The operating room for cesarean births is located at the end of the labor unit. Inside, the room is the shape of a large rectangle and lined along the edges with loads of shiny blinking contraptions, doodads, and gizmos. The lights are bright. The tools are laid out. All of it is intimidating.

Past the table, which is surrounded by an expert team of nurses and doctors poking around inside my wife, sits the anesthesiologist on a wheeled-stool. My wife, Amanda, and I are having our second child (both in this room) — the gender is a surprise (again). Sporting a fashionable, very in-season COVID zip-up surgical suit and mask, I sit on my own wheeled-stool next to Amanda trying to think of something funny to say — both to comfort her and to show the surgical team that I am a totally normal person capable of comforting my wife during major surgery and the birth of our child.

The anesthesiologist scoots over to say hello. He wears glasses and sits with his hands rested upon two beepers clipped to his pants as if he’s preparing a quick draw from his side holster. He has perfected the type of monotone speech and steady emotionless gaze that would indicate extreme boredom. Further investigation and chit-chat reveal that he is a very nice person who is currently sitting at his version of the office water cooler. The three of us form a mini-team and think of general subjects to discuss, such as missing the New England Patriot’s first pandemic game and, of course, the weather. While sitting within the space of this operating room cubicle, I fumble with my smartphone, awkwardly jabbing at numbers to open the screen so I can be ready to take a picture when the baby arrives. We all express collective agreement that face identification has become somewhat useless in this new age of mask-wearing.

Amanda blinks and smiles. We hold hands and wait underneath the bright lights. I briefly remember that the first time we had a baby in this room, I was so shocked when I saw it (him) that I forgot to tell Amanda that it was a boy. Our boy.

I was determined not to let that happen again.

Approximately thirty miles away, at our two-bedroom apartment in East Boston, Amanda’s mother, Nonna, and sister, Auntie, are taking care of Jack, our son. He is a busy little two-year-old with a full agenda that includes eating a bountiful variety of snacks, locating trucks, buses, trains, and construction vehicles for his viewing pleasure, and adhering to a rigorous daycare schedule.

Jack is a boisterous and wonderful handful of a kid with a beautiful grin and a mischievous sense of fun and adventure. He enjoys clambering up dangerous structures he’s been instructed not to ascend, devouring both sliced and cubed pieces of cheddar cheese, and running around the neighborhood shouting “hiiii” with an outstretched hand waving through the air as if he’s running a very aggressive campaign for the local mayorship — it’s possible he is.

While we stay in the hospital for a few days trying to remember how to take care of a newborn, Nonna teaches Jack to dip waffles and graham crackers at breakfast into his applesauce and how to lick the almond butter off his fingers. Auntie sings his favorite songs and plops him outside in the yard to watch a small, sturdy-sized orange digger move around dirt and rocks at the construction site next door. They take him to school, where he hangs with his friends and learns from his teachers, running happily through the doors each day past the Sesame Street characters on the outside windows to dance, color, sing, sleep, eat, and play. His parents are nowhere to be found, but he is happy and content and mostly very sure that the world is precisely as it should be.

Outside, the world is changing again. The streak of summer heatwaves has come to an end, and along with the fall season is the beginning of the annual changing of the leaves. Once green and clearly secured onto tree branches, the leaves fall off one by one, covering the yard.

“Leeeves,” says Jack. With a look of minor surprise, wondering why the leaves are now on the ground.

While the human race finds itself smack dab in the middle, or perhaps still the beginning of a global pandemic, life is good-ish. Our family is growing to the final number of four that we always thought it would. We have jobs that provide us with money for food and shelter. We have each other. We are good-ish despite almost every aspect of life on Earth deteriorating and becoming more and more dangerous, terrifying, and downright strange.

With the pandemic came the lifting of a curtain that revealed not one but an entire fleet of issues our country has swept under the rug for far too long. The United States now a ship steered into stormy waters at an exhausting pace as headline after headline drives our anxieties and fears to levels our generation had never experienced before 2020 came along.

