For the Love of a Small Tourist Town

I've had friends marvel that even when we lived in a Classic Six apartment on NYC's Upper West Side, two blocks from Riverside Park, and zoned to one of NYC's best public schools, my heart longed for a little faux Bavarian town in the Eastern Cascades.

Today, on The Last Day of Summer (unofficial), I was reminded of the wisdom of choosing to come Home, of admitting that the Upper Valley is Home, not because I was born and bred here (I wasn't) but because the cadence at the river's edge and the casting magic of the undulating light on the mountains tune the resonance of my heart and soul.

We strolled from home around midday, dropped our books off at the library, and made a little pit stop at the tasting room of one my favorite wineries. Then we meandered through the waning throngs of tourists and made our way to the river. 

On its sandy banks, Z swam, I read, and others floated, swam, napped and generally enjoyed the perfect day. 

I looked up from my book to find my daughter building a volcano at the water's edge. A little girl, with a sweet Spanish lilt to her voice asked if she could help. Z said yes. A Somali family frolicked with their toddler nearby, even as she looked over at The Big Girls and clearly set some personal goals. A boy - a bit younger than Z and the brother of her new helper-friend - asked if he could help too. 

As The Trio dug and chatted, other voices from other corners of the world passed by, like starling murmurations at twilight. Some Russian, Japanese, English, and a couple languages I could not place. And laughter - sometimes raucous, sometimes giggly, all of it pure.

All of us - most of us with our children -  simply enjoying the day. And respecting each other's right to Be and Enjoy and Savor the gift of this place and time. It was remarkable in its unremarkableness. 

Some fifty years ago or so, this community was a struggling logging town staring down the prospect of its own decline. But in recognizing the community's topographic similarity to communities in Bavaria, residents saw Hospitality as a path to renewed prosperity. 

Welcoming strangers to experience the Beauty of this place meant inviting strangers to weave this landscape and community into the fabric of their families and their lives. Some of those strangers became neighbors, friends and family. Some of those strangers never returned. And over the years, the community stabilized and grew and evolved.

To be fair, not all of the growth or evolution has been well or equitably managed. Many of the descendants of that first generation of re-inventors cannot afford to return or stay. The economy traded one primary industry for another, with little diversification. And the housing prices and vacancy rates have no correlation to local median income or need.

But the community has persisted as it has evolved. And Hospitality has made this small hamlet of less than 2,000 year-round residents, a home away from home for over 2 million visitors from around the world, annually.

At times, it can feel a bit like the utopia of the Tao Te Ching: small with neighbors nearby but not in your face; a place for community and cultural experiences; and a respite for peaceful reading and writing and creating. At other times, it can feel like a case study in Overtourism.

Today, it felt like what it has become - from my first rafting trip over ten years ago, to today as my daughter made impromptu play friends on the banks of the river - Home.

March Madness

It's remarkable how tempting it is to over-stuff the weekend when so many opportunities and priorities compete for the limited waking hours. There's so much life to cram in.

I had hoped to help register voters at the March today but I have A LOT of cleaning to do ahead of my kid's 8th birthday costume dance party tomorrow: my costume to layout, her costume to mend (thanks to Cocoa, our Rabbit with Bad Habits), baking, shopping, my first jog after three days of crud, cleaning and more cleaning still.

I wanted to march in remembrance. But as I ease into gear today, I'm going to try to exorcise my memories of pulling the van over on the way to my kid's preschool, on my Mom's birthday, to ugly cry at the news of Sandy Hook. I'm going to try to exorcise my memories of the gallows humor I began to develop in the early Nineties when "going postal" entered the national vocabulary and I had already attempted to bury memories of the shooting at my Mom's work a few years before, under layers of other drama (mostly involving Butthead, my stepfather, who thankfully never had a gun). 

As I bake Z's favorite sheet cake and scatter rainbow sprinkles over the buttercream frosting she loves, I will rehearse how to ask family and friends - without judgment, just due diligence - whether their kids know the combination to the family gun safe, or know where the concealed but unsecured guns are. I don't want to seem nosy or judgey - because finding and keeping Mommy Friends is hard, y'all. I'd just like my kid to keep living to see another play date. 

