Category Archives: immigrants

When Do Stories End

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Every time I ask my 3-year old grandson, Manu, “Do you want to hear a story?” he stops what he’s doing and fixes his gaze on me, his eyes wide in anticipation, shooting me a little dose of performance pressure. But I don’t have to worry because if he doesn’t like the story, he intervenes to change it. He has a strong preference for the characters to be people he knows, so I can’t resort to folk or fairy tales unless he, or my cat, or the members of the Tokyo Paradise City Ska Band make an appearance and take over the action. Even then, he likes to interrupt and add salient or deliberately funny details on his own, so that the story quickly becomes a joint effort.

But sooner or later, we both run out of gas, as we did about a week ago, when I said, “That’s the end of the story.”

“Why?” I could tell from his tone that he was clearly upset.

“Because I don’t know what comes next. Do you?”

Manu followed up with a sentence or two, and then looked at me to continue. I added what I hoped was a closing sentence, and then asked him if he knew what happened next, He said he didn’t.

“Neither do I,” I told him. “So that’s the end.”

A couple of days later in one of my writing groups, a fellow writer lamented the elusiveness of plot. “I have so many words, but not plot” she said. And without a plot, how do we manage our words? How do we translate that hidden precious bud of whatever we’re trying to express while still making it conform to the parameters of fiction that people expect: plot, being an essential element.

Even though I’ve been told by many teachers that my first published book–a YA Holocaust novel, Escaping Into the Night–was so well-plotted that “even the boys who preferred more action-oriented books liked it,” I’ve never considered myself a master at plot. There are many fiction-writing books that can teach you how to map out your plot in advance, designating turning points one-third, two-thirds, and just before the end that raise the stakes–a common outline for Hollywood movies. This is probably a good exercise to do, though I’ve never done it. Whatever plots I’ve managed to nudge out of my writing have emerged out of deep attention to character and setting, and intensive pondering of what could possibly happen next.

Often I go through several periods of trial and error before settling on what feels both realistic and meaningful in terms of getting across whatever underlying theme I’m struggling with. It’s not that different from riffing with Manu on my cat’s adventures in the backyard, except that instead of abandoning plot points that don’t work, we just keep going on one wacky tangent after another.

Lately in my own writing, I’m coming across another issue in plotting and determining where stories end. Even though I’ve already written and published a book of short stories on immigrants, the issue keeps tugging at both my activist and creative heart. But in the new fiction projects I’ve started on the topic (a couple of short stories and a YA novel) I keep getting to the point where every answer I can imagine to “what happens next” is so horrible, I can’t even write it down.

Maybe, I just need to follow Manu’s example when it comes to the issue of ending stories, and just refuse to say, that’s the end. At least, not until I can see past these awful moments into a brighter and more hopeful future.

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Washing Away the Numbness

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Like most writers, I’m constantly trying to strike the perfect balance between time for my writing and time for the rest of my life. And, like many activists, I struggle to balance responding to the demands of a situation, while setting boundaries so I can stay focused and not burn out too quickly. This past week has certainly been a test in maintaining all these balances. Nearly every day I’ve had 2 or 3 long meetings, some of them highly frustrating in the amount of disappointing new information revealed, or in their lack of productive outcomes.

This doesn’t even include time dealing with the text threads and email chains to plan and debrief these meetings, and sorting through the hundreds of issue-related texts and emails that have come into my inbox–many of which need to be responded to or forwarded to the right people.

Nor does it include the demonstration a few of us planned last Saturday as part of a regional day of action to boycott Citizens Bank, one of the few banks that still provides loans to CoreCivic and GeoGroup, two major players that run most of the ICE detention centers. And it doesn’t include the insomniac hours I spent worrying about the zero-degree wind chill forecast for that day and pondering whether or not we should postpone. (We decided to go for it, but set a shorter time frame. Happy that we got a good turnout and the sun kept the cold tolerable.)

