Thursday, June 14, 2018

Fortnight



So, tomorrow (Friday) marks the end of the second week of Sophie's recovery from her wisdom teeth extraction, and it appears that she's turned the corner. My poor baby girl suffered so much for so many days, but she's rallied and is eating again, has stopped having so many seizures (sometimes more than six, seven a day), can walk a few steps, has great eye contact and has even smiled. Knock three times. 

I am relieved. I am so very grateful.

I'm also a wreck, the proverbial ashes after the Phoenix has risen. I've probably made that cliched analogy 5,432,897 times in the last twenty or so years, but it's the damn truth. I am wasted. Sleep-deprived. Out of my gourd stressed. One of the highlights of the fortnight (how often do you hear the word fortnight these days?) was the early morning that I staggered into her room to check on her and came upon a scene straight out of a horror movie. There were ANTS marching along her windowsill and across her bed and onto her face and into her ears and mouth and nose and braids. I'm not kidding you, Reader. Hundreds of ants. She was asleep and stayed asleep (I imagine she was not just asleep but post-ictal after having a silent seizure that I wasn't aware of), even as I frantically brushed the ants off of her, stripped her, lifted her up and lay her on the floor, ants crawling all over me, then, as I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Windex with vinegar and started spraying down the windowsill and the bed and then stripping the bed and rolling everything up and bringing it to the washer and then running to the hall closet, grabbing the vacuum cleaner, climbing onto the bed and vacuuming everything. Sophie slept on the floor the entire time. It was about 5:30 am, and while I thought about waking The Brothers, I decided not to -- they'd probably only stopped playing a few hours before that dreadful game that every kid is playing, and let's just say that there are some things, some entirely insane moments of this caregiver life, that I want to spare them from remembering. When I was done vacuuming, I picked up Sophie from the floor (yes, I picked her up in a kind of squat that you see those Olympians do with barbells) and carried her to my bed. Then she started to have a seizure, and I effectively dissociated in a similar fashion in my mind as I'm doing here on the screen.

I can't remember if it was that night/early morning or another one that I called my friend Sandra in New York and wailed, but she helped me as did you and you and you (you know who you are). This community is everything. Thank you.



So, what else?

I can't go without mentioning the absolute shitshow happening at the border of our country. Would that we've reached a turning point today when the AG actually quoted from the Bible to justify the practice of separating children from their parents and That Sanders Woman reiterated the Bible to justify the fuckery. I'm not quoting any more Bible verses here except to repeat what my son Henry yelled when he heard about it. You could probably pick out any Bible verse and twist it enough to say that Jeff Sessions is a POS. Amen, son.

It should now be the turning point where we take to the streets and storm the WalMart where those boys are housed, help them out and throw the POSPOTUS and his Mafioso into it with all their supporters and enablers to live in to the end of their days.

And where are the GIRLS?

Honestly, Reader, can you even make up a story more Amerikkkan than illegal brown children being housed in a former Walmart -- a shitty megaMcstore, an altar to money and exploitation that has destroyed communities, sells mostly processed food and crap to the suckers who shop there because it's cheap and whose owners are revered for their wealth? That the Powers That Be are claiming God has ordained this -- well -- my god.

Call your representatives and demand that this stops NOW. 

Click here for other things you can do NOW.

11 comments:

  1. I don't know what to say about the ants. In fact, I can't think of one bible verse to address the issue. You do know that I was raised southern baptist? I have (had) the silver stars to prove that I know my bible. There are those out there that can cause you to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale!! The same ones that believe the T.I.C. is the great orange hope. The same ones that stare at me in disbelief when I tell them I haven't stepped inside a Walmart in over twenty years. I'm glad to hear that Sophie is recovering from her extractions. Now I'm off to ring up the representatives.

    Best,
    Bonnie

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  2. Sending love to you and Sophie. What would we do without community as inexplicable difficulties continue to unfold on a personal level and on a world-wide level. Looking at your portrait of Sophie, I'm struck today by how Sophie is both vulnerable and protected.

