Day 358- Ancestry

Dear Mr. President,

Tonight my family had our Christmas celebration a bit early to accommodate our various work schedules. Around a non-traditional (and largely gluten-free, out of respect to my mother and sister's new dietary guidelines) assortment of gourmet foods we kept up the family tradition of being, to a man, loud and incredibly opinionated. Asher, my 2-year old nephew and the only child in our immediate family, seemed to sense that this day was mostly for his benefit, and ran around happily watching cartoons and playing with toys while the grown-ups mulled over boring assessments of roast chicken, maple-glazed squash, mushroom quinoa pilaf and scalloped corn. Gifts came after dinner (but long before the dishes) and we gushed over beautiful new sweaters, intriguing new books and appliances that had the adults even more excited even than Asher at the sight of his giant stuffed dragon.

Spoiled by generous siblings and our mother who never fails to make Christmas just as magical as it was when we were Asher's age, I got a poker chip heart;



Beautiful new scarves and shawls and sweaters:



The tools to marry my two great loves:



even my macbook got a little something:



but the most unexpected gift was a simple family tree from my older sister, and photos of ancestors I'd never even heard of before tonight.









The men and women in these photos are strangers to me. If there are traces of my own features in eyes or noses or cheeks I see no evidence of it. My ancestors came from Germany, Bohemia and England. They married and bore children and died in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Some settled the west, some owned slaves, some arrived with the Puritans in Massachusetts. My sisters and I kept remarking in surprise at how shockingly American the whole story is. To know that these formally-attired, stiffly-posed subjects of photographs are connected to us is strange for me, especially in my urban tribe of familial bonds forged by forces stronger than blood. What significance, if any, do these lives have on my own? Staring at so much small-scale history makes me feel dizzy with the implications, so much more personal than the characters from my textbooks.

I hope that Christmases to come will feel this way, bright and warm and full to bursting with affection for the people near me. In a few generations, when my sisters, brothers and mother and I are all just tiny branches on some one else's family tree, I know they won't understand nights like this one. They won't know about the way we teased and laughed and talked too loudly as we passed around plates of food. They won't know that three cats and two dogs tread happily around our feet, or sulked angrily under beds. They won't know that my mother's Christmas tree had one string of lights in off-white instead of snow-white and why, exactly, that would bother her. They might see photos of me in my strange clothes and find nothing to connect them to me besides the sharing of some significant amount of genes. I think this gift, more than any of the others, reminded me to pay attention, to take in the details before they were lost in whatever next century's black and white photos will be. To look around at my family and feel connected to them, for all of our differences and for all of our faults. My ancestors' Christmas celebrations looked and sounded very different than my own and certainly meant something very different than this night means to our family now, but I hope that they felt a similarly overwhelmed by the love of those around them.

I hope that you have a good Christmas, Mr. President, and that even your job allows you a few hours of beautifully mundane moments like this to remind you of the sustaining love for and from your family.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 330-Black Friday & health insurance

Dear Mr. President,

I've worked in retail for the last four years. Most of the time I hated it, but today is the day that usually made me love it. Especially in later years, as a manager, I'd rework my hours for the week and end up spending something ridiculous like 16 or 18 hours at work, setting up before the store opened, drinking way too much coffee, and generally racing around as though lives were at stake. I'm probably just a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but after Black Friday, the store got busier, the lines got longer, and everything just got more exciting as the urgency to build displays, refill displays, organize gift wrapping services, unpack merchandise for the floor and help customers once the doors opened increased. Working retail during the holidays was stressful and did not go well with having a "normal" holiday season, but it was the most fun I've ever had at any job. Today, while I still work in retail, I no longer have the same responsibility toward customers or toward merchandising. It was a little disappointing to roll in at 2 pm for a 6-hour shift catching shoplifters, especially knowing that my sister would be working 18 hours at the clothing store she manages. It's nice not to have lines of frantic bargain hunters surging through the doors at 6 am, but it lacks a certain glamor. (However, the sheer craziness of the shoplifter we caught today pretty much made up for any lack of excitement.)

