Supposed To

Right now, I’m supposed to be putting together a business plan for a wicked-cool food truck idea. I have a spreadsheet of equipment, bulk food pricing, price-per-bowl breakdowns, lots of on-the-fly formulas, and potential local vendors. I should be writing up some SOP (standard operating procedure) documents and running revenue projections based on current market research.

But I can’t, because there’s snow in New Orleans and parts of Florida. Global climate destabilization.

I’m supposed to be writing a short story for a contest whose deadline is January 31st. It’s the pre-pre-pre-prequel to another story I’m writing – the one that’s turning into a short novel – about space travel and colonizing other worlds. It’s about human social dynamics and non-normative cultures and theoretical fission reactors.

But I can’t because California is still on fire. Gross environmental mismanagement.

I’m supposed to be unfuckening my yarn stash with the amazing yarn winders that Craig printed for me. I’m supposed to be cleaning off my desk, and I’m supposed to be putting together a move-forward plan for Alchemias. I’m supposed to be making herringbone knitted shells for purses, and I’m supposed to be drafting patterns, and I’m supposed to be making shelves for the kitchen and extending the counter and building a cabinet to go over my cedar chest.

But I can’t because our actual federal government is actively getting gutted right before our eyes, and our people – all non-normative people – are in danger.

And because there is so much danger landing everywhere around us, because the threats are growing exponentially by the day, I’m thinking about The Kids more than usual.

ICYMI

I don’t talk about The Kids a lot because I’m pretty sure they don’t want me to, but I think about them all the time. I think about how they’re doing and if they’re safe, and I think about whether they’re in a position to fight, or hide, or run if things go bad for or even near them. I wonder if they know they’d still be safe here, no questions asked. Do they even know we moved?

One of them had a birthday last week. Another has a birthday coming up in just a couple of months. The other one has another five-ish months to go for theirs, but I still window-shop for all of them, thinking about the things they might like for presents or Xmas or whatever. It’s hard to send anonymous gifts to people whose location you’re uncertain of, and I don’t even think they’d understand if I did.

I stopped posting about birthdays and so forth because it didn’t seem to do a lot of good, echoing into empty channels, and there’s a sense now that none of my well-wishes would find purchase in this expanding hellscape of reality that we’re in anyway because algorithms decide who gets to see what. (This is the dumbest timeline.)

You know what the worst part of The Kids Saga is? That their distance is based on lies and dishonesty, and they just… bought it. My part of the story was silenced by CPTSD, crippling burnout, and grinding axes, and in that silence, bad actors filled in the blanks with upside-down accounts and personal agendas. Proclivities of our neurotypes were manipulated to make it look like I was the monster – but if I ever was, I needed to know in specific terms what that looked like, but, no, that conversation couldn’t possibly be had because monsters don’t talk, monsters don’t take accountability.

Never mind that I know I’m not a monster, or that I am only in the last several years aware of the intense mental illness and disorders I was suffering through early in life and early in their lives. Their minds seem to be made up, and those aren’t conversations that are my place start.

But I still make my fried potatoes like M used to because they are the superior potato format.

And I still listen to Emo like C-Bro did because of that one day I caught them bopping along and they were so frikkin’ happy and into it, and MCR and P@tD makes me feel closer to them.

And I hope that the white jeep-thing still serves C-Sis well because it really was the best car on the lot.

Expansion

My very first grandchild (that I know of) was born last week. Her name is E, and I would live, kill, and die for her. (But mostly live.)

However, the Baby Watch (waiting for my step-daughter G to go into labor properly) brought up so goddamned much trauma and anxiety that I wasn’t expecting. I’m grateful to be back on good brain drugs because it was a far shorter road to call myself back to the moment than it might’ve been in the past, but it was not easy. One of the little tricks taught in cognitive behavior therapy is to remind oneself when one is triggered during someone else’s event that those feelings have been in there for a long time, and they will continue to be there, but they can wait to be addressed until after the event.

I feel like I must’ve been the weirdest sight at the birthing center when we popped over to see E because Craig was in Full-Gimme-Gimme-BABY mode – he does love the babies – and I was taking pictures and standing off to the side because…

… because if you hold the baby, you will bond with the baby, and then you’ll never let go of the baby, and her parents are sitting right there waiting to take her away, and you’ll never see her again probably, definitely never going to see her again, so it’s better to not touch the baby so that your heart will break just a little less, do not touch the baby, do not touch the baby, do not touch the baby do not touch the baby donottouchthebaby donottouchthebaby…

(Spoiler: that didn’t help.)

G was a total natural through the whole labor, staying on top of her body signals, doing all the right things, and when it came time, it was just a little pressure, three pushes, and then YAY, a perfectly perfect baby!

… and thank all the gods, new and old, for that because birth trauma causes all kinds of problems that they didn’t even tell us about, but surely they knew, surely they were just hoping that if they didn’t say anything, nothing bad will happen, don’t knit in Labor and Delivery because that makes knots in the cord, and cord accidents are never accidents, there are risk factors and you never know when family history is hiding the source of your tragedy, do not make the danger real by speaking its name, do not acknowledge the danger, do not sow doubt, do not stop being watchful, do not stop being afraid…

The part that I sat with, the part that I didn’t realize until some time later, was that the most profound feeling of anxiety was coming from feeling left out.

No… not quite “left out”. Maybe more like doesn’t belong.

Yeah, that hits. I didn’t belong in that birthing center, witnessing that miracle.

G is not my natural child, she’s my step-daughter, and though I love her like my own (live, kill, die), she does not see me as her one of her mothers. She has a whole slew of aunties to do all that extra maternal labor that her natural mother doesn’t/can’t, and she does not need me. I came into her life much too late for that, and there’s nothing to repair or fix: that’s just the cycle of life.

But E might well be our only grandchild, on any side of the family. G and her husband have already said they only want one – and that’s a logical, intelligent choice – and I wouldn’t wish for any child to be born into what is about to be some of the most wheels-off, insane fucking years in our civilization.

Which means, I will likely never actually have a “grandmother” experience. I will likely never have the chance to fuss over my daughter or daughter-in-law, protecting her, keeping her healthy and safe, until a new life is ushered into the world, because…

… maybe I’m just not supposed to.

Mid-Apocalypse Stories

The average Roman citizen in the far-flung reaches of the empire had no idea that their governmental infrastructure was failing because information just didn’t travel that fast and was in any case unreliable. Their society was mainly agrarian in the first place, so switching to more self-sufficient modes of living wasn’t that big of a deal.

We are not that lucky.

We are watching the collapse of the USian empire in real time, like a captive audience in a theater, the horror of each day unfolding. We the audience can see the boogieman, the villains, the obvious maniacal and nefarious machinations, and we are powerless to stop the victims from splitting the party, going into the dark basement, investigating the weird noise in the attic, or ignoring the warning from the creepy old guy at the foot of the mountain.

Do we keep watching this torture porn, can we even afford to look away?

I feel like we have to check in and see who the current enemies are regularly: who the official enemies are, and who the real ones are. We have to build something completely different to rely on when this system fails, and it absolutely will, and we have to ready ourselves to live, kill, and die for the things, for the people we love.

protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies protect all the babies…

I really think that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

Thank you to Pete Linforth from Pixabay for the header image.