In 2020, my mom needed surgery, and when she came out of her anesthesia, one of the first things she said was, “You know, I think I could go for some Indian food.”
They attracted me with their solid trunks, their graceful branches, the dry leaves that still created motion and gentle noise on a November day. I walked over to one and felt the rough bark and looked up into the branches, right up into the sky.
Sometime toward the beginning of the tapering-off of the Covid pandemic, going stir-crazy and wanting to get started on my retirement goals, I started doing volunteer delivery driving for La Soupe.
I thought, when given this amazing chance to have a first-person column, I would be offering my opinion on a variety of subjects. I’ve got opinions. But that’s harder than it seems.
One recent evening, a woman knocked on my door and asked for money. I could have told her to get lost. Or decided she was scamming me. Or I could have given her a little money to get something to eat, or recommend she go somewhere with more help.
It seems impossible that the progress of women would reverse course, but it already has. And plenty of people still would rather see women dependent on men, to have no sexual agency, to be quiet and have children and conform to male-created ideas of attractiveness.
Blood is one of the most potent words in the language. We refer to it to talk about family and temperament, about race, about violence and war and disease. But the strongest metaphor is not really a metaphor at all. Blood is life.