All The Light and Dark and Shadows in Between

Lady Liberty. According to Aela, this lady is "brave, determined, and kind."

Oof. I suck at this keeping up a blog thing. I can’t even get any of my kids’ writing posted or update my husband’s blogs, and I don’t even have to write those. Fail.

I am surprised at how little downtime there is in this RV Life of ours. I had some half-baked ideas in my mind that mornings would be slow coffee-and-homeschool mornings, afternoons would a few dreamy hours of exploring and by late afternoon, I would be settled down with my computer to write and write and write. 

Bwahahahaha. What a delusion. 

Our life on the road is as busy, if not busier, than at home. In some ways, it’s a weird, liminal life. We are not on vacation really, since we are both still working, but we are traveling and sightseeing like one does on vacation. We are working and doing dishes and laundry and grocery shopping, but it’s not quite regular “living” in that daily grind sort of way. We are operating somewhere in between. It’s a bizarre state of being. I have not found a way to incorporate regular writing into this liminal life as I had hoped. 

So, these last couple of weeks, I have been making attempts. I have bits and starts of blogs written, half-marinated ideas jotted, and I keep sitting down to write, and then… nothing. 

Finally, I realized there is no way to continue writing about our travels without writing about the election. 

It’s no secret that Trav and I are liberals. He would paint himself in more of a “libertarian” slant. I would call myself a good old-fashioned bleeding-heart snowflake liberal. We have some differing views here and there, but at the core, we hold these beliefs in common:

We believe that no human is illegal. 

We believe that all people are deserving of human rights. 

We believe that all people should be able to live as their true, authentic selves without persecution or interference as long as they are not harming anyone else. 

We believe that consenting adults should be able to love and marry who they wish. 

We believe all folks should have healthcare, education, and housing access. 

We believe that access to safe, medically sound abortion care is imperative. 

We believe a woman should be able to make choices about her own body. 

We believe it is our duty to care for our environment, lands, waters, air, oceans, and the natural world around us, to protect our earth and make it better than it was when we arrived. 

We believe in our taxes being used to support any of these things because we know that we all do better when we are all taken care of. 

Lastly, though this belief is shaken sometimes, I have to believe that people are inherently good at their core and that everyone in this world is just doing their best to live a life that brings them joy. 

We openly share these beliefs with our girls. They have been taught to accept all people and that our work on this earth is to do good, work for justice, and care for each other. 

We started this journey to share our love of this country and its history with our girls. We wanted them to see the beauty that lives in the crests of the ocean waves and the magic that is the sun streaming through pine trees. We wanted to see their faces light up when they glimpsed the Statue of Liberty for the first time or walked barefoot on the beach. 

We also knew we would share some of the hardest and darkest parts of our country’s past with them. We know that light and dark live together not on the flipsides of a coin but side by side, light and shadow, good and bad, and that the universal human truths of who we are reside in the shadowy grays between both virtue and evil. It’s up to us to look for those truths by listening to as many voices as possible, by looking straight into the gaps where the voices are hiding, and by asking lots and lots of questions. By celebrating the light and honoring and remembering the darkness. 

We have spent weeks talking to our girls about some of the toughest parts of the history of our country during this journey. We have traveled to the very shores where our country’s land was first stolen from Indigenous folks. We stood on the shores of the river where folks risked their lives to usher enslaved folks to freedom. We’ve walked in the footsteps of the exhausted and anxious immigrants who landed on Ellis Island at the feet of Lady Liberty, looking for a better life.

We have explained over and over to our girls that even though it isn’t always pretty, examining our history is important because it tells us who we are. We tell them we study these things to understand how the terrible things happened so we can be sure they will never happen again. And so we can celebrate and uplift the good things.

And even when it is not always pretty, we are still so lucky to be living in this big, beautiful country where people from all over the world have come to find a home and make a better life.

We have had some hard conversations.

But one of the hardest conversations right now is about some of the ugly parts of our country they see in front of their own eyes. 

We are both at a loss to explain why our country chose a leader who believes that not everyone belongs here and who wants to deport millions of us. That our country chose a leader who doesn’t believe that everyone is equal. Our country chose a leader who regularly uses vile and hateful rhetoric and calls people horrific names. 

Our country chose a leader who does not have everyone’s best interest at heart; who puts the wealthy and elite above others. Our country chose a leader who lies. Who is a literal criminal. Who tried to overthrow our government and promised to do away with democracy as we know it. A leader who has the power and the will to take away rights from folks that we love so very much.

I’m not sure how to explain these things to them. Because “milk is expensive” just isn’t going to cut it.

Harder still to explain is the hateful imagery that some folks on the Right seem to delight in somehow. I am not saying that those of us on the Left aren’t angry. We damn sure are. But you would be hard-pressed to find a parade of trucks bedecked in Harris/Walz flags that fly side by side with swastikas and other hateful symbols or that are emblazoned with verbiage wishing pain and suffering on the Right. These images seem to abound in trump-country.

Those images are hard to explain to our girls after we have talked time and again about being gracious to others, using kind words, and accepting all people. Those are adults flying those flags. For kids, adults are supposed to be the leaders, the ones with answers. Pretty hard to reconcile in a 9-year-old mind.

And scary for them, honestly. 

In the days immediately after the election, we moved RV parks. Most parks have a solid “no political signs” policy, which I appreciate. But our newest one did not. And so, on the day after the election, we were greeted in the newest park by massive trump flags and gleeful slogans promising to “Make liberals cry again.” “Gods, Guns, Trump.” Other vile, hateful things I don’t care to publish. 

