The US Senate essentially voted to confirm Judge Brett Cavanaugh for appointment to the US Supreme Court today.

Regardless of politics or sexual assault claims, judicial temperament and the admonition of a retired US Supreme Clourt saying this should not come to pass should mean something.

Apparently, it does not.

I have no idea who our country is anymore.

I. am. sick.

I write legal textbooks that include discrimination, diversity and inclusion as a focus, and I speak and write on the issues, so I try to keep up with what’s going on in those areas.  In cleaning out my inbox just now, I came across an article I had saved for later reading earlier this week.  It was about two University of Virginia professors resigning in protest from a UVA think tank because a former Trump staffer was hired.  They believed that the hiring went against the basic mission and values of the organization.  I understood their position and applaud them for it.

But, what I  reacted to was the mention that the National Rifle Association was now headed by Oliver North.

My visceral reaction surprised me enough to take to my blog tho I have other pressing matters with which to deal.

My stomach is in knots.

Where are we?  What world am in?  What country?  I am so truly confused.

For me to even notice a physical reaction says a lot.  You don’t do the work I do, keep up with the issues I keep up with day in and day out, with a thin skin.  You can’t. It takes an incredible amount of resilience to dwell in the space of discrimination and diversity issues, especially when you belong to more than one of the traditional group that is routinely involved.  You have to have it to keep going and do what you can to change things, otherwise you’re useless.

But, I swear, seeing that man’s name as the head of the NRA had that visceral impact.

What?!  OLIVER NORTH?!  Heading up the NRA?!!!

What quickly came to mind was that this was like if Hitler had lived, later putting him in charge of social welfare programs.  It’s not an exact comparison, but in my head as a first reaction, close enough.

When you think Oliver North, you can’t help but think Iran-Contra affair.  I remember day after day after day picking my daughters up from elementary school in 1986, and ’87, and it being on the radio. The Internet was not a “thing” yet, nor was cable TV, so whatever was on offer on the radio or TV was what you had to deal with.  Hearing about it was unavoidable. Secretly arranging for arms, the discovery, the cover up, the Congressional testimony of the deal, questions about whether President Reagan knew. Being charged then let go because of legal issues. We hadn’t witnessed anything like it since Watergate held us in its grasp.  I wasn’t even that into it, but you couldn’t avoid it.  It was huge, and a real blot on the Reagan administration.     It was a huge, huge deal.  You think Oliver North, you think Iran-Contra and arming the rebels.  And this wasn’t even the part, apparently coming to light later, about the original deal being to distribute drugs in America to raise the funds to pay for the guns because there was no budget for them.

And he’s now heading up the NRA?

I am so confused.

Whatever common values I thought my country had, whatever common interests have been shattered time and again since the dystopia of the last election campaign began, whatever I may have thought about this all being only a harrowing temporary  detour from sanity that we would right ourselves from and correct our course, I’m no longer sure about.

Knots.  Absolute knots.

I’ve pretty much always been a talker, but, at 67, I noticed that I talk in more detail than I’m used to doing.  It’s not that there is more detail, it’s just that I’m willing to share more.  I wondered about it at first.  I’d catch myself giving a rather long explanation of something that seemed rather simple.  I’d catch myself and say to myself, “Whoa, Girl!  They’re gonna think you’re losin’ it!”  I wondered if it was because I was getting older or senile or some other dreaded thing that we think about older people.  I thought about it a lot.

Finally, it dawned on me what it is was none of the things I was thinking at all.  I believe it is that as we get older, I think we realize how much seemingly random things are connected in ways we never contemplated and in order to truly understand and appreciate the beauty of how they fit together, you have to see the whole picture.

When you’re younger, you’re usually just in a hurry and want to get things done and over with and move on to the next thing.  I get it.  But, as you get older, you (hopefully) tend to grow in wisdom, in grace, and in understanding.  You realize that none of this thing we call life, in all its glory, can be taken for granted.  You realize that you didn’t do this all by yourself; you didn’t get here only by your individual efforts.  You realize that tiny little things can make the difference between you taking that trip to Africa and not doing so, but what a time you had for that ten month period with your three daughters.  Or that the trip with them to Russia could have not happened if you hadn’t happened to hear about the unbelievably cheap airfare advertised on the random radio station you were passing through on the way to your favorite one.  Or that if you hadn’t missed your confirmation call to the airline for your return flight from Egypt because you were too busy lolling by the pool contemplating the awesomeness of the Pyramids you could see from your lounge chair, you would not have needed to take the trip into Cairo from Giza and would have missed the marriage proposal you ended up getting along the way.

