The space we share

I navigate the rented Uhaul to an underpass, waiting for the rain to pass; tension clogging the space between us.

She, spouting dismal worst-case predictions of catastrophe for the climate, the country, the world, her life.

Me- champion of “fight fair” and don’t say “always or never” since her rocking horse days.

Feeling the preheat of parental course correction.

Her - Is it selfish to bring a child into this world?

Me – having a child is personal, not political

Her – but the rising horror…eco apocalypse, exhaustion, no Planet B

The social media algorithmic thermostat, turning up the temperature.

Paralyzed progeny, performative phraseology, headstrong hyperbole, a shutdown of solutions; whirling worry.  

This page blank – no solutions

Her, you don’t understand, and it’s worse for us…

Lockdown drills

Run, Hide, Fight

And the economic collapse/s

And the pandemic pause

And college debt and financial fragility

Stability slipping

through our fingers

Me, in defense of…

Latch key kids

And divorce is doubling

And sports for girls?

And AIDS and dot-com bubbles

and busts

And the wall coming down but death at Tiananmen square

You’re a FemiNazi

And conjugal partners or civil unions or gay marriage?

Explaining 911, first grade style

Smoldering smog and severed skyscrapers

Continuously juggling the ideal and the reality

Designing and redesigning a moral path

With space for questions and course correction

Our generational magnetic poles push apart

Her pain. Her disillusion.

Her life compass cracked and spinning.

My urge to seed resolve, harness hope, foster future

How to turn the tension

in US…

Navigating nuance

Currents of creativity and collaboration

In the land of what if and why not?

Unveiled understandings

And White guilt

Resisting religious rhetoric to deify dictators and rewind rights

Wait, are we in the Bad Place?

This landscape burning through hope

The pelting downpour has shifted to splatter

Opalescent prisms emerge

Ghostly apparitions

we need  

Even (and especially) when the world is bleak.