That being said, in this economy, it was kind of nice to see all of the hilarious coverage of long lines, crazy crowds, and more than a few frantic shoppers who look like they train to find deals all year long. Yes, it still makes me a little sad, and yes, it still makes me wonder if our society has deep issues with priorities and materialism, but I like my job, I like that my friends have jobs, and I hope that many more jobs can be created this Holiday season.

I noticed today that you had to get stitches as a result of a basketball accident. My first reaction was something along the lines of "OH NO, POOR PRESIDENT OBAMA! I SHOULD ASK IF HE"S OK!" (which probably speaks to the near-complete delusion that we're somehow friends which I have developed as a result of all of this letter-writing.) And then I got to thinking about my hand. Yesterday, while cleaning up my thanksgiving dishes, I cut open my hand on a knife hidden in the soapy water. My near-hysterical reaction notwithstanding it really isn't that bad, I'm fine and I didn't bleed to death (or even come all that close) but it still hasn't closed up. Today I showed it to a friend who is also a doctor, and she noted that I should have gone in for stitches. To be perfectly fair, I'm terrified of doctors, hospitals, and generally anything related to blood, bleeding, or medical attention. I probably wouldn't have gone in even if I did have insurance. The fact that I'm uninsured, however, was a significant factor in my decision just to take care of it myself. I'm really glad that you are OK and that you have access to the best healthcare we can offer in this country. But, just for a moment, I couldn't help but step outside myself and realize that if it hadn't been me but my roommates or my sisters or my friends who needed stitches and chose not to get them because they couldn't afford it, I'd be pretty upset knowing that money stood between them and basic care. We've both demonstrated rather clearly that these kind of accidents can happen to any one at any time and that having the option of medical attention makes a big difference (or at least, I'd imagine our respective scars will look fairly different in a few months.)

Anyway, I am glad that you are OK and that your black friday was spent doing something leisurely (at least before elbows were thrown.)

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 254- What we choose to remember

Dear Mr. President,

Nine years ago I was a sophomore in high school. I woke up before my alarm clock. I remember I was having a dream about drowning. On any other day I probably would have forgotten the last wisps of this dream as the rest of my morning routine replaced it. I went downstairs and ate a bowl of cereal, squinting at the TV because I hadn't bothered to put in my contact lenses. My stepmother told me a plane had hit the twin towers. The rest of the morning was a series of stories, some true, some false, some never to be properly accounted for later. I was safely on the other side of the country from what was happening, but all morning long I could see my own turbulent emotional reactions in the faces of my classmates. We all felt the magnitude of what was going on; even if we didn't yet understand it, even if we didn't experience it the same way that people in New York and DC did. I remember I heard boys just 16 years old calling for blood, wanting to enlist that day and kill whoever had planned the attack.

Nine years later I still remember the images we all saw on TV. I still remember the haunted way my coworkers at the Washington DC bookstore sounded when they told their own tales of that day. I still think about the havoc we rained down upon millions of innocent people in response. I remember the lives we have ruined and displaced, the hundreds of thousands we have murdered. I can't talk about 9/11 without also talking about these shattered lives. There was no number of Afghan or Iraqi civillians we might have killed to bring back those lost on American soil 9 years ago today. Every time I hear 9/11 used to justify these wars we wage as acts of vengeance, I feel tired in a way that I don't think I'm old enough to feel. It all seems so pointless, so tragically, miserably heart breaking and pointless.

