Bedtime, Ash, and Kamala’s Speech tonight
Hi loves.
I have a little poem coming your way tomorrow. Im proud of it. I’ve been working on it and fiddling with it for two years. It’s called “Hysterectomy”.
Barrels of laughs, of course. What do you expect from me lately.
Meanwhile….
A little story about bedtime tonight.
75,000 people came out to watch Kamala speak in DC earlier this evening. I watched it on a screen with my now-nine-year-old, Ash, as we cuddled on a couch.
The election is in one week.
Ash was keen to watch the whole thing.
He has been tuning into the whole election. We watched the presidential debate , and the vice presidential debate, with my boyfriend, with my boyfriend, with Lance. It’s been a family affair. We don’t watch sports. But we watch this.
He asks a lot of questions. I do my best. Tonight, my heart was extra heavy as I explained gently why the bullet-proof glass was surrounding the podium.
Tonight, he asked and asked. We talked about the issues. I explained to Ash what happened on January 6th. I explained (again) what abortion is, and why it’s a persons right to choose what happens to their body. We talked about racism and what Donald Trump had allowed to happen on stage at Madison Square Garden in NYC the other night.
I explained (again) what sexual assault and domestic violence is, and how men in positions of power so often abuse women without having to face consequences.
I explained (again) why Donald Trump is not in jail even though he’s done bad things.
I explained that I was praying for all of the women I know, because we are all concerned about what will happen to our bodies and our freedoms and our safety if this man gets to be in charge.
We do good wishes every night before sleep, it’s a habit we started when we were alone in New Zealand. Our little version of a set of prayers. We always send them to those we love and sometimes those we have difficulties with, we send them to everyone sleeping in the house, we send them to his dada and his dada’s whole whānau/family, we send them to the strangers we have met, the people suffering all over the place.
When we went to bed after watching, we did a special edition of good wishes.
We sent good wishes to Kamala and wished her luck. And we sent good wishes to Donald Trump, which was a heavy lift for Ash, but we got there in the end… and the way I managed to pry the good wishes for The Donald out of Ash was to send the wishes in the hopes that he will be a kind and calm and good loser when he loses. That was the play.
Ash went to sleep sending Kamala and Trump good wishes and smiling and weirdly muttering about how Donald Trump should be punished and sent to jail and how he should also have to give every kid in the world a Nintendo Switch.
Vote.
If you need help: headcount.org
I love you.
Weird trivia for the wonks: Jill Stein lives in my hood. It’s…weird. She’s probably not here, she’s out stumping. But it’s odd that she lives like a few streets from where I buy kale.
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Photos: Jerry Saltz
P.S. it’s also tour laundry day in the house bathroom sink !!! Wheeeee.
