American Woman

I voted for Hillary Clinton with my youngest son at my side.
I wore my great grandmothers beads and my grandmother's LOVE pin. It felt  significant, special even. And when I think about it now, it still feels good. I voiced my opinion by ballot as an American, as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a person.
I don't ask you to share my viewpoint.
My candidate lost. Your candidate won. I accept that.
But let me be clear - I am exhausted by the calls to fall in line, to put our differences aside. Don't complain they say. Come together, they say. Get over it.

So I'm curious:

• How does one get on board for a president-elect that gloats about assaulting women and calls his daughter a piece of ass?
• How does one get on board with a "leader" that garners the endorsement of the KKK newspaper the Crusader?
• How does one get on board with a movement flanked by grown men you actually know showing their fervent Trump support by posting  C-word memes, saying Trump that Bitch, or that they would rather sleep with her than vote for her?
• How does one get on board with a leader who talks about the size of penis in relation to his hands on a national debate stage?
• How does one get on board with a "leader" that said to two 14-year-old girls, "Wow Just think in a couple years I will be dating you."'
• How does one get on board with a leader's proposed database system to track Muslims?
• How does one get on board with a leader that is a plaintiff in 1,900 lawsuits and a defendant in 1,450 more?

I'm an American just like you. I'm not onboard with any of the above and I won't over look it. We have to do better for each other. The opportunity to unite is there for the new-president elect. I hope for you and for me that he makes the overture. 

Gram's Window

I'm sitting on the floor of my grandmother's bedroom.  It is - after four decades - the final time I will step foot in her home since she died 9 months ago. 

The room is empty except for the memories rushing my brain. I rest my back against the wall where her bureau once stood. The window streams the evening sun across the floorboards. 

I hear us talking. I am little climbing up into her bed, the white bedspread with the bumpy thread design leaves little dotted imprints on my knees. 

I snuggle under the sheets made cool by the breeze flowing through the always open window. I can smell lemony Jeanate. My brother scrambles up the other side of the bed. Gram is in the middle. We are playing our math game. She holds up her hands, her engagement and wedding ring twist around.
"I have this many apples in this hand and this many apples in this hand - How many apples do I have?"
We fall asleep, three of us snug in the bed. 

The alarm buzzer rings.  The little golden clock reads 10:30 in roman numerals. She tiptoes to the bathroom. She is back in her white nurse's uniform. There's a kiss to the forehead. I hear my grandfather whispering he is mad we are in his bed. I can't hear what she says. I hear the door shut and she is gone into the night.

In the morning I see her back from the hospital, a giant vase of lilacs on the dining room table still wet with dew after she picked them on her way home from her 11 to 7 shift. 

 I stand up and walk to her window and lean my forehead against the glass. So much time has gone by. The back yard is now bare. 

I see a cookout with the family - all of my mother's brothers and sisters are around the table and my grandfather is at the old Weber grill, a bag of charcoal by its side. My gram is putting condiments on a tray in the kitchen. I am taking the white stones from the backyard path to the picnic table and using them to write my name on the blacktop. Everyone is laughing.

 I catch sight of the clothesline in my view.

I am 7 and flipping upside down, hanging from my legs while the metal hooks scratch the inside of my legs until  I dismount like Nadia Comaneci in the '76 Olympics.

I notice the wall against the neighbor's garage.

 "We triple dog dare you to do it," My brother says, backed by his friends who are smug because I am a girl and therefore unwilling to take a dare. I shimmy across the wall careful not to lose balance on the embedded stones and fall into the pricker bushes below me. I win.

I move back to the sunspot in the middle of the floor where the end of my grandmother's bed used to be. 

I am a teenager laying across the bed. She is patting my back. Telling me not to worry. This too will pass…she hums Que sera, sera…whatever will be, will be. 

I can see the bed again, she is reading a book and I bust in to show her my engagement ring…
I see my husband putting in her air conditioner… 
I am laying my babies in the middle of her bed for a nap, flanking them in her pillows so they do not roll over…

One last time...I hear myself fling open the screen door and yell upstairs, "Gram, you home?"

I take this picture of her window so I don't  forget.