The Bravest Thing I Did This Year Was Have My Teeth Cleaned

What matters enough for me to risk my life or my husband’s life? A microscopic life form has forced me to ask myself this question daily. The pandemic has turned me into a first class coward. I fear coming in contact with other people. I fear leaving my house. I fear breathing at the grocery store. The bravest thing I have done this year was go to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. I spoke at length with the hygienist before my visit to find out everything they are doing to keep their office safe and I was satisfied with their efforts. So I removed my mask and allowed the hygienist to put her hands in my mouth. Upon returning home, I distanced myself from my husband for several days. Just in case.

While nothing is guaranteed in this world, I believe that I would survive this virus with my strong immune system and overall good health. But my husband is a different story; he is in the most vulnerable demographic. If he gets the virus then the chances are far greater that he will die than that he will survive. He is a stubborn man who has eluded death often enough. I lost count years ago of the number of times he has nearly succumbed during a severe diabetic low blood sugar episode. I don’t know how many times a paramedic has told me, “his heart rate is dangerously low,” and I have replied calmly, “just give him a minute.” Therefore, I wouldn’t entirely discount his ability to kick covid. He can be shockingly hard-headed. Perhaps that would be no match for an indifferent virus. I don’t wish to find out. I also don’t care to experience covid in my own body firsthand.

During 2018 and 2019, I went to a demonstration for one thing or another pretty much every month. Women’s March (every year). Gun control. Climate chaos and environmental preservation. Immigration issues and deportations. Families separated at the border. No Bret Kavanaugh. Black Lives Matter. DACA. Preserving the ACA. Voting rights. Preserving democracy, as flawed as it may be. I went out and stood and showed my face, added to the numbers protesting, and put one foot in front of the other to claim my voice. Sometimes I went to small protests in my rural hometown and sometimes to larger ones in urban areas, such as Santa Rosa, Oakland, San Francisco, and the former INS detention center in Richmond. So many things have fallen apart in the past four years. So many losses. So much progress earned hard through pain, suffering, sacrifice, and death has been rolled back with the stroke of a pen, the careless utterance of a word. Of course I am aware that life is ever tenuous and fragile, but it astonishes me how much unraveling, how much reverse evolution has occurred, or was even possible. The speed and ease with which hard-earned advances have been erased takes my breath away. Whatever happened to lasting change?

A few weeks ago, a friend in England sent a commiserating email expressing sympathy for our woes in America with the lack of leadership and spiraling disaster that has befallen our country. He said, “I hope you are able to remain calm.” I laughed out loud. Calm? CALM?! Before covid I was in the streets. I called congressional offices, emailed senators, wrote postcards to leadership, demonstrated, marched, wrote articles, helped organize, and spoke out at events. I am exhausted and feel as though I am hanging on by my fingernails until November and clinging to the hope that the election will bring a change. But there are no guarantees.

In 2020 this scourge arrived, and I have rarely attended a protest in person since (and then only small local events while wearing a mask and standing apart). These days my activities are restricted to things I can do from home. If not for the pandemic, perhaps I would have gone to Portland to don a yellow T-shirt (even though it’s not my best color) and protest with the Wall of Moms. Attending any demonstration that could turn ugly is particularly dangerous for me because I can’t hear well enough to figure out what’s going on around me half the time. Would I have risked it? I don’t know. I do know that the courageous, fierce woman I once was who went to jail to protest nuclear weapons is hiding behind a facemask these days. So I call the offices of Republican senators after hours and rant like a crazy woman on their answering machines. Obviously this is more for my benefit than anyone else’s. It makes me feel like I didn’t just roll over quietly.

In the first volume of his Southern Reach sci-fi trilogy, Jef Vandermeer writes “The madness of the world tries to colonize you from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.” Oh yes. My mind has been colonized and with each passing day I have more difficulty envisioning a different reality. Hope is no longer enough. I must find my way to faith, to the ability to believe without evidence that my belief has any basis. Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Does it? I must have faith that it does, because I see no proof of that. I must believe that Voldemort won’t win this battle. I must have faith that with or without my voice in the crowd and my feet on the ground, the good, the right, and the just will prevail. I would prefer to raise my voice and put my feet on the ground, but in the present situation that will not occur. John Lewis sure set the bar high. While I have done a few courageous things in my life of which I remain proud, I would have been too terrified to walk the Pettus Bridge. The most courageous thing I have done recently is to have my teeth cleaned. Now at least I can bare my teeth proudly and fiercely when roused to anger. But I am a coward. I will not risk it all to save it all. Forgive me.