A Week of Emergency

Tuesday, 11/5/24

As we headed to the polls, we noted a Miller Lite beer can had been thrown at our Kamala Harris sign. I laughed and righted the beer can beneath the sign while also harboring a burning coal in my chest.

I was 90th in line at the polls in our small corner of a small, rural Pennsylvanian town. Two Trump signs adorned the lawn outside our polling station, which we thought was illegal in Pennsylvania. I found it more and more difficult to make small talk with my husband Brian as I surmised that most of the folks in line were voting for someone I would never want to claim as my own, be it husband, father, friend, child, or neighbor. My irritability grew.

At that time, the sun had not risen above the easterly mountain yet. Just across the street, the houses were blanketed in warm sunlight. My husband and I were in a cold shadow. The day would later turn beautiful enough for any foray into the forest where one can gain perspective or mourn or escape.

But after voting, Brian began his two-hour journey to a hospital where he’d have ear surgery later in the day—a procedure suddenly sprung upon him just the day before. Because of certain obligations that kept me home, I would leave a little later in the day for my in-laws who were an hour away from the hospital.

I readied the house for absence. I turned down the temperature on the thermostat. I pulled curtains across windows. I wiped surfaces clean. I made space for recovery, discomfort, disappointment, and tenderness.

Wednesday, 11/6/24

Last night, I sat at my in-laws’ kitchen table, Brian’s surgeon on speaker phone and election results flashing on a nearby TV screen. Words like inflammation, bone, nerves, and PICC line sent a quartet of adrenaline through my body, rendering me nauseous as I held the phone up for Brian’s family to hear. The surgery had gone well, but further medical intervention was necessary. He would stay in the hospital for the next few days until the proper medicine is determined.

I wanted my mother. I excused myself to walk the dogs outside and I called her after taking many deep breaths in the darkness that I wished was cooler. I fought the urge to vomit. My mother’s ability to calm me is the closest thing to witchcraft that I have ever experienced or witnessed. When I went back into the house, my mother-in-law embraced me. She told me stories of her little sick, immune-compromised Brian. Women—especially good mothers—are medicine. While listening to her stories, I sat in front of a TV watching ignorance and hatred tally upwards in numbers against women.

I had gone to bed with the TV on, flashing its reds, whites, and blues. Early this morning around 3 am, I heard Trump’s voice in my sleep. His voice and my churning stomach awakened me. There he was on a stage, his young son—who never looks happy—and his wife—who never looks happy—were next to him. My mind registered that he was giving a victory speech.

Still in a dream-daze, I managed a quiet panic attack, breathing in and out. Noting the parts of me that were shaking and sending electrical demands there to stop it. If only it were that easy—to send electrical demands called thoughts to stop the hatred, racism, anti-woman, anti-constitutional rights, and anti-understanding that not only surrounded this election but also looms in the future. The neo-Nazi feels validated. The racist feels validated. The trash husband feels validated. The incels feel validated. The climate deniers feel validated. The science deniers feel validated. The irresponsible owners of guns feel validated. The disgustingly rich feel validated. The delusional poor feel validated.

I turned off the TV. I wanted my husband. As vulnerable as he is right now as he begins his healing journey, I still need his presence and his presence will still bring me solace. I did go back to sleep. I did awaken only to experience the pulp of disgust all over again.

Thursday, 11/7/24

The term brainwash comes from Communist China. Xǐnǎo, literally meaning “to wash the brain” had become a pun of the Taoist custom of Xǐxīn, “the washing of the heart or mind” that occurred before entering a holy space.

I have been too busy with working remotely, the hour commute to visit Brian in the hospital for a few hours, the commute back to his parents’, caring for the dogs, and updating friends/family to pay attention to much of the fallout from the election results. I have my social media curated in such a way that I only see things that serve me. But now when I do scroll, I see heartbreak, fearmongering, and insults towards conservatives, none of which serve me. What does serve me is the coming-together that I see. The let’s get to work that I see. Of course, heartbreak and reactivity need their time and spaces, but overall, it is the work that needs to be done that heals us.

