When They Go Low....

Original post: November 9, 2016

I had it all planned, the blog post for this morning would read something like this. 

November, 2008, just  days after the election I was taking a dance lesson with a man of Brazilian descent. He placed his cocoa colored hand on my back, I rested my pale arm on his, our rib cages connected and aligned to feel the movement of the dance.

I looked into his eyes, more brown than the dirt of my childhood. His black hair shone in the sun like a crow's wing. And just before the music began, he looked me square in the face and said, "You just don't know what this means to a man of color." We celebrated the hope of a president who ultimately changed the course of a very unstable country. 

I smiled, thinking I knew what he meant. As he wept in my arms I thought about growing up in the sixties and seventies. I thought about burning bras and acquiring my own credit. I thought about how much better the world looked than the one where my ex husband was acquitted of charges against him for domestic violence perpetrated on me while my children watched. 

Today, I wonder, do we have the courage? When they go low, do we have the courage to go high? When the only international leaders who support Donald Trump as president are Kim Il Jung and Valdimir Putin, can we rise above? When the country has elected a man who doesn't give a crap what he says about anyone, can we combat that and put one foot in front of the other and say, "I'm a better person than the leader of the free world. 

If there was ever a time for anarchy in our nation, it is now.