November 11, 2016

The stars are still there.
 
We’ve waited long for this 2016 election to arrive. Have at times felt desperate for the day to come. To know this divisive election cycle has ended and to feel at peace and free to go about the business of our lives.  We’ve waited a long time to know that the democratic rights we’ve honored and lived by for over 200 years stand steady and sturdy and strong. That we are whole as a country, a state, a neighborhood, family are OK.
 
And yet, and yet, and yet all is not yet calm. There are issues unresolved and unfinished today, two days after the election is over. We as a nation feel uncertain and unsettled.  Like sleepwalkers bumping into walls and coffee tables and chairs. We are numb, like someone who took a sleep aid at breakfast by mistake instead of our morning vitamin.  We are confused.  No one is happy.  Not the winners or the losers or those who never did decide.  Who are we as a country? Who will we be in the future?
 
And then tonight we take the dog out and look up at the stars and milky night clouds and the silver sliver of moon that has grown larger somehow since Tuesday. We feel the November air that has its own kind of exciting chill and we pull our sweater around our waist. We hear the dog sniffing and shuffling through the leaves and then see her running back to the house impressed with herself that she peed. We come inside to the warmth of the gas stove and the light of the kitchen and we think really we’ll be OK. Because we have to be and because we’ll make sure that we are.
 
We’ve waited a long time for this election to be over. But perhaps the life lesson tonight is that really nothing is ever “over” rather it is our collective journey, a journey that continues and evolves and resolves over and over again. Just like each of us. And tonight the stars are still there.