Tacked onto the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re experiencing everything from extreme climate crisis to widespread racism, police shootings, a crumbling government, and millions of people out of work. It feels like we have entered into an alternate dimension of reality where every terrible thing that could happen is happening all at once. Of course, many of these issues have been brewing for years or more. But perhaps worst of all is the insane, unintelligible orange man sitting at the helm in the White House. Tweeting horrible tweet after horrible tweet as his GOP-henchmen prove themselves to be the corrupt, disgusting, pathetic supporters they are now free to fully embrace.

What’s worse is that we have many people here in this country who support them, mostly against their own interests for who knows what reasons. I have no love for most Democrats, but if you support the Grand Old Party … well, I suppose if you support the GOP, maybe you don’t understand just how messed up that is at all.

In short, this is not an ideal time for bringing children into the world. And yet, here we are … number two on his or her way. As we prepare to meet our child, Nonna and Auntie make preparations in the apartment, getting it ready for our eventual return. This last-minute nesting ritual includes moving the swaddles and diapers into our bedroom, buying more clothes (for fun), and dealing with an ongoing infestation of drain flies multiplying at a ferocious pace to slowly, but assuredly become the new tenants of the two-bedroom apartment in our absence.

If you squint you can see these little guys all around the vent in the hallway of our building.

Approximately three weeks before Amanda’s c-section, I bumped into a fuzzy little fly in our bathroom, clinging to the wall as if it didn’t have a care in the world. This short, mini-moth-like creature didn’t even seem to mind as I swatted it into the wall with a piece of toilet paper and plopped its remains into the flushing toilet.

Plop!

As quickly as the first one disappeared, two new flies materialized on the far wall. That can’t be good, I thought to myself. With a little effort and a few misses, I disposed of them as I did their predecessor. And then … four more appeared. This is really not good, I thought to myself.

A thorough Google search identified the species as clogmia albupunctata of the Psychodidae family of flies. Further reading on Wikipedia describes the larvae of these psychos as living in sludge-based habitats and congregating in bathroom areas, particularly drains. Hence their fancy nicknames, which include enough AKAs to qualify them as the criminal elite of the fly world: drain fly, sink fly, filter fly, and sewer gnat. Nice.

Apparently, drain flies are nocturnal creatures, erratic fliers, and often attracted to light, such as the radiant glow of a Kindle — which I can testify firsthand as being quite accurate. Some nights, as the birth of our child grew closer, I would lay in bed reading a book by Mark Kurlansky called Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. While I learned about salt cod and the Great Banks and trawlers and dogfish and minor international fishing wars, a drain fly would keep me company at the bedside by lightly pinging itself against the Kindle, erratically, of course.

One night I woke to go to the bathroom, only to be greeted by a mighty battalion of at least thirty of these carefree little buggers sitting still or flying around aimlessly. I suppose if you could ask a drain fly in their language whether or not they would seriously mind being scooped up and flushed down the toilet, they would shrug their tiny drain fly shoulders and reply with an air of indifference that it really didn’t matter either way. And so I went to work, getting rid of the drain flies one at a time.

It’s a very odd thing to have to do. But it’s a Dad thing — a tangible task I can perform because I have a wife and a child, and stuff like this happens every so often. I can’t fix the toilet or build a bookcase or solve the dozen or so major issues in our country, but I can dispose of some flies.

Sorry sewer gnats.

Because I am a father now, I think a lot about why so many people in this country are against giving its people basic human rights and resources. Every other first-world nation provides healthcare — sure seems like a no-brainer to me. But here in America, that is called communism or some form of imaginary, made-up socialism that will set our country on fire if it ever finds its way here from across the oceans.

I know people that this affects personally. Very normal, kindhearted, hardworking people who have demanding jobs that don’t provide healthcare benefits and often don’t provide a living wage. In the United States, a person can work an exhausting job and be told that it’s not enough. They can work two or three exhausting jobs and be told that it’s not enough. Sorry — it’s the American way to deny our own people a basic standard of living and dignity. But it’s OK because who knows, you might make it big someday on your own grit and determination and become a billionaire or serve on a board that decides it’s best not to provide a living wage to the human beings that make them all their money … someday.

