Monthly Archives: June 2021

It’s very hot, but I’m frozen

It’s 5:40 a.m. and 79 degrees outside. I’m up early, so I can go on a walk with my kids before it gets too hot to be out. At around 6 p.m. yesterday evening—otherwise known as 98 degrees Fahrenheit—I left the living room where my family was gathered, went to my bedroom, and closed the door. Then I sat on my bed and wept.

The best way to describe how I’m feeling right now is like the other shoe is dropping. I have known this was coming—not just intellectually, but in a deeper part of me. I could feel it. For decades, but especially since 2009, summers have been … different. Warmer. Drier. Longer. Other people’s comments—“Strange weather we’re having, huh?” or “Wow, what a great summer!”—would confuse me. Weren’t they feeling what I was feeling? Wasn’t it obvious that this was ominous rather than amazing?

As the intensity of the crisis has increased, my motivation—or rather, my ability—to respond has decreased. I can’t face the deeply disturbing changes or the misery they are causing, so I turn away. I retreat into my escapes—basketball and books—and obsess to the point of paralysis about my personal choices. I wash and reuse disposable plastic bags and then wonder if using the extra water is better or worse than throwing away plastic. I wander the grocery aisles searching for food items that aren’t wrapped in plastic, don’t contain palm oil, weren’t shipped from thousands of miles away, and on and on, until I can’t settle on a single food. Yesterday, I found myself arguing with my spouse over the carbon impact of buying a fan.

Meanwhile, our state continues to build highways, and corporations continue to destroy our shared planet with impunity.

I don’t have control over that. So I channel my energy into things I can control, like planning my family’s entire Saturday around four hours of bus travel, so we can attend my nibling’s birthday party in Tacoma without renting a Zipcar.

I don’t know what to do about the fact that our rivers are overheating, killing salmon and starving Orcas—or the incredible reality that the Olympic rainforest now has dry spells. So, I haul buckets of water to young trees my family has planted at various planting events around our neighborhood. One summer, during a particularly long dry spell, my kids and I spent hours, day after day, hauling water from the faucet in front of their elementary school to the mini-forest where we had planted trees a couple of years earlier—a good quarter mile each way. (We eventually figured out a more effective—and less strenuous—guerrilla watering strategy, but, much like Smooth Jazz‘s identity, it shall remain forever secret.)

These days, we are “forest stewards” (a bit of an inflated title, to be sure) at a park about five blocks from our home. On Thursday, in an attempt to repeat our previous baby-tree-preservation strategy, I used our hose to fill two buckets and carried them over to the park. My plan was to water a couple of the newer trees. But when I got to the planted area and saw how dry everything was, it felt stupid and pointless to be standing there with two not-quite-full buckets. What was a few gallons of water going to do against 110-degree heat? Who was I to pick and choose which of these distressed plants deserved a drink? What was even the point?

I told myself that it was better to do something than nothing as I dumped a bucket on sweet Shirley, the grand fir we named for my friend C’s mother.

Shirley the grand fir, after her Thursday drink

The next day, I returned with two more buckets, repeating, like a mantra, “It’s better to do something than nothing,” during the difficult walk to the park, and again as I walked by all of the dry, desperate plants I was not watering.

But is it? Was what I chose to do helpful, or did it just make me feel better? (To be honest, I’m becoming skeptical about the effectiveness of tree-planting efforts in general. But that’s a post for another time.) Did the watering just give me something to focus on, in the same way not driving gives me something to focus on—something other than what I know to be true: I am part of a culture that is making survival impossible for many of the species we share the planet with, including our own.

All over the world, humans are dying because of climate change. In my own city, people are working in dangerous conditions and suffocating in overheated apartments—if they are fortunate enough to have an apartment. Thousands are living without shelter, exposed to the extreme temperatures with few options for relief. The smoke will be here soon, and those of us who are able will again find ourselves hiding inside while others suffer and even die.

I don’t know what to do about any of it. I make donations to resistance efforts and mutual aid funds, invite neighbors to cool off in our downstairs.

Much more is required of me. But what?

Time travel on the 48

Whenever I ride the 48 past Massachusetts, I pass the Century House Apartments, where my Grandma Bernice lived for several years during my childhood. This means that roughly 10 times each week, I have a visceral memory of being with a person who loved me well.

I don’t come from a “close” family. The only relatives I spent significant time with growing up were my dad’s parents, who separated when I was very young. Grandpa Marcellus was fun. He taught us to play poker and dominoes, to saddle a horse and bait a hook. He let us ride in the back of his truck and fed us strange treats like horehound candy.

But my grandma, she knew how to love.

Grandma Bernice stayed with our family often. She slept in the basement, on a bed with a sky-blue spread, and we kids always, always slept with her. She played with us—catch and dress-up and paper dolls she made herself—baked with us, listened to us. She had an ability to be present, to treat us like fellow humans instead of “children,” that felt like magic. No matter how long she visited, whenever she announced that she was ready to go home, we would beg her to stay “just one more night.”

Even better than Grandma’s visits were those times—maybe once a month or so—when she would invite one of the older kids to stay at her apartment. For me, there was nothing more coveted, more sacred, than an invitation to spend the night with Grandma.

I don’t remember much about that apartment at 23^rd and Massachusetts, other than the rough texture of the cheap carpet and the rather institutional smell of the hallways. I have only snapshots of the time we spent together there. I remember “sewing” on her magical sewing machine. Listening to stories of her childhood with the six sisters she missed so desperately. Brushing my teeth with salt and soda. Watching her remove her wig and re-braid her white hair into two scrawny plaits before climbing into bed next to me. The feeling of her cool fingers as she scratched my back until I fell asleep.

