As I was preparing this morning to go to my lily-white safe space, that 10 am Friday yoga class that I missed last week due to work, and hence am attending for the first time since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, I thought to myself: "I don't know if I can go on doing this."
 
It's not a safe space because of its whiteness, per se.  It's a safe space because this is the culture of yoga teachers, to surround us with unconditional love and supportiveness, to encourage self-love.  It's a very feminine space.  Today, there were three men present, and they all stuck together in a rear corner.
 
All three men were white.  And all the women there were white.  The teacher was white.
 
I live in one of the most diverse areas of the country.
 
So, in my lily-white safe space, two things make me uncomfortable.  One is the monolithic whiteness, only rarely interrupted.  And the other is the idea of self-love, of self-care.  Who am I, privileged white bitch with an easy life, to give this to myself?  To allow someone else to caress me with soothing words?    What even is this feel-good crap?
 
And yet the breathing, the movements, the resting, even the chanting--about which I still feel awkward-- they do calm me.  It is a conundrum.
 
Do I deserve more calm?  After the election of a racist, misogynistic, narcissistic, xenophobic, tax-dodging billionaire and climate-change-denier, is more calm something to be desired?  If this mode of increasing calm is not available to everyone, is it something of which I should avail myself?
 
All fair questions.  As a white woman at this moment in time, I feel squeezed.  I feel squeezed on one side by white male and other Trump supporters who said, at best, No, white women, it is not your time, and-- at worst-- it will never be your time, you stupid fucking cunts.  I feel squeezed on another side by women of color who point out, over and over, that 53% of white women voted for Trump, that we are, as a demographic, traitorous or duplicitous-- and make it clear that this is what they always expected of us.   They seem disappointed but not surprised.  I feel squeezed by sadness that an eminently qualified woman lost the election, that the small progress we were making on climate change will be reversed, that we will lose progress on LGBT rights, women's rights, health care, criminal justice reform.  I feel squeezed by the conviction that my sadness is selfish, an undeserved luxury, the personal stake I felt in Hillary Clinton's election insignificant compared to the stakes of others.
 
Sometimes it feels as though, squeezed from all these directions, there is nowhere left to inhabit.  Even action, even activism, feels potentially self-serving, is regarded with suspicion from within and without.  Maybe rightly so. 
 
Under the circumstances, what do we do?  Help others, is one answer.  I've been trying to do more of that.  Listen, obviously.  Take care of ourselves?  Do we do that?  Should we do that?  Is yoga OK?  Cups of tea?  Naps?  How about shouting, is that OK?
 
One thing I've learned over the years of being a white woman: we are so self-hating.  Nobody can hate us more than we hate ourselves.  Many of us, if we could shrink down to the size of a pin, if we could disappear altogether, we would do that.
 
But that is a cop-out.  When I'm mad at my husband for doing or saying something sexist, and he retreats into self-hatred, it makes me madder.  By yelling at himself, he is preventing me from yelling at him.  Then I have to turn around and reassure him.  He means well.  It is infuriating.
 
So maybe this answers my question.  White women should engage in self-care, whether or not they think they deserve it, if only so that others-- others who may be even wearier, with even fewer fucks to give at this point-- are not forced to do the caring for them.  Whatever, yoga on your own time.  Go sleep on your couch, just don't tell me about it (and yes, I'm aware of the inherent irony of this piece, squeezing away).  Eat avocadoes, while also bearing in mind the funniest protest sign ever.  Kvetch with friends.  And stop defensively flipping out every time someone points out that you are, like, the living stereotype of a liberal white woman.  That is what you are, own it.  And take care.

This is a bad time. 

President-elect Donald Trump, who did not realize he was going to have to staff the White House and come up with names for so many appointed positions, is busy finding the most ill-qualified and white-supremacist candidates available to supervise the executive branch of our government.

Controversy rages among our high school students, parents, teachers, and superintendent of schools about whether the constant student protests in the past week are worthy, permissible, or safe.  The superintendent, after a few days, puts out this message.

My dry cleaner has to reassure me.  "We will be okay," he says.  "We will organize."  I want to ask him: when?  where?  Is there a meeting in the back among the racks of shirts?  He is there six days a week, twelve hours a day.  
Lacking clear organization, I volunteer for everything at random.  I go to the PTA meeting.  I look up the date of my next city council meeting.  I put my name on lists that other people are organizing.  I write emails to the principal, other parents, the school superintendent.  I sign myself and my kid up for a seminar training women to run for public office.  I agree to sell tickets for my kid's school play.  I volunteer to make dinner for 45 kids, to be served during dress rehearsal.  I drive other teenagers home, give $2 (which is all the cash I have in my wallet) to the guy standing on the median, decide to buy a subscription to the New York Times.

I argue with white Facebook friends about racism.  I argue with Bernie Sanders supporters about Hillary Clinton.  I argue with a cook in my restaurant about whether Islam is an inherently terrorist religion.