So we have money to socialize the funding of war, military, and bombs, not to mention the very best health care for our own government officials … but not to provide health care for our citizens. OK. We have money to fund the police and fire departments, to subsidize industries that need money that otherwise go belly up, but we can’t figure out how to provide health care for our people? Not even a pandemic seems to be changing anyone’s mind about that.

If there is one obvious thing, it’s that the middle and lower classes exist for one reason — for the wealthy elite (Republican or Democrat) to siphon our blood, sweat, tears, time, money, and energy for their own pleasure. Because they will always want more. The deck is stacked.

This is the country we are bringing children into.

This is the country that when my children are old enough to ask me why we let it become like this, I will have no good answer at all. Other than to say I was busy with work and family and life, and that I also wasn’t really sure what to do about it.

I can vote. We do vote. But we live in a country where in order to elect the lesser of two evils (not a great choice to begin with), we must have millions of more votes in the right places, towns, and counties because the popular vote by the people doesn’t elect anyone at all. The evilest of two evils knows this and has gerrymandered their way across the country, knowing that to maintain power, to dictate their personal mission of taking everything, they don’t even need the will of or the majority of our citizens. Cool.

Look at this kid! He believes in cheese sticks, piles of leaves, and universal health care!

This is the world we are bringing children into.

When we first arrived at the hospital, we met a pre-delivery nurse named Kim. “Right this way,” she said, shuffling us into a nearby room for an examination. Amanda’s c-section was scheduled for Thursday. Although it had only been Saturday night, Amanda began experiencing contractions. Her body was not aware of the schedule.

And so early Sunday morning, Nonna came over to take care of Jack, and we drove to the hospital. Kim, the nurse, hooked Amanda, my wife, up to the doodads and gizmos, checked her vitals and told us it wouldn’t be long before they determined if maybe she was indeed already in labor. This left plenty of chit-chat time, during which we somehow learned that Kim’s birthday was September 28th. This was a point of interest because Amanda’s birthday is also September 28th.

Hmm … was this a sign from the universe? We weren’t sure yet.

But as the doodads and gizmos went beep beep beep and scribbled jagged lines across the screen, more nurses and doctors came in for fun activities such as COVID swabbing and cervix measurements. It turned out, that Martha, the floor nurse, has a wedding anniversary on September 28th.

Upon learning that information, brains began exploding, and an even more in-depth investigation into additional examples of synchronicity started in earnest. With an enormous smile plastered upon her face, Kim asked, “Wait … Matt, what is your birthday?” Excited to join the fun, I replied, “November 7th, it was a good day.” To that, Kim shared the news that November 7th was, of course, her brother’s birthday.

Can you even believe it?

Once the labor and delivery nurse came in and professed that her birthday was none other than November 8th — which, of course, is the day after November 7th — it was concluded that Amanda was indeed in labor, that her cervix was dilated, and we would, of course, be having a baby that day.

How could we not after all that?

Only slightly amused by all the synchronicity in the air, the doctor eventually came to tell us that the baby was “thick and floating.” Not quite sure how to reply, we nodded our heads slightly and looked at each other and then back at the doctor. “That’s a good thing,” she said. “Oh! Great,” we replied.

An hour later, in the labor and delivery operating room, with the surgical team poking around inside Amanda and the anesthesiologist zipping around on his wheeled-stool, our baby arrived. I remember thinking to myself, as I did when Jack was born, “she’s so gooey!” And, of course, forgot once again to announce the gender to my eagerly awaiting wife. “And what is it?” The doctor asked me so I could tell Amanda the excellent news.

“It’s a girl!”

And so it was. We named her Emilia.

She weighed in at a healthy seven pounds and seven ounces. Her birthday was September 13th — my mother’s (Nana) birthday (can you even believe it?) — at 3:06 pm during the New England Patriot’s first pandemic game, and more importantly, their first game without Tom “TB12” Brady. With dark hair unintentionally styled as a party-in-the-back sort of mullet, she was gooey and perfect.

