I have a theory that there are two types of men who voted for Trump: one is men who believe the rhetoric, who want the wall and the labels and the restrictions, whose fear-based hatred of anything Other drives them to stupidity and violence; and two is men who believe that there was no clear, good choice but that Trump was the least bad of two bad choices.

And while I disagree utterly with your assessment and choice, I can say that you are men who fall into the second camp. You see Trump’s ugliness and implied violence and fascist slant, and you voted for him not because you admire that about him, but because you thought the other option was worse.

I know that you are in the second group because I could not bear to associate with the first type of man, the type who hates based on race, gender, orientation, or anything not inherently evil. And because I have seen your goodness in other settings.  And because you have told me you only voted for him because of the other option.

When the election results began coming in last night, I began to panic. My heart started pounding, my chest ached, and I had a hard time breathing.

Because for me, choosing Trump is untenable. Choosing a bigoted, racist misogynist with the temperament of a grumpy toddler who needs a nap as the leader of the free world is not the least-worst option out of two bad choices. It’s the worst possible choice we could have made, and I expect absolutely nothing good to come from it.

From your choice.

And as the night wore on I grew angrier and angrier, my lungs tighter and tighter until I found myself making a sound that I had only previously made at someone’s death, a breathless, wailing keen of grief.

No one died, but something died.

My belief that Americans are, at their core, intelligent people, perhaps.

My faith in our judicial process.

But also…my trust in you.

How can this dissonance stand? How can good men vote for such a bad man? Is all of your goodness negated by this bad choice?

I still think you are good men.

But doubt has crept in to my feelings about you.

My concerns about Donald Trump as a president are myriad and complicated and deep. But my two largest are these:

Will he protect the environment? (No; he has stated that he believes climate change is “bullshit” and high on his priority list for his first 100 days is negating the Paris Climate Agreement and besides, he obviously has chlamydia from all that time he’s spent in bed with Big Oil.)

Does he stand up for human rights? As a feminist, I am most deeply worried about him stripping away women’s rights, because I know that when women start losing their rights, so do all the other groups that are seen as Other. (This is how I can answer that question: Nathan, today, in attempt to get his mother to stop weeping, joked with me. “Mom!” he said, “do you think Donald Trump likes libraries? He’s gotta like libraries, right? Who doesn’t like libraries?” and then I fired back, “No! Of course he doesn’t like libraries. He likes strip clubs and women with big tits in short skirts that make it easier for him to grab them by the pussy” and if that doesn’t illustrate how devastated and destroyed I am by this election—the fact that I shouted two words I absolutely detest at my 16-year-old son whom I adore—then I don’t know what could. Donald Trump will not stand for women’s rights; he will try to strip them because stripping is what he does to women. He stands for the rights of wealthy white men. Preferably angry white wealthy men who cannot bear the social ramifications of treating all people like human beings. He sees women as objects for having sex with.)

The man you voted for is power hungry and he will use that power to do bad things.

Already he is doing something bad: he is infiltrating my relationship with you. He’s making me trust you less. He’s making me wonder whose side you’re really on. He’s making me a little bit terrified that you are secretly men of the first camp, men who ridicule women, minorities, handicapped people. He’s making me fear that, given the choice, when Trump starts trying to give women’s power back to men, you might be tempted to accept it.

Before this vote, I never saw you as the patriarchy.

But now, a little, even though I still think you’re good men—now, you too are the patriarchy. To me, in my heart.

I trust you less.

(And, honestly: I am angry at you. So, so angry. Whatever political reasons you had for voting for Trump should have been superseded by a non-negotiable abnegation of Trump’s views on women, because I am a woman, because your daughters and your sisters and your mothers and your aunts and your neighbors and your friends are women, because I know you know women aren’t only objects but people, but when you voted for him you negated that. I am so angry I want to punch holes in walls and throw everything breakable around me against cement, I would like to incite violence against you but there is a small voice that says but they would only think you are a hysterical woman and see: already how it has changed, my trust in you.)

So here is what I need from you. From the men I know who voted for Trump.

If you want me to trust you again, if you want our relationship to be based in respect instead of fear, if you want to earn back my open and untainted affection for you, you have to doubt.

None of you have gloated, but you never can. Because you have to know that he is a danger to the world and you have to know that gloating for the triumph of badness is as horrible as the badness itself.

You have to tell me, “Yes, I voted for Trump, but I am not sure it was the right thing.”

You have to watch him and be sickened.

You have to know that you have lost any right to complain when his policies affect your life in negative ways. When that happens—and even though you are white men, it will happen even to you—you only get to take it.

You have to protest. You put this man in office, so when he does bad things, wrong things, horrible things, you have to stand up to him.

When he tries to lay waste the environment, you need to be there, protesting with signs, shouting and objecting.

When he tries to take away my rights as a woman, you need to stop him.

Your actions need to prove your words to me, if you want me to believe your motivations.

