My Tiny America
On the country I loved.
I understand, now that it’s gone, there were many Americas.
There was the one I lived in as a child, tucked into a tiny corner of the world. This is the one I mourn.
But in the 1960s, three miles from my childhood home in Virginia, there were Black children living in a different nation than I. Their grandparents were unable to buy property and accumulate wealth because of laws on the books preventing them from doing so.
Their grandparents worked for my grandparents. When my mother stepped out of the dress she wore at the end of the day, she left it on the floor. Someone picked it up, washed and starched it. When she woke up the next morning, there was another immaculate dress for her to wear.
It was like magic, except it wasn’t. There are a lot of layers in the dresses my mother wore.
I grew up. The kids on the other side of town grew up. Laws changed. Attitudes failed to do so.
The people who lived in the other America kept telling me my America didn’t exist.
But I knew it did. And the citizens of my America would never let them down. We’d never abandon them.
We have.
We let down the rest of you after you told me we would, after I insisted we would not.
It’s quite something to observe how spectacularly wrong I’ve been.
I was the voice of calm. I was the voice that told you women would show up, united, and give Trump his walking papers once and for all.
I know nothing.
My America was spread over seven acres and two houses.
Our house was next door to Tammy’s. Between the two, we kids had plenty of space to roam. She and I played together, or if we were outside, with our brothers.
We all endeavored to dig to China one day. I thought Tammy’s brother Tupper might make it. He was four years older, and he got far. His hole was wide and deep. China was surely just a few shovelfuls away.
I think it’s funny now that the four of us dug individual holes, instead of one big hole. Tiny American individualists.
Perhaps we were trying to see who could get to China first. I don’t remember that part, just the digging.
The depression in the ground from his excavation never got filled. We just left it there. For decades afterwards everyone called it “Tupper’s hole.”
The propane meters are behind Tupper’s hole.
We saw a black snake next to Tupper’s hole.
Watch your step in the snow, remember Tupper’s hole.
Imagine, if you will, four children today. There are two boys and two girls between four and nine years old. They have free range over the natural world without a bit of adult supervision or interference. When you want them to come for dinner, you whistle loudly (Tammy’s dad) or ring a cow bell (my mother.)
If we fussed or fought and told on each other, our mothers said if we couldn’t play nicely, the other had to go home. This was a fate worse than death, so we quit fussing.
Imagine not worrying about your unsupervised children as they played outside. Imagine trusting your children and their world.
When I was little and watched Mr. Rogers on TV, I felt such warmth and longing.
I knew what was going to happen: here’s the part where he changes into his sweater. Here’s the part where he changes from outdoor shoes to indoor.
I was responding to order.
His voice reminded me of Ellen’s, our godmother. Ellen always spoke to us in the same tone as Mr. Rogers. Respectful. Gentle.
Both Ellen and Mr. Rogers looked at us as if we had value.
When they looked at me, I knew I had a place in the world. I mattered. I belonged. I was loved, as is.
I’m told children need order to feel safe.
It turns out adults do as well. We no longer have it, now that the rulebook’s been tossed.
When you remove the human rights of anyone, the message you give is simple: you neither matter nor belong.
Congratulations. Tell me again how great our nation is.
Our parents could not have been more different.
My mother was an artist and she and my father never went to church. Then my father left, and they got a divorce. Tammy’s parents went to church every Sunday. Tammy’s parents are still married, fifty years later.
They believed different things. They lived differently. But they respected each other.
No, it was more than that. They were friends. They played bridge together and laughed together. Tammy and I learned how to play the game looking over their shoulders. She and I still play today.
Both of our fathers were Marines.
All four of our parents were principled people.
Principled adj. (of a system or method) based on a given set of rules.
"a coherent and principled approach"
Their ideas about Christianity were worlds apart. Tammy’s parents went to a fundamentalist church. My mother believed her prayers were her actions and didn’t see the need for worship.
They treated each other based on their principles.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. Judge not others.
I still have the ancient, framed piece of embroidery on the wall some ancestor of mine made:
Charity never faileth.
Imagine, if you will, having a belief system which enabled you to love your bohemian neighbors even though you were a fundamentalist Christian. Imagine not worrying about any ideas your children might pick up from their wild children, because you trusted your own enough to think for themselves. You trusted your kids to remember their religious instruction.
Imagine believing in your bohemian neighbor’s patriotism—no. Imagine never questioning it, not once. Imagine these two families setting off fireworks together on the fourth of July.
You must admit: my America sounds pretty good.
It is gone.
Our godmother Ellen lived in an apartment in our house, which my brother and I treated as our own.
Later he and I learned Ellen was gay. This is irrelevant to children. We know who loves us and who doesn’t.
Of course our parents trusted us with her. She loved us.
Exactly no one believed Ellen to be a bad influence. It seems important to point out that in 1970, the people in my country had much more sense than many of you today.
I remember a conversation I had with Tammy’s mother, a rare one about politics. I was in my twenties.
She didn’t believe in abortion. She also knew the government shouldn’t be involved in such a decision. Not in America.
She understood the difference between individual belief and individual rights.
Tammy’s father had a telescope and was fascinated by the stars. He loved space.
During the eighties there was a shuttle launch, and he and Tammy’s mom drove down to Florida to see it. They made reservations over the phone for a hotel.