You have asked us today to remember the tragic events of 9 years ago. We might choose to remember this day in isolation, to recall nothing of what came before or since, and I understand why many choose this. This day was so shocking, so traumatizing and devastating to so many that I can't ask any one to do more than what they feel they can. But I think we should not choose to remember this day in a vacuum. I think that, no matter how painful its memory is, we should not feel entitled to the belief that we were alone in suffering it, or numb ourselves to the pain so many others were forced to feel as a result. Today I remember the dead, I honor the dead, but I do not imagine that the death toll of September the 11th ended on our shores. I choose to remember all who have died since and all those who continue to suffer for it. Nine years of suffering has not made this day any less tragic. We are nine years older, our hands are nine years bloodier and the death toll just keeps rising.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 151- Memory in blank verse

Dear Mr. President,

I walked to work today in the pouring rain. My blood still boiling from last night, drums in my ears asking me to keep my compassion, to keep my cool, I walked and sulked and snapped at anything I could think of. I know, today is a day for remembering. Today is a day to remember the girls and boys we put in men's uniforms and gave weapons and made murderers (and murdered.) To remember the suits who sent them to their deaths and destinies. To remember the placid, peaceful suburbs and 3-day only sales we sent them to protect.

Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a microcosm of US history on fast-forward in Palestine. I fear that Palestinians face the same fate as the Native Americans; refugee camps like reservations, ostensible autonomy that creates isolation, not independence, dying traditions and tongues, hunted, then marginalized, disenfranchised, disarmed, disbanded, disappeared. When we remember the soldiers who have died for this country, do we also honor the dead who died for us to take it from them? Where is their bank holiday, their 3-day only sale? I'm so confused today, tangled up in the inevitable contradiction of being an American; of being born with blood on my hands, bearing the burden of an original sin, not against God but against my fellow man. I want to sort out these feelings; to tease out these threads into distinct narratives, of America, of Palestine, of wars and war crimes, to place it all on a timeline that makes sense.

Nothing makes sense today. Grief is giving way to disorientation and disbelief. Some lady was yelling at me about swiping her gift card too many times, because I might scratch it, and people are being taken off of a humanitarian ship in Haifa, to be taken to a room in the Tel Aviv airport, or to a prison cell, a hospital room, or a morgue. I'm just not sure I understand how these realities overlap. I've stepped, too far, off of some undersea shelf, and now I can only tread water. I can't tell if the White House thinks this is bad because it looks bad for Israel, or if, underneath the suits that control the truth, there are fathers who would not see their daughters suffer as daughters of fathers across Gaza are suffering. If you believe your own spin, or if you're saying it in the hopes of making the truth less devastating. Those boys in men's uniforms dropping down zip lines from choppers onto boats were acting in self defense. They were terrified of a truth so horrible it cannot be erased by bulletts. The truth that makes it so much harder to put on the uniform and pick up the gun. It was self defense, and if you say it enough times, it might be true.

In Washington, an unknown tomb is honored. The Schrödinger's cat of Identity. He could be white or black or Native or فلسطيني. Unknown could be any of us, bones bleached anciently to only human. The shifting, changing, contradictory American; he no longer needs to know how to live, it has been answered for him. He might have died for freedom, or security, or national unity; fighting the British, the Union, the Confederates or the Nazis. He might have fallen on a Pacific Island, or a Vietnamese jungle, or an Iraqi city. He might have been young, he might have been frightened, he might have been ready. He knows how to be an American, if he is all of these things.

Walking home, the rain had stopped. A day spent laboring under the layers of glass and steel and light that make up this city had made me tired, but hadn't made sense out of anything. I don't know what I remember and what I've just been told. I was told to remember those who died to make America safe for me. To teach me how to be an American on days like these. Overwhelmed, other people's memories wash over me; of Crow and of Blackfoot and of Cherokee, of Gettysburg and Bull's run and Blakely; of Pearl Harbor, and Dresden and Nagasaki; of Kabul and Baghdad and Karachi. (Of the dead, from a ship, in the darkness between Gaza and Turkey.) Lies are pouring in from men in suits on TV, while witnesses are being processed and discredited, until no one knows what they saw or who shot first. I still know what I believe. The drums haven't stopped. Compassion. Compassion. Compassion. I can't let it be taken from me.

