Feeling Grateful and Hopeful for 2018

2017 has brought me much anxiety. When President Trump was elected, I flew out to participate in the Women's March on DC. Since then, I've periodically interacted with Trump supporters on Twitter and Facebook, arguing over issues like climate change, reproductive rights, the criminal justice system, and immigration. The exchanges are often brutal, with opponents calling me stupid and worse. It's hard to articulate how fractious our country is in December of 2017. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the acrimony. These conversations make me feel dirty and hopeless.

But then I stop. I look around. I remember. 

I'm living in the most beautiful place I've ever inhabited. After having a heart attack in 2015, my husband is alive and well and still loves me 34 years into our marriage. Two of our three adult children are happy and healthy. The third is in a hospital where he might get some help, where he's safe and warm and housed and fed.

Could it be God has a plan for me? Probably not. But if I turn off the incessant chatter of "doomsday!" called out by the media and populace on both sides of the divide, I can see that things are as they've always been--beautiful beyond reckoning, chaotic, loud, tragic, and intermittently strewn with exquisite, almost unbearable gifts.

I'm Ready to Cook

I last posted on this blog two-and-a-half years ago, on June 3, 2015. But please don't think I abandoned you. I would never do that! For many reasons, posting here became too much for me: my son with a chronic mental illness fathered my first grandchild; my husband had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery; I decided to retire after 17 years of teaching high school; and, I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly what I wanted to do in this space.

So I retreated, turned inward, and began to ferment, like this beautiful bubbling bowl of sourdough starter on my kitchen counter. (That's another thing that happened. I took up baking sourdough bread.)

And then this morning, after visiting SFMOMA two nights ago and getting inspired by the photography of Walker Evans, after finding myself wanting to document the world around me in gorgeous photographs as he did, after taking multiple photos in my SF ramblings over the past two days, after posting a few on Facebook and finding the experience less than satisfying, I remembered: I have a blog! I can post my photos here. And I can talk in depth about all the things that have been occupying my mind for the past 2.5 years, all the things that seem too weighty and complex, too intimate and disturbing for a FB post.

So I came back, and found this wonderfully constructed site, representing many hours of my labor, waiting for me.

When I first pulled it up this morning, I had two loaves of sourdough in the oven. Now, I've just taken them out. If I could describe to you how good they smell, you wouldn't believe me. The tiny crackling sounds their crusts make as they are cooling is exquisite, and is moving me, as everything seems to move me lately, as we come to the end of this dark year of deep disappointment.

Here's hoping this new iteration of my blog turns out to be as delicious and satisfying as my bread. Because I'm done fermenting. I'm ready to cook.