If you only voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils, if your choice wasn’t based in fear or misogyny or narrow-mindedness but in your belief that it was the only not-horrible choice, you have to prove it.

And you prove it to me by fighting against the awfulness you claim to know he is made of.

I need a few days, honestly. I need to grieve. I need to learn how to be in this new world where I am stripped of male allies. I need to know how live with my distrust of you.

I need to tape my shattered self back together.

And then I’ll be fighting, against Trump and all he stands for. And you’d better be there, fighting with me. Because if I’m fighting that fight alone, I will need to learn to fight all the fights alone.

Don’t let me down again.

(These 1349 words are for the men in my life who voted for Trump. I have no words at all for the women who did.)

When I was a young mother, in my twenties and in the middle of the baby phase of my life, I had a big group of eleven or twelve scrapbooking friends. This was at the beginning, when scrapbooking was starting to be the craft that people did. Every month or so, some of us would get together and someone’s house. We’d each bring a card table and a trimmer and a box of scrapbooking supplies (back when my entire collection of scrapping stuff could fit in one Rubbermaid box if I packed it just right); we stayed out until one or two in the morning, making scrapbook layouts.

Those nights were awesome not just because of making layouts. There was also much talking (about babies, pregnancy, nursing, weaning, potty training, and the best places to shop for cute baby clothes) and laughing and, yes, even snacking. I loved, too, that if I felt at a loss for ideas of what to do with a certain set of pictures my scrappy friends were there to offer suggestions. And, as each friend finished a layout, we’d share it with the group, literally passing it around the room so we could admire what shad had made.

One of the women in the group had a sister whose close friend was the editor of the scrapbooking magazine Creating Keepsakes. Through that connection, my friend was able to write some articles for the magazine. This made me insanely jealous (and by jealous I mean “happy for my friend’s success but desperately annoyed and sad that I didn’t have the same opportunity”) because it sounded like such a cool thing to do, write for a scrapbook magazine and be sent free stuff and to not just be a scrapbooker but to do work about scrapbooking. I had a fresh English degree and the unjaded energy of a twenty-something and I decided I would get myself a writing gig like Ellen had.

That goal was one I sort-of accomplished. I never did get noticed by Creating Keepsakes, despite my dogged writing of query letters and submitting to layout calls. But then the magazine Simple Scrapbooks started being published (and its philosophy resonated with mine fairly cohesively), and my friend Molly did me one of my life’s best favors and suggested me to one of the editors as a person who could write well, and then, for a few glorious years, I got to write articles about scrapbooking for a magazine. I never became one of the Important Scrapbooking People, but it was thrilling and rewarding each time I pitched an article and the idea was accepted or, even better, someone would email me to ask me to write something.

It’s something to think about, how the scrapbooking world has changed since those days in the late 90s and early 2000s when everyone seemed to be a scrapbooker. Over the years, it’s become less mainstream. The magazines have almost all ceased publication (o how I miss scrapbooking magazines!), seeming bastions of scrapbooking have come, flourished, and then closed their doors (it’s still strange to live in a post-2Peas world and a Utah County without Roberts craft stores), and small, local scrapbooking stores have almost all vanished (even though I did my very darndest to keep them open by spending as much money as I could). Everything’s mostly online now; I’ve had to adjust to buying most of my supplies based only on Internet images instead of the tactile pleasure of touching (and, yes, even smelling) paper in real life. (Although I do still do my best to keep my one remaining scrapbook store open by shopping there at least once a month. Thanks, Pebbles in My Pocket, for sticking around!)

And those days of my young motherhood with my scrapbooking friends are also long gone. Not just the youth but the get-togethers; out of all my old scrapbooking friends (without whom I’d never have discovered scrapbooking in the first place), I’m the only one left who still actually scrapbooks.

I did accomplish a few things in the scrapbooking industry. I’m still proud of my work for Simple Scrapbooks. I taught at Big Picture and I hope my classes on journaling taught a few people that stories are just as important as pretty paper and cool embellishments. You can still read my work at Write Click Scrapbook.

Mostly, though, I am glad that I have continued to scrapbook, even though my friends didn’t. I’m glad I have some of my and my family’s stories told.

But I miss those scrapbooking nights we used to have.

A few months ago, I was invited to come to someone’s house to scrapbook, along with another person. I’d never met these women in real life, just talked to them a little bit in a scrapbook group. When I told Kendell I was going to an almost-stranger’s house he was a little bit baffled. And concerned about safety, because what if they weren’t scrapbookers at all, what if it was an elaborate set up to…I don’t know. I stopped him right there.

Because scrapbookers are awesome and last night I went and scrapped with friends again.

Is it too soon to call them friends?