To the dead, today, I remember you. I am humbled by your lives and how you lost them, for me. I still don't know how to be an American the way I am intended to, especially on days like these.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 91- Census Day

Hey all, it's Census Day! If you haven't filled out your 2010 census form, do so! It's fun, painless, and important!

Dear Mr. President,

My roommates and I have already filled out our census form, it providing us with one evening of jokes and giggles about which traditional family role each of the four of us represented. We're an odd sort of household, four unrelated early-20-something females; one white, one Guatemalan, one Puerto Rican-Irish, and one Hidatsa-Mandan, all in a two-bedroom fifth-floor apartment. We hail, respectively, from a small town, an island state, a big city, and a foreign military base. We attend Art school, Massage school, and State University. We're respectively Catholic, Wicca, Atheist, and, well, whatever I am. We all have very different dreams.

One of the surprising things that unites us is the role our grandparents played in our upbringing. Each of us was brought up by our grandmothers, either because our parents had to work or were unable to provide stable homes. My own grandmother watched my sister and I after school while our parents were at work. She cooked us dinner, helped us with homework, and entertained us with stories from her childhood adventures living on a ranch in Wyoming. We loved her and feared her and often suspected she might be a little bit crazy. I think of her now, not as she is, slowly losing her grasp on the present in an assisted living facility in Nebraska, but as she must have been before I knew her; young and feisty and terribly brave. She never went back to school after the 8th grade, because the United States entered WWII and she had to stay home to help out. She adopted two sons and lost her husband to a car accident, surviving the kind of poverty that widows in every society through history have known.

My roommates' grandmothers are the stuff of myth; one is still working full-time yet still seems to know whenever her grandkids need her for groceries, new shoes, advice or a good scolding. One has adopted her grandchildren as her own, facing the difficulties of being a parent all over again, passing her strength and her compassion on to the next generation. These women helped shape us into the women we have become. Our upbringing, much like our current family of four, was never traditional or reflected in what popular culture taught us normal looked like. We learned early, as your own unique upbringing must have taught you, as well; there is no such thing as a 'normal' family.

This is why I am glad that the White House, in observance of Census Day, made sure to point out the unusual makeup of the first family, noting that Sasha and Malia's grandmother lives with you in the White House, complicating your own census form. I'm sure that, for all of the uniqueness and opportunity of being First Daughters, the girls are glad (and lucky) to have the constancy and guidance of their Grandmother at home.

Thank you, Mr. President, for reminding us that all American families need to be counted today, regardless of their eccentricities.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 62

Dear Mr. President,

Today I gave blood at my local blood center. Before any one is allowed to donate, they are asked a series of questions about lifestyle, travel and medical history. When the woman preparing me for my donation saw that I'd been to Palestine, she started asking me about the trip. Soon, she and several other employees were talking about Palestine, where it was, what the political situation is, and their own travel experiences. They asked me about Ariel Sharon and the peace processes, and before long the other donors and I were chatting as well. The man in the chair next to mine had just relocated from southern California for work, and his wife and two young children were still there.

It was one of those perfect, sunny days that Seattle gets, more often than our reputation implies, but not so often that we've forgotten how to appreciate. I'm terrified of needles, and blood, and doctors, so this particular experience is not one I usually handle with very much grace. But this kind man, and the employees and the center chattering away as though we were all old friends, the sunlight pouring in through the windows, even the calm, sleepy greyhound that lived in the recovery area outside combined to keep me from the grips of complete panic. After, we ate cookies in the recovery room and joked about the weather.

We're all so different; facing such different struggles and looking for such different things in life. It reminded me strongly of the concept in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, of a karass, a team of people who work together without knowing it, to do God's will. I may spend most of my days in groups based on false constructs- age, social class, employment, education- but there are other things that bind us together as people, a willingness to help one another, that I sometimes forget in my day to day interactions. In the end, what ought to have been a really awful experience was really not so terrible at all.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey