Monday, Monday. Can't trust that day...

Monday was a rough day. I was bullied and I was lied about on Monday. And I can't write the story here, so I'll talk about the other side of Monday. People who don't owe me a thing blessed me with incredible love and support on Monday.

My daughter-in-law Dakota, who is simply the best daughter-in-law ever, took Coraline and my 2-year-old grandson Cassius Danger (whom I haven't even hugged since March) on a socially distanced (because she cares about Coraline) hike while I was in court getting custody. And Coraline didn't worry so much for a while, because she was having a good time exploring an abandoned house and hiking in the woods with people she loves and who love her and have always been there for her. And who care enough about her to socially distance no matter how hard it is to not give a worried little girl a hug and a snuggle. It was more than enough.

Shortly after we got home a former student who's from Moldova stopped by to pick up some sweet corn I was selling for a farmer I know (another story), and she brought Coraline and me delicious Russian chocolates and oatmeal cookies. I didn't even know there was a Russian grocery here, but there is and once it's safe, she's going to go there with me and tell me about Russian food.

I picked up the mail and there was a package from another friend from back in the olden days when I homeschooled my kids and we had just discovered the internet (who remembers Prodigy and AOL?). She sent me 4 ceramic affirmation stones and a money order to help pay for a used Trek bicycle I bought Coraline last week. I knew she was sending something, because she told me to expect a package, but I didn't expect such generosity. Yeah, I cried. I'm a sap.

Other friends sent me texts and messages and checked in on me to make sure I was OK. I'm not, but their support makes me feel not so alone. Once I got Coraline to bed, I did an hour of yoga and meditation opened a bottle of wine my friend Maria gave me for my birthday last month and a bag of Clancy's potato chips Dakota dropped off the other day (because I still haven't been to the grocery store since March) and watched a documentary about buskers. I've always wanted to busk, but I'm not that good. I don't think people would toss their coins and bills in my guitar case unless maybe they wanted me to stop playing. I'm reading a book about a guy who busks with a manual typewriter and writes a poem for anybody who needs one and they give him what they can or what they think it's worth. Maybe I need to busk with a typewriter instead of a guitar. I digress ....

I want to be able to write specifically about what's happening, but I don't dare. And that pisses me off because it's my story and as Anne Lamott says

I'm sorry, Anne Lamott. I don't have the courage -- or maybe the stupidity -- to tell this story while it's happening. But someday. Someday I will just for myself. Just to keep the record straight for those who wonder.

And in the meantime I will simply say that being the hero in a story doesn't mean you win like it does in the movies and books. Real life is 20fucking20 and I wouldn't get through it if I didn't have these blessings to count. These many blessings. I'm going to have to work hard to pay all this forward. I look forward to finding those opportunities though.

Do you have stories you can't tell? You can tell them to me. I can't tell all of mine -- nobody does -- but I can listen. One thing 2020 has taken away is the random encounter with strangers who have a story to tell, at least for people like me who are practicing safe living.

One final thought: Heroes wear masks. Heroes keep the rest of us safe by social distancing. Heroes know when to put others before themselves. Be a hero, even if heroes don't always win.

Tears for heroes: Day 26

Every day my Facebook feed is filled with shit that makes me get all the uncomfortable feels: rage, incredulity, fear, terror, shock, horror. And that's just the orange dog fart's tweets.

In my real life I've got plenty of things to worry about. For example I was researching security systems tonight and realized my downstairs furnace wasn't running and the front parlor was cold. Sigh. I got the furnace to come on and it blew cold air and then shut off. I went downstairs and smelled the faint odor of gas, so I called a local 24-hour furnace business. The woman who took my information said the guy would call me. It's been almost two hours. Fuck him. I've got another furnace upstairs. I'll get it fixed tomorrow by someone else. And fuck all the asshole men who are forcing me to get a security system. I could use that money for so many other things especially with the winter holidays coming up. See? Just tonight. Plenty to worry about.

And don't even get me started on grief. I want to tell my mom so many things that are happening right now, just to know she's on my side and that she's as upset as I am. She wasn't such a good listener all the time, but she did when it was important and she really needs to know some of this stuff. I miss her.

So in order to balance out the political, the worries, and the grief, I've been clinging to the stories about small acts of kindness, stories about people who are in-the-moment heroes, that, oddly enough, are the most likely to make me tear up or even cry. People who see a need and give because they can. Hero stories have always made me cry like the silly sap I am. Remember Billy Jack? There's a lake in southwest Iowa that was made just from my Billy Jack tears. Garbage truck driver who rescues an elderly woman from a fire and hauls her out of there in his truck. Oh, hell yes. Boy Scout helping an old woman across the street? Hand me a tissue, Granny.