It happens all day, every day, and we just rush through it in the crush of life.

In the rush of getting it all done and arranged, we don’t seriously think about what it took to get to that final thing we did, or saw, or wanted, and got.  In our younger years we just talk about the thing itself.  “We went to Africa for 10 months on a Fulbright Fellowship.  We took a family trip to Russia soon after the country finally opened up under Glasnost.  I married an Egyptian I met when I took two of my daughters to Egypt (yep, true story).”  Like the proverbial frantically teenage boy eager for sex, we just get to the heart of the matter and get it over with.  As we all (hopefully) know, that changes as we get older and learn that it is much more enjoyable if we simply take the time to enjoy it.

Turns out, the same thing goes for sharing information and our stories.  It may seem like we’re older people just rambling on about some irrelevant thing or other.  We’re not.  Or, at least not all of us.  We are sharing with you the true enormity of so many things coming together to get you to the final destination of the story that are important for you to understand in order to fully appreciate it.  If I just ask you, the machine repairer, to repair this sewing machine, you will do it.  However, if I tell you that it is the sewing machine that my Grandma was given by her Grandma who was a slave for 50 years before Freedom came, and she used the sewing machine to earn a living once she was on her own, chances are, repairing that sewing machine will seem a bit different to you.  You won’t be so quick to rush through.  You will handle it with tender loving care.  You will appreciate that you were able to help make a piece of history even better by your efforts.

That isn’t rambling.  That is providing context that helps you appreciate the world a little better.  Makes you feel better about what you do.  Makes you think about the issue of slavery in a new way connected to people, not just dry facts that you had to learn because they might show up on a test.  Or worse yet, something uncomfortable that people keep bringing up and you don’t understand why because it happened so long ago and has nothing to do with today.  You now see that your standing here talking to me about it, and about my Grandma who actually lived and dealt with that person who had been enslaved makes it a bit more real and definitely shortens the time span you thought existed between slavery and today.

Yep, me yammering on and on does all that.  So, you just might want to listen a little closer the next time some older person does what you consider to be going off on a tangent or talking to you about a lot of irrelevant stuff.  Listen.  You just might learn something you didn’t expect.

I went into the garden this morning and began to putter seriously. Climate change has made it so it is hard to know when it’s safe to do what I’ve done for decades. Here in the south, in the past few years we’ve had startling changes like snow in March or, as this year, seriously cool temperatures until nearly the start of April. At 67, and having been a lifelong gardener –I did it with my Ma from the time I could walk— my body tells me when it’s time to go play in the dirt. I say it lightly, but I’ve learned over the years that dealing with the earth is a necessity for me. But, climate change is seriously messing with my gardening circadian rhythms, so legislators need to get it together.

At any rate, I finally went out to play after a long, cold, weird winter. As always, the first thing is surveying what’s gone on in my months of absence. The next is to clean out a few pots I can throw some color into. I’ve gotten to the place where I sort of creep up to the tasks rather than taking it all on head first, because I don’t want it to seem to overwhelming. I finally had to tell myself I wasn’t a 20 year old gardening huge spaces like I used to be more than willing to do.

One of the reasons I love gardening is because, like quilting, it is a metaphor for life. How could it not be? How can you see your one season black-eyed Susan vine give off seedlings that stubbornly last for years and not learn the lesson that just because you see something you want doesn’t mean you should get it without knowing the consequences before you do? Or looking at a forlorn neglected, totally overwhelming mess of a garden that reflects the heartbreak that caused withdrawal from something you cared so much about and have the cause of that heartbreak work tirelessly to bring it back to life, and not learn about, among other things, forgiveness and resilience? Or watching a tiny pot of eucalyptus you thought would make a nice addition to your herb garden, grow to a 50-foot tree and not learn something about all sorts of things?

So, my gardening time is not just about the flowers. It’s about life. The flowers and veggies are just the cherry on top.

