Carpool Karaoke
For those who’ve experienced a deep betrayal, the idea that we’ll readily trust again is just that: an idea. But it isn’t real. The wound is too wide. It may heal over decades, but never over days.
I want not to rent space in my head to the previous president but I need to start with him because his was a siege of betrayal. He betrayed the ideals of the American constitution and the honor of the Office of President. He betrayed our nation’s global reputation and every standard of common decency. In calling others to violence and the sacrilege of January’s assault, he embodied what Stephen King once prophesied: “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” He lied and, innocent or not, they rioted.
Life has not been cleansed of all evil since the change of occupants in the Oval Office. Atlanta and Boulder are bloodied. Poverty still leaves children whimpering and hungry. Employment and economic security are beyond reach for millions. How, against all of this, is it possible that I’m feeling lighter, more hopeful, even happier than I have in…years? Years!
It’s possible because I’m blessed to have received the COVID vaccine. When the second dose was administered, I did the count-down to 14 days and felt, in tangible ways, as though I was being released from bondage to a virus too small to be seen. I was freed.
It’s possible because I’d just moved from my home in Florida to a new neighborhood in California when the pandemic arrived. I barely had time to learn my own address, and how to back out of the driveway without destroying my neighbor’s hedge, before we were in lock-down. I’d uprooted my life in one community but was denied the time to put down roots in another. Now, as my personal bondage is lifted, I can see a distant light at the end of COVID’s tunnel. I want to meet my neighbors, visit neighborhood shops, and start building a place in a community.
Earlier this week I left the house and drove, windows open, toward the nearest Starbucks to order “my drink.” Back in my car, without inviting James Corden to join in, I found myself singing and swaying in Carpool Karaoke. When a family pulled up next to me, and the kids pointed at me and laughed, I giggled. I was — oh, God, how long has it been? — I was being silly.
Something even more miraculous than a vaccine opened my life again. I’m recovering some trust. I’m broken by mass shootings and shattered families. But instead of an uncaring tweet I hear compassion, a comforter-in-chief’s voice. Little ones are being nudged across the border by parents aching for the dream of America. I don’t know how we’ll navigate this river of children. But I’m confident our President does not want to cage them. I trust that he knows their longing for the freedoms of this nation.
For years, I’ve gone to bed believing I’ll wake to things even worse than I’ve imagined. Too often, I was right. Now, I’m drifting off trusting that tomorrow’s light may shine on things even better than I’d hoped. I’m living proof that Chekhov was right, “You must trust and believe in people, or life becomes impossible.” An impossible nightmare of life has ended. I’m beginning to trust again.
Oh, and there’s this: I’ve sometimes wondered aloud whether I’ll ever be able to reach out to those who answered the call to violence, whose faces were contorted by rage as they poured through the Capitol’s windows and doors. Or, asked with less drama, can I find peace with those who support That Man?
I’m not sure I know how, or whether, to cross the gaping divide. But if it’s possible, it’ll come because I see that they too were betrayed. They were seduced by lies and promised falsehoods. If I can hold onto King’s idea — that “the trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool” — then I can see them not as the enemy but as fellow-citizens. They, too, have been abandoned. Perhaps their anger is the result of an innocent trust in the face of a liar’s most useful tool.
Here’s to the trust that heals bleeding wounds and makes miracles possible, that comes in deep, sustaining breaths of open-window air while singing at the top of our lungs. Let’s hear it for trust!
