Home, home on the range

Stop 3 in Gap Year of Love: Denver, Colorado.

I lived here 25 years ago (!!!) and loved it. I always thought I would come back. I moved into my apartment - first apartment without roommates - started a new job where I didn't know anyone, and didn't know anyone in Denver. And when I moved in, I thought: "I am home." Isn't that wild? I just knew it was home.

I spent today tooling around the neighborhood where I lived, Capitol Hill bleeding into Cheeseman Park. Our neighborhood was where they called the King Soopers grocery Queen Soopers.

Colorado is showing me its best - wow, the sunshine! Blue skies, cool temps, light snow most nights I have been here. Honestly...it's glorious.

I'm living with my sister-friends Elizabeth and Diane. I choose the words "living with" instead of visiting because we discovered an important rule of this nomad gap year. People I am staying with must not feel any hosting responsibilities. (It's better for me, too, to not feel so much like a guest.) It's working for us - even as others gasp when they learn I am staying a month. "Wow, that is some kind of friendship!," they say. Yep. What a damn blessing that the three of us were up for this because it is really, really nice to be together.

I walked downtown Denver today, wandered through the library and across the grounds of the capitol. I made three phone calls while walking: my Representative and both Senators from Tennessee. Today, my call was about objecting to shutting down the Consumer Finance Protection Board. Earlier this week it was about shuttering US AID. I meant to call every day this week - even put an item on my calendar...and found I just couldn't. Even a few lousy phone calls drained me - it's the feeling of inefficacy that drains me, not the actions themselves.

What I did instead of those calls: 1) checked into a virtual meditation with Cambridge Insight Meditation Center for the first time in ages; 2) had zoom calls with two groups of sister-friends, and we did not talk politics; 3) listened to a talk about how to fortify and train the heart for skillful living.

I had to. The litany of terrible things was terrifying me and breaking my heart. I had to / have to get more stable. I can't sling the anger and outrage. The thing that tanked me the most was a news report that the Felon's approval ratings are going...up. It's causing all kinds of questions for me about what it means to be an American. They are shredding the rule of law, our constitution, the ideals of liberty and justice for all. Do they think they are American? If so, what am I? This concept of identifying with a nation is perhaps more prominent in my mind because of returning from Liberia - there were lots of "this is Liberia," or "this is how the Lebanese are," or "Nigerians are x,y,z." So I was often saying or thinking about what "Americans" are like. And then: am I one?

Walking through Denver today, I found myself making a list of all the great things that government does for me, my family, and for our collective:

1. 12 grades of education
2. Safe roads
3. Libraries
4. The person/ agency who put icey-melt on the path I walked this morning in James A. Bible Park
5. Health insurance for my parents
6. Trash pick up

ETCETCETC....you can see how this list gets so long so fast. Why the fuck would we destroy it?

xo