It also doesn’t include dealing with the numbing grief as one shocking news story after another unfolds in Minneapolis and elsewhere. A second murder of a protester, the abduction of a preschooler used as bait to detain his parents (my grandson has the same bunny hat), a gunpoint wrongful arrest of a US citizen who was taken in his underwear in the frigid cold, and 5-year old twins being denied release after 8 months in detention in Texas because the judge said they have no access to collateral.

These are just a few of the horrific stories that can easily send me reeling into a state of numbness.

While people now seem to be galvanized by DHS’s murders of Tim Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, it’s important to know that they are only 2 of the 8 people who died in dealings with ICE just in the past month. Perhaps it’s easier to see ourselves in Pretti and Good, since they were protesters, but let’s not forget the other six people who died in ICE detention centers this January, often under questionable circumstances: Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez. Campos’s case is particularly disturbing, as ICE claimed he committed suicide, but the medical examiner determined that his death was clearly a homicide.

So, yes, friends, it has been hard to find balance. And hard to find the psychic space to write, though in some ways being inundated with all these meetings and emails and events and projects does make me feel like I’m doing something to fight the tsunami, even if at times, I worry that I’m just wading right into it with my surfboard. Still, the cold water pouring over me does help wash away the numbness. And somehow, I’m still managing to stay afloat. And if you’re moved to take a small but important action right now, you can ask your Senator to vote against continued funding for ICE, using this call script from Indivisible.

Image by Elias from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/wave-ocean-sea-storm-tsunami-1913559/

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Grandma, Dance!

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Once again, I was in the middle of preparing a blog post on my submissions stats from 2025. And once again, life happened. Or, should I say, death happened.

Renee Nicole Good. 37 years old. A poet, and the mother of three young children.  Sitting in her car as a legal observer during an ICE raid in Minneapolis. Shot four times in the face after being harassed by ICE agents as she attempted to drive away.

The feds are spinning this story by painting her as a domestic terrorist who was trying to run over ICE agents with her vehicle. An outright lie, but what else would you expect from an administration who had the audacity to rewrite the events of January 6? The videos made by numerous bystanders show otherwise. No ICE agents were in the vehicle’s path as she attempted to escape. The person who shot her–four times in the face–was standing by the side of the car, not in its path. And besides, as my partner pointed out so matter-of-factly, if you want to stop a car, you don’t need to shoot the occupant. You can shoot the tires.

And after she had collapsed and crashed into a utility pole, ICE refused to allow a physician in the crowd to provide medical treatment, claiming they had their own medics, who, at the moment, were nowhere to be found.

I first read accounts of this story yesterday, sitting in the dark in my grandson’s room while he napped. And two things came to mind. First was a blurry melange from Schindler’s List and other Holocaust movies where Nazi guards randomly and blithely shot any Jew who wasn’t immediately conforming to whatever order was given.

The second was an event that happened to me when I was about Renee’s age. I was backing out of a parking space with my one-year-old in the car, when all of a sudden I heard this man knocking on my trunk. You hit me! he shouted. He told me he had fallen from the impact and re-injured his knee. Mortified, I dropped off the baby to my partner at home, a few blocks away, then drove the man to the ER. When he said he didn’t need me to come and wait with him, I drove to the police station to report the accident. When I gave the name of the victim, the policeman rolled his eyes. That guy’s a known scammer. I’d be very careful, he said. He probably didn’t even go into the ER. You probably didn’t even hit him.

And I had stupidly just shown him exactly where I lived!

The next day he called me and asked for money for medical expenses. I took the easy way out. I met him in town with cash.

I was lucky. I never heard from the man again. I have my life. I watched my children grow up, as Renee never will. The feds’ story circulating about Renee, embellished and exaggerated by Kristi Noem and Donald Trump, is another scam. A scam of out-of-control proportions, which if people start believing it, will give ICE the authority to keep randomly shooting anyone they deem “non-compliant”–to be no different than the Nazi guards were, needing no justification to shoot anyone they pleased.

So today, I’m wearing dark colors, feeling a different kind of grief, a stunned sadness punctured with fear for my country. Renee’s death is not the only senseless death of a protesting activist. I think of Rachel Corrie in Gaza, Heather Heyer in Charlottesville. And I think of the hundreds of African-Americans murdered by authoritarian police for no cause: George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark–just to name a few. More profiles and stories are here.