So, I was cleaning the heavily mildewed north-facing side of my favorite wind chime this morning, when I thought about a conversation I’d had with my oldest daughter the night before as we chatted during my granddaughter’s 12th birthday 6-girl sleepover (!!). My daughter had come into a pretty substantial inheritance a couple of months before, and while, as a divorced mother of 2 (with no child support) elementary school teacher, she is extremely fiscally conservative, she’d (thank heaven) kept enough of the money available to do some things she had never been able to afford before. One of them was to buy this wonderful cooking pan. I loved the pan and it would get good use by her.

But, when she told me about the pan, something seemed off. Then she told me that when she’d put the $40 pan she’d have forever in the Walmart cart, her daughter had essentially told her, with all the wisdom learned in her 12 years of witnessing her mother’s fiscal conservatism (i.e., “Put that back. We can’t afford it.”), that she was losing her mind buying something so expensive.

So, my strong, independent, kick-ass daughter was second-guessing her choice to spend $40 she could now well afford, on a cooking pot she would keep the rest of her life.

Because a 12-year-old questioned it.

I thought about that while cleaning the wind chime because in some ways, I totally got it. I am not a conspicuous consumer. I have driven a Volkswagen Beetle for the past 18 years (and love it! Tho I hate its Hitler origins). I don’t spend loads of money on clothes, jewelry, high priced food (organic excepted!), shoes, or many other things that it astonishes me that people do. How can someone pay $800 for a pair of shoes? Or even $200 for a pair of sneakers?! But, last night I ordered over $200 worth of flower plants from a favorite gardening catalog.

And the wind chime I was cleaning as I thought about this? $300.

Yep. A $300 wind chime. I didn’t even know they existed. Until, while browsing in my favorite (regrettably no longer in existence) gardening store destination (actually, an outdoor gardening selling place rather an actual store. It was awesome!) I followed my ears to the most glorious sound I can ever remember hearing (outside the sound of my 3 daughters’ first cry after birth). It was absolutely celestial. Deep. Clear. Unbelievably mellifluous. Amazing. Then I saw the price tag. I was so sure it was a mistake until I asked the owner. Nope. It was correct.

How could it be?! It was a wind chime!? Talk about sticker shock.

I hated to leave it, but I did. There was no way I could spend that kind of money on such a thing.

But, I couldn’t get the sound out of my mind. So celestial. So rich. So sonorous. So transcendent.

I went back to see if the sound was as wonderful as I remembered. It was. Perhaps even moreso. Parting with it was like leaving a dear friend. The sound was a sound that elevated me. That reminded that I was a heavenly being having an earthly experience. It reminded me of my spiritual connection to the Earth and to humanity. It was more than a wind chime. It was a spiritual reminder to my higher self.

I bought it.

Not only did I buy it, but as I realized as I cleaned it this morning, I have never had one second of regret about buying it. Not one. And after all these years, it never ceases to do what it did that first day, remind me of my higher self.

Life is too short to deprive ourselves of the things we legitimately believe fill a genuine desire. I’m not talking about buying trying to be better than the Joneses type stuff you can’t afford in order to make yourself seem important in the eyes of others. I’m talking about things you genuinely want that you think are helpful in your journey in some way. Even if it’s to help you more efficiently or happily perform the tedious daily task of cooking a nutritious meal for your kids every day or a reminder of connecting yourself to your higher purpose.

This is your unique journey. No one can dictate what you need for it or how to do it. There’s no telling what may help you with that journey along the way. No one else may ever understand how the me they know who would never buy an expensive car could spend $300 on a wind chime. But then, they don’t have to. They didn’t pay for it, I’m not asking to borrow grocery money from them because of what they consider a frivolous purchase, so what’s the issue? It’s my journey and no one can dictate what I need to help with that journey.

And so it is with you.

I cannot even begin to describe what the past few days have been like for me.  There are so many ways I could talk about this.  I’m still not sure how or even if I want to yet.  But, I feel compelled to say something.  It is too historic not to.

Imagine being in the world and being able to appreciate and understand what was going on when George Washington was elected first president of the U.S. Or slavery ended.  Or when Brown v. Board of Education was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Or when women were finally given the right to vote.

Except for the Brown decision and the Civil Rights Act, you see how few and notable (what an understatement!) and far between these things are.

Come to think of it, I could add to that list, or when the first black president was elected.

There are some things that when they happen, you just know they are historic and that it is going to create a sea-change.  Friday June 26, 2015 was such a day for me.

I LOVE LIVING  HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I am blessed to have been living at a time when many, many things have happened that have profoundly changed history in some way, shape or form.  Some come creeping in.  Some come in with a bang, but you don’t know the significance of them at the time.  And some…well…you just know when it’s happening that it’s one for the books.