Making pasta salad, as well as a green salad, for 45 people turns out to be a lot of work.  It takes about 3 hours, given that I have to boil water for pasta four separate times, blanch broccoli in a giant pot, and do lots of chopping, slicing, and grating.  Plus washing dishes.  In the end, there were four foil trays of pasta and two big bowls of tossed salad.  On the plus side, I managed to make all this food for about $75 in groceries, a good value compared to the catered or pizza dinners that other parents have brought.  That is less than $2 per person, and the food is healthy, with lots of vegetables, a little cheese, pasta and a balsamic-and-olive-oil dressing (plus lemon-and-olive-oil for the green salad).  My kid said that some students complained it was too healthy.  Fortunately for them, due to our current spirit of volunteerism, another parent brought sandwiches as well.

Vive la resistance.

​Finally, after a significant vacation and a lot of extra time spent at my restaurant job after my return, I have time to do some serious grocery shopping, and then actually make something from a recipe.  My first foray back into Real Cooking is the Strawberry, Balsamic & Olive Oil Breakfast Cake from Food52, posted 3+ years ago now.  I think it sounds delicious, but I talk to my mother on the phone while it is baking and she balks at the idea of balsamic vinegar in a cake.  Then she confesses that she balks at balsamic vinegar in general, which is obviously a giant error on her part, so I dismiss her opinion.  Has she ever had strawberries with balsamic vinegar, I ask her?  She hasn't. 

​The cake involves layering an entire pound of strawberries on the bottom of a round cake pan, pouring on a substantial quantity of balsamic reduction, and then layering the cake batter on top, batter which itself contains both buttermilk and more balsamic vinegar, for maximum tanginess.  Warning: bake this cake on top of a cookie sheet, because vinegary strawberry syrup will boil up and pour out the sides, and boy does that stuff smoke.

​Second warning: I don't really recommend baking this cake at all.  The quantity of strawberries on top is kind of excessive, and the amount of balsamic vinegar (3/4 cup in all) is really excessive.  The cake was quite moist, on the level of a pineapple upside-down cake, but most of that moisture consisted of a vinegar reduction: strange, sharp, and much more reminiscent of salad than a cake should be.  That said, my husband loved it.  Kid and I ate our slices-- it was not inedible, certainly-- but we lacked enthusiasm.  The bites with a lot of vinegary strawberries were especially difficult to get through.  If you do try this recipe, try halving the amount of berries and also-and-especially halving the balsamic syrup-- less topping might bring this cake into better balance.

Cake was for dessert, of course.   (Not breakfast.  It would be quite a... bracing... breakfast.)  Dinner was fresh corn-on-the-cob, little boiled potatoes from our CSA, and open-face egg salad sandwiches.

In the first half of August, kid and I went on a road trip through parts of the country where we have never before traveled.  We drove from the Washington, D.C. suburbs, where we live, down through Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, in order to visit friends in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Then we drove on into east Texas to see my former foster son, now grown, and his girlfriend at their home in Santa Fe, near Galveston.  On the way back, we returned through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

It was, in some ways, a different world: not only more desperately hot and humid than I'd imagined, but full of American flag clothing, churches in obscure denominations, shiny white trucks, billboards advertising Jesus, and... surprisingly few Trump signs.  That last made me wonder.  My kid was at times uncomfortable, nervous that they would be singled out for disapproval or, worse, confrontation, on the basis of their purple hair and unconventional gender presentation.  Nothing like that ever happened, though. 

The food was different, too.

Things we ate included: at least 3 meals at a Waffle House.  McDonald's ice cream cones.  Burger King milkshakes.  Fried crawfish po-boys.  Lots of french fries.  Fried catfish.  Steamed shrimp and crab.  Seafood boudin balls.  Something that I ignorantly referred to as "gumbo" but which was actually called "sausage, okra, and shrimp."  Crawfish etouffee.  An amazing caprese salad at a fancy cheese shop in New Orleans, with real bufala mozzarella.  Beignets and cafe au lait at the Cafe du Monde.  Actual gumbo.  A sort of crawfish etouffee- Eggs Benedict.  Pulled pork and more fried seafood, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans at a barbecue joint in Texas.  Caramel apples covered in additional things like chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts.  Fried shrimp po-boys.  More french fries.  Subway sandwiches (twice) and chips.  Chicken, fried fish, corn fritters, mac & cheese, mashed potatoes from a supermarket deli in Louisiana (eaten in the car with the air conditioning running).  Pineapple soda, Cokes.  Several beers. (On this trip my child learned to like both unsweetened coffee and Coke.  They were also offered beer at least three times-- they declined-- and made their peace with stopping regularly at McDonald's.)  A number of biscuits.  Gross bagels from a motel, sausage and egg sandwich from a motel, Holiday Inn omelets.  Hot chili and lime Takis.   A very nice sushi dinner on a balcony overlooking a river in South Carolina.  Endless cups of bad coffee, an occasional apple or handful of baby carrots or cheese stick or packet of almonds purchased in desperation for something wholesome.

​My kid said they really liked the food in the South, particularly in Louisiana.  I myself feel that I could now go without more fried seafood for at least six months.  And, honestly, I don't really enjoy the plain steamed stuff much.  We never go for crabs here in Maryland.  Maybe I was spoiled by New England lobster and now can't appreciate anything else.  And, while I love french fries, I had enough to satisfy me for a long, long time.  (I could eat more biscuits, though.  I could always eat more biscuits.)

Reading back through the list of things we ate-- now almost two months later-- it sounds sort of decadent and amazing.  At the time, it was just cloying, overwhelming, like swimming in a vat of fry oil.