I hope all the readers of this blog–those of you who are inclined toward political action and those of you who aren’t–will think of one thing you can do in response to Renee’s death and this unraveling trajectory towards authoritarianism. Call your Congresspeople. (Jessica Craven has a script here), attend a vigil, write a poem, as Cyn Grace Sylvie did in yesterday’s poetic resistance blog, Second Coming, or make a piece of art. Post your responseon social media/and or share it with friends. Share this blog. Or share something else that might speak to you more deeply.

After I first read the news story about Renee yesterday, I only had a few minutes to absorb the severity of it all before my grandson woke up and wanted listen to clips of his favorite band, The Tokyo Paradise Ska Orchestra (an odd choice for a 3-year-old, but that’s where he’s at). He has about 50 cuts on the playlist his parents made for him, and was happy to put them on shuffle and see what came next.

Grandma, dance! He kept shouting as he bounced up and down to the beat,  a different stuffed animal in his arms for each song.

I didn’t feel like dancing. But this is life.

And as I bobbed around, I realized one more time, that this is why we must keep fighting. So we can dance.

Carolmooredc, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

If I can’t dance, then I don’t want to be part of your revolution.–Emma Goldman

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Chainsaws Gone Wild

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Photo by haemd: https://art.ngfiles.com/medium_views/ 6994000/6994772_2373943_haemd_ chainsawman.88461deeb7794d08f5f 382a77717451f.webp?f1756587284

Last fall, I was outside with my grandchild, Manu, when he heard a motorized noise and asked me what it was.

It didn’t exactly sound like a lawn mower, or a weed whacker. “Maybe it’s a chainsaw,” I said.

“Let’s go see it.”

He got in the stroller and we took off in search of the noise, taking a few wrong turns before we found the perpetrator–a very scary industrial-size leaf-blower, sucking up everything around it.

“I want to go home!” Manu shouted as soon as he realized what it was. He’s always hated leaf blowers.

At the time I didn’t find this incident particularly significant, except that Manu wouldn’t let go of his desire to see a chainsaw. In fact, for nearly a year after, every time he heard any kind of motor after that, he asked me if it was a chainsaw, even if the lawn mower, or the motorcycle, or the helicopter was clearly in sight. And he also asked me–often–to tell him the story of “Manu and the Chainsaw,” where I’d recount the chainsaw-turned-leaf-blower-search” in detail, embellishing shaggy dog style with my purplest toddler-appropriate prose.

The story always ended like this: Manu was very, very sad that he didn’t see a chainsaw, but Grandma said, ‘That’s okay, Manu. We’ll get to see a chainsaw some day.’

Last week, two houses down from his, the neighbors were cutting up a dead tree. Manu stood mesmerized, holding my hand at the edge of the grass, a little scared, a little awed, as the neighbors ran the chainsaw over and over through the dead wood.

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about this story, and its relationship to how we deal with things we anticipate once we see them.

Especially things that are unpleasant.

For months, we’ve been told fascism is coming, hovering at the edges of our democracy, eating away at it in small bites. We’ve been told that if we don’t turn the tides in three months, six months, nine months, or by the mid-terms at the latest, we’ll be doomed.

But fascism is here. Because ICE is here: Masked thugs over-running our communities, lawlessly breaking car windows, pushing their way into houses, taking undocumented people who have been here for years, as well as people with legal status, green card holders and even U.S. citizens.

In other words, kidnapping.

We may not have personally seen ICE yet; those of us who are privileged may feel like we still have time because in our day-to-day lives, everything is normal. We still wake up in the morning, work, exercise, garden, parent, make dinner, watch our daily TV shows. If we don’t pay attention to the news, we can live happily in a pretend world where nothing has changed.

On Labor Day, I went to a rally in support of a local farmworker who is one of over 2500+ victims taken by ICE in Massachusetts alone. An organizer who spoke said she was in the car accompanying this man to a court hearing when three cars surrounded them, threatening a head-on collision if they didn’t stop. Six men surrounded the car, pointed a gun at her face, and dragged him out.

