Keep showing up

 

   The holidays are sort of a rough time for me anyway, and being hospitalized for 5 days between Christmas and New Year’s Day this time, in addition to a separate visit to the ER on Christmas Day, because of a bad, painful UTI didn’t help. So, early in the new year, I decided to gift myself and bought three pairs of overalls. 

   Those who know me or have read my posts probably won’t be surprised at my buying overalls (even 3 of them!), but these weren’t your regular, everyday bib overalls.  Definitely not!  One is black-and-white checkered, a la Bob’s Big Boy or NASCAR flags – actually a replacement for a pair I had outgrown.  Another has a patchwork of very random and very bold patterns.  And the third – my favorite – is a pair, advertised with a man wearing them (shirtless), that is blue covered with big, bright yellow and pink flowers and green leaves. Super gay! (Actually, I bought 3 pairs. I bought another of the flowered ones, because I think they’ll be cool to wear shirtless as cut-offs.)

   These overalls – bibs, as I call them – were probably made for special or unique occasions, like football games (the checkered ones), concerts, music festivals, raves, clubbing.  Cool.  But I wear them like any other bibs. They are just my regular everyday clothes, just my everyday “streetwear.” I like wearing them when I go out around the neighborhood, when I go to the market, to Quaker meeting, to the bank, to doctor’s appointments, to therapy sessions, to the movies, to concerts and performances. I get a kick out of it.   

   But I soon realized that this is about more than cheering myself up after a tough month and in a tough time.  It is about much more.  It is about showing up.  I am showing up. 

   I am showing up.  When I go out in these and my other bibs in my wheelchair, I am saying, “I am here.  I am here and disabled and queer, super queer.  And I’m not going anywhere, dammit!”

   I am showing up and sticking it, in a peaceful and fun way, to Trump and the others who would rather not see me, who would rather I wasn’t here. 

   I get to protests – in my bibs – when I can, but wearing these bibs is my way of showing up, my way of protesting. It is small, yes, tiny, but it’s what I can do, along with writing posts and articles and sharing articles I read.  Some may say that it’s too small, that it’s not enough, not enough of a risk and danger.  But they don’t know how hard and scary, perhaps even dangerous, it is to come out, to come out over and over to everyone, let alone how hard and exhausting it is to get around with a severe disability in a society that barely accommodates us and often is disabling, making it harder to live with a disability.

   This is what we all need to do. Show up.  We all need to show up.  We all need to stick it to Trump and his minions and followers who want a society where we and others don’t fit in or should just be quiet and perhaps not seen. (Remember, Trump once made fun of a reporter with a disability.)

   Well, I’m not going to not be seen and heard!  I’m going to be seen and heard.  I’m going to show up.  And I’m going to have a bit of joy in it – like what I mentioned in my last post about George Fox saying to “walk” – roll, in my case – “over the earth, answering that of God in everyone” and James Naylor saying that “There is a spirit that delights to do no evil.” Both were early Quakers writing in a time of great strife and turmoil and, in Naylor’s case, imprisonment and torture (a nail driven through his tongue). 

   Yes, I am sad and angry, I am enraged, about what is happening in our country, the cruelty, danger and senselessness of it.  I am exhausted and depressed and scared.  But I refuse to sit there, overwhelmed, and not do anything.  I’m going to show up, as scary and hard as it is.  And I refuse not to have joy, not to be cheerful and to delight. 

   A big part of my joy is seeing and knowing that there are many others, and more and more, who feel the same way and who are showing up.  I take joy in being not alone in showing up.  We may each show up in our own, often small ways, but we are all showing up – together.  It makes it a bit less hard, a bit less scary. 

   We can take joy and strength in seeing the thousands in Minneapolis show up and find each other, find community, as they stand and protest on the frigid icy streets in memory of Renee Nicholle Good and Alex Pretti who were shot and killed and all the others snatched and disappeared by Trump’s henchmen.  We can take joy and strength in seeing all the cyclists riding all over, mostly in the cold, together, in community in memory of Pretti, a fellow cyclist.        

 Let’s take this joy and strength to keep showing up, each in our small, peaceful, even joyous way.  I will.