The Thief of Dreams

With every new Donald Trump announcement or proclamation that draws on the worst in us, I think about my daughter.

She’s young, only twenty-six. Her life is really just beginning. She’s at the age where you create dreams about the future, think about the life you will lead, let your hopes and aspirations wander as they will. Anything is possible. All doors are open. This is a moment we cherish for our children and try our best to prepare them for. We had such moments when we were young. They only appear once, and they are glorious, full of exciting uncertainty and potential. In those moments, we can be anything, do anything. Why not?

I had that freedom to dream, that open chance at optimism, when I was young.  Now that I’m not young, I know well how precious that dreaming was.

But every morning I get up to some new haughty, unsettling declaration by Donald Trump that I know must infringe on those freshly minted dreams my daughter and others like her are making. His denial of climate change is possibly the most arrogant of his declarations.  With that, he commandeers the safety and well-being of our planet and its people.

WBUR in Boston reported recently on the growing problem of climate anxiety.  I have had conversations with younger people, some of whom have decided not to have children because of the precarious state of our future.  What about the many of us who do have children? What of those young people who, despite the times, want children?    

It’s hard to build dreams, those most delicate of bridges, in such an atmosphere of darkness.  I am so angry at Trump. I am angry at him for many reasons, but mainly I am angry at him for stealing the future.

How dare he. How dare he pollute the ability for young people to plan their futures in serenity and peace and with hope. I’m calling him out for the thief he is.

The thief of dreams

With every new Donald Trump announcement or proclamation that draws on the worst in us, I think about my daughter.

She’s young, only twenty-four. Her life is really just beginning. She’s at the age where you make dreams about the future, think about the life you will lead, let your hopes and aspirations wander as they will. Anything is possible. All doors are open. This is a moment we cherish for our children and try our best to prepare them for. We had such moments when we were young. They only appear once, and they are glorious, full of exciting uncertainty and potential. In those moments, we can be anything, do anything. Why not?

I had that freedom to dream, that open chance at optimism, when I was young.  Now that I’m not young, I know well how precious that dreaming was.

But every morning I get up to some new haughty, unsettling declaration by Donald Trump that I know must infringe on those freshly minted dreams my daughter and others like her are making. It’s hard to keep up. A month or two ago he was threatening to unleash Armageddon. How can you dream beautiful dreams when you’re worried you might be blown up, or at the very least witness the dogs of war unleashed on North Korea with no certain outcome? Then Trump let loose the dogs of racism as well. White supremacists and neo-Nazis, and whatever else they call themselves, feel like they can come out of the woodwork. And they have, with disastrous, chaotic results. He’s empowered them to show their true colors, and there was Trump’s old supporter, David Duke, in Charlottesville to cheer them on. A woman was killed. Trump embraced this. Now it's about Jerusalem.  We're on pins and needles, worried violence will unfold. What will he do next?  Every day is built on uncertainty.

It’s hard to build dreams, those most delicate of bridges, in such an atmosphere of crude turmoil, of hatred and danger. I am so angry at Trump. I am angry at him for many reasons, but mainly I am angry at him for poisoning the emotional landscape around him, like what the damaged nuclear reactors Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima did to the earth. Things don’t grow in those sterile places.

How dare he. How dare he pollute the ability for young people to plan their futures in serenity and peace and with hope. I’m calling him out for the thief he is.

Oh Diana!

In the late 1970s, I belonged to the Midtown Squash Club in New York City.  It was a great little club.

One of the members was Diana Nyad.

She wasn't Diana with a capital D then, but she was getting there.  She was an amazing athlete to watch.  In incredible shape with a fierce drive and whiplash power in her stroke. I loved to watch her play.  Everyone knew her.   

But we didn't know what she would become.  A world-class squash player? An Olympic athlete of some kind?  The first woman to summit Everest?  All I know is that she put me in awe.

Through the years I heard about her from time to time.  I don't recall under what circumstances.  But then she began this Cuba to Florida swim, trying and trying.  She came front and center into the news.

I saw that she was on Twitter, so in the spring of 2012 I contacted her and told her I used to watch her play squash years go and that I loved watching her.  She replied.  "1970's huh?  Time sure flies."  We exchanged, oh, maybe five or six tweets.  It was such a treat to be "talking to her."

And now she's done it.  She tried and tried and if at first she didn't succeed, she did.

                                                           

And what did she say when she emerged from the water after 50-some hours in the ocean swimming?

"You're never too old to pursue your dreams."

She's sixty-four!