Two Times a Lady

 There was a teacher at a junior college I attended who stunned me with my prejudices. Actually I would go so far as to say that he bowled over everybody in the classroom. He began the class by having each person state why they were there and what prejudices they had. I remember my statement - that the class sounded interesting and a painless half a credit, and that although I doubted that I was riddled with prejudices, I was open to examining mine and hoped to find ways to deal with them. I felt very sincere and a tiny bit smug because although I struggled with eradicating my foibles, I knew I lived in a glass house, as do we all. 

The teacher somehow got us all talking about homeless people, and the classroom realized, almost simultaneously, how prejudiced we all were against homeless people. I believe that would be called a breakthrough? 

Fast forward to a year ago. My son-in-law's stepfather, a very well-connected personal injury lawyer in Northern California, had opened his doors to my daughter and her husband. My grandchild's first home was under his roof. Yet his drinking and self-medicating caused them to flee, fearing for their personal safety, in August 2019. I kept the text my daughter sent me at 1130, "We grabbed everything we could carry and left." I began to be afraid for them. For eight months they had no home, were moved around from motels to shelters, dealt with state and county agencies until they were able to move into an apartment called their own in April 2020. I kept that text, too, from April 10th. "It's official, we are no longer homeless!" When I talk to them about their ordeal, I see their emotional scars that I, too, carry, and my guilt from not being able to do enough for them. Did I mention that the baby's first birthday was in a shelter and I was unable to see or go visit them for months? They are now settled in and dealing with apartment life, but the experience has left them jittery and scared, worse so from Covid19.  

Driving home this last Monday, while waiting at a stoplight, I hear a male voice talking to himself, a string of obscenities. I look around to see where the voice is coming from and have the misfortune to make eye contact with a (presumably) homeless male, across the street from me, walking against traffic. He lets it rip with, "F you white-trash effing b----!" I refrain from saying anything as I would have had to scream to have him hear me and clearly he is "unmedicated." AND the next day, Tuesday, I am parked near Trader Joe's, pullling the petals off a daisy, when this humongous woman comes out of nowhere and walks on the hood of my car, the windshield of my car, the roof of my car and the trunk of the car and then WHOMP the car shudders and backlashes as she jumps off and lands on the ground. My heart is pounding as I jump out of the car and scream at her. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING????" She looks at me, "What up BITCH?" and waddles off. 

The two witnesses parked near me trade phone numbers with me. I call the police and give an objective but unflattering description, an area search is done to no avail. It's terrifying to think of what the consequences could have been from a confrontation with her. On Friday I washed the hand and footprints off my car, and mused, "I was called a bitch twice this week by total strangers." 

Which makes me two times a lady. 

10-24 or Returning Home

All my previous posts and drafts have had to do with places in New England and how to travel. The appearance of Covid19, and the death of my parents, put everything into a new perspective. I haven't gone anywhere on vacation, or really even wanted to write anything, until last weekend, when I realized I had only been addressing physical travel. Without meaning to sound incredibly corny or trite, there are still virtual travel and mental travel possibilities. 

This epiphany came as a denouement from my pennypinching. I pay a monthly fee for unlimited online reading and was irked with what I perceived as not getting my money's worth. Qualitatively perhaps, but it was slow going and my quantitative perception was that I was overpaying. The lightening bolt was the unlimited magazine access also available to me. If I read only two magazines per month (which I wouldn't have purchased in any case!!) suddenly it's like I'm saving money and achieving a "deafening bang for my buck." Yeah, you have to try living in my universe.

My surprise was the amount of information and insights I absorbed causing me to think critically, realizing the trends I had been spotting were already published, which was all right as I had come to these independently and was only just now starting to use my atrophied brain. 2020 has been difficult at best for almost everyone worldwide. I can't help but wonder how many of then changes we have experienced, the obstacles we have had to overcome, will become imbedded in our psyches, in our personalities, changing us forever? Adjustment disorder - did you know there is a name for it? 

Finally, I remembered "The Writer's Journey" by Christopher Vogler, used in my college writing classes to great success in my case as I superimposed an abstract pattern faintly reminiscent of Ulysses in my papers, manifesting a physical journey or metaphysical wandering in assignments to arrive at an end, a conclusion, the denouement of my required papers. Anybody who has been in lockdown 2020 either longs for the previous status quo or something anything not resembling the isolation alienation loneliness in the metamorphosis of 2020. We are looking for a way back, or the way forward to a resolution. We are all on a journey. I will tell you about mine - taking a huge cut in pay to change my daily existence. 

Picture #1 is from CNN on August 8, 2020 - notice the death toll from picture #2 which was two hours later. My last remark - NPR awakes me daily at 5am - yesterday iit was broadcast that one in every 1,000 African Americans in the United States had died from Covid19. This is NOT "what it is." This is wrong.