Rainbows

This has been quite a week. Today I thought maybe I would write about my recently active social life -- my book group, coffee with a friend, another mini-reunion with my cousin and her family this past Wednesday, and on Saturday I took the bus to Denver and had lunch with an old friend from high school. So different from early pandemic days, when I never saw anyone except the twins. So nice to interact with people, not just screens.

I wanted to write about that because I didn't want to write about Roe v. Wade. I'm so sad about the Supreme Court decision this week that I don't want to write about it. I'm still processing it. It's so strange to think that young women today now have fewer rights than I have had my entire adult life. Fifty years ago I was 11. What do 11-year-olds have to look forward to now? An increasingly deprived life, that's what it looks like. Clarence Thomas has it all mapped out: no abortions, no contraception, no gay sex or gay marriage. In other words, no pleasure for anyone. You can have children (at least straight people can), but you can't have fun.

Yeah, I didn't want to write about that. I'll write about the fun stuff instead.

But then, last night, I realized I'd lost my keys somewhere during the Denver trip yesterday. I had them in my pocket, and when I got home I didn't have them anymore. So after a lot of calling and texting and filling out online forms, we determined that my keys MIGHT be at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Denver where I'd had lunch yesterday. My old friend who I'd had lunch with called the front desk and determined that they did have a set of Subaru keys and that I should call them. But I couldn't get anyone in the hotel to pick up the phone. 

Eventually I decided my best option was to take the bus back to Denver and go to the hotel in person, and Teen B very sweetly offered to come with me. That made all the difference. We took the FF1 to Union Station, and then caught the free MallRide to the hotel. At the hotel we stood in a really long line (20 people ahead of us) to get to the front desk, where I explained my problem. The clerk called security, we determined they probably did have my keys, we waited on a bench for security, I showed him my ID and signed for the keys, and then we had to come all the way back to Boulder. The entire trip took almost four hours (Saturday's trip took five hours, but that included a nice lunch). My butt is killing me (yes, I'm still in pain from the tailbone injury two and a half weeks ago).

I could have driven -- my car is fixed, at least enough to drive to Denver -- but downtown Denver is a madhouse today. It's PrideFest, and the 16th Street Mall and thereabouts were mobbed. Almost everyone we saw was wearing rainbows, all different kinds of rainbows. Rainbow shirts and rainbow capes and rainbow makeup and rainbow hair accessories. I saw one woman with a sort of rainbow tube top worn above her lovely breasts, which were adorned with rainbow pasties (I suppose the tube top was there to be pulled down if someone made an issue about her lack of coverage). I thought, wow, that takes guts to walk down the mall like that, and then I thought, no, all of this takes guts. All the people who came out today to stand up for who they are, they had to have guts. 

During our lovely lunch yesterday, my old high school friend Tracy and I talked about a lot of deep subjects, possibly more than we've ever talked about, and we've been friends since we were 13. We talked about race and gender and how different things are now. I mentioned that when we were in high school I really only knew one person who I was absolutely sure was gay, and I named her. Tracy nodded thoughtfully. "And then," I said, "we went off to college, and all of a sudden there were all these other people who turned out to be gay." Tracy nodded more vigorously, and we both remembered all the people we knew who'd come out when they went to college. "And there were probably lots of other people who came out later still," I added, and she agreed again. 

Today, wandering rainbow-filled downtown Denver with Teen B, I realized that I'm even more upset about the threat to LGBTQ people than I am about Roe v. Wade, and believe me, I'm terribly upset about Roe v. Wade. But gay people's rights are so fragile and new. Gay people have been around forever, but it's only so very recently that they've started to be accepted as part of mainstream society. Think of all the gay families who might be made illegal if this evil court has its way. 

***

We saw my cousin Kathy back in March, during our Spring Break trip to Nebraska, and I was so happy to see her again, after I don't know how many years -- more than 20 but fewer than 30 is the best I can come up with, and I'm not totally sure about the "fewer than 30" thing. Being able to see her again this past Wednesday (just three months later) was wonderful. But in the meantime she's been diagnosed with a degenerative condition. She talked a little bit about things she still wants to do, before the disease makes them difficult: get another dog, go to Hawaii again, visit her son in southern California. I thought of other people I know and have known who had this condition, such as someone in the bird club who insisted on going camping on her own because soon she wouldn't be able to.

This made me think, again, of what I still want to do in life -- even though I don't have a degenerative disease (that I know of), nor do I have coronary artery disease, as we thought previously. I'm basically fine, as far as we know, but I'm 61, ALMOST 62, so you do start thinking about how much time is left, how much healthy time is left, and what would you like to do with it.

I brought this up in conversation with Tracy and I told her that the main thing that comes to mind is getting my kids raised (I told my cousin that too). It's the only thing that seems urgent. She agreed, though her two girls are just about launched (one is mid-20s and working, the other just graduated from college and is in training for her first job). My cousin Kathy's kids are in their 30s and definitely launched, so she can think about other things. 

I mentioned that I do still think about writing, but I don't think it's urgent. It's fun, it's satisfying -- as is reading -- but I don't feel a desperate need to get something written (and especially published), nor do I feel a desperate need to read certain things (a desire, but not really a need). It's more that I'd like to go on reading and writing as long as I'm able, not that there are particular things I want to achieve in those areas. I'd like to travel some more, too, but there aren't any places that I feel a desperate need to see before I die. Maybe it's because I live in such a pretty place. I see beauty every day. It would be nice to see other places, but I don't have to.

Then I mentioned the one other thing that does cross my mind: giving back. I've had a good life, I continue to have a good life -- I would like others to have a good life too, not just my white children who are growing up in privileged Boulder. Tracy agreed again. She was in Denver for a conference of the League of Women Voters, which she's been active in for a while. I asked her how she happened to get involved, and she said she joined after Trump was elected, because she felt like she had to do something. 

So that's what's on my mind right now, in this terrible week (politically speaking), in the midst of my own happy socializing and the pleasant June weather. What are some things I can do, some concrete ways I can help out? I don't really want to think too much about the horribleness. I just want to think about how I can help.

*All the rainbow pictures in this post were found by doing a Google image search for rainbows, and then limiting it to those with Creative Commons licenses. They aren't my pictures.