When personal computers first came in, especially portable ones (hah! Portable?!  In 1982 my Osborne weighed at least 30 pounds!), I knew they would be big.  But, I was the only one I knew who both had one and thought so.  I work in a male-dominated field and when I lugged my portable computer into the office, everyone gathered around my door.  No one could imagine what I would ever want with a computer.  But, I did.  I dreamed of ditching the infernal drudgery of having to write an article by hand, give it to a secretary, complete with incessant interlineations and time lags, getting it back in typed form, physically cutting and pasting my changes as I read over it, giving it back for re-typing, then proofreading the typed version, making more cut and paste changes, and doing so ad nauseum.  I immediately saw the value of being able to type my paper, electronically cutting and pasting as I went.

For my male colleagues, typing was women’s work since all secretaries were women, so they could not imagine a time when a computer would be of any value to them.  I remember laughing to myself as computers became more and more popular and replaced typewriters, males sitting at their desks pecking away at a foreign keyboard.  Since I was female (and thus presumed to one day be making a living as a secretary or clerical), at 15, I had typing in my high school curriculum—a factor for which I will be forever grateful. It was especially helpful in law school.  😉 But, when personal computers that we cannot now imagine life without first showed up, no one had a clue that they would one day be omnipresent.  My male colleagues had no idea that they were looking at history as they crowded around my door.  To them, it was just Dawn being the outlier she was regularly perceived to be.

Hah!  I got the last laugh on that one, fellas!  😉

I can also remember the first time I saw a laptop.  I absolutely could not believe it would do what the store clerk told me it would do.  By then I had moved on to a desktop with a larger screen.  There was no way that entire desktop could be contained in this little thing I was looking at.  The store clerk laughed at my reaction and actually allowed me to take it home over the weekend so that I could see it for myself and believe him.  Enthralled that he was indeed telling the truth, I came back on Monday and bought two—–one for me and one for my partner.  I had no idea that they would one day pretty much replace PCs.  Again, history had crept in.

I’ve always loved electronics, so my kids were also the first ones to have these cute little things I found that turned out to be early versions of MP3 players.  Awesome.  Who knew we would one day all be carrying iPhones that would contain all of our favorite music in their version of MP3s?  Or before that, a WalkMan?  Or before that, a cassette player?

Having a man on the moon was one of those things that came in with a bang, and it was historic and interesting, and you knew it would change things in some way, but I didn’t perceive it as having any personal impact on my life.

Watching the election returns in 2008 and realizing around 11 p.m. that our next president would be black was a day you knew you lived history, but you weren’t quite sure what it would mean other than he had gotten elected.  But, in the days to come, it was clear that even the folks who hadn’t voted for him or weren’t sure of what his presidency would be like appreciated that history had surely been made when we lived in a country that could go from slavery to a black president in 143 years.

Attending the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 as a 12-year-old was hugely historic, and you could say it went on with a bang, but I don’t think anyone there thought it would have the kind of lasting historical impact that it did.  Nowadays when  I mention to my students that I was there, it is as if something magic just happened.  Like they saw Abraham Lincoln, or something.  Even though it was big, we had no idea at the time that it would be the historic occasion it turned out to be.

But, Friday June 26, 2015?  The day LOVE WON at the U.S. Supreme Court?  The day my first black president sang “Amazing Grace” and told white America that racism didn’t have to be big, but could be deciding to call back Johnny for that interview rather than Jamal as he delivered the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney who was killed on June 17 when a 21-year-old white man who had sat in Bible Study with black Mother Emmanuel AME Church members for an hour opened fire and killed 9 church members because he said he wanted to start a race war?  That was one for the books.  That was one you knew right then and there would make history.  You knew that was a turning point for society.  It is now Sunday and I am still processing it all.

It was a great day.

It was a great day to be alive.  It was a great day to be an American.  It was a great day to be black.

My epitaph, whether it is on a slab of marble or simply in the minds of those who knew me, will most assuredly say, “It’s ALL about LOVE…”  I have one tattoo on my body.  In the middle of my chest I have a Maori-styled heart that I got in Maui.  Actually, after Friday, I’m thinking of getting another that says “Love wins.”  For me, life is all about Love.  Notice I capitalize it.