And as I whisk and rehearse, I will remember that one time she won at hide-and-seek when we visited some friends. They lived on an island where break-ins were common but no alarm service seemed to operate, and both violent crime and vicious wildlife were practically non-existent (well, except for that one cougar who had swam across the inlet and laid low, except for a couple chickens...unless that was the raccoons). After the other kids couldn't find her, I joined the search and found her in the parents' bedroom closet (Ugh! Kid!) - giggling quietly, one hand on her mouth, the other grasping the door jamb ready to spring from her hiding place. She was utterly unaware that her little hand was next to a shotgun -- barrel up.

I have since repeatedly reminded her about staying out of grown up spaces - for so many reasons. I don't know what to do about our new friend's gun safe in the family fun room where the computer and family pets live. Why is it so much easier to compare and align strategies for holding our kids accountable during play dates in our respective homes than it is to discuss the steps we each take to insure that our children are safe in each other's homes? How do we talk with friends and family who seem to be responsible gun owners and parents? We are all raising kids who also seem pretty good...until they're not. 

We are raising human beings who are learning everyday, how to be good people. And they often, heck, almost always learn by making mistakes. Don't touch the fireplace grate, it'll burn you. Check. Walk before you run, or you'll face-plant. Check. If you grab the cat by the tail, she might scratch you. Check. Don't eat the yellow snow. Ever. Ugh, check. Don't throw sticks or play shovels, someone could get hurt. Check, which is why my dear girl has a third dimple thanks to the teacher's kid who will forever be That Little Sh*t, to me. 

But at least he didn't have access to a gun with which to kill her as he overreacted to her hoarding of that swing. 

On the spectrum of bad choices when kids can access their parents' guns (not because they should or are allowed to but because they are physically capable of finding or stumbling across damned near everything we don't want them to find), we have: 

• the two year old boy who broke the rules, unzipped his mom's concealed carry purse, and accidentally killed her
• the six year old who shot a classmate, 
• the eight year old who played with a poorly concealed family weapon and accidentally killed himself - apparently one of three such kids in that weekend
• the twelve year-old girl whose show-and-tell gun shot two classmates - one in the head -when she accidentally dropped the backpack
• the sophomore at my high school in 1992, who shot himself in the head playing Russian Roulette in a car in the school parking lot (though, to be fair, I'm not sure where he got the gun); 
• the "love-sick" misogynist teenage boy just last week, who couldn't handle rejection, so he shot and killed the "Object" of his "Affection"; 
• and the list goes on and on and shamefully on. 

The gift of childhood as fought for and created and nurtured in America requires that we create environments for our children that foster Failing Forward into being better individuals, better citizens, better friends, better family... better people making better choices. That means minimizing their exposure to the dangers that are not age-appropriate. That means creating opportunities for learning - and failing - that can help the children we know and love without hindering or killing the children we don't know (or even the Little Sh*ts we don't like).

Guns are the third biggest killer of American children. And the majority of children killed by guns in the developed world, are Americans. While most of that death is intentional and caused by their own family and friends, or themselves, a non-negligible amount is accidental. And more than 80% of the accidental gun deaths occur in the home, with unsecured guns. There are nearly 2 million children living in homes with unsecured guns and I can guarantee that the vast majority of those kids go to and host play dates. 

I don't want any more children - but especially my child - to be exposed to that degree of risk. And yet it feels increasingly like too many of my gun-enthusiast friends and family prefer to protect their weapons more than our children. The tools they have embraced for protecting their children have become more precious than all of our children. As adults, he have failed backward and our children - all of them - are being dragged by the backdraft.

No wonder so many are marching. And crying. And screaming. And acting out. It's what our children do when they are hurting. And scared. 

I miss the days when my girl was only afraid of zombies because I may have prematurely shown her Michael Jackson's "Thriller". So far this year, she has brought home a flyer from school featuring the NRA's Eddie Eagle, and parents have received two incident messages THIS WEEK with allegations about creepy dudes and kids from her K-2 elementary school talking crap about guns. None of it was true but all of it caused anxiety.

No wonder my girl is desperate to be homeschooled. At least with homeschooling, she's unlikely to be normalized into accepting the risk that a kid, a parent, a neighbor, or a teacher might go rogue (with a gun or without) and kill her while she practices her cursive. 

