Directions

 Where do we go from here?

The roof of my family's house was torn off by the death of my mother. 

The political landscape continues to shift, with "representatives" that don't appear to represent me. 

I voted. I buried my mother. But somehow, nothing seems to have changed. 

Don't get me wrong, I can feel the void left by my mother's departure. Becoming an orphan at sixty years old gives me a leg up on Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker, but I don't guess I am prepared for spending the rest of my life fighting crime either. 

I live in California where the map looks indigo from way up in the sky, but I know where those pockets of scarlet lie. I can imagine going about my days in a bubble of blue that keeps me safe from confronting the worst of the red baseball cap fomenters.  

And I remember the words my mother used to toss around about how things could still get a whole lot worse before they were going to get better. She lived through The Depression. World War II. Nixon. I figure she probably knows from worse. 

My home is now, in part, a museum of artifacts that tell a patchwork story of both my mother and father, lifelong residents of Boulder, Colorado. There are times when I am sitting in my living room located by the sea, or at least one major earthquake fault, and I wonder how I strayed so far from home.

There are times when I wonder how the country that brought us Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama could also produce a George Bush or two, and impeach a former game show host twice without convicting him. Still waiting for the arc of history to bend a little closer to justice. 

Making a place for those I love and care about where they can feel safe and happy is the job of a parent. 

I'm a parent. 

I'll figure out which way to go. As my mother used to say, "Sometimes lost isn't a bad thing."