Tucson Writer Editor

REST AND REFLECTION

It’s my 75th birthday. It’s a monumental day.

Southwest Harbor, Maine, is home. I’m here for another three weeks before returning to Tucson to pack my art work and photos, special books and dishes, and a few colorful Turkish and Mexican rugs.

I’m moving to Minneapolis. My son and daughter-in-law, two grand babies, and grand puppy are there. Going back to the cold, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll have a bigger life.

My Maine month has been so happy. I’ve been hiking with dear friends and by myself.

Why not? I’m feeling so flexible, I’m in such decent shape.

I’ll tackle Acadia Mountain, I thought yesterday. I haven’t been there in at least four years since MTD and I came across a squawking fawn sitting amidst the lush green growth without its mother. Poor thing. I got closer to look for injuries but there were none that I could see.

Making our way down the mountain, the fawn was gone. We called a park ranger when we got to the car.

I’ve been curious about that small creature. What happened? How did the rest of its life go?

Climbing Acadia yesterday seemed so much easier than four years ago…I was so proud of myself. I’ve put in the time in Tucson over the past eighteen years — walking, hiking, yoga, Pilates, short exercise breaks like a recent NYT article advised.

Still, scurrying down those boulders on the way down Acadia wasn’t a good idea. Big rains saturated the island a few days ago. Was I being careful enough? Probably not. I slipped on the slick rock, grounding myself on my right ankle. I heard a crack.

Sitting there, repeating, “Shit, shit, shit,” my faith in humanity was upheld. At least two young couples came along kindly asking if they could help me (what was this old lady with purple streaks in her gray hair doing there?).

I like to think I’m fine when I’m not. These past weeks of alone time and good friend time, taking in the beauty of mountains rising from the sea, feeling my strength, culminated in recognizing a need for change.

“I’m fine, thanks, I’m fine,” I said, but I hadn’t stood up yet. I stood when the next young couple climbed over the boulders. I felt a little wobbly. I could feel my ankle swelling like a balloon. Each of the young folks hooked an arm in mine, helping me back to my car.

Onward to Mt. Desert Island Hospital where 165 Seawall Road, my home for twenty-five years, still showed up in their database. A nurse I knew thirty years ago ambled into the hospital treatment room to chat.

Is this not home? I’m happy to have lived in the Southwest, the heat, all that sunshine.

I’ll return on July 4, Independence Day, to pack up my stuff. Headed toward cold weather again, in my trusty ocean blue Prius. I’ll be in the cold again but near the warmth of family. I’ll be in life.

They want you to not believe your eyes, the prosecution said of Derek Chauvin’s defense attorney.

That’s right. Throwing every possible cause of George Floyd’s death into the mix ought to make jury members more disbelieving. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Drug overdose. Heart Condition.

Believe your eyes, People!!! If Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd’s neck for three and a half minutes after Floyd was unconscious, one might ask why.

Angry bystanders distracted Chauvin. Floyd could have awakened in a violent mood. This large Black man calling for his mama, uttering that he couldn’t breathe, had to be subdued.

This is all bullshit. Pure and simple.

I speak for history.

How many years has it been since entertainment in the Carolinas included watching Black folks being lynched, dangling from the prettiest live oak tree.* Seated on a blanket and munching on Southern fried chicken, a good mother might have asked, “Would you like some sweet tea, dear?”

A recent Saturday Night Live cold open depicted a Minneapolis TV news program. Two Black and two white newscasters agree on Chauvin’s guilt and encourage a change in the city’s policing. But each pair’s experience differs like night and day.

Remember Dylan Roof, the young white man who murdered nine Black parishioners at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015? Roof had planned on killing himself after the massacre. He had hoped to happily start a race war.

No police officer plastered Roof with bullets when he was caught in his car less than a day after the church massacre.

Roof was treated humanely, the way police officers are supposed to treat suspected perpetrators.

How many Black people who have been stopped for traffic violations have been treated humanely in recent years? George Floyd for passing a fake $20 bill, Daunte Wright for hanging air fresheners in his car?

Yet Dylan Roof was brought food from Burger King by the local police who captured him, because he hadn’t “eaten in days.” He was hungry. He wasn’t murdered in his car. He wasn’t ambushed in the middle of the night like Breonna Taylor sleeping in her bed. And he wasn’t crushed by Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck for more than nine minutes.

I suppose Roof didn’t resist arrest. Plus, he was white.

I speak for history.

It’s time — finally — to treat a white cop like the murderer he is.

*Lynchings didn’t only take place only in the South. I visited Charleston, South Carolina, with my daughter a few years ago. It was there that I read about white families watching Black lynchings, sometimes in the town square in broad daylight. Sorry I can’t cite my source.

I had an epiphany about politics at the Natural Grocer. On a mundane errand to purchase the purest water, Bunny brand organic carrots, and blueberry oat flakes, it happened.

Finding a parking place near Barrio Bread always takes time. Emerging from my ocean blue Prius –the reason I bought it — I head into the market under a dazzling Tucson blue sky.

Checking out Turmeric gummy prices so I don’t need to order them on Amazon. Strolling through the never-grow-old facial product section. Then I make my way toward the typically long checkout lines.

On the other side of the line backing up to the salad dressing aisle, past the potatoes and tomatoes, I notice a customer packing up her stash at one register, ready to leave.

And it’s the nice cashier’s station, the woman with the flaming red hair and sparkling turquoise fingernails.

Steering my shopping cart her way, I wonder, How come no one is moving to that line?

Finding it difficult to keep quiet, as I often do, I ask the nice cashier her opinion.

“You know what’s what,” she says. “I see this all the time. If there’s a line, customers head over to it.

How odd…

I beckon to a woman holding one bottle of multivitamins. Waiting in oblivion.

“Why are you waiting in that long line?” I ask.

Perhaps she’s hanging out in another world, contemplating an impending divorce or a daughter arriving from college or Tucson’s upcoming summer heat.

She shrugs, waking herself up, crossing the short divide between following and observing to stand behind me.

It’s like politics, my epiphany whacks me over the head. Is it the mindlessness of Melania Trump’s high style jacket message, “I really don’t care, do you?”

Here’s how it goes for many Americans:

I’ve got so much more to think about than some election. I’ll just ask my friends who they’re voting for and vote the same way. I don’t have time for political drivel. Besides, why rock the boat, if anyone asks who I voted for? It’s much easier to be a lemming of complacency.