Compared to our first-go-around with Jack as totally new parents, our stay in the hospital this time was rather uneventful. Thankfully, we were able to conjure much of the taking-care-of-a-newborn information we learned several years before and apply it again. The nurses were friendly and helpful, and whether due to the virus or because this was our second child, mainly left us to ourselves and Emilia.

We used this time to re-familiarize our bodies with sleep deprivation and our taste buds with the hospital’s infamous chocolate chip cookies. While Amanda wasn’t allowed to leave the floor, I found plenty of excuses to wander by the little snack shop to fill up another bag, making sure to buy more at each visit for fear that we would never have access to these oversized scrumdiddlyumptious baked goods again.

Like Emilia, the cookies were gooey too.

Eager to see Jack, we found ourselves finally walking through our apartment door a few days later. Amanda was feeling sore and moving slowly as she was still at the beginning of her recovery. I picked Jack up from daycare a few hours later and smiled as he saw me through the window and began freaking out. He waved and waved and then grabbed the attention of his teacher as he pointed toward the window. He paddled his arms through the air, running to get his lunch box and gather his belongings.

A big hug. Kisses. Warm hearts.

“Momma?” He asked.

As we get used to our new routine, Nonna sticks around to help us acclimate while we figure out how to take care of two kids at the same time — no easy task. But Jack is a good boy, and although he mostly ignores Emilia at first, he races through his daily activities happy as a clam, content that he has his parents back and convinced that they are in no way going anywhere anytime soon without him.

There are school and his friends, walks to the park to see the choo-choos on the subway and the big blue busses he has come to love. We kick the soccer ball in the yard and watch as squirrels scramble up the trees and collect acorns on the ground. He plays with the pumpkin on our stoop.

Life is good-ish.

It’s good-ish because there is still everything and all things terrible happening in the background. The election nears. Trump embarrasses our country once again during a debate. He contracts COVID and then leaves the hospital to expose countless people around him, declaring that we, the people, should not be so afraid. The GOP scurries to nominate and appoint a new conservative judge to the Supreme Court to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and Roe V. Wade because, of course, we still have enough insane people in this country who would prefer to focus on determining who gets to have control over a woman’s body and destroying our health care system rather than the thousand or so major issues of our time.

This is the same conservative party that still has no problem with putting children (who are already alive) into cages because their parents weren’t born here.

Countries around the world laugh at us ... but also express concern — showing compassion and shock at how drastically a nation has become divided, spiraling down into chaos that has no clear path to resolving itself. While now obsessed with our future, we also find ourselves simultaneously confronted with the demons of our nation’s past.

How long will the pandemic last? Will there be a vaccine?

Can we survive the climate crisis?

How do we address racism, systemic poverty, and the murders of black Americans by police officers?

If one thing is clear, it’s that we must be brutally honest about our past and admit how it’s affecting our present. And if we can’t build a future that includes everyone and every voice, then there won’t be a country here for any rational human being to feel happy or content or proud of anyway.

How can we one-hundred percent enjoy our families and our own lives (even if we are lucky enough to have everything going well) when others suffer so much?

The wildfires rage on. There are peaceful protests and protestors met by violent police forces armed but untrained in military-like weapons, vehicles, and tear gas. Sea levels rise. The hurricanes keep coming. Insane people politicize wearing a mask during a pandemic — the most basic and simplest form of protecting those around us.

There are corporations that dictate what happens in our government. And a government populated by officials who are happy to take their money. How people like that can live with themselves and not feel the weight of responsibility or karma or something eating away at their souls … I do not know.

Boston Globe article highlighting how fun 2020 has been so far.

This is the world we are bringing children into.

At home, we have stopped watching the news as much as we used to — it had been something I enjoyed listening in on while it played in the background. But with every new daily headline comes another injustice, another horrible decision or action or way to screw over the people of this country. And yet ... I can’t help but watch, like an observer witnessing a train wreck thinking they’re seeing it all from a safe distance when in reality, it’s coming straight at them.

