Although I find myself struggling to feel terribly hopeful about the coming year, it is with little sadness that I bid 2016 adieu.
This year started off so well- a new home, a joyous 40th birthday, a great family trip, and the liberating realization that as I've come into myself and my age, I have far fewer fucks left to give than I ever imagined possible. That, my friends, is a win!
My family is happy and healthy, I have so many good friends, Percy is snug as a bug with Suzanne who dotes on him with mad love, my sister’s TV show was purchased by Netflix and will begin airing in America in March (stay tuned), and my father will retire in the relatively near future after working endless-hour days for decades.
I am so grateful for everything, and yet this year also took so much, so wantonly. My heart is both light and heavy; it is full in all meanings of the word.
The loss of so many talented people has been stunning. David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, George Michael, Gene Wilder, Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, Phife Dawg, Gary Shandling, Morley Safer, Elie Wiesel, Edward Albee, Leonard Cohen, Gwen Ifill, Muhammad Ali, Shimon Peres, Janet Reno, Florence Henderson, John Glenn, Pat Summitt, Patty Duke, Pat Conroy...the list goes on. So many of those folks fought to make this world better. Through their words, work, humor, music, journalism, films, and political tenures, they pushed boundaries, opened our eyes and minds, challenged us to be better, made us laugh.
Thank god the "Save Betty White From 2016" campaign seems to have worked. Knock on wood.
I learned that I couldn’t outrun my own limits; that ignoring all warning signs of exhaustion and overwhelm doesn’t mean they’ll fizzle out and disappear. I fell, hard. It was and remains a tough but valuable lesson, even when I wish limits weren’t so. As I sometimes tell the boys now when their demands are many and simultaneous, “I am one woman with but two hands. I can only do so much.”
I was reminded that we have a long way to go in not only raising our daughters more like sons but also, as the indomitable Gloria Steinem said, in raising our sons more like daughters.
Yesterday, in the midst of buying a new car to replace my 12-year-old Honda -whose trunk leaked rainwater, whose backseat light long ago quit, whose tires needed refilling on a regular basis, and who’d begun playing an awfully staccatic song on all left turns- I realized that neither of my children had ever known a different car. The material change meant nothing to me or Jack, but my sensitive Oliver, sitting on my lap after five long hours at the dealership, began to cry. He becomes attached to things in which he's made memories, and I love his sentimentality.
“I love all my stickers on my side of the car, and remember the time the windows were shot out [at our old house] but my window didn’t crumble because of my stickers? And we never have trouble finding the car because of all the stickers? And I have played in the trunk so many times….”
I hugged him tight, softening into the sweet moment. The man helping us complete the paperwork said, “In my country, men don’t cry. Come on now. Men don’t cry.”
I stiffened, but didn’t say anything. I hoped Oliver didn’t hear. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go there, I guess. But then he said it again. “Men don’t cry.” And I looked at him, with both softness and steel, and said “In my family, men absolutely can and do cry. It is OK.”
When we are all willing to give up the gendered ghosts that haunt society’s very soul, that peg and judge and shush and intimidate, we will all be better. I believe that we’ll see healthy displays of emotion rather than forceful explosions that burst from cracks because the pressure is too great to stay put anymore.
When we publicly denounce the judgment of men for being emotionally attuned and the judgment of women for being strong and unapologetic, we will also stop excusing locker room as nothing more than “boys will be boys.” When we publicly uphold the dignity and worth of ALL bodies, as well as the total value of the word “NO,” we will shut down men who feel it’s okay to assault women, to demean them, to harm them. We will not allow proven rapists and child molesters to keep their positions because they are talented swimmers and effective coaches. Perhaps, even, we won’t allow a man who mocked the disabled and bragged about sexually assaulting women, to become president.
Breaking down those ages-old walls will take persistent efforts at speaking up and out. As will refusing to normalize Trump's behavior, wholly unpresidential mien, ignorance, and complete lack of qualifications for the office to which he will soon ascend. As will righting our dangerously listing ship of state.
In recent days on Facebook, I have been called “nuts,” “loony,” “insane,” and told “you make me want to vomit.” Why? Because I thanked President Obama for his dignified, thoughtful leadership. Because I thanked Hillary Clinton for her service to women and children over the past forty years and for showing my sons that women can aspire to great heights. And because I disapproved of Trump’s having bragged of grabbing women’s genitals without permission. For expressing my fear of a world based not on fact but on fake news, I was called vitriolic. I and all men who haven't grabbed women's genitals were also, inexplicably, accused of being gay. A woman said that. I have no idea how to move forward with people like that. Does she think normal men just grab women? I don't.
Ours is a deeply fractured country, cleaved by economic disparity, racism, sexism, and fake news. I wonder about a world like this. I worry about it, too. I have zero faith in the incoming administration or in people who sling ugly insults at others offering simple words of gratitude, but I do find hope in the resistance that began rising on November 9.
During these last months, I've discovered that inside me burns an activist fire that I either wasn’t totally aware of or had always been too scared to do much with. I have discovered an incredible, fiery band of intelligent others who want only for our country and world to be better. Fairer. More equal. Safe. Who want more people to have more rights and better lives, regardless of their gender, skin color, faith, or sexual orientation, rather than only a select few (too often this means: white, Christian, heterosexual, and male) benefitting at the expense of others. Who believe in fact and the need to combat climate change pronto.
As 2016 draws to a close, I feel determined and strong. I hope you do too, because there is much work to be done.
I hope your families are safe and warm and feel loved. I hope you encourage the boys and men in your lives to understand and express their emotions in healthy ways and everyone you know to respect their own and others' bodies. I hope you will meet people from different places and with different backgrounds, talk and laugh with them, eat their food, share. I hope you help those in need and accept help when you struggle. I hope you will stand up for peace and justice in all the ways that you can.
Here's to love and light in the New Year. Be kind!
