The Big Terribleness

"No one wanted to leave and go out into the world, which had changed so stunningly. Even now, years in, no one could get used to it; and conversation at parties still centered around the ways that no one had seen it coming. They just could not believe what had happened to the country. "The big terribleness," said a tall, spindly, and intense woman."
- Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion (p 437) penguinrandomhouse.com/the-female-persuasion

The air conditioner labors to exhale air of seventy-six or fewer degrees as the sun beats down on our porch and west-facing walls. The cat sleeps curled up in the box-top of "The Game of Life," which I won against Daniel earlier this afternoon. As he snores away and I type, Aden and Daniel swim at Willow Way pool, where William works today from 2 - 8. It touches me that Daniel wants to go swim wherever his big brother or sister are working, and that he's willing to bring them cold drinks, snacks and a neck-cooling towel when he goes.  Wanting to avoid the baking temperatures, I hide in the house.

In the blessed silence, I just finished Wolitzer's book, The Female Persuasion, an excellent and thought-provoking read that dwells not on the politics of today but on a loose history of the women's movement and excellent characters who find their place in this confusing world. The quote I borrowed comes at the very end, when Greer and Cory, two protagonists, arrive in the present.

Though it wasn't the theme of the book, this phrase, "The big terribleness," shot me off my seat and to my computer, its resonant meaning driving me to say something about this time, when the ever-hotter days of summer collide with omnipresent, strident headlines to weigh on us all. Or not on us all, which is even more confusing.

The separation makes me think about an evening when I met two lovely couples at one of Rob's work dinners. Over the course of the evening, they asked what I did, and this blog and my book of blogs surfaced and were examined. I gave little away about the content, self-conscious to growing strident or political with new acquaintances, but when one of the women contacted me later, via LinkedIn, she mentioned that she was off to read my blog and I wondered, will I ever hear from her again?  Re-reading the past few entries leaves nothing to the imagination about where I stand with this government and its actions.  Readers of The Post editorial page are also clear on my positions, and I have, in the past, received hate mail because of it.

At the advanced age of forty-seven, I don't need to be liked  - would not want to be universally liked - and yet it makes me sad that such great differences divide us. Wolitzer and I and many of my friends agree on "the great terribleness," but others do not, and that alone seems terrible.

On the plus side, life has amazingly shifted arranged itself to enable me and some of my close friends to go on a mission trip to McAllen, Texas, where many of the separated immigrant families are detained. We will be volunteering at a location that provides aid to families who have been released from detention, and it's been arranged by a lovely women who works at our church.  The fact that my three children will be on a different mission trip at the same time - also through our church - seems not merely providential but ordained.  And so we rest, and we gear up to go out into the big terribleness, in the hopes that we might make it for a time less terrible.