As Emilia sometimes prefers to be awake at night time — not understanding that outside the womb, there are hours for waking and hours for sleeping — I sit on the living room couch with her nestled in the crook of my arm while scrolling through headlines. None of them good. It creates anxiety, a new form to supplement my regular anxiety that builds and builds and builds, like an internal pressure cooker with no release valve. It doesn’t go anywhere — I am soaked in it, absorbing it all into the muscles, bones, and blood of my body, the psyche, and spirit of my being.

Adding to my concerns is a new health diagnosis I received back in March, almost at the start of the lockdown phase of the pandemic here in Massachusetts. Apparently, I have earned myself a movement disorder called Cervical Dystonia. It is a not entirely rare, but not very well-known or popular neuromuscular disorder. At least several very intelligent doctors and researchers believe that dystonia derives from some sort of hiccup occurring in the basal ganglia.

Just as Wikipedia has helped me catch up on the specifics of the Pscyhodidae, a quick search tells me that the basal ganglia are a cluster of neurons in the brain associated with many functions, including control of voluntary motor movements. Unfortunately, as if some all-knowing entity in the universe is definitely playing a bad joke on me, I can no longer keep my head straight, literally. Instead, my neck constantly turns entirely toward my right shoulder. Over. And over. And over again.

It is uncomfortable to walk as I’m constantly trying to push my head back to the center. To drive, I smoosh myself back into the headrest, and the padding embraces it enough to keep it still and allow me to look straight ahead. Ironically, it is the best driving posture I have ever maintained in my entire life. At night, I learn to sleep in different positions to brace my head against or into a pillow to stop the movement. I am often sore and constantly feel like my upper body has twisted itself into something that cannot be untwisted. It is … not good.

I first noticed my head moving back in September of 2019 when I went to get my driver’s license renewed. For some reason, I couldn’t keep my head still when the nice woman was trying to take my picture. I thought maybe I had too much coffee or was nervous, neither of which is unusual for me. Eventually, after several attempts, and with a shrug of confusion, she settled on a picture described as “good enough.” It still captured my head twisting to the right — the first empirical evidence that something was wrong.

In March, the issue made the leap from something weird occurring only once and a while to holy heck, I can’t believe this is happening all the time. While Jack was now permanently home from daycare, and Amanda and I tossed him back and forth while attempting to work, I started my research. I Googled for hours and hours. Hunting for information. Eventually, I finally figured out what I thought it was, and a neurologist confirms my diagnosis — cervical dystonia.

Dammit, I thought.

But like anyone with a chronic health condition, I went to work with the hope that I could make it better, if not make it go away. I visited new doctors, found online support groups, called and went to see chiropractors and therapists from all sorts of backgrounds and specialties. I freaked out and lost my mind. I cried. I even got Botox shot into my neck, which worked pretty good actually and is the main form of treatment for this disorder. Go figure.

And over time, I think I’m learning to cope with it, to accept it as a part of my life now. Oddly enough, I am lucky. Many people with dystonia or other disorders, diseases, and ailments have it much, much worse. This is not a degenerative disorder, I will not die, and it’s possible my symptoms won’t progress any further. If you saw me, you might not even notice anything different unless you knew. I often hold my neck with one hand, as if rubbing a kink out, to prevent the movement from occurring.

And so while life is good-ish, I’m learning to live with another challenge, another thing I can’t control. And that’s OK, I suppose. Maybe there is something I can learn from this.

But for now, I’m walking around yelling and shouting at Mitch McConnell and Devin Nunes and Donny Trump and Bill Barr and Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller and all the other terrible people running this country. I’m performing internal monologues and screaming matches at people who aren’t there as I listen to podcasts or watch the news, the temperature of my blood boiling as my head moves back and forth, back and forth, everything feeling twisted.

But even with the abundance of supervillains that 2020 has given us, I’m surprisingly able to separate the good from the bad. To laugh and play with my children and my wife, while suppressing, at least for several moments in a row, all of the everything else.