But homeschooling does nothing about play date safety, which ever since she won hide-and-seek, has taken on deeper meaning for me.

And as a single parent, working for a nonprofit, I cannot afford to homeschool her or hire an old school tutor. So...I guess I'll just bake an effing cake, prep my Mommy Pirate costume, pregame my knees with ibuprofen to prepare for garage dancing to KidzBop with a dozen of my kid's friends and parent-friends, who will also hopefully be in costume. 

The life-and-death matters that should plague me today are how we are going to get through the pre-tween years without me having a heart attack, and whether the party will wrap before the late afternoon hangries create an elementary Battle Royale. Instead I remember the ones lost, the ones we could have lost, and the childhood innocence my eight year old is rapidly losing. I could march but instead I'll bake a cake and try, one more day to keep the anxiety of this worsening Normal at bay. 

Springing Forward...with Stubborn Persistence

I am a fair-weather morning person. So like so many people, this was a rough week. Late winter gloom, Daylight Savings Time and early allergies have made mincemeat of my energy, sleep pattern and focus. 

And yet, I am also jazzed, with clarity about a single-minded mission: becoming a flower farmer and farmstead entrepreneur.

Sure, I just began a new job I love (and which, sadly, is under acute threat if 45's budget hit list is to be believed). But it is 3/4 time and is values-aligned with my stubborn desire (going on eight years now) to start and grow a farm-based business.

A property I have been eye-balling for almost two years went back on the market a short while ago, and my wheels began to turn.

I began communicating with the owner, visited the snow-blanketed property, and went into feasibility research mode in every spare moment. 

This week, my meeting with the local Small Business Development Center went very well, and while I have more homework to complete before our follow up meeting next week, I am reassured in the feasibility of the concept AND my ability to execute it. 

Over the years, I have developed a number of business projects that usually got to the capital raise stage and petered out. I used to lament these but I stopped doing so once I realized that with each effort, I learned more about myself, the markets, and the nature of business itself. But I also learned that it is so much harder to build a business without being rooted in community. 

We are home. 

Finally. 

And this community is one I love and have loved for years. 

It's telling that when I envision the Farm, I don't just see the fields and the canning garden or even the canning kitchen - spaces of meditative work for me and my soul. I envision people coming as guests. People integrating the story of the Farm into the narratives of their lives. Communities planted through seeds of commerce and cultivated through the humus of hospitality, memories and joy.

And so I persist...with spreadsheets, the business plan, and preparing documents for loan applications and prospective investors.

The seed has been planted in good potting soil. It's incubating in the greenhouse, with the seedling beginning to break through. By the grace of God and the stubbornness with which the Divine has gifted me, this is the year the seedling will transplant well and the Farm will finally bloom. 

Embracing Hygge, Solstice and Faith

A short while ago, I came across two writings - an excerpt from a book and an article - that have struck such a chord with where I am and who I've become. While not driving the decision I have made, they have helped me better understand it as more than an act of mothering and self-care. The decision was a necessary pang for new birth.

First, from The Spiritual Meaning of the Winter Solstice:

The birth of a divine child and savior at the winter solstice has formed a central part of spiritual beliefs throughout the world since the beginning of history — in ancient Egypt as the birth of Horus, the birth of Mithras in Persia, the birth of Jesus at Christmas, the birth of the divine Son at Alban Arthan of the Druids, etc. These celebrations have tapped into a universal spiritual principle that is just as relevant now as it was then. 

They speak to us of a mysterious and universal understanding of spiritual transformation. All things which come into being must first be born. Even as creation was borne by the great Mother of the universe, so too must we be born of the spirit to become spirit. The winter solstice is a celebration of being born again — not of flesh, but of the spirit. It’s a celebration of the birth of the spiritual Son, the Christ, within a person’s consciousness in the process of awakening. 

Symbolized as a child just as the winter sun is at its weakest, it will grow until reaching its full strength at the summer solstice—just as the spirit grows within a prepared individual to transform them completely from inner darkness into light.

And so the Winter light begins to return, with ever increasing clarity.