This man’s only crimes: a broken tail light and wanting a better future for his family.

The whole incident took two minutes.

This man was following government protocols. He was on his way to a court hearing. If the government wanted to get rid of him so badly, they could do that through due process. But due process is no longer a given in our fascist state.

I’m pretty sure Manu had no idea what a chainsaw was when he first asked to see one. And while he’s now seen one in action, I’m still pretty sure he has no idea what a chainsaw can do when used inappropriately. If his parents, and I, and the other caring adults in his life have our way, he’ll never find out about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

But too many of the authorities in our country–ICE, CBP, and any police department that cooperates with them–are chainsaws out of control.

Meanwhile, like my grandchild, too many of us are just standing at the edge of the sidewalk gaping. Not because we’re bad people, because we just don’t know what else to do.

This is not meant to guilt-trip. If I knew what to do, I would happily end this post by saying so. I do believe, however, that acknowledging the reality of what’s happening is an important first step. And that art and activism; connection, community, and kindness all have a role in bringing about the world we want to see. Let’s hope it will ultimately be enough. #artforchange

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Empathy

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My 2.9 year old grandson, Manu, loves the playground, especially when there are no other children and he has the whole place to himself. A few days ago when we arrived, we saw another kid in the sandbox who waved to him enthusiastically. “That kid wants to play with you,” I said.

He hesitated before answering, then said, “I don’t play.”

Photo by Shel Horowitz

This surprised me because I have clear memories of being 2 and wanting nothing more than for other kids to play with me. I remember Linda, who lived a few houses down in the apartment complex we lived in and how I liked nothing better than running down the hill with her at top speed in our shared yard. And in kindergarten, I remember Mary Ann, with her perfect blond braids, how I cried because the teacher wouldn’t let me sit next to her.

While I don’t remember the specific incident, I also remember the day I came home from kindergarten crying  because some kids had said or done something mean to me. My mother simply shrugged and said, “Children are cruel.”

I was shocked! Children? My tribe? (I was already aware of divisions: that I was a child in a land of adults and a girl in a culture where boys ruled.) But how could children as an entity be labeled as cruel? I was a child and I wasn’t cruel. And why was being cruel something to be shrugged about and accepted as a fact of life?

Unfortunately, cruelty is not something confined to children. Our human history of wars, torture, and the oppression of one group by another is all the proof we need. And if we want to fast forward to the present and our own country, all we need to do is look at the initial reports from “Alligator Alcatraz” (aka “Alligator Auschwitz”) where inmates are reporting no bathing facilities, one maggot-infested meal per day, elephant-sized mosquitoes, 24-hour lights, and alternating periods of sweltering heat and chilling cold.

What should we do? Shrug, and say, “People are cruel?”

In both my most hopeful and most devastated days, I find myself pondering why we humans as a species are the way we are. How can we possibly have the capacity to harm each other in the ways we do? The “hopeful me” looks at this question as a puzzle that, once solved, can change the entire trajectory of how humans can live together on the planet, while the “devastated me” wants to curl up somewhere and cry–with many more tears than I ever shed because I couldn’t sit next to Mary Ann.

Elon Musk recently said, “the fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.” But that’s the voice of the dark side. Empathy is the only thing that might be able to save us from ourselves. It’s empathy for others that can catalyze those of us who have the privilege and the capacity to speak out. And we must speak out–despite empathy’s ability to also render us paralyzed because we feel the pain of others so deeply.

On a recent day at the playground, Manu wanted to climb on a rock where another little boy was standing. He stayed at the bottom of the rock for minutes looking up at the boy, who stared down at him from the top, neither of them saying anything, just staring each other down and holding their position. Finally the boy on the rock made a fist and released his index finger, as if he were shooting a fake gun. It was subtle gesture, and I wasn’t sure if I was interpreting it correctly, but I think I was, because he did it several more times.

Where did he learn that? I wondered, with horrified distaste. Who taught him?

