“Now What?”

It’s Saturday afternoon, November 19^th, and I’m sitting watching a sappy Christmas movie and I’m weeping yet again. The movie is about caring, love, respect, inclusion, acceptance, joy – and the true Spirit of community. Why am I weeping? Because of what it feels like we’ve lost, and are yet to lose.

Since the election in the US almost two weeks ago, I’ve been going around feeling punched in the solar plexus.  I’ve realised something in the aftermath of the election, particularly watching the reactions of my white friends south of the border, and the total shock they are dealing with, and the intense grief. Something they thought was an intrinsic part of the US turned out not to be quite true. Part of me empathises.

But the other part of me thinks “Didn’t you realise this? It’s always been here.” I realised this week that as a result of marriage, I am now both white and non-white. Forty-six years ago I married a Japanese, a person of colour, and in those forty-six years have seen a fair bit of the racism and bigotry which has always lived in North America.  I was twenty-five when I married him, and entered into an inter-racial marriage and another culture and language altogether.  My life is divided between the two – both in Japan and here. In the years of our marriage, we’ve become acculturated – he to my culture, and me to his. And I think it’s the ‘me to his’ part which comes into play here. I am now just as Japanese as I am Canadian, maybe more.

My husband watched the election just about every minute of the day. He has been devastated by the result. But his devastation is different  - travel to, even through the US, is no longer an option. He has a target painted on him just because of colour. So do our children and grandchildren. Oh it won’t be tomorrow or next week, but already it’s beginning. Problem is, it’s been emboldened here in Canada as well, as we are seeing. And it’s coming out of the shadows in other parts of the world as well.

And I realise that my white friends can’t enter into this experience.  I’m in between.  I’m them and I’m not. White and not white. I think that’s the part that hurts the most – there’s this gulf. But they can take this seriously. Now more than ever.

Yesterday, outside the church, even as the leaves on the trees have gone and the flowers in the church garden are brown, I took this picture. Tiny blooms in the still-green grass. I’m not feeling all that hopeful at the moment; but maybe this is a sign.