Senior Momentum - No Time to Cool Off - by Zoe Tummillo - March 2018

I don’t really like being

We could lose our country as we know and love it! As for me, not to worry... I’m old enough that I wouldn’t even be here when the final boom would be lowered. These things take time. These things are innocuous right before they slip away from our grasp and become an unrecognizable “something else.”

It has become bizarre – in these unseasonably warm days – to spend a day doing beautiful things in my garden (where beautiful Daffodils and Narcissus are blooming) then come inside for a big let-down. All I want is lunch and the noon news! Instead, my mood gets blown away with the dark and ominous realities of a twisted, dangerous, incompetent administration that is trying to make my country unrecognizable.

Often, I think about the fact that there now are way too few of us still around who can actually remember hearing – in real time -- the maniacal voice of Adolph Hitler. I was just a child then, in a living room in rural Massachusetts listening to a frightening, screaming voice followed by shrieking mobs shouting “Heil Hitler!” coming from the (at that time) state-of-the-art Philco radio cabinet. I can still see the tense, worried look on my father’s face, straining to hear the translations – which were chilling. (Why does today feel so deja vu?)

This is no time to cool off, calm down, tune it out, get fed up, stop caring, stop voting, stop yelling about it, just give up or write this off as an anomaly that will come to nothing.

There is a pathetic, dangerous Pied-Piper-wannabe ranting a repetitive mantra of lies, deceptions, incompetence, ignorance and worse. It hopes that if we hear it long and consistently enough we won’t remember when it wasn’t so.

As Americans, have we lulled ourselves into lethargy and overconfidence? Have we become arrogant, believing we are impervious to deterioration? Do we deny the possibility of the destruction of our Democracy? Do we think we are invincible? (Are we deaf, dumb AND blind?)

I sit here venting and ranting – a grandmother in her 83rd year – writing furiously about circumstances about which I can do very little, the truth be told. I have other themes in my drafts file that are being neglected – ideas and thoughts that would be interesting to explore – yet I am taken over with what feels like huge, imminent danger.

It is so ruinous to my mood, at times, that I almost feel guilty wanting to go back out to my garden and just enjoy myself! Instead, I write another letter, make another call, talk with my political junkie friends and try my best to stay informed – while also trying to immerse myself in my real work! I am trying with all the focus I can muster to trust the basic precepts and disciplines our Constitution mandates. I don’t want to become a cynic, trapped in negativity and inaction.

Eventually, I go back out to my garden; I consider bulbs. We bury them before the frosts set in, then winter wraps them in severe cold – it’s almost a threat of destruction. We trust they will make it through the test, break through the earth barrier -- renewed, strong and beautiful again in Spring -- cycling into a new beginning.(There’s an analogy in there somewhere.)