How

How do you eat pumpkin pie and turkey and mashed potatoes with people for whom rape isn’t a big bright un-crossable red line?

How do you smile and hug people from whom you expected so much better?

How do you balance this reprehensible, unconscionable choice they made with the many real and concrete ways they have shown you love over the course of your entire life?

These aren’t hypotheticals; I really want to know. Because I don’t have any kind of answer yet and a vanishing amount of time to figure it out.

“Don’t let politics get in the way of friendships or family.” I certainly agree with that when we’re talking about the finer points of income tax rates or zoning laws or transportation policy. There is plenty of room for friendly good-faith differences of opinion in those areas. If we’re talking about very real threats to my son’s education and general future – and very real threats to the literal air we breathe and planet we exist on – and very real threats to my own bodily autonomy and health – and good God, so much more – well, sorry not sorry, the political is personal as fuck and I can’t pretend otherwise.

I often wish that everyone had been required to take a women’s/gender studies class in high school or college, not only because everyone should be a feminist (or womanist), but because of this central lesson we learned early and often throughout those studies: the personal is political, and the political is personal. It’s one thing second-wave feminism got absolutely right. And yes, I know at this point I’ve risked sounding like an absolute parody of myself, but it’s the goddamn truth.

To willingly make the clear-eyed choice to support kakistocratic government because…because…because you’ll get anti-abortion judges and justices? Because you think gas is too expensive? Because you think Kamala Harris is a scary woke San Francisco lib? Because…???? How could I pretend to respect that?

I could go on and on and literally forever on, but I’ve deliberately ignored federal news as much as humanly possible over the last week and a half, and don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. What’s going to happen is going to happen. I don’t need to borrow worry from the future. My brain thinks if it tries hard enough, it can come up with all the right contingency plans for every potential disastrous policy enacted, but of course that’s not how any of this works.

I think we learn pretty early on in adulthood that part of ~maturity~ is being able to hold space for two opposing facts at once. In this case, the facts are these: 1) People in my family have made a decision that I abhor with every fiber and cell and atom of my being. 2) I still love them. I don’t think either of those facts are really changeable. So here I must sit with it, and it feels like one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

***

What I’m reading:

• My most recent completion is Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror“. It’s better than a lot of personal essayist memoirs I’ve read. Respect.
• Now I’m in the middle of Ann Petry’s 1946 classic “The Street” and have just begun Kara Perez’s “Green Money“. I’ve got to figure out how to ethically strike it rich sooner or later.

What I’m watching:

• We continue our sojourn through Suits, now mid-season 6. It’s so great and often pretty dumb but still so great. However, if Harvey and Donna don’t eventually ride off into the sunset together it’s all completely dead to me. Don’t you dare spoil it.
• Someone I know very wisely saved up all the current season episodes of Great British Bake-Off to watch this week in case things went, well, how they ended up going. I wish I’d had that level of foresight, as we are sadly all caught up with it, but every minute in that tent with Allison Hammond is a balm to the soul.

What I’m baking:

• This exquisite little dream of a coffee cake.

What’s getting me through:

• all of the aforementioned things +
• Ashwin
  • watching him figure out how to write ABCs
  • getting amazing progress reports from his speech and OT folks
  • seeing how much his classmates love him and vice versa
  • supporting his random and ever-changing obsessions (currently: dinosaurs, Peppa Pig, “Spooky Scary Skeletons“, the solar system)
• my dad and me sending each other smart-watch screenshot proof of our daily-ish walks
• my work group chat
• Halloween candy
• commiseration with every like-minded person I meet
• finally, finally, F I N A L L Y sweater weather
• we’re seeing Jon Stewart in Milwaukee next week
• we’re visiting my Michelle in February
• having successfully kept Twitter and Threads deleted from my phone for the last 9 days
• acknowledging to myself that even though by many measures it’s been a pretty bad year overall, I’m still here and I’ve done a lot of really fucking hard things and I’m more confident in and proud of myself than I’ve ever been.