Friday marked my last day working for an organization I have admired for many years and worked for, for nearly two. I made the bittersweet decision to resign as the Best for Colorado Campaign Manager because - despite my love for and success with the work - it was becoming increasingly clear that for my family, and my own heart and soul, we need to return to Washington state. 

And so, I return Home, not to the state of my birth but to the state of my becoming. Where I became an adult more fully than I'd ever been before. Where I reconnected with my bucolic heart. Where I became a mother. Where I became better attuned to the resonance of my soul.

I don't know what's next. But I know my kid is happier than she has been in months.

Professionally, I have an interview scheduled with another organization I have admired and with which I have wanted to work for several years.

Residentially, I have a few leads on rentals in the notoriously tight rental market.

But thanks to the parting generosity of my former employer, I don't have to act with immediacy on the first "Next Gig". And we have friends who have offered interim shelter until I am able to find us a home.

What a rare and precious gift.

I have resources to take the time to release, relax and recalibrate. If my interview on Tuesday doesn't work out, then I will fail forward into other opportunities, as I make myself fully at home in a community that I have adopted, a community that brings Z closer to her paternal family and to which we have regularly returned as our True North since leaving Washington in 2012.

And while I HATE moving - especially cross-country moving, which I've done twice in the last 18 months for opportunities with B Lab  - and I have never moved in the dead of winter, I find that I don't entirely mind.

I have embraced my professional down time and even the move as an exercise in the spirit of the Danish tradition, Hygge.

Now, I'm pretty sure there is no Danish in my family history. But when I read an article about Hygge, a light bulb of recognition went off. Hygge describes what I'm looking forward to. Hygge describes how I plan to spend at least the next two - three weeks (well, depending on the move timeline).

“Hygge, during the short, dark days and long nights, is akin to wintering. To slowing down, allowing the year to fold in on itself, and tending to ourselves and to each other."

And it has six core elements.

1. Slow Down

My last year has been a case study in Marathon Busyness. And since I'm more of a 5k with Sparkle Dust kind of gal, I need to Slow...The Frak...Down.

I will slow down by taking snowy walks and finally some cross-country skiing lessons for the first time in almost seven years.

I both need and want to recalibrate my sense of Now, with a greater focus on presence and an unlearning of the disease of "busy." 

2. Create a Circle of Warmth

Hygge is "sort of a full-on embrace of all things toasty, cozy, and restorative."

I look forward to the warmth of old friends and the joy of new ones. And the introvert part of my extraverted introversion equally looks forward to the comfort of my favorite sweats. I might even see if I can find one of those sensory deprivation pools in dark rooms for a little Womb Return reenactment.

3. Soothe Your Senses

But I don't want total sensory deprivation. I want and need a sensory reset with familiar landscapes, and favored flavors (Cave B Cuvée de Soleil, Chukar Cherries and all things Tillamook ...I have missed thee). All at an altitude that doesn't still have me wheezing.

And then there's the Sister Santa massage gifts and some day soon, a pilgrimage day to Olympus.

4. Embrace the Small Stuff

A small home in a small town can root and grow big dreams.

5. Celebrate the Season (and not just The Holidays)

Unlike the cacophony that often takes over the Holidays, the Winter season - especially in the mountains and high desert - has a majestic silence when we turn off the gadgets and allow ourselves to fully embrace the season. It creates an unavoidable encounter with Self.

6. Know That It Won't Last Forever

Having never been unemployed, with a child before - without also being a full time student - the most comforting part of Winter may be the reminder that This Too Shall Pass. One can survive Winter and just be glad to get through it. Or one can decide to thrive during Winter and commit to making the best of it. Slowing down, scaling back, and turning inward need not equate to coming to a stand-still, giving up and shutting down.

I am cocooning for a few weeks. And like all cocooning, mine is a stage in active transformation. It is not without its risks. But it's also not without its opportunities. And I know that it is the best choice for me, my daughter, and our family.

The Inelegance of Grief and Vulnerability in the Seismic Age of Trumpence

How is a person to act when the first rumblings of seismic shift begins and s/he realizes s/he is standing on shifting sand rather than bedrock?

