(Sticky) Summer Nights

Fat Tomato Summer - vol. 004

(Sticky) Summer Nights - vol. 004

Forecast:

Bruising Skies + Punishing Sun

Weights:

• Trump’s tax bill and its endless devastations.

• (I am genuinely so bereft, I’m going to leave it at that. If you feel the same way, this post by Parker Palmer will probably resonate.)

Counterweights:

• Re-listening to Every Single Album - Taylor Swift podcast (grown-up comfort “food”?)

• Many hours with my face in various books

• Chance encounters with several Holy Alliance “lifers”

• Watching Veep with Cory (irreverent + ridiculous)

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Every summer, around this time, reality comes knocking. I am undeniably aware that tomorrow is the anniversary (much too pleasant a word) of the day, two years ago, when we lost our church with one phone call. (It would take several months for us to admit it to ourselves.) The reality check I’m talking about now is a different kind.

My day started off on a high note – joining two of my kitchen coworkers for a Trauma Informed Care training in South Bend. I spent the morning thinking about people I love, how so many of our experiences are scaffolded over layers of living – hurts we were too young/scared/stuck to name. The trainer spoke about the virtue of “unconditional positive regard,” and I thought of specific cases, far outside the kitchen, where this feels like asking too much.

We talked about ACE scores. Adverse Childhood Experiences. Many of the people I love most have scores that soar. On its face, the data suggests their lives will be more difficult. Their relationships will suffer. They are more likely, it seems, for every bad outcome. In a final kick to the face, a high ACE score is statistically inclined to shear two decades off one’s lifespan. Twenty years. Poof.

After returning to Goshen, after a staff meeting and running Ruby to her class, after zipping back home to inhale my lunch before more appointments and meetings, I made a rookie mistake. Earlier that morning, I’d rage-posted on Facebook – something we’re warned to avoid for the sake of our own mental health and as a good faith effort to foster communal wholeness. As I often do, I chose differently. I leapt the divide, venting my disdain toward a President hawking cheap cologne in an idol-shaped bottle against a backdrop of terror disguised as Christian policy.

I used the word “repugnant.”

Perhaps the post itself was a mistake. Checking the notifications definitely was. Reading the replies, I felt my mood discernibly slump. Then buckle.

Where are my counterweights? (I ask this daily.)

I called Cory for a few minutes of emotional support. “I feel like I might cry,” I warned, more to myself than him. It is devastating and mind-numbingly disorienting to watch people I love spiral into Christian Nationalism and conspiracy. It’s even harder to hear, from people who once loved me, that they are appalled by me, that they doubt my faith, that I’m (always!) the problem.

How am I supposed to regard this with unconditional positivity?

Perched on the edge of the bed amid socks waiting to be matched, my voice broke.

Out of nowhere, Silas appeared. He sat down beside me, wrapped both arms around me, nestled his head into the crook of my shoulder, and said absolutely nothing. He just stayed there while I continued sniffling to Cory.