My nails, November 9th.
I wrote this with my seventh graders the day before the election. They are brilliant and I love them:
It started months ago as a tickle in the back of our throats. We thought, “Are we getting sick?” No, it’s probably our imagination. Just a slight tummy ache, and only when we really thought about it. We thought, “Are we about to get really sick?” No, it was probably something we ate. There were days when we thought we could see it coming in the distance, and we thought, not the America I know.
But the truth is it started years ago, long before the first black president ran on courage and hope and a wave of joy and relief washed over us as we thought, finally the healing can begin! But out in the suburbs and deep in the countryside the seeds of discontent were being sewn, quietly at first, and then triumphantly blooming in back gardens and subsistence farms and even large commercial plantations. And they surprised us all! That tickle in the throat had become the full-blown disease we feared most, it's bright angry blossoms now deep-rooted and blooming in that briny sea of dissatisfaction, and for us it seemed like it happened overnight. But it was a long time coming.
I see angry men and women yelling at the camera, screaming at the press, they are yelling racial slurs and anti-Semitic chants, and sexist rants and calls to violence. When did this happen? How did this happen? Were we sleeping? Were we busy liking each other on Facebook and Instagram? Where were we and how did this happen? This blinding lightning rage. It must have started long ago. Before the first black president. Before the women’s movement. Before the civil rights movement. Before the civil war. Before Christopher Columbus. Before the first European king sent ships and swords to conquer distant lands, before the first Chinese Emperor built the Great Wall, before the first Pharaoh enslaved the first Israelites, before the Aztecs fought the Maya with their great war machine capturing the enemy: men, women and children.
Or maybe it started before that. Somewhere in the murky cosmic brew before the first humans. I don’t want to believe it. But maybe it’s always been there, waiting, hard to swallow, tickling the back of our throats.