New New Year

Begin again

The first week of the New Year was spent hermetically sealed inside the house. Windows and doors closed, the chemical smell of toxic smoke running through our air purifiers. I could see the Palisades fire from the window where I’m writing this now, flickering orange in the distant hills. Friends fled, we didn’t. Houses burned, ours didn’t.

I was pregnant that week. There was a problem. I needed medical care. I live in California so I was able to get the medical care I needed. The medical care I needed was a second trimester abortion for a very sick baby that was making me very sick. The baby would not live. The baby would suffer. I wanted the baby to live. I did not want the baby to suffer. My husband and I could not make a choice that would make the baby live so we made a choice to make sure the baby didn’t suffer.

That week the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy started goose-stepping his way through Washington, getting rid of education and medicine for babies. The president golfed. I bled.

Sometime in the past someone posted a tweet jokingly saying the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy would probably get pregnant all the time if he could, because the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy likes having a lot of kids but doesn’t seem to like the kids very much when they are born (based on the fact that he doesn’t like them). The Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy responded to that tweet with something like, “Totally! 100%.”

I thought at first ha, what a joke, but then I was like maybe it would be good if the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy could get pregnant. He would throw up a lot and only be able to eat bagels until even bagels made him throw up and he would think at least the throwing up is nice because he’s not feeling nauseous for those three minutes of throwing up as opposed to every other second of the day. Maybe his brain would rot a little bit as it tried to grow a new person. Maybe his executive function would shrink down to a dull husk of what it was. Maybe he would have to sit in a dark room with a glowing screen while a doctor told him all the things wrong with that little life inside his body, the life that was making him so sick. Maybe he would spend late nights looking up the particular syndrome his baby was diagnosed with, desperately trying to find a loophole in a diagnosis that had no loopholes. Maybe he would have to take a day and a half off from firing people for the procedure. A half day for the pre-surgery appointment where they maybe have to dilate his cervix but luckily his cervix doesn’t have to be dilated because the baby is so sick and measuring so small it won’t be a problem. The full day for the surgery. He would wake afterwards up with the baby gone, bleeding but finally feeling some sense of temporary peace because of the strong opioids and no nausea and that heater they have at hospitals that blows warm air directly into your bed, making you feel as safe and loved and cozy as his baby hopefully felt in him for the brief time they shared together on earth. Maybe knowing how precious and fragile and unpredictable life is would make him kinder.

But then I remembered that the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy did have a baby who died when it was very small. I read this in an article about his first wife, the mother of that child.

Anyway, the next week I went to the Huntington Garden with the miracle of my alive, healthy child and everywhere there were red lanterns hanging from the trees for Lunar New Year. I had forgotten—another New Year, another chance to start again, a joyful surprise hidden at the end of the worst month of my life.

The air was still kind of bad. The foxgloves were blooming.

I think the Vroom Vroom Electric Cars and Trucks Guy and the rest of the New Nazis™ want someone to praise for the good things that happen and someone to blame for the bad things that happen but that’s just not the way it works. There are good things and there are bad things and sometimes for no reason they all happen to you and that’s called being alive.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A red Lunar New Year lantern dangles from a tree above a map that says “NEED A RIDE?” and two benches, angled toward each other. Taken at the Huntington in the New New Year.