Courtesy of wikipedia.com
I am not hopeful for a country to be led by Donald Trump over the next four years. Frankly, his presidency looms like a hurricane funnel on the horizon. So, I’ve been thinking about what to put in my mental storm cellar to survive. After all, at age 88, I’m hopeful for a few more good years.
One of the items I’ll need is Sally’s chair. Sally was a friend who died a year ago. Now and again, I wonder what happened to her enormous chair, covered in chintz, heavily padded, and large enough to cuddle in with two mid-sized grandchildren. An Edith Anne chair, I’d call it, like the one Lily Tomlin sat in when she did her skits on the 1960’s television hit, Laugh-In. But Sally’s chair was more comfortable. And that’s the truth!
A person needs a good chair in which to sit while watching the evening news these days. All those bombs flying overseas. All that killing. All the starvation and social injustice. Recently, Putin has made it a crime for lawyers to defend the accused. It sounds like a decree from the Red Queen in Alice In Wonderland.
If I ever find Sally’s chair, I’ll need to install safety belts before I watch the news in the future.
If there’s time before the storm hits, I’ll also drag into my mental cellar an item to make me laugh. One that always works is a gift I received from a staff member on my last day in political office. She placed a small box in my hands with a wink and an admonition. “Don’t open it until tomorrow.”
I did as she asked. So, on my first day as a civilian, free from the pace, obligations, and harassment of public life, I lifted the box’s cover. Inside was a whisky glass, a large one, frosted and embossed with the drawing of a naked woman, dangling by one arm from a street lamp. A bowl-shaped smile sliced across her face and her eyes, the size of ostrich eggs, reflected an alcoholic stupor. Below, the inscription reads, “Public Opinion no longer worries me.”
Oh, how I laughed and still do recalling the joy that flooded me when I realized I had regained my privacy and independence.
If I have time before the storm hits, I’ll also drag into my cellar a copy of James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times. “Everyone needs a laughing place.” That’s what Br’er Rabbit said and he was right.
With laughter and comfort at my fingertips, what next I would need is a few good friends, the kind I’d trust to hear my deathbed confession. Similar minds who know when the time is right to either bend with the wind or take a stand.
As I sit making my imaginary list of names, my television blinks with an image from the real world. A woman wearing a babushka weeps outside the Russian courthouse where Navalny’s attorneys have been sentenced. Her tears are not for them. She weeps because her water pipes are broken and no one comes to fix them. Do not speak to her of justice. She wants water.
Society is born from the needs of individuals. When the balance between the two grows weak, it cuts a path for tyrants. “Let someone strong decide,” the masses cry, impatient for solutions.
Democracy’s failure is the people’s failure. They want too much and wish to give too little in exchange.
Those who believe in freedom have no defense against the wildfires born of the current discontent. They can only stand and wait, defending the truth as if it were a fevered child and refusing to accept lawlessness as governance. These are the cool heads I want around me in a political crisis because survival will depend not only upon the sacrifice of heroes. It will depend upon steadfast citizens who are determined that liberty will endure.
But first, I must find Sally’s chair.
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