Look...

Gravity sucks.

Combined with estrogen loss, sun damage, wiry hairs in odd places, general aging and decrepitude, looks are not much to celebrate compared to the glossy magazine models and celebrities in Hollywood’s shadow. 

Yet, Mother Nature is generous. She gives us crepe-like skin, if not crepe paper streamers with which to decorate our sunset years. I love that She’s generous. But, sunsets don’t need decoration. Why should we? I aspire to be the one whose twinkle precedes her with such a force-field that no one even sees the whiskers, wrinkles, and road-maps on her skin.

The movie, Book Club celebrates friendship among three friends of a certain age who have one another’s backs. While predictable, I did laugh out loud several times in the old Elmwood Theater in Berkeley, filled with folks (mostly women) of a certain age. 

It’s the certainty OF age that’s the given, not what will happen when we are truly old. Maybe the greeting card is right: We should slide into home with our hair messy, our muscles sore, and a twinkle in our eye. Chin whiskers be damned. I’m going outside in the light to Play!

A sudden chill blowing in off California’s coast caused my So Cal volunteer counselor hubby to say that last week, when it was so warm, he was afraid of getting a mosquito bite and, when the temperature dropped so unseasonably, he was afraid of getting frost bite!

Unbearable news cycle… children being ripped from the bosom of their family.  We’re creating trauma with a capital T faster than ever we can heal it. Between War and Epidemics, why must we insert Shredding Families? Romans 13:1? Really, Mr. Sessions?

Some friends and I are thinking about going to Southern California where there is one such facility that houses these youngsters who have been wrenched from their country, their mothers and fathers, even their siblings. No one is allowed to touch or comfort them. Really, Mr. Sessions? We’re wanting just to be witnesses: Vigil Aunties, (and Uncles) sitting vigil, bearing witness to this atrocity that is inhumane and evil.  How can those who carry out “orders” sleep at night? How can these people live with themselves. How is this policy different from the tactics of any fascist regime? 

Put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat, it will acclimate until it’s too late, be cooked, and die. Pop it into already boiling water and it will jump right out. The fire has been warming us since November of 2016. If your country is not safe and you seek asylum in one that you think is safe(r), how is justice served when everyone turns a cold shoulder and worst of all wrenches your child(ren) from your protective arms?

Aunties with white hair, delicate or bulging varicosities tracing roadmaps of Cleveland on their legs, and lots of life experience have had enough. We’ve earned our stripes and will not sit by and watch the heat being turned up slowly. We shall intercept, interrupt, and disrupt the status quo that allows border agents to rip nursing babies out of their mother’s arms. We will resist. We will turn this around.

What's already occurred is sinful, if you want to put a religious spin on it, Mr. Sessions. Simply SINFUL. Your actions will come back to haunt you. May you have terribly disrupted sleep. You deserve it.