(Stella)
I was halfway through my day today before I realized that something felt very different. I hadn't written a post. It had caused this swell of ambition and then a series of minor accomplishments. My mind seemed freer from distraction, by mid-afternoon I felt far less cluttered.
After work, I washed clothes and straightened up the apartment, performing the hundred little acts I just didn't bother to at the time. I let domestic tasks go for far too long, so that I can use the excuse of them being overwhelming when I wish to escape the voice of guilt, to escape it with a flimsy enough reason.
Every time I do laundry I tell myself: It's going to be different this time. I try to show myself that by doing laundry more often it's not such a task, a day long burden. Every single time, I tell myself this. Nothing changes, of course. I just keep buying new socks and underwear. They're relatively cheap and it allows me to go longer and longer between washings, if I'm careful with the hundred or so shirts I own. You might think that I'm exaggerating, but May 18th was the time that I did laundry before the time before that, not including today. Do the math, it's longer than most people can possibly go, longer than most people would even consider, even men.
We're having a small birthday party here tomorrow. I will clean up even more, possibly degrease my grille, make dinner, buy a little cake, help the boy make a birthday card, and vote.
I found the locket above in my desk today, almost by accident. Right away it passed through me - how happy, proud, and excited my mother would be to be voting for a woman for president. It reminded me of her and the many talks that we had. We did not agree on a number of things, but she was an impassioned conversationalist, not afraid to invoke the Old Testament God if it supported her biases. She was a nut, of course, and I loved her greatly. That is what I was reminded of most today, that she was my only mom, imperfect in person, nearly infallible in mothering.
One of my earliest memories was the Watergate hearings. I stayed home from school and was disappointed that I couldn't watch kids' shows. I remember her yelling at the television. It scared me a bit, how angry she was, how betrayed. It was a level of corruption that was inconceivable. I even remember her telling me, perhaps many years later, why a country has to be willing to subject their leaders to the same laws that we lived under.
When Ford pardoned Nixon I thought that she was going to hatch a plot to kill him, the fucker. She wanted both of them in prison, or worse. Carter didn't help anything. She spoke highly of him because he was a Christian, not much more.
My mother resembled Geraldine Ferraro, particularly when the latter made the cover of Time magazine. Have I written all of this before? I think I have. I'll stop for the night. tomorrow will be a trying day, whether I succeed at ignoring what is happening, or whether it seems like we were able to keep the idiot out of the white house, or not.
I've never seen anything like this in America before. It feels as if it is going to pop and that nobody is going to be able to get away fast enough before it does. Nobody at all.
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