Post-election thoughts

I haven't posted anything since the election, and I've had a few people ask me why, given my usual very vocal opinions. The truth is that I still don't have the right words, because honestly, people like me were part of the problem. Sure, I worked my butt off for my candidate, and I passionately told everyone and anyone who would listed why I supported her. But how many times did I passively turn the other way when someone said something hurtful, untrue, or just plain ignorant, and I "let it go" in the name of peace and friendship?

A very brief story: The day after the election, we ran into one of Zane's best friends and his mom at school conferences, both of whom I adore. Zane's BFF was withdrawn and sullen, totally unlike him. His mom, a very strong and proud woman, had tears brimming in her eyes, and her shoulders slumped. I asked what was wrong. They had simply gone shopping, like they do every week, at Fred Meyer, right here in SW Portland. They were immediately threatened and harassed, and fled for home, fearing their safety. IN PORTLAND. You see, they are a Muslim family, and she wears full hijab. The worst part-- when I conveyed my horror and intention to accompany them the next time they go, she said "we've gotten used to the stares and muttered obscenities, but...". STOP THERE. What? This beautiful family of proud American citizens has endured harassment and micro-aggressions this whole time? In liberal Portland? Where have I been?

The answer is, right here this whole time. Yes, I choose love, yes, I choose light-- but I have let people near and dear to me down, in the name of keeping the peace, and not wanting to be offensive. I also believe that the conversation is greater than the political polarization; this is more than Trump vs. Clinton, Liberal vs. Conservative. This. Is. Us.

So here's this cartoon. It's definitely not the same one that keeps popping up on many of my friends' feeds, the whole "all lives matter, can't we just get along"? (Literally, dozens of postings). This cartoonist put into words what I have been feeling for the past week. This doesn't mean that I can't have a conversation or be friends with someone who's views are different. To me, this means that it's time to take a deep, honest, and maybe painful look at how my life and actions have served others, and how I can do better. I am a very privileged white woman living on my little urban farm in Portland, with my white husband, our white kids, our chickens, cats, dog. That is not to say I haven't had hardships-- I have endured terrible things only the closest friends and family to me know-- but I always have this place of relative safety and privilege to return to. When I walk into Fred Meyer, no one is going to call me a terrorist, call my son a n*gger, or threaten me physical harm for the hat or scarf I may be wearing. I am willing to look in the mirror, take stock and appreciation for what I have, and then shatter the mirror to see beyond, because right now, it's about so much more. It's not a sweet little meme of a Trump and Clinton person holding hands, it's messy, sticky, and really, really scary, and every single one of us is accountable.

If you are ready to join me in the conversation, look deeper, work harder, and find the true humanity and love that connect all of us, you know where to find me.

Fire

Weight of an air pack, axe in my hand.
Just before I clip into air--
            the stench of fear-sweat, acrid, alarmed, excited.
Wood splinters as we crash through a door.
The engines whine and rev high behind us, water spraying, blinding, people shouting.
            Something in my back splinters, too.

Keep going, press on, the ghosts say.

The man, he is there, just out of reach. Just up those stairs. Just through that door?
There is too much fire. The furnace blast of flashover
pushes us back out the door.
I will find him later, still almost standing.
A toppled redwood in a blackened forest.

Skin melts at 500 degrees, stretched gaunt over tight bones.
There is a model airplane-- fire engine red-- on the other side of the door.
             Intact. Unscathed.

Fifteen bullet holes in the skinny buddha's body, his blood
drenched onto scorched California earth, nurturing nothing, nothing.
His hand, still clutching the leash of a whimpering soft-muzzled doberman.
Three drifters, they will say. Senseless.
           Thoughts and prayers, they will say.
A wake of grief rippling an entire coast, like a funeral pyre.

Did he notice in that frozen moment the flash from the gun, before
flesh ripped, before gasping dreams spilled forth, uncontained?

