And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden…
Protesting Week 9 and Mother’s Day
Protesting this week involved standing out in the pouring rain. Some of the good humor of the crowd was diminished, out in the cold rain, some people balancing umbrellas and signs, others wearing waterproof gear. The crowd was fairly large, considering the weather. The latest outrages – soon to be superseded by the newest outrages, waiting for the next round of outrages, might have fueled some of the energy.
Support from the honking cars and waving drivers and passengers. Negative reactions from the small group who seem to share so much in common – scowls and anger and black pickup trucks. One woman offered both hands in a fuck you. A man yelled out his window, “Suck it up!” as if he didn’t have 401k funds, or any chance of waiting for health care, or a right to a free trial. The promised shortages on the shelves haven’t hit yet, so perhaps that will be when he notices, or when his elderly relatives no longer have Medicaid. A tree pruning company, who had already made motions of disapproval in previous weeks, now outdid themselves. A tractor-trailer with the name of the company came through at a faster speed than a curve before a small town on a small road would make acceptable. The driver steered the truck so close to the pavement and the line of people holding signs that everyone jumped back, and stared after the truck.
They were actually shocked.
At the end of the hour of protest – an hour! So little, really, a man came to do a reading of Governor Pritzker’s speech – or a part of it. It was hard to hear over the rain and the traffic, but he carried on and the force of the words was conveyed by his emotion as he spoke. The birds chose to begin singing as well, a moment that felt as though the earth was applauding any action that would help to save it from those who would destroy everything for profit. At the end of the speech, he told the crowd how he was a life-long Republican. How he had voted for Reagan and Bush, and his parents in their 90s could be shocked at his actions. How he had debated whether to do this, as he could lose clients and friends. How he had decided that if he couldn’t speak freely, the republic was dying, or already dead. How he needed to take the risk, to stand up for democracy. How there was so much more to lose, especially if we were all frightened. At the end of his words, the crowd applauded, then fell silent as he hugged a woman next to him, who looked like his daughter. She had been holding an umbrella over him and looking at him proudly as he read the speech then spoke about his own journey that brought him to speak before us. Us – a crowd of mostly retirees, standing in the rain in Patagonia rain gear, holding handmade signs. Doing the only thing that seemed an available option, encouraged by the weekly turn out and emails from the Democratic group in the town. The man was clearly crying, overwhelmed by the enormity of speaking out for something he believed in, against all the history and convention that he had ever known.
Standing in the rain felt appropriate.
Mother’s Day
The earth is our mother. Reading about how the current government has fired National Park employees, and now intends to sell off public lands to private companies for exploitation, makes a mockery of caring about women and mothers. As does denying them health care. Apparently the rate of maternal deaths is skyrocketing in this country. Or you can watch the videos of ICE, masked and anonymous, tearing apart families, disappearing women, lifting them into vans while their children and neighbors scream, cry, protest. Pictures of children maimed by war in Ukraine and Gaza, homes destroyed, tiny bodies made even smaller by starvation.
This is a world of plenty. We take the garden, and level it, while listening to an insane man talk about moving to Mars, knowing that his company can’t build trucks, that he is planning for a company town in Texas where he will send up more rockets, tests that were already under scrutiny for destruction of wildlife, pollution of water, endangering airports. The cars and trucks that crashed or burst into flames, killing their drivers – the previous government had been investigating him, before his donations and the current government corruption fired those employees and closed those operations.
Mothers raise children, and protect them. They teach them right from wrong. They hold them when they are crying, and celebrate them when they have succeeded in doing something that they worked at.
We may all know mothers who didn’t do those things. Who taught the wrong things – greed, laziness, cruelty. Who were cold, distant. Who, when faced with children that only wanted what small creatures who need protection want – love, care, warmth, approval – did not care. But even if we never experienced love, or not enough of it, maybe mixed with bullying and distance, indifference and shaming, we can still feel what is right. We can still dream of love and try to do the right thing. Love nurtures and grows. Hate makes things ugly and empties us of emotions unless they are negative ones, like fear and despair.
Doing the right thing is within our reach. Cynicism and selfishness destroys what is good within us. Small actions, the consistency of appreciation as opposed to perfection is what plants and children and pets and the land need. Not a once a year holiday with flowers and a card. Performative love is not love at all.
Giving birth and nurturing demands more of us than we could ever imagine. Destruction is nothing – thoughtless, over in a second. Yet too many people admire those who destroy while holding mothers in contempt.
If more of us could think of how we approach life – and then do it as if we were mothers, whether it is feeding children or plants or animals, as opposed to using people up, for profit, without regard to suffering.
Mothers who care do not want suffering.
