By Angela Townsend
Two days before the election, I spoke to my half-brother. His existence was limited to Christmas cards for the first forty years of my life. He was a squiggly ballpoint first name with my last name. When the world got sick and it was too dangerous to go downstairs, my brother called and asked if it was a good time to be my “big bro.” It was a pandemic, for God’s sake. I found out he had a beard like Santa Claus and did not believe in the death penalty, and we have been talking ever since.
Two days before the election, my brother said hope was conspicuous. He saw it at 9,500 feet of elevation, in the Sangre de Cristos. He brings the dogs up there, twenty pounds of buoyant frizz. My brother is not a religious guy, understand, but at 9,500 feet there is something rather than nothing. People give each other little nods and let their beasts carry on the complicated conversations. There are pine trees that smell like vanilla frosting, although you have to press your nose up to the bark to confirm this. Some people miss out because they think their neighbor is pulling their leg. It does sound ridiculous. But the pine trees smell like frosting, and there is a fellowship at 9,500 feet that my brother would call spiritual, if he used that word the way I do.
Two days before the election, I confirmed the situation on the ground. I live two time zones east, in a swing-state suburb where all the dogs are leashed. The trees have New Wave haircuts to avoid contact with power lines. The sign at the edge of town says, “A Wonderful Place To Live, Work, and Worship.” There are wry souls among the Olive Gardens. People in the frozen aisle held the door for each other. I saw a mature mammal draw a heart in the condensation. A man checking dates on cottage cheeses looked me in the eye, and I looked back, and we both laughed. “Like those who dream,” I told my brother, who knew that was from a Psalm, although neither of us could remember which one.
One day before the election, I heard from friends whose faces I would not recognize on the street. We were young together during the War on Terror. We went to divinity school to bronze our theologies. We found out anything you can call “my theology” is a lonely plankton in the ocean. God set the lonely in a blended family. A professor we called “The Hun” looked like Bob Ross and led protests against torture. My friends became pastors and social workers. I became a fundraiser for a cat shelter.
One day before the election, I squinted at my screen to confirm that the man with lines on his forehead was Colin, who once laid hands on me and said my calling was real. Today Colin said politics is downstream from love, but it is not nothing. We prayed together at 125 words per minute. I gave thanks for good things smuggled into mixed things, like time machines in social media.
One day before the election, I drafted Instagram posts. I am infamous for these daily dumplings, ranging from insipid to faintly helpful. I wanted to be careful in this week of high emotions. I lay belly-up and pictured the faces of my people. My people come in all the colors. My best friend, who is also my mother, cancels out my vote. My vegans and pagans make me look like Margaret Thatcher. My jambalaya of Jesus people sits out in the grass where you can still hear the Sermon on the Mount if you look people in the eyes.
The cat shelter volunteers tell me that my posts are good bread for breakfast. They are nanas in puffy sweatshirts and teenagers who are not “just in a phase.” They lay like glow worms on floors they have just mopped and slow-blink into the eyes of animals who don’t trust larger animals. I steepled my hands and tried to hold them all, writing words that would not “rub in” anything but balm.
The day of the election, I was besieged with gastrointestinal events that would embarrass warthogs. I chain-drank ginger tea until the cats grimaced at my breath. My mother and I texted each other hug emojis with rollicking redundancies like “I love you more than life itself!” I went to the grocery store. I watched people pick up fallen jars and help each other find little wagons. “The big wagons are too big,” a man in a sweater vest told me. He had gourds with glued-on googly eyes in his basket, and I could not explain why that made me want to cry.
The day of the election, The Hun made a rare appearance on Facebook to advocate for “excess gentleness.” He had not aged. He beseeched us not to gloat or gallop. Bind the wounded, even if that is your Uncle Leo whose epithets give the angels indigestion. Do not declare anathemas, even though every generation enjoys that pastime. I ordered my mother a paperweight with a heart inside an infinity sign. Then Florida fell in a landslide. A British news agency reported Ohio was lost. I wrote LORD HAVE MERCY in all caps everywhere it could be seen.
The day after the election, my mother put her palm on her forehead. We start each morning with a video visit. She wears prism earrings that commission rainbows all over the room. Her day is a scavenger hunt. She tells me about breakthroughs in neuroscience or a man who played piccolo on the subway. Withered strangers fall into her arms at Wal-Mart because she is visibly kind, and they need to tell someone they can’t afford cereal. She prays for them on the spot.
The day after the election, my mother grimaced. “You’re wearing black?” She did not notice my mourning garment was a blazer. I am a creature of pink sweatshirts. I was dressed in dignity. I was wearing pearls, as those who dream. “Did I give you those?” She did.
The night after the election, Sesame Street posted salvos online. They reached all my disparate people. The pastors and the vegans and the brother and the volunteers liked Big Bird burrowing into Mr. Snuffleupagus’s broad shoulders, with the caption, “You are loved, and you belong here.” Bert and Ernie fixed their googly eyes on us and insisted we take care of ourselves and each other.
The night after the election, I wondered if the winners would take this as proof that we were naïve children, mercy-idiots who nearly cast the country into a bog of finger paint and foolishness. I reposted the Muppets anyway. I drove to TJ Maxx in the dark and acquired velour sweatshirts two sizes too big for my bones. Ashen zombies shopped in silence by my side. I paid thirty-six dollars so I could dress as a blanket for several consecutive days.
Two days after the election, my mother did not send me a poem. My mother sends me a poem every morning. She is as prolific as King David multiplied by Mary Oliver and Justin Timberlake. Her verse rings across continents, with literary journals jousting for first right of publication. “Today’s poem was political.” Her voice was as slow as the lemon and honey she used to give me when my throat was sore. “You know I’m thrilled. I believe it will be good for everyone. But I don’t want to cause you pain or put distance between us.” I thanked her. I asked what the poem was about. “People in Wal-Mart are shining like a great darkness has ended.” I began to cry. I told her that people in my stores were trembling with grief. Conditions deteriorated rapidly. I hung up on her. She called back. “Honey, we will get through this.”
Three days after the election, my mother sent me a poem. I put on a sweatshirt large enough to hide several unkempt prophets. I worked on my Thanksgiving cards. The cat shelter sends them to one thousand donors a year. I put my hands on my own cheeks and tried to picture their faces. We have people who fill pickups with seven trips worth of kibble. I don’t notice until the last trip that their truck is covered in aggressive stickers. We have people who show up in a hatchback with a giant decal of Bernie Sanders on the back window, except he is dressed as a Jedi and the windshield wiper is his lightsaber. They are acquainted with the poor in spirit. I prayed for all the people while I wrote their Thanksgiving cards. My fingers and eyes got tired. With ten cards to go, I accidentally signed my name “Thanksgiving.”
“Love, Thanksgiving.” I stared at my own hand.