And this is where I am conflicted. Discussing the election results with Brian, bandage wrapped around his head, I told him that we would just continue being good people. We would continue loving and caring for others, helping where help is needed. But this is where I am conflicted. What if the more serious fearmongering is right? Even as a liberal, I try not to fall for leftist propaganda. As an avid identifier of social constructs, I refuse to let that construct wash my brain. I’m a let’s not jump to conclusions kind of person because the life I lived allowed it. While in the hospital with Brian, I romanticized continuing on with our lives, continuing on to fight for good things. We will continue on with our passions in order to cope with the circus. But I can’t decide if I need to bury my head in the sand or throw sand in the eyes of the ignorant and dangerous. But as always, I’ll likely choose the middle ground, the daggers in my eyes sharpened and the dagger of my tongue whetted. Less than a handful of people in my life have seen me ill-tempered and viciously angry. They were all people who I loved, including my own father, because I couldn’t care less about other people and their bullshit thoughts. But now we’re entering a phase where other people’s bullshit thoughts are even more dangerous.

The writer Hermann Hesse wrote about how every generation and culture encounters this how do I continue phase in existing. It’s like a coming-of-age for everyone, where we decide how we must move forward with or change our own constitutions of self. Anger is not my nature. In moments where I can be angry, I am sad instead. Disappointed, even. I am now at my own crossroads where I am learning who and how I am or will be when angry.

And this week, wow it has been a challenge so far. Fear for my partner’s health. Worry for humans. Not being in my home. Being in good, rational spirits for my partner and his family. When I returned to my in-laws from my visit to Brian this evening, I learned that a young family member attempted suicide but they were okay. It has been a week of emergency.

At this point, going to bed feels best. Like a holy place. I wash my mind and heart before I sleep.

Friday, 11/8/24

I miss my house as if it’s a person. Thoughts of its darkness and stillness calm me. I think of the quiet fruit on the countertop. The still, flat water in the Keurig’s reservoir. The fossils capturing the movement of the sun throughout the day, cast in light then shrouded in shadow. The couch and its numerous blankets and pillows. The humanless beds. The thousands of unread narratives on the shelves. Dog fur tumbleweeds in corners with no movement to send them tumbling. The darkness inside the cabinets. The chilliness of the kitchen floor. The plants and the silent music of their movements.

Missing the house together, Brian and I looked at our garage camera to check on it much like how parents would gaze into the baby monitor. Is that the aurora? Brian asked, angling his phone towards me. Certainly there was a redness and green on the northern horizon. A brushfire had begun in the region, but that was in a different direction. Brian looked at the analytics and yes, aurora was gracing our home-sky.

Last night, I developed a cold that renders everything I hear into an aurora, a billowing spectrum of muffle.

Saturday, 11/9/24

Discharge date.

The nurse’s station’s worth of medical supplies would be shipped to our home today in time for Brian’s 5 pm administration of IV liquid antibiotics. Every six hours, we will sanitize, swab, unwrap plungers, uncap, recap, squeeze, twist, plunge, and dose Brian with a half-hour’s worth of drip antibiotics that go straight to his heart through a PICC line in his upper arm. It will be how we start and end our days. I will wrap his arm in Saran wrap before he bathes. I will wash his hair, administer ear drops into his ear, do the heavy-lifting, embrace him, encourage him, and validate his feelings through it all. I watch the 12-minute video on how to take care. He will work remotely, crack jokes about Nurse Sarah, and swing on the pendulum of this sucks and but it isn’t forever. And of course, he will do the heavy-lifting of bearing everything acquainted with illness, waiting, and inconvenience. We will hibernate in the drone of this love song for however long is needed.

Sunday, 11/10/24

Rain finally came so I pulled my feet up from the floor and beneath the blanket. A dog curled his body into the crook of my leg. I washed my husband’s hair. We watched movies. We skipped dinner, finally full of nothing.

Monday, 11/11/24

Early, when 5 am looks no different from 2 am, Brian is hooked up to the IV and scrolling on his phone. Across the dining room table from him, I play Arnold Schoenburg’s piano concertos on my laptop for us and bend the glossy pages of a bird ID book away from the overhead light so to better see the birds. This book discusses looking versus seeing. I sigh, knowing I have a lot to learn. For instance, the Great Egret, Great White Heron, Little Egret, and Snowy Egret are all large, white, and glorious water birds with S-shaped necks. Three of them have plumes on their heads. Some are larger than others. Some have black beaks, others yellow. It’s like trying to tell the difference between 5 am and 2 am in November.