agenda. It's a matter of survival.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Captain Absolute

It was a typical day in my high school English class. I sat in the back, hoping, as I always did, that the teacher would not call on me. Not just because I was terrified of public speaking, but because I had not gotten around to reading "The Rivals."

Why is he called 'Captain Absolute?' My heart sank when I heard my name. I could feel my face turning bright red.

Because he's the absolute captain? 

My friend, sitting next to me, the one who always got in trouble while I got away with everything, snickered. Luckily, the follow up never came, and I silently swore up and down to never be unprepared again. I was humiliated by my ignorance, humbled by my utter lack of creativity in coming up with something a bit more creative. Wrong would have been far better than stupid.

Forty years later, I've broken that promise to myself more times than I care to admit, though I've become much more adept at speaking about things I know nothing about. Still, it's unforgivable.

Then again, I'm not the POTUS.

It's gotten to the point where I turn off the television whenever DJT starts to speak, not just because he is nauseating, but because I am embarrassed to have become this person who screams obscenities at an inanimate screen. I lingered yesterday, though, to catch the "press conference" with the Canadian prime minister. Let's face it, at least the young Trudeau is easy on the eye -- and ear, especially when he's speaking French.

Asked about specific ways in which the two leaders might navigate some philosophical differences and move forward on issues such as trade and immigration, President Absolute (according to his anthropomorphic policy adviser, Stephen Miller), took the opening stab:

We are going to have a great relationship with Canada, maybe as good or better, hopefully, than ever before.  We have some wonderful ideas on immigration.  We have some, I think, very strong, very tough ideas on the tremendous problem that we have with terrorism.  And I think when we put them all together, which will be very, very quickly -- we have a group of very talented people -- we will see some very, very obvious results.  We're also doing some cross-border things that will make it a lot easier for trade and a lot better and a lot faster for trade.We have -- through technology, we have some really great ideas, and they’ll be implemented fairly quickly. 

Very, very, very reminiscent of that fateful day in high school, when I had not read the play. Well, except with one very, very, very significant difference: I'm not the friggin POTUS. Like I said.

But back to what has me really frustrated (and a little bit terrified) today. The guy who tirelessly skipped along the campaign trail with DJT even though everybody knew he had a penchant for sitting on Uncle Vlad's lap (not to mention retweeting conspiracy theories) has been caught in a fib. Oh no! A fib. To Mike Pence, Vice Puppet in chief. Oh no, just wait until the boss finds out! But wait, the Attorney General whom he has since fired for being, I think, incompetent, let the little impropriety slip a while ago to the White House Counsel. Oh no, did the White House Counsel forget to mention that? Sort of the way the General forgot that, yes, traitorous discussions about lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia did indeed come up at least once. Well, if the General felt the need to resign for fibbing to the VPuppet, then White House Counsel should surely offer to resign for forgetting to mention something so important to the boss, oh, yeah, and the country. Hmm, maybe it's all just one big misunderstanding. One big golden shit shower.

Speaking of precious metals, kudos to Melania for figuring out how to get a de facto divorce without paying a dime and while forcing every other American (well, those who pay taxes) to help her get through these trying times. So much for those who think you can't have beauty and brains.

Baffling, shocking, scary. Absolutely.

The American Dream House (The New Fixer-Upper)

This morning, in a Starbucks far from home, I watched a brown skinned girl play with two lily white blond Barbies. The dolls and the girl resembled each other only to the extent that their hair was frizzed and tangled.The brown skinned girl clearly had the upper hand, but she didn't seem to notice.

I could tell the girl was a regular; she bantered with the barristas as she played, her mother occasionally peering over her newspaper with one eye to make sure she was towing the line. The girl appeared happy, articulate, loved. The dolls, partially clad with an occasional limb twisted in an unlikely direction, seemed, nevertheless, loved. They had gotten that way from hours of devoted play, I assume, and not from any intentional abuse.

Recently, in an Uber far from home, my driver struck up a conversation. Black, not brown, a man not much older than I but boasting of multiple grandchildren and his lingering friendship with the woman who was once his wife but from whom he had long ago split. I thought about how easy my life is, as passenger, not driver. I listened politely, even tucked my latest Words With Friends game back into my purse.

Henry told me how much he loved his new vocation. In a few short months, he had met all sorts of people from all sorts of places, had told his story and heard countless others. He used my name frequently, committing it to memory, sewing me into the fabric of his autobiography. Henry and I quickly found common ground; faith -- though not necessarily in the same higher power, pride in having raised children, how lucky we feel when we wake up to a warm and sunny day.

Henry told me he had no patience for negativity. Life had dealt him plenty of blows, but he never dwells. He told me he had a lot of friends who had been depressed since November. November. If he hadn't already commanded my attention, he certainly did then. November? I asked him, though I knew immediately what he meant. The second Tuesday in November, 2016, the day on which I felt betrayed by a country I no longer recognized.

He chastised me for being discouraged, reminded me I had no right to complain unless I did something about it. I write, I told him. I renewed my subscription to the New York Times. I've signed dozens of petitions. He wasn't impressed.

But what surprised him the most was my shock. Not my shock that a deranged man child was about to move into the White House. Not my shock at the things he has said and continues to say. What surprised him was that I felt betrayed, that I no longer recognized my country, that I thought something had suddenly changed. That I had no clue how racist this place is, and the only thing that had changed was that it was now okay.

In my well-heeled suburban bubble, in the Starbucks far from home where a brown skinned child plays with lily white Barbies, I still find it hard to believe this is so. Then again, I know plenty of people who have no trouble looking the other way if there's a chance their portfolios will swell. All things being equal, it's a lot easier to have money than to not.

