I did my final volunteer shift at the vaccination clinic this past week and while I’d entered the front door hoping to be stationed at temperature check or directing people to an available chair to get the shot, I was placed front-of-house on observation duty, which meant being armed with disinfectant spray to wipe down the chairs after folks completed their 15-to-30 minute after-shot watch period. I’d done that before and wasn’t at all mad about being placed there. My main reason for wanting a solo job had all to do with the anxieties I feel around interacting with folx for seven+ hours. So, I was joined on disinfectant-spray duty by two young women (30 and 23) and Sonia, a nurse practitioner in charge of handling any medical emergencies that might happen post-dose. At some point soon into the shift, as I sat waiting and watching people rotate their just-stuck arms, I overheard my companions talking about upcoming surgeries they both had scheduled for this summer. How they’d be convalescing for almost six weeks and what states they were traveling to get it done. My immediate thought was what’re the chances they both need the same thing in the same time period? They talked about the thousands this was going to cost each of them and I secretly damned our healthcare system for outrageous pricing. As the words lift, rounded, shaved, enhanced bounced between them, it dawned on me that I was rolling down the wrong medical road. When the woman nearest me pulled up a photo of Kim Kardashian’s posterior in a thong, then leaned over to show me, I got it. They were both going under the body-sculpting knife. Eyes widened, I kept on listening. They repeated cautionary tales (never have these procedures done in the Dominican Republic: unregulated), financial planning (monthly payment deals are a rip-off), tips (no heavy lifting for at least six weeks; let someone else do the laundry). This conversation hooked me on a lot of levels, but top among them was the matter-of-factness of the discussion. They were architecting and redesigning their bodies to fit the mold of what they saw in the world/wanted for themselves in a literal way. They weren’t afraid to talk about it, tell anyone who’d listen, and compared notes like seasoned consumers. To my ears, this was grounded in a different type of body dysmorphic mentality than eating disorders, which are to a high-percentage and, I think detrimentally, kept hidden, often connected to deep feelings of shame (one reason talking about it in a safe space is so incredibly helpful). These ladies were conversating about their physical remake/remodel in a completely matter-of-fact way comparing procedures, cost, alterations. At one point a nurse came up and shared her own recent surgery (stomach-flattening procedure). All the why’s were rolling around my skull as I looked at them. My 59-year-old self saying (inner voice), “Ah, ladies, when you get older you’ll look at yourself as you are now and appreciate how gorgeous you are. Just wait.” They never would have listened to me. Just as I wouldn’t have at that age. But just then Sonia came back from her break. She lasered a look at them (I backed up against the wall so as not to be caught in the white-hot of it) and asked, “What are you talking about?” They told her without pause and she lit up, firing off all manner of reasons from age to intelligence and finishing on a strong Biblical note. As the flame singed my chin in the crossfire, I understood I was in the presence of tough love. I thought they might cry (I felt I might), but they shrugged, smiled, said, “Oh, Ms. Sonia, don’t worry about us.” She shot back, “I do worry. Why do you insist on being ignorant.” Then they took lunch and she continued to mutter ignorance, ignorance. I wanted to tell her how I’d appreciated what she’d said, but she scared me a little, so I just kept disinfecting the chairs. Later, when one of the women asked me if I believed it was possible to be in love with two men at the same time (one her husband and the other someone she’d known since childhood), Sonia once again stepped in with, “Why are you still talking about that? Stop being ignorant. And no, you can’t love two men, you can only love your husband,” then some more scripture. I didn’t know if that was altogether true, but her certitude was phenomenal and I wondered if she might have some extra to lend me. Later in the afternoon, I did have a chance to tell her I thought what she’d said was awesome and she smiled. That was all, and it honestly felt amazing. Leaving the clinic after my shift, I reflected. The last five weeks had held a completely different emotional experience than I’d thought it would. Because of course it did. Sonia could have told me that nothing ever looks like you think it will. I could have told myself that too.

A year ago, May 25, 2020, we’d just gotten done installing in our back area an inflatable pool (with a beautiful redwood surround built by Dennis), then we turned on the news and watched George Floyd’s murder under a policeman’s knee, filmed by a young (teenage) woman on a sidewalk while her 9-year-old cousin stood feet away inside the store Mr. Floyd had just left. My body went cold and my ears rang. Breathing was hard, yet it was not lost on me that I still had the gift of it. As the days went by, the emotion built, certainly in the country and the world, but also inside of me. The fact that I would not be physically joining a protest as I normally would do to channel my outrage meant I had to find another way. And as I searched and found a place where I could do something, White People 4 Black Lives, I thought a lot about what drove me in this particular social justice moment. I wrote about it in a blog post (The Stake), hoped I wouldn’t lose the forward movement over time, having come to know myself around passion projects, my proclivity to go in 187%, then burn out and fall away. I wanted to pace myself like it was a marathon, which of course making any bit of headway around systemic racism both in myself and in this country is. So now, almost one-year later, I review: Yes, I’m still working virtually with WP4BL sending letters, emails, petitions; I’m still contributing to BLM, The Loveland Foundation, Girls Write Now, Native Land, Feeding America. I’m glad I found a way to stay in the exploration and work in a way that feels balanced. There’s always more, which is why I was sad on a couple of levels to see this article in the NYT today about the falloff of momentum in BLM’s movement among the larger public one year later. A portion of the sad was that I wasn’t surprised. There may be an incremental change in police accountability—yet still I read today about two young men in separate incidents dead from police bullets. The NYCity mayor’s race is hinged on a healthy amount of consideration regarding policing. Chauvin was convicted. But the interesting thing for me is that although I know change takes time…so much time…which requires patience, the vision of what I think the moments will look like are out&out different from what’s in my head. If you’d asked me what I imagined my involvement in racial-social justice movements would look like, I might have envisioned holding a bullhorn with lots of people listening. Funny what the imagination does around the ego. When I started volunteering with Get Out the Shot: LA, my inner script was “helping people who couldn’t otherwise get appointments,” and, yes, sure this mostly happened, but the balance fell into a category of folx who actually could operate a computer—probably better than me—had excellent wi-fi, but had signed up with GOTS because they felt we were an excellent concierge service. This was humbling given the commitment remains the same: just do it. And honestly, I love doing it. For the vaccination center, I envisioned myself in some sort of benevolent usher role (consistent smile, all the right things to say to calm the needle-and-mRNA-phobic, walk them to their chair for the shot). That I entered data and sterilized things was less sexy but just as crucial. Sonia would have said “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 26:12), and she wouldn’t have been wrong.

A year later and still I strive. Best we can do, us humans.

Update on last week’s blog re: the neighbors. Following the crash of glass and long moments of fury next door, and thinking because of that the seemingly fraught, always arguing relationship must be over, she’s now moved in. Nothing broken since, but a good amount of verbal aggro continues. And as for my furry friend: Gladimus has not turned up in our backyard for a week. I’ve missed her. Once again, what I thought might be is opposite land.