Standing in the snow adds a certain certainty

Protesting. This week’s recap.

It was snowing today. Almost icy rain, but the sky smiled upon us and rain that had blown through in the early morning was now snow. Easier to hold a paper sign in the snow, although I was splashed by a truck going through a puddle left from this morning’s rain as I walked to the area designated for protest. Left, left again, straight through the area where five different streets come together, and you’re there. In a world of cars, the distance appears just too far. In reality, a ten minute walk, alone on the pavement as cars rush past. I saw a wallet on the way. I thought, I shouldn’t touch someone else’s property. Someone will come back for the brown square and it won’t be here. I’ll leave it.

I felt guilty but walked on.

I had planned that if there was no one there, understandable given the weather, I would stand there for a bit, then go home. But no. There were already people gathering. So I crossed over the road and went and stood with them. I didn’t have a sign. Every week before, someone has had an extra that they have been kind enough to lend me. Last week someone came with a bag of sign-making materials and invited me to make one.

Dear reader, a short diversion. Pretty much 50 years on from when my mother told me I couldn’t draw. She wanted to be a painter, you see. She wasn’t bad, either. There was a painting of me as a small girl, an oil on canvas, my bare foot on a multi-coloured fuzzy ball I used to play with when I was two? Three? I was wearing a toddler dress, one of my stuffed animals in my hand, tucked under my head, cuddled. I think it was the difficulty of painting the stuffed toy and the outline of my face that stopped the work. I now recall, strangely, that there was a white blot in that spot, waiting to be repainted. The portrait was never complete, and the wooden easel, which I remember thinking so beautiful, is lost forever, along with the painting. The painting sat upon that easel, waiting completion or for others to join it. I haven’t thought of that in years, yet it loomed over my sense of parental doings and knowledge for my entire young childhood. Another symbol casting a long shadow, into the silent rooms of all my unknowings. And where did all my childhood things go? That must be for another story.

But there I was, standing at the table last week, the woman showing me pens and cardboard and stickers, all things which would make the average normal person, I imagine, feel like there was good work to be done. I recoiled. I noticed my reaction, however, and managed to assemble some of the voices that streaked through my mind like a missile launch. First and foremost – your handwriting is awful. Then – your letters are crooked. Then – you are sloppy. You don’t know how to draw. Do it like this – and she’d take over, and I would stand there, unable to practice either drawing or fighting back. For a long time I really did think I was incapable. It’s only recently I’ve wondered if that were so.

I turned down her kind offer and hoped she didn’t see the terror on my face. Don’t make me do this in front of you. You will laugh at me.

I picked out a poster that was already made, and took my place in the line of people edging the roadside.

That was last week. This week, a kind woman who looked very arts and crafty I thought, relinquished her sign to me and said she had more in the car. No – I protested – I don’t want to make you do that. But off she went, and I held the sign aloft. Part of the group.

The sunlight was faint and the air was freezing, and I was already cold from spending the dawn at the beach trying to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse. But as time went by, and cars went by and honked, I felt warmer. The older women next to me were saying how terrible it was. One of them had worked for NIH on funding for HIV research. She was incensed that it had been shut down, despite what the courts said. My turn to be surprised. You think some causes are only for the under 30s? Think again.

There were more positive beepings of horns, waving, thumbs up. From the Trump supporters, a new type of counter protest – lots of middle fingers held up. One man slightly hid his gesture behind his head as if he was somewhat embarrassed. And he should be. There is a group of his fellow citizens and possible fellow townspeople, all for the most part over the age of 50, and the best they can do is raise a middle finger. One truck went by and yelled, “losers!” Effective.

“I think we are getting to them,” I said to the man next to me.

I like watching the people in the cars, their dogs, what is in their pick up trucks. The Meadery truck went by, no honk or wave. I was disappointed. You’d think someone bringing back an old craft would be for healthcare, and veterans’ jobs and supporting countries under attack. But many people don’t do anything. You’d think at this point you would know how you felt. But sadly many people are still seeing nothing out of the ordinary. It is frightening how uneducated people are about their own country. At this point, that is the best possible excuse for those uncommitted or on the Trump side. The worst is racism, fascism, a streak of eugenics running through their thinking where they believe their large house and large truck and large tax bill gives them the right to belittle others with less. And then there is the anger. So many of the thumbs down people were big, unattractive men, who grimaced at us. Imagine being so angry you want people to die and to not have health care or jobs. But it’s a point of view not that far from the America of the before times. Where you deserved nice things or you didn’t. Where “free” health care had to be bad or for the unworthy. Hence the cry of “loser” from the truck. We must be losers. That is the ideology. “That is what they see on Fox news every day,” said the women next to me. “I can’t watch more than five minutes – it makes my blood boil.”

It makes their blood boil too, but not in the same way. Advertising and TV have learned to play with emotions like fear and hatred and envy, and here we are.

The best cars were the families that honked, their children looking out wonderingly at these people standing in the freezing snow, holding up homemade signs. Maybe there was hope.

You have to cling to hope.

The hour went by quickly. I don’t think everyone wanted to leave, but it was cold and the group dispersed, slowly. I walked back along the street, feeling that I could walk for miles. I could do the right thing. Somewhere, someone had posted about their experience of protesting and said that it was like “an hour of therapy.” And it was. It is. You don’t feel so alone. You hear others who have feelings about what is happening, who are uncertain, yet hopeful, whose life experience had led them, decades from their start on this planet, to this smallish town, this road transverse, by the town green, to gather the energy of hope and share it with the cars and their drivers on their way to somewhere on a cold spring Saturday. And to remind those who were supporters of fascism that the destruction of a government wasn’t going to go as easily as their billionaire overlords had assumed. And their simple action served as well to remind the Democratic party that what was needed was fundamental change. That people were tired of going bankrupt if they fell ill, or panicking if they lost a job. The idea of having people rich enough to buy anyone, at least in their own minds – the morality they claim to hold a stranglehold on, they ignore, kick to the dirt, and rejoice in watching people fall prey to greed and apathy. “I never liked Marco Rubio,” said one of the people there. “But he must know this is wrong. These Republicans, who do nothing, they must know this is wrong.”

I took the same route back, careful to watch for any trucks going by the large puddle. And just careful. It’s a small place. Once you’ve stood on the main street, and declared your true colors, there will be people who know that. Small towns, or not-so-small towns like this one still operate the same way.

I walked by the wallet on the sidewalk, still there. I hesitated, and picked it up. Right in in the first pocket, was what looked like a high schooler’s driver’s license. The house was just down the driveway. I went up to the door, and the Ring doorbell flashed at me. When did we all get so frightened that we needed to have cameras. I pushed the button and somewhere inside it rang. Nothing. Were they there, or not, or avoiding strangers, impossible to say.

I waved to the camera and placed the wallet down on the door step. Protesting builds community, and there was the evidence. I took a few minutes to help a stranger.

In a community, people don’t tell strangers with signs to fuck off. America is no longer a community. But the seeds of possibility and hope are still here.

Get off the internet for an hour a day and see what people look like in person, with funny shapes, and odd hair and teeth, and ways of speaking. The problem is that to sell things, “they” encouraged fear as the dominant emotion, and have now weaponized hatred and mistrust. A woman who can stand in front of prisoners like she is in a fascist advertisement for one-minute hate is not the norm. Don’t believe them.

In the middle of the hour of snowy protest, a man in his car slowed down and yelled something at the people holding signs on the other side of the road. I didn’t hear what they said, but the protester said, “why don’t you get out of the car and we can have a conversation.”

You try and remain hopeful, don’t you.