I have realized that I can now think of my kids, of Jack and Emilia, whenever I’m feeling down — that their image brings me joy and back to a smaller, more suitable place within myself that feels good. I’m on paternity leave. Thank God. I wasn’t when Jack was born, and that was … hard. This time around, I can enjoy the experience a little bit more. I get Jack up in the mornings, and we pick up his blankets and his stuffed elephant in his crib. We choose an outfit for the day and put on a new diaper. He’s becoming a big talker and a very decent conversationalist, surprising us daily with words we’ve been trying for some time.

Elephant.

Squirrel.

Mailman.

All leaving his mouth as if he’s been saying them forever. We eat a breakfast of cereal or waffles or oatmeal. He loves kiwis and will sometimes eat apple sticks. It’s off to school in the next town over. “Big truk!” He shouts from the back whenever he spots an 18-wheeler or a construction vehicle. “Yellow!” He howls whenever a school bus rolls by.

“The traffic light is green, Jack. What does green mean?”

“Go go go!” He yells from his seat. We drive past the “lybrary.” “What’s in the library?” I ask. “Books!”

“Back,” he proclaims when we arrive at the school. Sign the COVID forms, say hello, and the happy little boy runs inside to see his friends. “See you later,” I say. “I love you.”

Back at home, the Psychidodae have made a retreat. Our landlord informs us that pest control may have found the source in the building’s basement — the sludge-based habitat, a big-bang epicenter of their universe — which may mean their days are finally numbered. Instead of swatting dozens of flies per day, there are only a few here and there. And, of course, they don’t mind much.

We spend the days falling in love with Emilia, just as we did with Jack. She likes to poop a lot while resting on Mommy — just like Jack. She makes funny faces as babies tend to do. She can sleep with her arms in the air and looks at you with dark blue eyes as if to say, “just what the heck is going on here.” She sleeps and eats, and so do we.

Neighbors and family bring over presents of clothes and diapers, and new toys for the new big brother. Jack has made out like a bandit, expertly learning how to quickly discard tissue paper and bags and wrapping and clothes to more efficiently locate the next toy truck or car that is undoubtedly sitting there waiting below.

I pick Jack up from school in the late afternoons. “How was your day?” I ask with eagerness and excitement.

“Good. Momma?” he asks. “Let’s go see her,” I say.

And, eventually … “Momma? Baby?” He asks.

It took a few weeks, but Jack comes around favorably on his baby sister. Maybe it was all the presents. He rubs her head and points to her eyes without poking them. “Eyes.” And then, “mouth, ears, toes,” he giggles. We read books now at night as a family of four on the couch. “Is everyone ready?”

Jack is getting bigger, and Emilia is too. Jack now says “ice” as he prefers ice water for some reason. I fill up his sippy cup only to be told to return to the freezer … “ice.” Amanda is walking and lifting and cooking and feeding and doing a million things already, whether she’s supposed to or not. She keeps me laughing and shifts my focus from somewhere inside my head, from those internal shouting matches and anger over my moving neck, to a better place.

We sit and wait together with Emilia while listening to the RMV’s classical music for people on hold. Twenty-five minutes. Forty-two minutes. An hour goes by. It’s her turn to renew her driver’s license. The music isn’t bad.

We wrap Emilia up and walk her around the neighborhood, showing her Jack’s favorite parks and the harbor and the city and the shipyard, and, of course, the buses and the trains. Amanda asks me why doesn’t anyone make mixed flavors of creamsicles? Chocolate and orange. Strawberry and lemon. Over lunch, she says, “now that I can drink again, we need to get into boozy milkshakes.” I agree while choking on a tater tot. We laugh about how bad I am at eating, constantly stuffing something down the wrong tube, or eating so fast that everything gets stuck somewhere along the way. “Maybe I have a skinny esophagus,” I tell her. “Please don’t start researching that,” she not-so-jokingly requests.

We discuss our local composting company’s ongoing escapades — the one that sometimes shows up for pick-ups and sometimes does not. They recently sent us an email stating the following:

“I understand that many of you have been experiencing service issues, so I wanted to provide an update to everyone. There was an unexpected reduction in staff last week. Unfortunately, law enforcement was involved.”

Unfortunately, the email didn’t disclose the juicy details of why law enforcement might be involved in the reduction of staff for a local composting company. And so we joke and tack that line on to the end of random sentences.