Then I tried to use my empathy, and reason from the kid’s perspective. He was enjoying being on the rock and didn’t want anyone encroaching on his space. We humans have an innate tendency to protect what is ours, and when we’re young we often have to learn not to grab or be aggressive towards others to get what we want.

Even though neither of the little boys thought so, there was enough room on the rock for both of them. Just as there’s enough room in our country for all of us who are here to live peacefully with each other.

Eventually, the boy’s mother finally came over and picked him up, enabling Manu to climb on the rock unimpeded. Eventually, Manu, too, will need to learn how to share his space. Hopefully he’ll get to a point where he thinks it’s much more fun when other kids are also at the playground. Hopefully, we’ll also get to that point. Somehow. Some way.

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Out of the Cage

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Last night, I had the special treat of seeing Ocean Vuong talk about his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness. I haven’t read the book yet, but I was wowed by his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous–and struck by the sensitivity, depth and humor in the brief excerpt he read from this one. Most of all, I was moved by his thoughts on what it means to be a writer–what it means to be a human, actually–in these troubling times.

Vuong talked about “the cage” that all of us are trapped in, meaning the large set of sociocultural stereotypes and mores that hinder the definitions of who we are and the possibilities of who we can be. In his first novel, the main character, Little Dog, says: To be an American boy, and then an American boy with a gun, is to move from one end of a cage to another.

As I thought about this idea of cages, I realized that my lifelong pursuit of writing is absolutely an attempt to break out of the cages of expectation, to come as close as I possibly can to exploring absolute truth and authenticity. And perhaps that’s what makes Ocean Vuong’s work so great. He may be writing fiction, but he’s doing it without artifice. Vuong insists that his novels are not autobiographical, nor are they specifically about anyone in his actual life and claimed that he would never appropriate anyone’s life story to feed his art. Yet, there’s a truth that seeps through whatever he’s invented that pulls back the veils under which we hide.

And I do believe it’s not only the revelation, but the acceptance of our own and each other’s authenticity–provided we can even find it in ourselves–that may be our only hope of changing the world.

Alligator Alcatraz: From Heute.at (cropped)

Of course, I couldn’t think about cages without the intrusive images of “Alligator Alcatraz” the newest prison being build in Florida and the memories of children in cages during this administration’s first term, a practice that ended after huge public outcry.

Also, yesterday, earlier in the day, I joined eight other people dressed in black, carrying signs with names and information about people who have been disappeared in Massachusetts and sent to caged prisons near and far. We walked in silence through the streets of Northampton, banging a drum, and bearing witness, creating a stunning visual effect that made people stop what they were doing and notice.

Said Vuong in a recent interview, Maybe in another 15 years, I will write about trying to be an artist while our civil liberties are being eroded and our country is run by oligarchs who are bordering on fascism. If we make it to 15 years later, hopefully I can write a book about that. 

Hopefully, he can. And in the meantime, hopefully we’ll all continue to access whatever creative sparks we all can make to raise awareness, claw out our own truth, and make it through.

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Bravery

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As I sit on my porch under the maple tree, on a sunny late spring day looking out at my idyllic view of the farm and the mountain behind it, I realize I have no idea what it means to be brave.

Sure, I’ve taken the plunge into social situations I might have preferred avoiding, and occasionally attempted some speedy or free-fall athletic feat that instigated a split second of terror and an adrenaline rush. But really, I always knew I’d be fine.

So I’m thinking now, as the jaws of the looming authoritarian police state are snapping loudly, about what it means to be truly brave.

When I went to the border in 2020 I heard many stories of bravery, all of them spiced with horrific moments that made me flinch, or cry, or both: kidnappings, gang break-ins, death threats to their children, rapes…One man told me about being forced into a car with his 8-year-old daughter by kidnappers after spending weeks in the hielera (Spanish word for ice box where they keep detainees). With his permission, I chronicled his story into a poem (pasted at the end of this blog) which was first published in my book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, and which I’ve shared at many community talk-backs about our trip.

Holding this man’s story and the stories of others was devastating. I came back from that trip feeling smothered under the weight of such sadness, confused about how I could continue going blithely about my days feeling grateful for the trees, and my friends, and the small sweet details of my privileged life.