I'm posting as many of these stories on my Facebook as I can just to remind myself and my friends who we really are. Who we really want to be. So tonight, because I'm worn out and 7:00 is going to be here in < 5 hours, I will simply share this story, which I will admit made me tear up. And I will ask you to please share stories like this too, because even though they make me cry, it's good crying, healing crying, hope crying. And we need all the hope we can get right now.

I Need a Hero

I was talking to my son on the phone tonight and he offered to beat somebody up for me. Of course my response was "Yes, please. Hurt that fucker bad and make sure there's blood....but only if I can watch." "That's not the way I raised you. Of course I don't want you to beat anybody up."

"No," he insisted, "I really think this is one of those times when grabbing somebody in a dark alley and kicking some ass is the right thing to do."

And I, of course. replied, "Yes! My life story needs an ass-kicking in a dark alley right now. Go forth and be my hero, Son. And then run away fast so you don't get caught!"  "No dark alleys. That's not the way to solve anything. Do you really think it's worth getting arrested for? Do you really think this person is worth getting arrested for?"

"Maybe it is," he said. "I would do it for you."

Awwww. I smiled on the other end of the phone. He would do it for me. That's my boy. Well, that's not really my boy. He's a grown man in the prime of his life and he can take care of himself if he needs to and, more likely, other people too. He's always had the heart of a superhero. Yet he's tactful, good with words, and it's not his nature to solve problems with violence. And I've always been glad it wasn't. I've always been glad he wasn't one of those violent little boys who bullied other kids and got in fights all the time. I hate bullies.

Sure, he went through a phase where everything he put his hands on became a gun, in spite of the fact that his hippie mom wouldn't let him play with toy guns for the first few years of his life. (I despised the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All that kicking.) Lacking any actual facsimile of a gun, he would chew a piece of bread into the shape of a one. Or cut pieces of paper. A banana could become a gun or a special stick. Even his shoe.

I couldn't seem to quell his fascination with weapons no matter what I did, and yet he was never one of those violent boys. If anything, he was on the more sensitive side, more likely to be bullied when he was little. He didn't understand bullying, so he had a hard time seeing it coming and dealing with it. (Something I struggle with myself to this day. I really hate bullies.)

His violent nature, if it could even be called that, rose up when somebody else was being bullied. He could be fearless when he was protecting someone else, but he never instigated fights. And yet the damn guns! What the hell was it with the damn guns? He puzzled the hell out of me until I did some research on little boys and their innate need to know they could control their world using physical force if necessary. Turns out even hippie moms can change their minds.

But a hippie feminist mom shouldn't feel any sort of pleasure when her son offers to beat the shit out of somebody for her.....right? We don't solve problems that way. First, women don't need a man to go all crazy and start hitting people. We can solve our own problems and we don't need violence to do it. And second, there's never any reason to use physical violence unless you need to defend yourself. And even then, WWJD? Or Gandhi? Or MLK? Right? Right?

I try. I really do try to live the principles my brain says are right, true, ethical. I talk and compromise and work things out and I'm patient and kind and understanding and I listen and I forgive too  easily and my heart breaks and breaks and most of my rage is delivered to other drivers from the safety of my van and they never even know how pissed off I am so nobody is hurt. I would never condone my son giving somebody an asskicking in a dark alley....Yeah. Whatthefuckever.

There's still some part of me that felt proud and supported and...I don't know....protected when he said that. There's a part of me that's evidently neither a feminist nor a hippie that whispers that sometimes a woman has given enough of her fragile, sensitive, compromising, taking-care-of-everybody-else's-fucking-feelings self to a situation, and she would like one of the men in her life to step up and say, "It's time for somebody to get an ass-kickin' because in my world that's not the way you treat a woman." There is a part of me --a seditious, perverse part of me--that says if men are going to act like assholes, then sometimes another man has to deal with him man to man, because much as I have a wicked tongue and an even more wicked pen, I really can't deliver the same sort of message as an asskicking in a dark alley. And sometimes I just want one of the men in my life to step up and say, "This stops here because men don't behave this way. And since you don't respect that woman over there, I'm going to deal with it like a caveman. That seems to be what you understand." And then let the asskicking commence.

I'm not saying I really want my son to hurt somebody on my behalf. I really do don't do don't. I don't! But I am confessing that I kind of like the idea that he's willing to. Maybe, in spite of my feminist, hippie ways, I really do want men to be heroes, to stand up with courage to right wrongs, to defend the women in their lives, to keep alive that special masculine mythology of physical courage and protectiveness that...well, that some men do so well, even if most of those are fictional characters in movies and on TV.

Sometimes, I just need a real, live hero. But I'm not going to let my son give anybody an ass-kicking in a dark alley in my defense. At least not tonight.