Welcome to the next chapter, kids. I remember this so well from the first time around. The emboldened hate and vitriol. The childlike name-calling and absolute glee some folks took in intimidating and harassing others with political propaganda. We live in such a liberal bubble we don’t see this often, but even still, I feel like it is about to get worse the second time around. And I am heartbroken for my girls. 

Meanwhile, I'm over here just trying to sprinkle some joy.

On top of that, a feeling of hopelessness settled over me right after the election. A feeling of “Why are we even traveling? This is superficial and self-indulgent. I should be back home finding some ways to engage in social justice right now. I should recommit myself to the volunteer work I did for reproductive health. Get louder in the education arena. Find new ways to become active and supportive for folks who don’t have my privileges. Who cares about seeing the Liberty Bell, visiting Disney World, or walking on the beaches at Cape Hatteras?” 

I started feeling a bit guilty for being out here, sightseeing, enjoying my family and my privilege, and discovering new things when I knew that folks in my village at home were stressed and losing sleep because this incoming administration would directly affect them. 

You see, we have a niece who is trans, and although we live in a state that has safeguarded her right to exist and live her life, this incoming administration does not see that as her right, and they don’t see it as my sister’s right to try to provide care for her daughter in the best way she can. And so there is terror and fear that she will lose her rights with this incoming administration. 

I have another sister who works in advocacy for national parks. She is already bracing herself for the incoming attacks on federally protected lands that this administration promises. 

I have a best friend who works in abortion care. We live in a state that has enshrined abortion as a right. She is in the trenches daily, caring for women from other states who need reproductive care and who are being denied that right in their own backyards. Her work just got even harder overnight as appointments for IUDs surged 150% just the day after the election, and folks are still streaming in for reproductive care.

These are real issues. The annoying trump flags in our RV parks are just that. Annoyances. 

I had a moment where I felt like this was all really and truly pointless. That I should be home supporting my people. The ones who are always there to support us. And start trying to figure out how to dig in and get to work on some of these issues. 

One of the hardest parts about all of these emotions was keeping them in check so my children didn’t panic because of the way their parents were feeling now. 

The day after the election, we went to do school at an arboretum in Connecticut where the girls explored the nooks and crannies under rocks and behind logs, painted pictures of ladybugs, and wrote stories from the perspectives of a rock and bird house, all while I stuffed down my anger, my fears, my deep, deep sadness and tried to find some peace in the trees around me. 

Then my mom sent us a surprise: tickets to a “Tea Around Town Tour.” A bus ride through Manhattan that would take us to all of the sites while serving us a full-blown tea. You know, sandwiches, pastries, the whole nine yards. 

At first, I felt like this was the last thing we should be doing now. I should be somehow commiserating with my people, not galavanting on a tea bus.

But I realized that my girls needed this. They needed a happy day out with a happy mommy because watching me spin out would not solve any problems; it only made them fearful and angsty. I'm not ready for angsty. I hope to stave that off until the teen years, at least.

So we went to tea on a bus. 

The Tea Bus!

It was beautiful. So stunningly gorgeous that I started to tear up.

All of the emotions of being away from home for so long, of struggling to adjust to the family dynamics and the ins and outs of living in an RV, the stress of watching the election cycle news and debates in isolation from our families and friends, the absolute devastation of the election itself, all of that overwhelm was distilled down into one deep painful breath that I exhaled out as I watched my girls light up at the towers of treats, at the teacup they get to keep, at the flowers and lace and absolute tweeness of it all. As the late afternoon sun streamed in through the bus windows while my girls giggled and nibbled macrons, I felt the world tilt back into place a bit. 

After tea, we met up with my friend Megan. She and I went to high school together in Orlando. Megan is a trans woman. She had to leave Orlando and move to New York because Florida is most definitely not a safe place for trans folks. She has made a new life in New York and she seems to be thriving. 

We met her on the steps of the New York Public Library, and I was so happy to see a familiar face that I almost danced for joy when I saw her. 

We walked through the library's permanent collections and chatted over the stuffed Pooh bear and the Gutenberg Bible. She shared bits of historical knowledge and trivia about some of the collection pieces with us.

After exploring the library, we took the girls to the children’s library across the street so they could look at books and she and I could chat. About her life in New York. About the election. About my travels. About some of the crazy things we had seen. 

And then, she shared with me some of her own memories of traveling in an RV with her family as a kid. I don’t know much about Megan’s childhood. I don’t know what she has been through on her journey to transition into her true self as an adult other than what she has shared publicly. But I do know that she shared these RVing memories with such warmth that I could feel the love she had for her family and those pieces of her childhood. No matter what else she has endured, it gave her joy to relive these particular memories. 

I realized that this trip is good. No, I am not out there lacing up my activist boots and getting to work. But I am doing something good. Something pure and wonderful and good for my girls. 

And by sharing this love of our country with them in this way, I am hopeful that this will also be something they share with their friends like Megan did with me. And with their own village someday. What they learn and see may somehow translate into a deep love for our country that maybe they, the next generation, can someday convert that love into stewardship and activism. 

In the meantime, I also hope that by continuing to share our travels with you all, with my friends and family and even a few strangers who have found us here in this corner of the internet world, we will also continue to show you how much there is to love in this country. I want to show you how many good people exist out here despite the ugliness. We want to show you the beautiful things we find hiding in the gray areas between the light and the dark and share them openly and warmly with so much love that you won’t hesitate to stand up and fight like hell for them when the time comes. 

And so, with that in my heart, we left New York and headed off to the next legs of the journey with renewed determination to keep exploring this beautiful country of ours together, all of it-- light, dark, and all the shadows in between.