Here We Go Again

Hi, just a quick reminder to Baltimore folks:

I’m facilitating a FREE monthly writing circle at The Womb Room on the last Monday of each month starting on Monday, November 25th at 7pm. You can find out more about that and register here. If you’re working on a specific project, trying to start a regular writing routine, or could just use a dedicated time and space to journal and get to know fellow parent-writers, I hope you’ll join me.

As always, thanks for reading and for all your support.

Here We Go Again

My toddler is obsessed with coloring right now. Even more than that, he’s obsessed with demanding that everyone else must color with him. “Color-y!” he says, as he thrusts a crayon or marker in your direction. I bought a big roll of paper that I use to cover the little square table in our playroom and we will sit and draw for what feels like hours on end. He scribbles and I make hearts because I have zero artistic ability and a heart is the only thing I’m capable of drawing.

The morning after the election, we went out into the alley to draw with chalk. I was tired, having woken at 5 a.m. to pee and check the news, and then proceeding to spend an hour crying in bed until our older son woke up for the day and came running into our room. “Color-y!” my toddler said, and I sighed, but dutifully took the proffered chalk and drew a pink heart on the concrete. Then an orange one. A yellow one. A green, a blue, a purple, a brown, a gray, a teal, a red. We have a lot of chalk. By the time I finally said enough and told him it was time to go back inside, the alley was full of hastily drawn hearts that had been enthusiastically covered in erratic scribbles.

Last night it rained for the first time in over a month and all the chalk has washed away.

How did this happen?

That is the question on everyone’s mind. The question that everyone and no one seems to have an answer to.

Personally, I’ve been avoiding reading the countless and varied takes on the election’s outcome. I don’t find it especially helpful to tick through the long list of reasons for how we ended up here again. No matter the factors, we have to sit with the reality that nearly 75 million people saw who Donald Trump is and what he stands for and chose to vote for him. However many more million saw those things as well and decided that, for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough to motivate them to go out and vote against him.

When my son was 5 years old, he fell from a set of monkey bars and broke his arm. The break dislocated his elbow which required two surgeries, one to insert a screw into the joint and one to later remove that screw once the break had healed.

We were out of town visiting family at the time and I took him on my own to a park near my in-laws’ house to play for a bit. We had our dog on the trip with us and I took the dog along too. My son rushed ahead to get on the playground while I paused to clean up dog poop. It was in that short interval that he fell and broke his arm.

When something scary happens to a little kid, they spend a lot of time afterward asking questions about it, wanting to replay the experience again and again to process it and try to make sense of it.

“Why did I break my arm?” my son would ask.

“Because you fell from the monkey bars.”

“Why did I fall?”

“Because you didn’t have a strong grip on the bar.”

“Why didn’t I have a strong grip?”

“Because you were looking back at me when you went to grab it.”

“Why was I looking back at you?”

“Because you wanted me to watch you but I was far away.”

“Why were you far away?”

“Because I was dealing with the dog.”

“Why were you dealing with the dog?”

“Because he had pooped and I was cleaning it up.”

And so on.

The question “Why did I break my arm?” is not all that different from “How did this happen?” and I think both ultimately have the same answer: Because humans, and societies, are fragile entities. Sometimes we fall and if we fall hard enough, we don’t make it out unscathed.

It’s going to be a long and difficult four years.

I have spent my week reading and listening to music. We organized a kids versus parents baseball game as part of a birthday celebration for my husband this past weekend and it was a wonderful, joyous distraction. We have played soccer in the yard after dark most evenings, my older son showing off his skills while my toddler excitedly directs our attention to the moon. I have checked in on friends, commiserated and vented. I have started planning for the holiday season. I have avoided reading the news. I have reminded my son that because we are safe and healthy and well supported, we have an even greater responsibility to try to always be sources of good and care in the world. I have drawn more colorful hearts than I can count.

When my son hit the ground after falling from the monkey bars, he screamed out in pain and I raced toward him as fast as I could run.

“I broke my arm,” he told me, as I lifted him from the ground and positioned him on my hip. In my other hand, along with the dog’s leash, I still held the bag of poop. I trudged up the park’s hill and back to the house, my arms full. I was trying not to panic.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think it’s going to be okay.” I wanted to soothe him. I needed to calm myself.

“It hurts really bad,” he said. “It feels broken.” And he was right.

We are in a weird liminal space right now where Trump has been elected again but is not yet president again and it is an anxious, foreboding period, and yet life is proceeding in pretty much the same way it did before the election. A sort of calm before the storm.

I have no prediction for how this will all play out. No advice for what anyone should do—I think the answer to that depends a lot on who you are and where you live and what the circumstances of your life will allow. So I won’t say that I think it’s going to be okay. Won’t try to soothe you, or calm myself.

I will offer this thought, though: it is going to be an uphill climb and we will have to find a way to carry each other. Everything feels broken right now. It will take time and effort to heal.

You can find more of my writing & contact information at clairemtaylor.com. If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.