It’s pretty much the same as how I’m feeling now.

Except that the necessity for bravery, personal bravery of a sort that’s far greater than whatever “risks” I might have taken to enter the potentially dangerous city of Matamoros, Mexico, has reached a crucial point. As the events in Los Angeles unfold, and thousands of brave people prepare to demonstrate nationally on Saturday against the rising tide of authoritarianism, and the administration counters by launching threats against protesters, I have to ask myself: am I ready to face masked men in military gear who may be throwing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets? It’s unlikely things will escalate to that point in our relatively small and mostly rural area, but if I lived in L.A., I hope I’d be brave enough to be on the streets, protesting *non-violently* against what is happening to immigrants across the nation.

Because the point is not about the few burning cars that are being shown over and over again as justification to quell our First Amendment right to peacefully protest. The point is that ICE is breaking the law! Over and over again! They are arresting people without warrants, abandoning due process, tricking people in court by moving to close their asylum cases and then arresting them. They are bashing car windows, leaving children abandoned as they take their parents away, and sending many to prisons that are miles away from their families. They are disappearing people off the street! Nearly 44% of those arrested have no criminal history and many of those with a so-called “criminal record” have only minor infractions–traffic stops and what-not!  Some of those who have been arrested are green card holders! Some are U.S. citizens! 

I do not condone violence, but the violence inflicted by ICE on our local communities is evil, ruthless, and deliberately inhumane. It is an order of magnitude more violent than the actions of the protesters, of whom the huge majority are demonstrating peacefully. Much of the violence is being instigated by law enforcement, who are choosing to escalate by throwing tear gas. A so-called “unlawful assembly” is a form of non-violent civil disobedience, but it is not a riot!
Here is the poem, I wrote about one of the stories I heard from immigrants in Matamoros. When I asked this man if I could tell his story, he said, Sure. There are a thousand stories just like it.
MY FRIEND TELLS ME THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF STORIES JUST LIKE THIS ONE

Man who takes us to the Matamoros mercado
to buy food for refugiados to cook by their tents,
tosses frosted flakes in the cart with the rice,
tells us he’ll pay, man whose money
we wave away. It’s a gift, un regalo.
Man whose glow is a regalo, scrolling
through phone to show us mamá y papá.
He left without time to say goodbye;
his abuelita, who now has died.
Man who says, you must understand,

I love my country, amo mi país.
I had a good job, never wanted to leave.
El año pasado, last year, on Valentine’s Day
I called mi esposa said, Amor, let’s go out.
We took the kids and came back late,
fell happy, full of love, into our beds.
In the middle of dreams, a noise in the night,
man with a mask, black hat with holes for eyes.
When I tussled with the guy, the mask
came off; I saw a boy I knew,
then the others surging with the guns.
I told them to take whatever they wanted.
The next day, I went to la policía. All they wanted
was my phone number. I’d barely gone a kilometer
when the phone rang with amenazas de muerte, threats of death.

Man on planks of wood lashed
to an inner tube crosses the river to Mexico
in the dead of night when the guards are gone,
each daughter held in a muscled arm.
Man riding on bus after bus, north
to la frontera, bad hombres lurking in the shadows.
The guards block the way, the only opción
to pay the coyote to take his wife
and younger daughter. (He didn’t have enough
for all to go together.) On the opposite
shore, man’s wife presents herself to ICE.
She’s put in the “hielera,” where the detainees shiver,
then sent to the midwest to live with her brother.
She is one of the lucky ones.

Man raises money to cross with coyote,|
asks for asylum and taken with daughter,
put in the hielera, three days. Couldn’t bathe.
They blast sirens in the night to prevent you from sleeping.
His beary arms couldn’t stop his daughter’s shivering.
He thought they’d send him to his familia,
but they took him to Tijuana, so he could wait in Mexico.
Man who refused to go. Said,
I won’t sign these papeles. They marked him
troublemaker and sent him there anyway.
Man whose daughter tenía hambre, so hungry.
When he tells us this part, he starts to cry.
Man whose arm I touch chasms away in his dolor privado,
los memorias that could shackle a thousand hearts.