I like to think Henry is wrong, but Henry is so obviously wise. Maybe he will reach people as he drives them around the parts of New Orleans that are as foreign to him as hate and racism always seemed to me. Like Henry, we all have a job to do.

A Malignant Narcissist's Tale: Small Spigots and Big Sticks

It occurred to me today that our new President does not have a dog. Consistent, I suppose, with the germophobia that keeps his spigot out of the golden shower game, but there's more to it than that, I think.

I had to dig back to the nineteenth century to find a gap in White House canine residency, before Teddy Roosevelt and his big stick. With no disrespect to non-dog owners -- I never had one until I was well into adulthood, though it wasn't for a lack of annual birthday begging -- I think dog ownership can sometimes tell us something about a person.

In just a few days, I have been brought to a gasp twice by heartbreaking dog news. One friend had to put a faithful companion down, another is now trying to figure out why his young pal has suddenly gone blank. It's the kind of news that shocks me out of my lingering despair over the state of our nation, at least for a moment, and conjures up memories of this most unique sort of grief. There are far more unimaginable tragedies, to be sure; indeed, those of us who choose to bring dogs into our lives do so with full awareness that they will probably leave before we do.

Our new President does not have a dog. In fact, he does not have any family members living with him in his new D.C. digs, human or otherwise, who might depend on him for love or expect him to turn a blind eye to their messes. It makes sense that a person who is so bent on creating messes would have neither the time nor the inclination to clean up somebody else's.

Back in the day, my fledgling divorce proceedings inspired me to blog. I called it "A Narcissist's Tale" -- a shout out to my ex-husband's attorney's marketing strategy of handing out books about narcissism to her male clients and highlighting portions that proved the diagnosis applied to their soon to be ex-wives. This was before I realized that garden variety narcissism could apply to everyone -- cockiness, manipulativeness, selfishness, the traits that help even some of the nicest people survive -- as opposed to narcissistic personality disorder, which is an official diagnosis with a number and everything and usually involves much darker traits.

So I took this attorney's sight-unseen diagnosis of me with a healthy combination of indignation and humor, given her inflated hourly rates and her habit of wearing short cocktail style dresses to court. And there are no professional ethical guidelines that prohibit attorneys from floating psychiatric diagnoses, even though psychiatrists themselves do so at risk of severe sanctions. But finally, a prominent psychiatrist gave the old Freudian slip to the so-called Goldwater Rule and diagnosed our new travesty-in-chief: malignant narcissist. Malignant. By itself, a word that inspires in all of us the worst fears, leads even the loudest among us to start whispering Cancer. 

A malignant narcissist who doesn't even have a dog. A spewer of all varieties of hate who nevertheless rises to the presidency while hapless folks in the entertainment business make a single unfortunate misstep and lose their jobs. This is our new normal, our new "business as usual."

Somebody get this man something or somebody to care about -- if there is such an animal -- before he makes even more of a mess.

52 Thursdays Later. . . .

525,600 minutes ago (give or take). . . .

I was getting ready for a nap. By the pool. After gorging myself on nachos and a midday pina colada. I had reached that point in the vacation where I was finally settling in, getting acclimated to the days filled with, well, not much more than food and alcohol. When boredom suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing, and I began wishing I could stay longer.

525,600 minutes ago (more or less). . . .

The "before." When deliciously petty annoyances bothered me, like a passing cloud. Or having to dig under my beach chair to find my phone in my bag so I could check the time, for no reason other than to gauge how long I could nap before my next cocktail.

It's coming up on 525,600 minutes of "after." After the unimaginable. The "there's no good way to tell you this" text, from my friend. Only hours after the "here we are drinking Lemoncello's somewhere near the South Pole" text, from the same friend. There is no good way, though I suppose it was just as good a way as any for my friend to tell me her son, a child I had known for almost all of his twenty-seven years, was dead.

The "after." I called her and I begged her to tell me I had misread something. The pina colada. The heat. It must have gotten to me. But it hadn't. So why was I in such a fog?

The immediate "after," I circled. I tried to do what I needed to do: change flights, pack, drink water, breathe. Call my children, explain to them the inexplicable. "There's no good way to tell you this...." I remember walking around that evening, resenting everyone, wanting desperately to return to all that was "before."

It's been 525,600 minutes (almost). . . .

What a difference a year makes, or so I had always thought. The "firsts" have all been checked off, which means only that we brace ourselves for the "seconds." It's not as raw, I suppose, but still, I am stunned. There was no good way to tell me then, and there is no good way to tell me now.

Yesterday, I met my friend at the cemetery, for the second time in the 525,600 minutes or so since we buried Adam on the most ugly winter day when the sky opened up and sobbed freezing rain. She came with her usual supplies -- a cup of coffee for her, a cup of coffee for Adam. Nothing for me, but I gave her a pass. And, this time, she came with a laminated proof of what Adam's tombstone will look like when she gets around to ordering it and some massive bright green doohickeys so we could jerry rig it to the marker. We picked dried leaves off his grave. Dusted things off. We did what mothers do.

She wondered why she couldn't cry. Why cry when you still can't believe it's true, so many hundreds of thousands of minutes later. I yelled at him, the way I did the last time, for not being able to outsmart fate, even though he was so ridiculously smart. I caught him up on stuff, in my head, on all the crazy shit he's missed this year, in the year since I left "before" behind.

Four seasons down, four more until we brace ourselves for the "thirds." A half million minutes, give or take. My friend will bring the coffee. All I got is a shoulder, if she needs one.