I am talking about universal love, not just romantic love.  I’m talking about the way you go through the world and conduct each and every interaction you have.  You do it with the knowledge that we are all human and we matter, even in the smallest ways. I’m talking about caring enough about others that you give them a smile rather than a frown, even if you don’t know them.  I’m talking about Love that takes you through the world choosing to believe the best rather than assuming the worst, but being prepared for it to be otherwise.  I’m talking about Love that makes it so that just today I spoke with each of my two former husbands and my former female partner (couldn’t get married then) and each of them was a warm, wonderful conversation, even tho our romantic relationships ended 35, 9 and 22 years ago, respectively.  I mean a Love that lets me view people as spiritual creatures whose spirit matters most, rather than physical creatures whose hair, clothing or car I focus on. I have lived that truth all of my life and tried to get the message across by example.

In the end, it is Love that rules.  Regardless of wars.  Regardless of politics.  Regardless of differences.  In the end, it’s truly ALL about Love.

In its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling the Supreme Court of the United States realized this too.

As a lawyer, I am totally comfortable with its reasoning.  I have the ability to be able to separate myself from what I want, and if the reasoning was not sound, then even though I might like the outcome, I would not be OK with it.  But, it is.  You will hear people say otherwise, but it is a legally sound decision.  That matters to me a great deal.  We live in a democracy.  We all have to take turns winning and losing.  I don’t like the idea of running roughshod over others to get where I want to go.  This was not that.  This was legally sound and imminently reasoned and reasonable.

And as someone whose longest relationship was with someone of the same gender and we raised three daughters together, for me the outcome was a good one.   Especially when, upon hearing about the Supreme Court’s decision one  daughter texted “Whooo Hoooo!!”.  The second, “Holy f*** shit!!!!!” with emoticons of hearts, kisses and all variations of couples. And the third, “It must be so wonderful to see of your hard work pay off. Knowing you have come so far and no longer have to hide….how wonderful.  F*** the closet.  Now that’s where we can put the haters.”

Friday June 26, 2015 was a good day.

I hate it when people who call me up ask me what I’m doing.

The other day a long-time friend, who I’d already asked not to do it, did it, I’m sure without thinking, then was offended when I reminded her that it is a question I’d asked her not to ask me.  When I’d told her that a few days before when she’d asked the question, and she had readily agreed not to ask, she didn’t even remember that we’d had this conversation before and she’d agreed then as well.  Yet, there she was, mindlessly asking it yet again. It seems like an innocent enough inquiry. Folks always ask it.  Most people answer without even thinking about it.  But, most people don’t care about, or attach as much significance as I do, to words.

I always knew it made me feel uncomfortable, but I didn’t really think about why. When she became offended I started thinking about it.  I realized that I am a pretty honest, straightforward person and when someone asks me a question I answer it truthfully, without even thinking.  But I realized I don’t like the idea of accounting for my activities to people and being judged about it.

Why does someone need to know what you’re doing when they call?  For me, the only reason I can think of is to make sure I’m not interrupting them by calling at an inconvenient time.  So, that’s what I ask.  “Did I catch you at a bad time?  Can you talk now?”  The simple yes or no answer is all I need.  If they want to add more and tell me what they are doing, that’s up to them and that’s fine with me.  But, they are not telling me because I asked.  What they were doing is none of my business. Why do I need to know?  Even between the best of friends, everyone has a part of their lives for public consumption and a part that is private—hopefully.  If I am engaged in a private part, and I answer truthfully, I’m divulging more than I care to.  If I don’t, I’m forced to lie.  Why should I be put in that position?

In my experience, telling someone what I’m doing usually results in them responding by commenting upon it.  That comment is usually a value judgment about it.  If I say I’m twiddling my thumbs, I get a lecture on what a ridiculous waste of time twiddling one’s thumbs is. But twiddling my thumbs may make perfect sense in light of the rest of what I’ve been doing or am getting ready to do.  Why do I need to be judged for that?  Why are we even having a conversation about it?  What does it have to do with why you called me?  I may be happy to hear your voice, but then we are waylaid by your first question about what I’m doing.  It’s not that I am trying to hide what I’m doing, it is simply irrelevant to why you called.  And if I care to share, I will.

Or, I may simply be doing something that isn’t worth talking about and I don’t feel the need to do so, but also don’t feel like having to lie to get out of talking about it.

So, save us the trouble and don’t ask.