A Weekend at Home in America
I spent an hour that afternoon carefully mending our 8-year-old neighbor’s lovies, four identical rabbits that were loved so hard their heads fell off.
How is everyone surviving the snow storm and the arrival of fascism? my friend messages our college group chat. We say terrible things very cheerfully to underscore how serious we are. This friend and her husband are ex-pats in Dublin who correctly guessed five years ago that it was time to get out. Now they’re raising their twins in the green freedom of Ireland and watching in horror as their former country tears itself to shreds across the ocean. I just watched the second killing video 10 minutes ago and I’m in a deep mental spiral, another friend responds, too spiraled to match the tone. My stomach drops. I set my phone down like it might explode and go back to making lunches as the snow piles up outside.
My daughters turn on Home Alone during their post-lunch TV time. My husband walks into the kitchen and reports that he peeked in during the black and white shoot-em-up movie clip and saw both girls curled into balls, covering their ears. I absorb this and then turn back to my own screen time. Gunshots ring out in my Airpods, which I put in so the girls wouldn’t hear the sound of a real-life man being executed in broad daylight.
My older daughter likes to read a collection of Would You Rather riddles at bedtime. “Mama, would you rather be able to see 10 seconds into the future, 10 minutes, 10 months, or 10 years?” she asks that night. I turn the question over and over and over until she falls asleep.
Later, I lie wide awake in bed, attempting to compose a series of Would You Rathers to capture this moment.
Would you rather watch the arrival of fascism from your phone, or use your phone to document it? Would you rather stand back when an ICE agent holds up his mace canister, or shield a woman with your body as the agent sprays her at close range? Would you like to see 10 seconds into the future?
Would you rather teach your son to stand back and protect himself at all costs, or raise him to be an engaged citizen who will shield a woman with his body? Would you like to see 20 years into the future?
I watch the video five more times because bearing witness feels like doing something. I turn over and over and over before I finally fall asleep.
The next morning, I’m craving the warm community of our church, but decide it’s too snowy to drive. I channel my nervous energy into cleaning the house, pausing every now and then to check the news and see a new angle of the murder. By the end of the day my counters sparkle.
That night, enough time has passed that the videos in my feed are tributes and not breaking news. I watch one filmed in a Minneapolis church that feels like the eye of a storm. Our love for each other will carry us through, the packed congregation sings softly.
Another video queues up and I watch thousands march through downtown Chicago in protest. What was the nothing I was doing while they were doing something? I wonder. I spent an hour that afternoon carefully mending our 8-year-old neighbor’s lovies, four identical rabbits that were loved so hard their heads fell off. Our love for each other will carry us through. Or we’ll love so hard it’ll break us.
I don’t want to see into the future at all, I decide. I don’t want to know if the good choices we’re teaching our daughters to make now will be the choices that will break them in twenty years. I don’t want to know if, ten months from now, I’ll still be puttering around at home, watching videos of other people shielding me from the consequences of my doing nothing.
For a long time, I’ve thought that what I was doing—voting, staying informed, bearing witness, putting up signs, lighting candles, parenting, cleaning, mending—was something. Placed on a spectrum where the other end is bleeding out in the street as you defend your neighbors, those things feel like almost nothing. I don’t want to be a martyr; I don’t want to do nothing. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, a middle rich with community and action and shoveling each other out of the snow drifts.
I’ve started repeating it to myself like a riddle or an incantation: our love for each other will carry us through / or we’ll love so hard it’ll break us. Carry is something you do. Break is something done to you. Which would you rather?
