American’t

I'm usually abuzz with pure joy and happiness on this Friday, the Friday before we leave for the best week of the year, our annual pilgrimage to Woodloch. 

I'm usually making lists of what would be disasterous if I forget to pack it.  I would  be obsessively checking and rechecking  the forecast, I would  be worrying  about who was going to get sick or who'd be attacked by a coyote or who'd win the first gold medal at a major event.

  I should be  salivating over the mud pie I was  planning on eating and I should  be remembering the feel of  the icy yet exhilarating first plunge into the lake.

It's a great mixture of anxiety and anticipation..a healthy, neurotic mixed bag  of emotion.

Did I buy enough snacks for the house/pet sitter?  Is the bathing suit I bought last summer already out of style? Will they offer "Scattegories" this trip, where I always manage to think outside the box and win my whole team a coveted  gold medal?

("Name something you open that starts  with the letter B.")

 Other teams write down "bottle" or "box" and get disqualified for matching, but because I have a touch of ADHD and overall craziness, knowing how many points I'd get for using that letter B as often as possible without matching another team's answer, I'd put something like:  "Bagel Boutiques in Bulgaria" because you KNOW that is "something than  literally CAN be opened and you're pretty confident no other team is going to submit that as an answer)

Okay..so maybe I'm  still thinking about a lot of these issues, (the "Karen..Calm Down!"  team tee shirts have never been more appropriate) but I am just crying and crying because I was stupid enough to turn on the news.

How DARE SCOTUS do this??  How DARE them, when one third of them were nominated by a CRIMINAL???  

As if yesterday's decision wasn't horrible enough....!!!

I keep hearing the voice of that clinic  receptionist in Little Rock, who spent her entire morning phoning patients and canceling appointments, telling them through her anger and tears that they just don't matter, knowing she was delivering the  horrible news against her will.

I think about the anguish on the face of my friend's grandmother when I met her in the late 1970's as she told me she has five grand daughters(my friend being one of them) but used to have six. 

(One of the six had the misfortune of getting pregnant before  1973, and dying from a botched attempt  to handle the unwanted pregnancy  herself.)

I WANT to describe that woman's pained  face to anyone reading this, but I just can't.   I can't and I won't, because I simply cannot believe it is happening again.

Writing is therapeutic, and my mountain getaway will be great escapism too,  but how will any  true American celebrate the Fourth of July, which is  only ten days away?

How can any of us display a flag when there is no freedom anymore?

We are no longer Americans..we are Ameri-CANTS, and I can't wait until this nightmare ends.

Which it might.

In November.