The other day I went to a coffee shop to work. Not my usual shop. A national one I don’t ordinarily go to unless I’m out of town. There were no seats by the wall with the comfy upholstery, which matters a bit to my ass and back, but matters even more to the need to charge my computer.
So I sat down at a long, wooden table in the middle of the shop to get some work done and kept my eye on the coveted electric outlet seating options.
As soon as I put my backpack down, a young woman in her 20s looked up and stared at me. Like, I can see looking up to note who just put their bag on the table, then going back to your thing, but she didn’t look away. I took out my computer. Started to work, put sugar in my cappuccino. She was still staring at me. I looked at her inquisitively and she looked away. By that time, a friend had joined her and they were starting to spread out papers. Looked like they may have been studying for something. She nodded her head sideways toward me as they were taking out the papers.
One of the coveted wall spots opened up, and I bolted with my backpack. When I turned back to get the computer, they were full on turned to me and staring. I stared back at them. They looked away.
This amused me more than it bothered me. So I texted my kids about this bizarre interaction. Or non-interaction, as the case may be. Then I put on my headphones to finish editing some audio. And that’s when things got… deep.
Delaney: Are you, like, safe?
Delaney: Are those weird people still looking at you
Delaney: Mom?
Delaney: Mom..
Delaney: Mom.
Me: No
Me: I’m working
Delaney: Jesus Christ
Me: (looking up) They moved to another table
Delaney: YOU CAN’T WORK AND GLANCE AT YOUR PHONE
Note here: She gave me a period after the last mom, then she gave me an all caps. I was in trouble.
Delaney: Listen, a fucking genocide is about to start against trans people and so I am extra anxious about my androgynous looking mother being attacked.
Delaney: 😡
Me: They weren’t looking at me because I’m a dyke.
Me: Also… I’ve lived through worse.
Delaney: I don’t even know what “worse” is.
OK, note here that she used a period - which means she’s serious - but, more importantly, she used the quotation marks to convey meaning. As a mom/writer, this made me very proud. Then the next text came in.
Delaney: You know, the day I realized as a kid that people could deliberately hurt you because you were gay was the day all hope I had for the world vanished.
I had to think about this for a moment. But I obviously couldn’t dwell on it too long or I’d make it worse. I decided on humor.
Me: Delaney… ALL hope? Because I am a pretty hopeful person, even in my despair.
Delaney: I still get super, wildly anxious about it.
Me: People can hurt us because we’re Jewish.
Delaney: OK, maybe not ALL hope.
Delaney: But like a nice portion of it.
Me: People can hurt me because I’m gay.
Delaney: Yeah, I’m also keenly aware of this too, which is why I cried so much when Dixon’s co-worker said anti-Semitic things
Me: People hurt my friends because they’re Black.
Me: We just fight. It’s why I fight
Delaney: I know
Delaney: I just get scared
Delaney: Happy international women’s day btw LOL
She and I totally have the same sense of humor.
Me: We do all need to take care of each other. But besides being a big ole dyke, I am first and foremost your mother. I take care of you. Not the other way around. I know how to take care of all of us. (Well, until I’m old and you get to take care of me.)
Delaney: I know. And I appreciate that
Delaney: I’m just a paranoid human now
Me: I know. We all are. It’s a crazy world
Delaney: You did good
Delaney: Taking care of us
Delaney: You’re STILL doing good
Me: Honestly, if you look at history, and if you’ve lived long enough, you see the cycles. I am less worried now because some crazies are overt than I was in the ‘90s when most people didn’t “approve” of me - most people being my mother and those like her. Now we live in a world in which most people are horrified at the vocal few and don’t have their own personal hangups about queer folk. I think it’s an improvement. Besides, the anger is coming from their own fear. It will flame out eventually.
Me: Then again, it could sweep everybody up and we could have a second Holocaust.
Me: I think it will be the former
At this point, she asked me to proof her cover letter for an internship, and I thought that was a nice pivot.
But the conversation stuck with me. This was, in fact, the second time I had said, “I’ve seen worse” in a 24-hour period.
And I stick with that. But while I’ve “seen” worse, I don’t know that I or the Collective Unconscious have ever “felt” worse.
One reason is that we are going backwards. If you’re standing at the bottom of a mountain, then the only way to go is up. If you are toward the peak of the mountain and someone comes out of nowhere and pushes you so you slide down, it feels like defeat. Even though you are still higher than you were when you started.
I also subscribe to the notion that things have to get worse before enough people galvanize to make them better.
Then I remember that back in November, Delaney and I watched the documentary “The Square,” which is about the ultimate failure of the Egypt uprising from 2011 to 2013. And I understand why, in the face of possible autocracy in the U.S., she is scared.
I also know that U.S. terrorism didn’t end with the coordinated attacks on 9/11. According to the Gun Violence Archive, most gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, and the vast majority of murders are one-on-one, usually by someone who knows the victim. A tiny minority of gun deaths are from mass shootings. But, if the definition of terrorism is to commit violent acts with the intention of sowing panic and fear, then mass shootings are it. We are not safe in a movie theatre. We are not safe in the grocery store. We are not safe in our houses of worship. We are not safe in our schools. It is random. And that randomness is terrifying.
My 20-year-olds grew up in the mass shooting generation. They were a week away from turning 10 when Sandy Hook happened.
And they, like all of their peers - like all of us who are sentient - live every day with a bit of low-level terror.
In June 2016, I read a detail in a news story that still haunts me. As first responders were trying to make sure the Pulse Night Club was secure, all they heard was the pinging of cell phones coming from the bodies of the 49 people who would never answer them.
So, yes. I understand that my daughter gets paranoid when her androgynous and outspoken mother doesn’t answer texts.
We are living in perilous times. But what I said to Delaney holds: We have to take care of each other.
It makes me sad to think your daughters live with such an undercurrent of fear. But then again, I was 22 years old during the Cuban crisis and had a very deep terror that nuclear war was going to destroy us all. And fear of the crime in New York city where I lived during the 1960s. But given some perspective, I've lived through German bombs raining down on our house in England when I was a toddler, fear of rejection as a little immigrant girl in Canada, fear of a third world war, fear of never having enough money to be indepentdent in old age - it goes on and on. And yet we survive AND THRIVE.