When they got to the place in Florida after a long drive, the room price was more expensive than what they’d been quoted.
Tammy’s mother is telling us the story.
She is the most even-keeled person I’ll ever know. She is a study of composure. Even when she’s angry, she doesn’t raise her voice; she is simply emphatic.
The hotel jacked up their prices because of the launch and decided to charge them more for the room than they’d been quoted.
This is now such a common practice we’ve all gotten used to it. In Manhattan parking garages near Madison Square Garden, they have an entire price list called,
But Tammy’s parents expected principled behavior from people and businesses; chief amongst them, honesty.
“That,” she says, her eyes like steel, “is usery.”
Usery: 2: an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest.
Tammy’s parents slept in their car instead of paying what the hotel was asking.
For those of you wondering why they’d do such a thing: this is an example of principled behavior. They did not accept the unacceptable.
In my America, nobody said,
It is what it is.
In my America, people were willing to be inconvenienced. There was no shame in saying,
“We can’t afford it.”
If I had to point out one big difference between my America and this one, it’s The Man.
When I was a kid, fighting the man meant fighting the people in power. The man was against the rest of us. The man had all the money. The man owned the factory and didn’t pay fair wages.
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Katie Porter are the best examples I can think of as people still trying to fight the man.
But it seems to me people no longer want to fight the man; they want to be the man.
They want to be Kim Kardashian. They want to be Elon Musk.
This is rich with irony. Back when I thought I knew something (last week) I would have told you the reason people are so pissed off is the American Dream doesn’t provide satisfaction, after all.
Consumption does not equal liberty or happiness. How else do you explain the richest nation in the world brimming with so much rage?
Tammy’s mom cooked, cleaned, gardened, canned the harvest from the garden, sewed clothes, worked in the yard. Tammy’s dad built a swimming pool and put up a basketball hoop and worked as a health inspector for the county.
Tammy’s mom did not expect my mother to be like her. My mother taught ballet and focused on what interested her. Housework did not.
When my brother and I got there early enough before school, we ate breakfast with them next door. Hot biscuits from scratch. I skipped the white gravy and slathered mine in butter.
They didn’t have a lot of money. I’ve never been in a house of greater abundance.
My America sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No wonder I miss it.
It is inconceivable to me that I live in a nation chock-full of selfish people, but I do.
In my tiny America, neighbors cared about your rights, not just theirs.
It’s so simple to me.
If all of us—men, women, non-binary, trans, Black, BIPOC, white, Native, LBBTQ+, cis, disabled, abled—if all of us are created equal, we all have equal rights under the law.
If we amend our past with reparations, Black Americans are closer to economic parity.
If we remove abortion off the political table, we remove the emotional hijacking. Without abortion and transphobia, politicians are reduced to talking about policy.
Policy. For the good of us all. Not imaginary men on your daughter’s basketball team, and no imaginary babies, either.
You thought eggs were expensive? Hope you’re ready to pay $25 a pint for strawberries. Undocumented workers have been keeping your grocery prices low for decades.
You don’t have to like it for it to be true.
As my mother said, what is regulated shouldn’t be, and what shouldn’t be regulated is.
In the richest nation in the world, you can still go broke without health insurance. This is not government by the people, for the people. It’s government for corporations.
America is a memory.
You think we will come out of it. We will not. Any group of people who could reelect Donald Trump doesn’t have a chance in hell of coming through anything.
You’ll discover this for yourselves. I have ceased to be sentimental about who Americans are and aren’t.
What this feels like:
It feels like I don’t matter, and I never have. It feels like as long as prices are low and you have someone to blame, you will.
I despise cruelty.
Someone I respect, love, and appreciate told me this week she had to have hope. She couldn’t go on if she didn’t have hope.
In case I’ve been unclear: I do not have hope for America.
I loved my country. I’ve always appreciated the freedoms it’s afforded me. And unlike our president-elect, the men in my family have paid a heavy price defending it. I do not take their service lightly because I know what it cost them, and me.
Unlike my friend, I can function without hope.
The best I can do is to be an inconvenience to The Man. I can be the tiniest of thorns, like those little ones on old-fashioned roses.
I can get up, look at the sky, and write what I think.
And surely by now, we know there is nothing more irritating than a woman who says what she thinks.
I can live for that. It’s enough.
Perhaps I’ve better news than I’d imagined giving today. Even when the bastards win—and they have—they cannot shut me up.
It’s the wonderful thing about being a writer. Even after I’m dead, the world will know exactly what I think of it.
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Thank you for the words that I'm too devastated to articulate right now. As is so often the case, you describe my experience of both past and present so poignantly and precisely. All I've got right now is bone deep grief for the loss of that America and the hope that I still belong in the one that's left ... and the gratitude that my father passed before he had to see this happen again/still.
This is an incredible essay!! Your America has many similarities to my youth. I lalso loved Mr. Rodgers. He made me feel loved and safe. I am now feeling as if I'm watching and waiting for a bomb to fall. Trump and his ridiculous appointees, will do such damage! They will make America unrecognizable to the America most people knew and loved. Maybe that's Trump's goal. It's his way of making an evil mockery of the way things should be done. We all know his cabinet SHOULD consist of intelligent and experienced individuals, but he wants to go in the complete opposite direction. How in the hell is that making America great!!