Having lived in California or Washington for nearly thirty years of my life, I have experienced many earthquakes, most so small that I barely took a pause ("Meh, that's like a 3.0 and I've GOT to get this laundry done"). A few - the Loma Prieta and the Northridge quakes, in particular - were doozies ("Oh, Sweet Lord, is this the day and place where I die?"). 

My one comfort during those bigger - dare I say, "bigly" - earthquakes was that at least I was on solid, if rocking ground. If I made it to a strong doorway or under a solid desk that could withstand the weight of falling debris, I knew I would be okay.

But for folks whose homes and work and and schools and lives were built on landfill (the approximation of equity in property development and urban design) they found out quickly, brutally, and totally just how illusive the security for which they paid dearly truly was.

These days, I've been thinking a lot about earthquakes, given the preponderance of seismic imagery in analyses of the Trump Electoral College victory. And I can't think of a more apt metaphor for the pace and scale of the threats, and the importance of situatedness in determining one's perception and vulnerability to those threats.

I am reminded of this video by Brent Kooi, who was a missionary in Chiba City, Japan, a few hours away from Fukushima when the earthquake struck.

Elsewhere, Mr. Kooi has stated that he was able to stay calm in the crisis because he did not know the scope of the damage further north. What I find striking, however, is not his calm but rather the reactions of some of the others in the video: both the dog and the Japanese citizens at 0:40. While Mr. Kooi admits to feeling disoriented as he continues to meander towards the train station, while recording the liquefaction of the park, the people at 0:40 waste no time leaving and the dog sounds like s/he is having none of it. It's not until 2:26, after noting the rapid expansion of the fissures, the sprouting of lakes where there was once lawn, that Mr. Kooi admits to feeling "a little nervous" because, oh yeah, the park is built on landfill.

It's personally hard to reflect on the seismic nature of the coming age of Trumpence and not react like the people at 0:40 or holler like the dog. Over the last few years, I've noted regional insurgencies and wretched Supreme Court decisions that have made it very clear that core human and civil rights, necessary for a successful free and fair democracy, are not bedrock rights for anyone who isn't straight, white, wealthy, or evangelically Christian. And now, the candidate who campaigned peddling contempt, ridicule and hatred for The Other, is queuing up a Cabinet full of hateful True Believers determined to enshrine their white supremacist, heteronormative, Inquisition-style Christianity into every chamber of government and into the highest law of the land for at least a generation.

How am I to act when the first rumblings of seismic shift begin and I realize I am standing on shifting sand rather than bedrock?

I know there are many who believe that the best way to react is to follow Mr. Kooi's example: stay calm in the crisis; make note of the changing landscape; look to the reactions of others as guidance for how best and when to react; don't panic; and don't disturb others with your nervousness. 

That's a lot to ask these days when the fissures of injustice are undulating and threatening an era of constitutional and humanitarian liquefaction.

Not only does it ignore the messiness of grief and legitimate fear. It fails to create space for the very productivity that it requires. How does a vulnerable person create a plan to alleviate that vulnerability without engaging those who may be inconvenienced but who purport to "empathize"? That's not a rhetorical question. That's my dilemma. If I follow the example of the dog and loudly announce my concerns, I am histrionic in my personal life and unprofessional at work. If I follow the example of the people at 0:40, I am uncommitted. 

I and others more immediately vulnerable (e.g. Muslims, Hispanics and sexual minorities) are now profoundly inconvenienced by the need to create exit strategies that may pull us away from homes we love, communities we enjoy, and work that inspires us.

And resolving those two inconveniences -- the one for those adapting to the liquefaction of their human and civil rights; the other for those on higher, more stable ground who want to help but also need the vulnerable to function as if they too are on stable, unchanged ground -- is a conundrum that many communities and workplaces will need to resolve.

Survival strategies for vulnerable people in the Age of Trumpence are not something that can be gradually evolved in wonderment at the rapidly changing terrain. And their genuinely empathetic but inconvenienced neighbors and colleagues who are less vulnerable to Trumpence priorities have a right to try to maneuver through the transformation with calm. 

