Week One
By Christine Junge
A rally the night before the inauguration is “laced with exaggerations and outright falsehoods.”*
I come home from a weekend away to find water leaking out the side of our house. Inside, water is pooling beneath the dishwasher. One more thing that’s falling apart.
An executive order instructs the government to end birthright citizenship. This constitutionally protected right says that children who are born on U.S. soil are citizens, even if their parents are not. The order is an attempt to rewrite our country’s founding document. I can only assume it won’t be the last.
I get a massage. Even though they have been prescribed to me for chronic pain, spa services feel indulgent at the best of times. Now? I spend the whole time thinking about the Mexican-American family I used to volunteer with. I have no idea about their immigration status.
How one of the police officers attacked on January sixth describes the pardoning of 1,600 January 6 rioters: “A miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy.”*
My four-year-old son gets sent home from school with a fever. I have to cancel my doctor’s appointment, a lunch with a dear friend, my writing time, and the hour I would have spent scouring various newspapers and listening to NPR. Maybe this last piece isn’t a bad thing? I’m exhausted. It’s still day one.
“Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, now has full command of the federal cost-cutting effort, which Mr. Trump has hailed as ‘potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.’”*
A handyman diagnoses our dishwasher leak as a faulty valve. Turns out the part is on backorder for months. A few weeks ago, I would have complained about this inconvenience. Now, I research McCarthyism, Nixon.
“Federal workers ordered to report on colleagues over D.E.I. crackdown.”*
I come to enjoy washing dishes, the warm water on my hands, the smell of soap, the ping of the water as it drips out of the drainboard into the sink. I guess I can get used to anything. Well, hopefully not.
“Even more than in his first term, President Trump has mounted a fundamental challenge to the norms and expectations of what a president can and should do. . . He intends to test the outer limits of what he can get away with.”*
I get trained to teach ESL. When I signed up, it felt like it would be a rewarding volunteer project. Now, doing something, anything, to help others feels urgent.
“No matter how small, quiet, or private the expression, art can move the needle in fighting for our collective freedom.”*
I read about art as resistance. I write this poem.
*Quoted from the New York Times
Christine Junge is a writer living in California, by way of Massachusetts and New York. She is currently working on a novel about grief, art, and the question of how well we really know those we love.
Photo credit: Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash.
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