LET US BE TRUE

I used to wonder, reading a novel about Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia, how oppressed and threatened people managed to carry on in a constant state of fear. When I saw them going through “normal” motions, I’d feel wary, off kilter, as if evil were about to burst through the drapes into rooms where people drank tea and knitted scarves and quarreled over petty things and laughed at silly ones. Did those people have some way of turning off the fear? Or were they just braver than I?

Recently, during our annual “Revelry on the River” reunion, I watched our family avoid talking about our country’s perilous state. We did gasp an occasional, “Oh My God!” when newsfeeds on our phones offered us another atrocity. The gasper would then say, “Sorry. Sorry. Not going there. Not now.”

We had a new baby here, with the most infectious smile, and a newly married couple, still glowing. The children hung out in the treehouse and concocted secret missions on their walkie talkies. Their parents worked jigsaw puzzles, made rhubarb pies. We watched The Red Turtle with the kids and Carnivale without them. The old folks (That would be me) loved seeing everyone so happy.

At dinner on the deck one night, we slipped up and fell into politics. Michelle, our forty something niece and the new baby’s mama said, “I feel so helpless. Like nothing I do makes any difference.”

I heard myself say, “But we’re making a difference now. By being here for each other. By not letting Trump and his puppet masters destroy us. By not letting them steal our souls.”

Our niece looked doubtful. I didn’t blame her. I’d surprised myself, and I had to look deeper to see if I really believed what I’d said.

I do. I’m not being a Pollyanna. I’ll keep making phone calls to Congress. I’ll continue to resist this regime. But I won’t spend time obsessing anymore, and I won’t use my energy to despair, because I have loved ones to hold close and nurture.

Last week, our thirteen year old granddaughter, Sophie, holding the sign, “I support LBGT+”, marched with Ed and me and the Snoqualmie Valley Indivisibles in our small town parade. Near the front of the parade, staff from a local healing center carried a long, funny-looking thing made of yellow foam blocks. When Sophie and I walked closer, we saw that the blocks were vertebrae and the strange looking thing a spine, the individual pieces forming a backbone that snaked through the North Bend streets.

That’s us, I thought.  A collective spine keeping us upright, moving us forward.

I picture that spine now when I feel afraid, and I believe I know how those fictional characters coped. They refused to let evil keep them from enjoying each other’s company. They refused to let fear steal their souls, and thus their connection. They were there for each other.

“Ah, Love, Let us be true to one another,” Ed often quotes me from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”

Yes, let us.

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