We went to a potluck tonight and time and food with friends was a welcome respite from the worst of the news of the day.
To dear friends of ours in Minnesota: we are so sorry.
I debated to the very end throwing responsible disease management to the wind and joining the local No Kings protest. I badly wanted to be able to tell my grandkids I had, to set an example of standing up for democracy, of the right to peaceably assemble to petition one’s government.
But once again in the end, having done blindness, kidney failure, and cerebral vasculitis in autoimmune reactions to summer suns, I just couldn’t make my husband worry like that. And I wanted to see those grandkids grow up.
But color-wise I was dressed the part because that at least I could do.
Someone else there had on white stripes against red, her pants blue, and I knew without asking. The refugees in that family were only two generations ago.
We caught each other’s eye but didn’t say anything: not in someone else’s home while two older people were there who already know where we stand and who break our hearts.
The kicker being that one of them emigrated here, many years ago, after falling in love with an American.