Risking Delight

The kids have arrived for a visit and a new kind of chaos has erupted: lively and joyous, but also exhausting. The baby is fat and snuggly and generous with her smiles, and the little boy is a one-man show, utterly unstoppable. He strides around with a proprietary air, naming and remembering: there are the orange trees, there’s the culvert that fills up with rain, there’s the outdoor shower. He often breaks into a run––and oh, is he fast!––and he maneuvers the precarious edges of things, observing that the ground is uneven, with now and then a hole, but he proceeds with confident alacrity, and I can see right away how hard it is going to be to keep up with him, but I follow him around like an eager puppy. I love this child beyond all reason, and having been denied the gift of seeing him regularly, I am determined to make the most of it now.

His name is Felix, and he is so much more mature and self-assured than the toddler he used to be, or even the Felix of six months ago, when we last saw him. He has since finished a year of school, become a big brother, and developed new interests and skills. “Remember when we pretended this bed was a flying combine harvester?” I ask him. No, he does not. (It was obviously more significant to me than to him.) In his English accent, he explains that he is no longer particularly interested in vehicles or rescue work. His toy obsession is Legos, but he is also just generally curious, in love with the world, and brimming with ideas.

At his suggestion, we set our for a hike, first putting together a backpack filled with fruit and candy, then stepping out into a cloud of fog and meandering up the canyon. We passed the fledgling oak trees he once helped me to water, and the neighbors’ friendly dogs. I told him about the Chumash Indians that lived here long before us, and we stopped and sat on the bridge to eat our snacks. I looked out at the gnarled old trees in a misty grove, listening to the musings of my grandson, and I sensed that this was one of those moments I would remember and cherish always.

He knows he has me wrapped around his little finger. “Nonna,” he says, “You would never get mad at me.”

“Well, I might get a little bit mad at you sometimes,” I reply, “but it wouldn’t last, and I can tell you this: I will never, ever stop loving you, no matter what you do.”

Later in the day, we all go down to the beach so my daughter can indulge her desire for a swim in the sea, and Felix is the epitome of glee, running and jumping and splashing in the surf. Afterwards, he takes an outdoor shower with Papa, and we see bulls on the hillside, and vultures flying overhead, and the train goes by, its horn and clatter punctuating everything, and there are two coyote pups on the road back to the house, and here we are, together at the Ranch, the Ranch in all its wonder.

Sometimes I see a flicker of sadness in my daughter’s face, for this is the place that raised her, and soon it will be ours no longer. She is a complicated person who has made a life in another country, but the reality of her homesickness is sharpened now by the finality of our pending move, and everything assumes greater significance and poignancy. But we are here together now, and I am grateful.

Meanwhile, I am of course acutely aware that terrible things are happening in our country. I would say we are in a state of emergency, and it is hard to soothe the pain and repress the anger. Just a few days ago, not very far from here, smoke bombs, live ammunition, and gestapo-like agents were deployed to terrorize law-abiding people as part of the regime’s escalating war against immigrants. And that’s just one example of the ongoing cruel, unconstitutional, and destructive actions that have been unleashed. A shadow hangs over us even in our seemingly carefree moments.

An acquaintance employed by a federal agency sends me dire reports from the frontlines about the intentional chaos caused by incompetent appointees and arbitrary cuts to crucial programs and staff. He is discouraged by his erroneous impression that there has been virtually no pushback. He cites studies that suggest it requires 3.5% to 4.0% of the population of a country to become actively engaged in opposition protests in order to cause change, and he laments the fact that we have not yet reached that threshold. We are reportedly at about 2% now. (And that is actually not a small number.)

I remind him that even with numbers under-reported by the media, there was a significant increase in participation from the first wide-scale protest to the next….and the furor is growing. Approval ratings for the administration are already dropping, and when the pain of program cuts, tariff folly, and other actions begin to manifest, that approval is likely to plummet further.

Here’s an illuminating factoid from the BBC: “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.”

So don’t let go of that information, folks. It’s powerful. Can we double our protest participation and other resistance efforts? With so much at stake, why not? There are millions and millions of us, and in this exhausting and heartbreaking time, we must hold fast to our hope, determination, courage, and commitment, all of it ultimately fueled by love. “Together,’ wrote John Lewis, “you can redeem the soul of our nation.”

When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.

I intend to participate in a local “good trouble” rally for democracy this week, on July 17th, exactly five years after John Lewis’s passing. (July 17th also happens to be the birthday of my beloved sister Marlene, who was brave and outspoken and would have proudly stood up for what is right, so I will be honoring her as well.)

And when feeling depleted, here’s some good advice from Robert Hubbell: “I strongly urge you to seek community with others who are energized and enthusiastic. Just be in the same room or on the same street corner with them. It will remind you that you are part of a fast wave of resistance that will sweep away the corruption of the Trump years—if only we refuse to give up and rise to defend our democracy every day.”

Now another foggy white morning has come, muffled and quiet but filled with promise. Felix showed up at our house in a Superman cape, eyes twinkling with mischief and ideas, his parents and baby sister still asleep next door. In a couple of hours, a few of the ladies are meeting here for a walk to our sandstone church. It’s becoming a custom with us. Last week, we sat on the rocks and had tea, and one of us read Jack Gilbert’s “Brief for the Defense” aloud, and we acknowledged the sorrow but embraced the joy. I’ll post Gilbert’s poem for you here:

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.