I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today. Unfortunately, law enforcement was involved.
Jack had a great time at the park, but he fell down after climbing onto the metal bench at the soccer field. Unfortunately, law enforcement was involved.
Emilia pooped twice while feeding just now. Unfortunately, law enforcement was involved.

Putting Emilia down on her couch cushion pillow, Amanda says, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Before they let you into the operating room, the doctor told me I had a great set of ovaries AND fallopian tubes.”

Everything is good-ish.

While we no longer have access to the delicious hospital cookies, we have plenty of other desserts and baked items to keep us busy. I start eating over the sink or the trash bin to minimize the mess. I develop a temporary online shopping addiction once I realize Jack doesn’t have a fall wardrobe or jacket, not to mention the zipper on his lunchbox is now a real pain in the butt to zip. There’s talk of a second COVID wave hitting Massachusetts as cases rise. I keep shopping, just in case.

Boxes filled with toddler clothes and paper towels and cleaning supplies are delivered daily to our apartment. I stress clean to stay busy. I dust the floors with a wet paper towel because it makes me feel good. I empty diaper pails and trash cans. I vacuum and scrub down the bath and the toilet. I clean the mirrors and take out the garbage. There is enough recycling for several trips a day. I take the compost bucket out on Wednesdays in case they are fully staffed and able to come. I begin talking to myself out loud, declaring to no one in particular that I should do this or that next, announcing my to-do list to the universe as I discover it in real-time with thought bubbles turning into real speech.

My head moves to the right, and when it’s bad, I pin it to my left shoulder because it will stay still when I do that. I walk around sweeping and Swiffering and recycling like I’m talking to someone on an old phone braced between my ear and my shoulder. I’m arguing with Mitch and Donny and Lindsey and all the buffoons who somehow found a way to sleep at night despite everything they have done.

And still, everything is good-ish. Absolutely exhausting, but good-ish. As I said, we have jobs, savings, shelter, food, each other. That is a lot. That is more than many.

I love watching our two kids do anything. It’s fun to be a family of four, a crew. And naturally, I want the best for them, and all the kids everywhere, because how could you not? And so I’m not sure what we do next. Or how we go about it. But I do know that it starts with voting. Voting these people out.

The so-called President.

His entire family.

The GOP.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, their families in mourning. This is not business as usual. We no longer need to respect the opinion of anyone who supports this regime. That old trick where we’re supposed to “respect the opinion of the other side” doesn’t apply, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I don’t have a lot of love for Democrats, but right now, this is the lesser of two evils, and it must be done.

The so-called President owes $400 million to “somebody.”

The so-called President uses radical right-wing media like FOX News and Rush Limbaugh to advance his brand of hate, evil, and chaos.

The so-called President and the GOP support and encourage fascism and right-wing terrorist groups.

The so-called President is a failed businessman and does not pay taxes.

The so-called President openly mocks and is disgusted by the people who support him.

The so-called President does not believe in science.

The so-called President and the GOP have sucked the life out of every rational human being left in the country.

It is what it is.

I hope that one day our country can be a place where our children don’t have to ask us why we let it become something to be so ashamed of. To be terrified of. That maybe it can still be a place for all of us, taken back from the insane and evil and corrupt. I’m not worried about two-year-old Jack or one-month-old Emilia. These versions of my children are perfectly fine, happy, and content. I’m worried about them five years from now. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. I’m worried about the world and country they will inherit.

So please. Vote.

Get these people out. Out of our lives and out of the news. It must be done. Vote and support and donate to all the democratic candidates running across the nation, especially those running in swing states.

Here is an easy link at Swing Left to find out where help is most needed right now.

It’s nighttime here in East Boston, and Jack’s ready for bed. Our family of four huddles together by his crib for a big hug. “Kisses?” We ask. He rubs his head against Emilia and then moves in for his Mommy. There’s a furry little moth-like creature perched on the wall, probably not paying attention to anything in particular. For now, everything is good-ish. But hopefully tomorrow, or someday soon, everything will be just a little bit better.

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