Home at last

I’m off today, but I am still thinking about yesterday’s new client, a trans 20 year old FIT student whose uncle decided to throw her down a flight of stairs. She fled in just her socks, walking through the snow to her friend’s house, where she can stay for a week. She told me that things had not been comfortable at home for a long time, but she was hoping she could get through school and then leave. I’m also thinking about the discussion at Rise and Resist last night about FBI agents showing up at the homes of members (and former members) of several environmental orgs including XR and Sunrise. We talked about what to do in such a situation – don’t open the door, ask if they have a warrant (which they often don’t), don’t talk to them, call Ron Kuby who has offered to represent any of us in that situation. Today Kuby also offered to represent the snowball-throwers – the NYPD and their supporters are all outraged because some officers got pelted by snowballs during a big post-blizzard snowball fight in Washington Square. Ron posted that he has never represented anyone accused of throwing a snowball. I got home, drank a red bull, wrote those two paragraphs at 4pm and woke up at 6:30pm surrounded by nap-happy cats, computer still open and waiting. Connor, who hid during the entire month we were away from home, is now soaking up as much cuddling as possible, and the orange sisters are not far behind. Smokey, who always has greeted me at the front door, is now especially vocal about it and meowed disapprovingly the whole time when I went back out to shovel the other day. April and Sapphire are still on vacation, having a blast with Dilo and John, scaling the ladder to the loft bed, sleeping all over John, and harassing Dilo for food. I wish they could stay, since both humans and cats are enjoying themselves, but the landlord of that building has a real problem with cats – there are dogs in the building but cats are forbidden. This month has been the longest time I have been away from home, and I didn’t realize how much energy it was taking to navigate that and hold things together, but now I can feel this gaping, cavernous exhaustion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shut Down Trump

Image
I had to be up at 5:30am for today’s action, so I tried to get to sleep early. It turned out to be a crazy night where I got woken up by the weird noises and vibrations of road repaving, then by Connor, who had not shown up for dinner, meowing for food which he barely ate. Then I was woken up by a weird feeling like my heartbeat was doing strange things. And then finally noisy drag racers and garbage trucks. I groggily launched myself out into the early morning, leaving behind a bunch of puzzled cats not used to getting breakfast so early. I found Ben in the crowd in front of the Main Library, and we gathered with our assigned group until it was time to march. To keep from being arrested too soon, we marched on the sidewalk filling both sides of 42nd St. As we marched to 2nd ave, I told Ben that I thought all the remembering I have been doing has to do with turning 50 and the feeling that there is more life behind me than there is ahead now. We talked about his mother and my d...
Read more

Angel

When New Alt was new and small I personally knew most of the donors, but that was years ago. These days most of the donors I interact with personally are on the Angel List, a special list of donors who have signed up to receive emails when one of our clients has a specific need. This runs the gamut from textbooks to work uniforms to housewares for a new apartment. Even most of the Angel donors I don’t get to know beyond a sense of what type of request tends to appeal to them. And then there’s Susan. I first noticed Susan in 2012, back in the days when donations came in the form of checks. Not only did she often respond to requests, she also signed up as a Gay Santa and I was struck by how pretty and thoughtful her gift was, not just the requested item tossed in a box, but the candy and extras and careful wrapping we tend to use with people we care about. And unlike any other Santa,she asked for the recipient's birthday, and sent her gifts then, too. Even her donations had a th...
Read more

Palestinian Doctors

We were standing, handcuffed, in the cavernous parking garage under the US Capitol, going through the process of being searched and having our property placed in oversized ziplocs, when we heard unfamiliar voices. Looking around, we spotted two people who had just been brought in, also cuffed. They were wearing white lab coats with the words "Doctors Against Genocide" on the back. We had seen members of their group upstairs, in the hall outside the hearing room where Marco Rubio was lying his ass off about programs that mean life or death to people all over the world. They were both speaking to the police in urgent tones. "I'm a pediatrician," said one. "It's my obligation to stand up for the babies dying in Gaza." The police, making no distinction between our message about the deadly consequences of AIDS cuts, and their message about deaths in Gaza, placed them next to us, and then loaded us all into the van together, still cuffed. Capitol p...
Read more