Category — Uncategorized

I read an article recently about people who dress up like Martha Washington as part of a debutante ball in Texas. It was already sort interesting (a “what moves people to do this” kind of interesting) when I got to this part:

Today, Martha, George, and the girls are mostly Mexican Americans. Many of them descend from the original WBCA families, but just as many are descended from the people who were categorically oppressed—and, in several instances, massacred—by an American colonialist expansion set in motion by the Founding Fathers they dress up to honor.

This is the story of a border town, and what it means to be part of two worlds. And how they both acknowledge and don’t acknowledge this reality. For example:

Abrazo Ceremony, which takes place the morning after the pageant, before the parade. Four children, a boy and a girl each from Laredo and from Nuevo Laredo, cross the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge from their respective sides, dressed in colonial-era costumes and accompanied by the mayors of their cities. When they reach one another in the middle of the bridge, over the waters of the Rio Grande, they hug.

(Except it’s a ceremony you can’t actually watch.)

It’s a story about countries, cultures, poverty and wealth… but even larger. How one can be a part of things and on the outskirt of things at the same time. It’s a long article but also super interesting. So bookmark if you don’t have time to read it now.

Author A writes fiction, so when I use the term “narrator,” I don’t really mean his various protagonists. I mean, him. The author.

I loved his books and followed him on GoodReads so I could always know when he released another. He was not only a good writer, but he came across as a good guy. A thoughtful guy. A really kind guy.

So I was somewhat shocked by something heartless that he wrote online, and I emailed him to address it, pointing out some things he may not have known or considered when he came to his point-of-view. I thought he’d write back something along the lines of “That’s a good point, but I still think X, Y, or Z” or “Crap, I hadn’t consider that. Let me post an apology.”

That’s not what happened.

He doubled down, tripled down, and then went completely off-the-rails with his argument, posting multiple times about it online, each time more offensive than the last. Nothing like how he had presented himself up until this moment. I quietly unfollowed him on GoodReads and stopped reading his articles online. His fiction just wasn’t enjoyable anymore now once I got this peek at the narrator.

Author B writes nonfiction, so he is the actual “narrator” of his memoir.

I purchased one of his books, so I decided to finish it, but he came across as a real asshole. All I could think as I read his book was how much I never wanted to meet him or have a conversation with him. I kept looking ahead to see how many more pages I would have to endure.

Yet when I got to last page, I felt really sad. I had developed almost a Narrator Stockholm Syndrome, where I had come to like my literary captor. There is a part two to his memoirs, and I think I may buy it. He’s an asshole, but he doesn’t try to hide that he’s an asshole. And he’s an equal-opportunity asshole, a dick to individuals (friends and non-friends alike) vs. being against a group of people.

I’m not sure what this means when I’m willing to spend time with a miserable narrator who is honest vs. a seemingly thoughtful narrator who (at one point) hid his disgusting point-of-view.

I have zero clue why I wrote myself this note back in October: “We don’t know what is bad news or what is good news.” Meaning, something could seem bad in the moment but really turn out to be good down the road, or vice versa. You may be thinking that something is really going your way, but because we don’t know the future, that good thing turns out to actually be terrible.

The point?

One, I have no clue why I wrote this note. Does anyone know why I would have written that down last month?

Two, it seems like a good thing to keep in mind if today is hard. It may be hard in the moment, but that hard may be yielding something wonderful in the future. And I hope it does for you.

Happy Thanksgiving if you live in the US, and happy Thursday to everyone else.

[Melissa stands up, taps her fork against her glass, and clears her throat. The conversation around the table dies down. She looks at everyone at the table.]

We do this every year: Come together as a community and have a virtual meal before we scatter to our actual meals. Unless, that is, you do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But I hope that you’ll join the table for virtual food and company even if you don’t follow this tradition offline.

We’ve virtually eaten together since 2009. That’s when this tradition began. There are some people hurting at this table. For some people, this pre-meal is what gets them through their real meal later in the week. People have written that they’ve printed out this yearly post and comments and left the paper in their purse because it helped to have a tangible reminder that there were people out there who got it. Who weren’t going to ask them when they were going to hurry up and have children. Who weren’t going to cringe when someone spoke the name of a child they lost.

We are all so different. All of us. Around this table. But we have this one facet of our lives — and yes, even though it may be a big, overpowering one for you right now, it is only one facet of who you are — where we overlap: infertility or adoption or loss. And I am so thankful, so grateful, that I found all of you. Everyone needs a You-shaped space where they can be themselves. And that’s what I have here.

So every year, I ask people to bring a virtual dish to our meal. Place it in the comment section, explaining what you brought and why. And say anything else you need to say before sitting back down to enjoy the company. Update about where you are; your emotional state.

We’re an international group, hailing from countries all around the world. So while Thanksgiving is an American tradition, I hope that everyone around the world feels as if they can participate. (Especially our Canadian neighbours who celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago.) I’d love for your dish to come from your culture or country. Don’t worry about the contents on the table clashing.

As always, I am bringing stuffing. It’s comfort food; mushy and soggy and warm.

So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?

And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish. We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table. Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.

There was a post on Slate a few weeks ago that affected me profoundly. It was about the California fires; the idea of packing to evacuate without knowing whether anything would survive (or if you’d be able to return).

The writer practices packing in case they need to evacuate, and they’re proud of how efficiently they gathered the things they’d need. Their partner looks at the bag and says, “That’s all you want to save?”

Which led into this paragraph:

I realized, then, that I’d misunderstood my own assignment. I thought we were packing only what we needed to survive a few nights away from home. I hadn’t appreciated what evacuating really means: saying a provisional goodbye to everything but what you can carry. And figuring out what the discrepancies are between what you must bring and what you can.

I think for the vast majority of people who never experience this kind of evacuation — not the “we’re evacuating you just to be on the safe side” but the “you must leave now” evacuation — it’s hard to reconcile that party game of “what would you bring if you were going to be stuck forever on an island” with the reality of looking at your belongings and saying, “This is what I can realistically carry and the rest needs to remain behind.”

The writer weaves their story with those of others who evacuated (more than once) for fires. I know I will never hear about the evacuations and not think about this impossible task of looking at your belongings and hoping for the best but knowing you may also experience the worst. The article got under my skin.