The blonde head of my son, hair thick and smelling of campfire.
If the shooter comes to the classroom, mom, you just
drop off the ledge and out the window.
You'll only break an ankle, maybe a leg, but probably not the whole thing.
Other wise, you have to charge him, throw a chair.
His large blue 12-year-old eyes contemplate the physics
of facing death.

A car backfires outside
I lurch my body over him.
            Geez, mom, it's just a car
            and anyway, I have homework to finish.

My anger and grief are steam rising off the back of a hard run horse
galloping, frantic and seeking familiar pasture.

Where is the safety, who will be the rescuer
in this hot, sticky, salty viscera?
Sirens light through the dark sky in the distance
Familiar, comforting, haunting.

These ghosts and I, sitting outside the fire, gazing in.
Our reflections dance, entwine, ensnarl
Eyes glittering, rapt in the distant shimmering heat.



©2016 Dacia Grayber

The light of his broken teeth

Two days ago, my son broke another one of his permanent teeth, this time while throwing himself with wild abandon into a backflip on the neighbor's trampoline. While reportedly almost a perfect execution, Zane went into the tuck a bit over-vigorously, and threw his knee into his face. There was a moment of confusion on what had happened, until he said he "felt a painful hole in his mouth" and noticed blood seeping through his pants. Apparently, the force of his patella was great enough to break his left lateral incisor about 1/3 of the way down, leaving the tooth temporarily lodged in his knee. The tooth came out, and with the intrepid scrutiny that is unique to a 9-year-old sibling, little brother quickly came up with the missing chunk. Boys, tooth shard, and bloody pants came home.

It is no accident that our pediatric dentist knows Zane by name and athletic incident, and I think perhaps might regard our family with a small grain of incredulity. The forthcoming emergency trip to the dentist for a broken tooth was Zane's second.

Only a year and a half ago my supernaturally strong bean-pole child was demonstrating his parkour ability to a rapt 3-year-old out at dinner. Zane jumped onto a street sign to show him a horizontal "flagpole"move, and either in a dramatic miscalculation of the pole's location, or a failed missive at flying, fell straight down, tooth first, 2-3ft onto the concrete. The horrific cracking "smack" that followed was enough to make the other firefighter/ paramedic friends I was with scream. My golden-haired child lay motionless on the ground, only long enough for me to envision the bloody broken horror I would find when I abandoned 20 years of medical training and leapt to him, quickly scooping him up in my arms, any principle of spinal immobilization gone. There was very little blood, his eyes welled with tears and refocused, and he gently spat a perfect triangular shard of his first adult tooth out into my hand. We were both shaken, but he had the words. "Mom, how did I miss?"

Which brings us to Tuesday morning, seated in the world's friendliest pediatric dentist office. While two visits is by far not "routine", the dentist did explain to Zane that one only has so many permanent teeth, and at the rate he was going, he'd be in dentures by college. This time the damage was more severe, the pulp nearly exposed, and a crown in his near future. Zane, true to his nature, did not miss a beat to ask if this was his opportunity for a gold crown with "just a small diamond, nothing too showy". (He was only half joking). He smiled at me, and then it hit me.

Both times, both broken teeth, his face has been nearly unscathed. No teeth gnashing at angles through lips, no bloody torn mouth. Just cleanly broken teeth. This is because in most everything physical Zane does, he does with a giant, wide, beaming smile. I was overcome with gratitude and amazement.

What a marvel, to be an almost 13-year-old boy, at the pit and precipice of teenage angst and turmoil, and plunge into the world without caution, with near-blind abandon. To dive at a flagpole, believing in your heart and soul that you would fly horizontally, that your sheer will and the assured love of gravity would hold you. To hurl yourself high into the air backwards, all fibers of your slight sinewy back and gangly legs contracting, gathering speed and force, eyes and mouth wide and sucking in the damp spring air. No disgrace, no embarrassment, no shame…. and no fear. Believing in your place in the world, penultimately present in the moment, even in the blazing pain of an unexpected trauma. And most of all, hours later, to beam that same, unfettered grin, albeit a little broken and crooked, and say, "Well mom, I almost got it. Next time."

What a marvel indeed.