I wish I had the answer. I suspect it begins with authentic heart-to-hearts between the vulnerable and the inconvenienced, focused on discerning mutually beneficial pathways towards continuity where possible, and towards escape where necessary. But those heart-to-hearts must be predicated on a shared understanding that while there are always tremors with change, seismic tremors (like the rise of a President openly allied with white nationalists) are different. And the discovery that some principles once believed to be bedrock are in fact landfill in the early stages of liquefaction is a living nightmare.

Requiem for an American Dream

When I started this blog, it was after accepting that my long and circuitous journey towards becoming an academic was derailed, and I needed to re-chart my course.

Last month, I began drafting a post the week after my birthday. I'd learned that a high school friend (the first boy I ever loved) had died tragically. And a few days later, a college friend died after a sudden, fierce and ultimately futile battle with cancer. Questions of mortality and purpose intermingled with grief for two of the kindest and most decent people I've known. And I was plunged deep into introspection.

In the days that I have been drafting this - tapping a few letters, sometimes words, deleting, and gradually needing fewer pauses to remind my lungs to function - I have reconciled with the demise of my delusions about the state of the country of my birth.

My American Dream has long been to finally settle on some land in a rural spot within a half day's drive of an international airport. My mind's shameless cosmopolitanism would finally reconcile with my agrarian progressive heart and I would establish our family's farmstead bed and breakfast some place in rural America that would welcome our presence, and respect this dream.

But in light of last week, my encounter with Trumpence, and the litany of indignities and threats piling on to my black, brown, Muslim, Jewish, Asian, Latinx, and queer friends and acquaintances, I've decided to rechristen my American Dream as my North American Dream.

I've decided to resume the journey of emigrating to Canada, something I've explored off and on for over a decade. And for that, I've been accused of being histrionic. Of being a quitter. Of never really being an American anyway. Of being naive. Of simply not doing enough.

I've been told that now is not the time to walk (or sprint) away. It's the time to grieve through volunteering, strategic donation, and consistent self-care. It's the time to stockpile Plan B and lean in, just a little bit more. It's the time to celebrate the glimmers of hope that also manifested on Tuesday (see 1, and 2). Now is the time to lead and testify and build bridges to those who want me and mine gone my neighbors and listen with an empathy they clearly lack for Others. It's the time to give hate a chance.

But here's the thing: at best, all those exhortations sound like Hamilton's Aaron Burr chatting revolutionary strategy with General Washington, and at worse, they are the knight reassuring the pawn.

I will continue to lean in to support the development of communities that support businesses that implement more positively impactful practices (an aspect of my current work that I deeply enjoy) and I will lean in to advocate for more equitable distribution of economic opportunity to regions beyond the coasts and large cities. But I will not lean in to place my head in the guillotine and become a martyr. And Hell will host the Winter Olympics before I knowingly gamble with my daughter's safety and options. Staying put feels - and with each passing day, looks - like a risky gamble.

Before Tuesday's results and the racist encounter I experienced on Thursday, if I unexpectedly encountered a person as I rounded a corner, I would respond with a chuckle and a greeting, my default reaction for ALL people. Now I go through my day with a heightened vigilance, uncertain whether I am truly, fundamentally safe. My trepidation isn't reverse racism, it's the law of averages. More than 53 million overwhelmingly white Americans voted FOR a candidate who promoted white supremacist views and violence against his detractors. They voted for a man who would rather me and mine weren't here, in the land of our birth, investment and homes. And many millions more didn't bother to vote to keep him and the hate he enthusiastically celebrates at bay.

I'm not the fighter I used to be. For my daughter and for my aging heart, I seek Safe Harbor in a sanctuary where I can mourn, heal, regroup and thrive.

But I also want to understand: 

How have Canadians made diversity and immigration "work," especially in rural and exurban communities?

Sure, I could just stalk the British Columbia OARH online, and dive deeper into reading about Canadian history to glean what I can learn. But, as a former study abroad alumna and a card-carrying cosmopolitan geek, I prefer immersion. In the US we like to talk a good game about how we are the exemplars for the world but on this point, we are a cautionary tale and clearly have a lot to learn.

On Fights and Backs in the Age of Trumpence

When I was my daughter's age, there was a little white girl I wanted to play with. Her parents didn't allow it, so I shrugged it off and went off to play on my own. At the time, Mom didn't tell me why the girl  wasn't allowed to play with me. And to those parents' limited credit, they didn't tell me either. It was much later that I was finally told it was because I am black.