    What you said about biblical quotes currently being used wrongly to justify separating children from their parents. I'm reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James H. Cone, at the recommendation of a Christian friend. There are frequent references to the way bible verses were used to justify slavery and then lynching. Just before falling asleep last night, I read this from The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the chapter that focused on black women. In this case, James Cone was referring to Ida B. Wells (p. 131),

    "Faith and doubt were bound together, with each a check against the other -- doubt preventing faith from being too sure of itself and faith keeping doubt from going down into the pit of despair."

    Keeping the focus on what we can do is vital. Thank you for your voice.

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  3. I'm glad both you and Sophie survived the recovery. She is blessed to have you watching over her. Who watches over you? Who's got your back?

    As for what is going on in the US, I'm sorry to say, your country is going down the toilet, along with that giant turd Trump. It's reprehensible and he is being aided by a lot of people. There are a lot of angry, despicable people in power in the US. They have been given free rein and it is not good.

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  4. Speaking of Biblical- those ants. Oh, Elizabeth! For once, let me say- I CAN imagine because I live in Florida and you are the strongest woman in the world and there is no doubt of that in my mind.
    I have called my representatives. I cannot believe how quickly this country under Trump has become capable of of such inhumanity. As bad as I thought it would be, it's so much worse.

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  5. I understand this, the surviving. The ashes after. Also what Ms Moon said (ants, Florida, everything). I called the Justice Department yesterday, without much hope of anything happening as long as THE MONSTERS are running things. If only November would hurry up already and if only people will vote to carry us back to sanity...

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  6. Elizabeth, you are amazing. I read about the morning with the ants, picturing it all, knowing that in the moment you were just doing doing doing, and it was only afterwards that you tasted the bitter ashes. Oh, my friend. Life sometimes calls on you to be superhuman, and by god you manage it. I wish you didnt have to, but from Sophie's perspective, I am insanely thankful for your strength and perseverance and love and gallows humor, and ability to write it all, so we can know one fraction of it. As for the border evilness, what an apt observation about the Walmart warehouse, and yes, where the fuck are the girls! And the babies! And you know they spruced up that Walmart with the boys for the cameras, that pool table was brand new, that video game system, the murals on the walls, the sheets and blankets on the beds, all of it just broken out of its store bought wrapping before the reporters walked in. No doubt bought from Walmart. All I can say is you're raising Henry right. Your children know whats what.

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  7. Dear Elizabeth, No, No, NO!! Ants! Jailed children! It really is all too much. Thanks for the links on how to help. I've been feeling so helpless.

    Hope Sophie continues to recover and that her seizures come under better control. Christalmighty.

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  8. Oh dear Elizabeth, what a terrible experience. I hate ants and now even more so.

    Today I read a report of a teenage Eritrean mother being turned away from the French border with her baby in her arms, walking back into Italy. The French officials took her phone from her and she has now lost all contacts to her family. You see, Europe is just as evil. It feels as if the nazis are closing in everywhere. As if . . .

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  9. So glad Sophie has turned the corner on her recovery from the Wisdom Tooth extractions. The Ant story gave me chills... OMG... that's the stuff of Stephen King novels! I hope you can find some time for yourself to recoup from all this extreme Caregiving stress. As for the Politics and ongoing shit show, words fail me... and it is obscene to imply that God ordained any of this fuckery by twisting Bible verse to attempt to justify what is the devil's work!

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  10. OMG, what a horrible thing to walk in and see -- those ants! Frightening! I haven't heard the word fortnight in ages, except in reference to "that dreadful game that every kid is playing," which I think is actually spelled Fortnite, but I'm not sure. (Unless your kids are playing a different dreadful game!) As for the shitshow, I can only say that the right-wing fringe of the party in power is continually proving its absolute lack of morality.

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