And I remember our walks.

Grandma Bernice didn’t drive. For most of her life, a car was out of the question, an impossible expense. When her own children were young, she transported them on Seattle’s then-trolleys or on foot. Many years later, my dad tried to teach her in his own car, but she found the experience terrifying and abruptly discontinued the lesson.

For my entire childhood, my grandma bused and walked everywhere she went. When I was with her, I bused and walked, too.

Sometimes, on those one-on-one visits, Grandma and I would walk to the store. She would buy ingredients for dinner and maybe a copy of the Enquirer, which she considered evidence that we were living in the End Times. Sometimes, we would walk all the way to Douglass-Truth for story time. Sometimes, we would walk just to walk.

Grandma Bernice was the only adult I knew who really noticed things. As a country girl living in an apartment with no outdoor access, she missed dirt. When she walked, she would gather leaf skeletons and flower petals, which she sometimes used to make art. She would ooh and ahh at people’s gardens—and sometimes sneak a flower or two. (Later, she would press those stolen beauties between the pages of her Bible to preserve them.) Sometimes, she would walk up to a tree and wrap her arms around it in a true embrace. If I listened closely, I could hear her whisper, “Thank you.”

This practice of walking just to walk continued far beyond my grandma’s time at Century House. She walked no matter who she was visiting or where she was living, no matter the conditions. Nothing deterred her—not stormy weather, not heavy traffic, not even repeated purse snatchings.

Even though I cherished my time with Grandma Bernice, I didn’t always cherish those walks. When we walked to get somewhere, I couldn’t match her pace. I’d find myself blocks behind, exhausted and miserable. When we walked just to walk, I quickly grew bored. When could we go back inside and do something?

But somehow, over time, I have become my grandma. Of course I love the bus, but walking is my favorite way to travel. I walk to get places, yes, but I also walk just to walk. To clear my head. To experience the seasons. To notice. Sometimes, I even stop to thank a tree.

Century House Apartments — The Century House apartments, a site of love

On interdependence

In the US, we are trained to believe that we can be self-sufficient—that if we just work hard enough, save enough money, buy enough insurance, hoard enough toilet paper, or build tall enough fences, we can insulate ourselves from what is going on “out there.”

This has always been an illusion.

The truth is, most of us eat because other humans grew and harvested food, then processed, packaged, shipped, stocked, and sold it to us.

The truth is, even the most “self-made” among us were brought into this world and then kept alive by other humans (not to mention the ecosystems that sustain us).

The truth is, if someone drops a cigarette in a drought-stricken forest, the smoke will affect our lungs, too.

The truth is, if one of us is sick, none of us is well.

These are the lessons that the pandemic has taught us—and that have always been available on the bus.

On a cold morning last January, when Covid cases were still rising in King County, and every bus ride felt like both a gift and a risk, Busling and I watched a not-uncommon scene unfold at a stop. While we waited for the 48, an 8 pulled up and parked. The driver turned on the hazards and opened all the doors, then walked to a seat near the back, to a sleeping passenger whose mask was on the floor near his feet.

The driver tapped on the seat until the passenger opened his eyes.

“Sir! Sir! I need you to put a mask on.”

The passenger looked blankly at the driver for a moment before his chin drooped to his chest and his eyes closed again.

The driver tapped on the seat again. As he tapped, he repeated, “Sir … sir! I need you to put a mask on.” The passenger—60-ish, clearly intoxicated, and very likely unhoused— continued to open, then close, his eyes. He never spoke or moved to retrieve his mask.

Finally, after several minutes, the driver gave up. He left the passenger and mask where he had found them, returned to his seat, closed the doors, and drove away.

I have seen versions of this scenario play out many times on my Covid-era transit rides. And we have to talk about it.

What I love most about the bus is that everyone belongs. The world I’m trying to build is one in which public transportation is free, safe, and accessible to all. This means that I support any and all efforts to decriminalize transit infractions. It means that I don’t have a problem with someone riding the bus to stay warm (or cool). AND it means that no one should be exposed to a contagious, deadly disease while riding—or driving—a bus.

Every time something happens on transit that feels threatening to me or my children, I do a gut check. Do I want to keep doing this? Do I want to keep doing this in a pandemic? Usually, my initial response is a reflexive, almost visceral urge to turn away. I want to stop riding the bus, stop being exposed to risk. What I really want is to stop being exposed to reality.

But then I return to myself. I remember.

It’s true that there’s nothing inherently unsafe about transit. (Cars are far more dangerous, especially to children.) But the bus requires us to experience our fellow humans directly, to share the ride with the people we share the world with. If one of my fellow passengers is hateful, or harmful, or in distress, I will experience their suffering in real time.

Because here’s the thing: We can’t create safe communities without first ensuring that everyone’s needs are met. A society that leaves thousands of human beings without shelter from the elements harms everyone, including those who are comfortably housed. Including those whose jobs require them to serve the public.

The driver and passengers on that early morning 8 were faced with unnecessary risk and few safe (or satisfying) options for addressing it. This fact should galvanize us—not to create more rules or more enforcement mechanisms, but to end the conditions that created the situation. The problem isn’t what we should do about a passed-out passenger on the bus without a mask. The problem is, we haven’t figured out that our well-being is connected to his.

We cannot look around at the misery in our city and decide that the answer is to isolate and insulate ourselves—or to turn on those who are suffering. We must see our neighbors in distress as a sign that we are all sick. Then we must do what’s necessary to heal.