When I was just a little bit older than my daughter, a white boy in my class called me a nigger on the walk home from school. I turned around, kicked him hard in the nuts, and then chased him home. Classmates were around. They heard what he said. They saw my response. And when the kid and his father came to school the next day, looking for witnesses to report me, my friends had my back. And I don't think it was because they were afraid I'd beat them up too (I wouldn't have). They had my back because in their elementary sense of ethics, they knew it was the right thing to do.

Fast forward thirty years, and some of those same friends who had my back in grade school, have turned their backs or stood in palpable silence as I and people who look like me have begun to be harassed by racists emboldened by my "friends'" chosen savior. Those friends no longer have my back. They have stabbed it.

New friends, better friends, promise they have my back in the fight(s) to come. And to the extent that their hearts are true and their spirits strong, I believe they do. But I also know that the beat downs along the way (some reputational, some legal, and others, I'm sure, physical) are coming as much for my allies as for me and people like me.

And the tests my back-havers will endure will be many, with varied expectations of advocacy and intervention.

When I studied abroad in Russia one summer, I was one of maybe two dozen black people in the entire city of St. Petersburg. It wasn't long before the neo-nazis under Nevsky Prospekt saw in me an easy mark, and the abused and down-trodden Roma saw in me someone who, finally was lower on the whipping post than they were. I got through those two months sometimes by hiding in my room but mostly because two white male friends who spoke better Russian than I did, essentially took shifts hanging out and exploring the sites with me. They had my back in a most literal sense and I will forever be in their debt.

Last Thursday, when I finally had to leave the house (pesky job and adulting responsibilities), I was anxious. Friends and others around the country were already reporting racially abusive language and physical acts. But though I live in Denver, CO, I was on alert as I walked out my door. What would the rise of the Age of Trumpence have in store for me that day?

Very little, it seemed. I parked in a parking garage and scurried to my office hours, encountering no overt racial enmity whatsoever. I carried a large box several blocks to another meeting downtown and encountered nothing but either averted eyes or really earnest and hyper-kind smiles. I got through the day! Yes! And as I walked back through downtown, to the garage, I allowed myself a little relief.

Then a car rolled up slowly beside me, which was odd because there are no parking meters on that part of the street, nor any storefronts. A sneering voice said something out the window to me. I didn't catch all of it but I did hear "Trump's White America." And as I picked up my pace, without looking at the car or saying anything, the car sped up too and drove off with the sound of the occupants' malicious laughter.

I was shaken. But I wasn't alone. There was a thirty-something looking white guy who was just a couple feet ahead of me. When the haters rolled up and pronounced the truth of the day, my sidewalk neighbor glanced over his shoulder at me and the car. And here's the thing: he didn't say or do anything. He just kept walking.

I won't have friends like my buddies in Russia around me everyday. I need to rely on the kindness of strangers in this Age of Trumpence. But can I? When 1/4 of the voting-eligible population saw an opportunistic racist and xenophobe and said, "Yeah, I'm cool with that." And nearly half of the voting-eligible population saw the rise of the opportunistic racist and xenophobe and said, "Yeah, I don't care enough about that to vote to keep it at bay." When nearly 3/4 of those who could have had my back chose or enabled those who'd rather but a bulls eye on it, can I rely on the kindness of strangers and still feel safe in the land of my birth?

I am tired of abuse. I'm tired of the shocked white moderate and liberal realization that white supremacy isn't America's underbelly, it's fundamental to too many Americans' national identity. I'm tired of those with more privilege and security than I have ever had or ever will have here telling me THEY need ME to fight the fight that THEY should have been fighting with their families and friends.

I need sanctuary to recover my footing,  heal my broken heart, and raise my daughter in a space of genuine compassion and safety. I need to relearn who I can trust to have my back as I have theirs, and who offers nothing but smiles and lies.

Sometimes, getting out is the best course of action. Trumpenistas may triumph when I and others leave. They may even try to block the right of return for anyone who departs. But if those who have the wherewithal (and strategic privilege) to stay and fight prevail, then the Trumpenistas will win this terrible battle but will lose the long and bitter war for this country's soul.