Man who clung to his daughter when the gangs grabbed her
and shoved them both in a car, demanding ransom,
which his wife had to borrow to pay. They dumped him
far away in the desert, across the border,
where for hours they wandered in the dark, coyotes howling,
until they found a woman, an angel, he thought,
who fed them and led them to the city, where she stuck
out her palm for money, and they were forced in another car.
He should have known the world, like the wall
at the border is lined with spikes. Man held

for money, then more money until all sucked dry.
If his wife didn’t pay, they said they’d kill him.
In a last gasp he retrieves the hidden,
maybe broken, phone in his daughter’s teddy bear,
with only a battery sliver, texts the location
to su esposa, who calls the cops,
who come and find seven more people
captured there, all put back
in the hielera, all sent back to Mexico
where they all wait, all hope. Esperar.
In Spanish, it’s the same word.

 

 

 

 

 

Holding Onto the Heavy

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Every spring, as soon as I start gardening, my shoulder begins to ache, a dull pain that often spreads all the way down my arm. It’s not debilitating; it’s just annoying, but it’s pretty constant and I have to keep reminding myself not to overdo–set the timer and tackle the ubiquitous onion grass for no more than half an hour. Lately I’ve been feeling it most when I’m lifting heavy rocks to weigh down seed covers and cardboard mulch. And in the wee corners of my mind, I hear the niggling question of how much longer I’ll have the physical ability to keep on with this yearly seasonal ritual that brings me so much joy. Hopefully for a long time, I tell myself, deflecting with my usual optimism/denial reflex on any issue that relates to my own aging.

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

This morning I felt torn between gardening and writing group, since it’s going to get hot in the afternoon and I have a bunch of things to do then, but I chose the lure of writing group community, where someone made a random comment, “It has been a time and it’s not over.”

My friend was referring to events in her personal life, while also acknowledging that many people our age (50s and 60s with aging parents) are going through something similar. But I believe this heaviness is currently permeating among all ages as we read story after story of children starving and being indiscriminately killed in war zones, humans taken off the streets by masked men in military gear, and the myriad other ways our rights to shelter, health care, and food security are being dismantled.

I’ve encouraged people in our immigration justice advocacy network to join me in sharing some of the personal stories of immigrants who’ve been arrested, kidnapped or disappeared, knowing that reading about actual humans with lives and back story can get people in the gut in a way that vague policy statements or piles of statistics don’t. (Though one stat I will emphasize: very few of the people taken have a criminal history, unless you count trying to enter this country for a more economically secure life free from gang violence and death threats a crime. All this talk about murderers, drug dealers and rapists is a lie fabricated by the administration that’s also intended to get people right in the gut.)

However, my resolve to share these stories has gotten to the point where I can’t keep up with the flood of incidents coming into my inbox like weeds each day–high school students, families with young children, neighbors, friends…And to tell the truth, I don’t even want to read these upsetting stories any more. And if I, despite spending most of the last decade as an immigration justice activist, don’t want to read them, how can I expect others to?

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

Back at a demonstration on the border in 2020, we projected a sign. Don’t Look Away! Yet, there are some days that all I want to do is look away–curl up with the blessing of my meditation app that encourages me to simply cultivate a lens of neutrality and observation and be present in the moment.

How do we balance this appropriately mindful adage for self-care without forsaking our responsibility to our fellow humans? I keep thinking about Nazi Germany. Not the people who actively collaborated with Hitler, and not the people who risked their lives by hiding Jews in their barns and attics, but the people who may have quietly disapproved of what was going on, but did nothing and went about their lives as best they could.

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

I don’t want to be one of these people, and yet, I fear that’s what we’re all becoming. Not because we’re bad people. We’re just numb. Paralyzed by the heaviness of it all.

How do we hold onto the heavy and continue to take steps forward to address injustice, perhaps with the clarity and gentleness that mindfulness might bring? Somehow despite the pain, we need to keep lifting those heavy rocks.

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