Resolve.

I question pickups of the marginalized by the unidentified on streetcorners in the name of safety: a female graduate student in the sciences posing zero threat to five men in a trained tactical unit suddenly removing her from her life and chosen land horrifies. A person detained at their very interview for citizenship and imprisoned for voicing opinions that I support.  

What if these were my friends? Could they be?

And, a judge arrested.

Could even this post alter my life-trajectory too?

Citizens willing to justify these choices in the name of crime prevention when overall the country is a safer place. The balance on those scales of justice weighs on in a direction that breaks any semblance of balance; treat all accused the same and sentence by institution rather than trained eye. And, summarily decide that some lives are not to be valued.

I place my reflection in the context of my arrival story at the land of the mouse this year. It was a quieter visit : no parks but sunshine, good food, better friends and escapism needed in a time indescribable.

Lighthearted, I was not in an off-kilter world; a collective malaise seems to be the thief of joy in many domains.

My airport driver was a 70 years young Haitian man who spoke of street brawls in his youth, and of disappearances unwarranted (see the play on words there) and unexplained in his home country. In these United States, his work as dishwasher and then line cook at Pizza Hut brought him joy. How he could describe the pizza with affection – Pizza Supreme – you could hear the memories in his tone tied to his perceived good fortune.

He told me of his Mexican friends, and his Uzbek friends. He also told me that the current mouse land visitors were people whose trips were scheduled long ago; he worried not only for those undocumented but those financially precarious.

I wonder if you can hear my memories in my tone of voice: when I speak of this annual trip, or my children, or other elements of the past. Perhaps my hearing is muddled in the retrospective. But I feel the soul longing for the time remembered in the tone and affect of my reminiscence.

I too wonder if those memories tie us to a frozen past. The driver and me both. Tie us and freeze us to a time when political news could be a background story rather than a mental weight. For good and bad.

I asked that cabdriver what kept him going now that he perceives that we in his chosen country may need to learn the lessons of his youth.

He said one word.

Resolve.