I don’t think so, because the love of scrapbooking makes an instant bond. It’s easy to trust someone whom you know totally gets you. I mean…I have a hard time imagining what my life would be like without scrapbooking. On the surface it would look the same, I’d go to work, I’d take care of my family. But there is such a satisfaction and a pleasure in scrapbooking—in the telling of stories, in the making of something, in the recording of family history. It adds a richness to my life. It makes me happy, but I’m also deeply aware that this is a thing most people don’t understand. Even this week, I had lunch with one of my old scrapbooking friends, who I hadn’t seen in real life for years, and she was astounded that I still scrapbook. People wonder how I have the time (I make the time because it is important to me), or why I would spend so much money on a hobby (can you think of a hobby that doesn’t cost something?). I’ve had people say something dismissive like “isn’t scrapbooking just like crafts your kids do in kindergarten?” or hint that it is childish or silly. “It’s not really art,” seems to be what they are getting at, and on one hand I agree with them. “Real” art, something you find in a museum, is different from craft.

But on the other hand, it is art, in a sense, because it is a made thing that attempts to communicate something through its creation. The contemporary Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto said that “above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums — they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level.” Museum art is art, but things that are made through the creative process are also art, even if they are not museum art.

And to be among people who understand that about scrapbooking is a solace and a joy.

I think I did as much in the scrapbooking industry as I could. Some of the people I scrapped with last night still work in the industry, and some don’t, and I have zero jealousy over any of it. I don’t actively seek out scrapbook-industry work (although if you asked me to write something scrapbook-related for your publication or blog, or even better asked me to teach about scrapbooking, I still would be thrilled) as I feel I gave what I had. Now I mostly scrapbook just to feed my creative itch. It is an intensely pleasurable and necessary activity for me. If I don’t have a little bit of creativity in my life I get antsy and irritable; it is like running in that it keeps my depression at bay (it’s either scrapbooking supplies or Prozac!).

But I forgot just how fun it is, to scrap with friends. To be understood. To sit in a room and scrapbook with others who are also scrapbooking, to share supplies and tools and ideas, to admire each other’s work, to talk about scrapbooking and about our current lives.

Whenever that happens, friendship is present.

(The five layouts I finished last night.)

Sometimes I have a hard time finding a way into a story. A story I want to tell, or need to tell, but usually it’s these important ones that are the hardest to start. Because what if I start and then keep writing but I can’t write it right, can’t do it justice, can’t write what needs to be written in a good way, even if—especially if—it’s not a good story? Not an easy story, like this one I need to tell, a story that’s not a good story and I don’t want to tell it because telling it makes it true, makes it real, and yet—perhaps the only goodness in telling a hard story is the relief—a sort of solace—of telling it well.

I want that solace.

Tonight I read this poem, “Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country” by Angel Nafis. And then, somehow, here it is, my way in, even though the poem and this story have nothing, really, in common. Not in an obvious way, and all heartache is specific to its circumstance—and yet, all heartache is also the same. It is a brave poem that speaks bravely to grief and loss, to the self that has lost and fears more loss.

It gave me a little handle on my fear and made me think I can ride my moon hide through this upcoming darkness.

(And if you are bothered by the F word in the poem, I don’t even know what to say to you.)

But enough of poetry: here is the story.

In the middle of August, just as we were planning our trip to New York, Kendell started having a hard time breathing when he exercised. I’ve not yet felt like he was fully recuperated from his cardiac arrest last April, but this was definitely a downswing. First he was having to stop after five minutes, then three, then two. He’d exercise but get out of breath. His energy started to lag and he started sleeping more, and finally—the week before our trip—I convinced him or he decided that this wasn’t normal and he should have the cardiologist check it, just in case.

So in we went, and after hearing his symptoms and listening to his heart (I have come to be able to read the merest hint of a cardiologist’s facial inflection when she hears a murmur, to prepare myself for the bad news before she says the bad news), the doctor ordered some tests, and after an EKG and an echo and a TEE (trans esophageal echo, which is a tube down the throat with a camera to look at the heart), after anxious waiting it was confirmed:

his valve, the one they just replaced last October, the one that should’ve lasted for 15 or 18 or 20 years, is already failing.

Piece by piece/The body prayers home

When he had his aortic valve replaced the second time (last October. As in: one year ago. 12 months. 52 weeks.) it was failing because of scar tissue. When the pathology came back and the surgeon explained, I thought but wait. How does replacing the valve with another valve stop the scar tissue from growing? Shouldn’t we be addressing the reason why grew? Won’t it grow again?

But I am not a cardiac surgeon or a cardiologist. I’m only a person who is starting to learn something I didn’t ever want to know, so many meanings of the word heartache.

When he had his cardiac arrest, the electrocardiologist surmised that scar tissue had grown in the layer of tissue where the heart valves are located, interrupting the electrical current. When he explained this to us, I thought but wait. Scar tissue again? Can’t anyone stop it from growing? Isn’t there a medication?

But I never thought it was still growing.

But it is. The process of healing is killing him.

So here we are, facing down his fourth major heart event in seven years. Or, more terrifying: his third major heart event in one year.

And I have to tell you. This isn’t happening to me. I don’t have to have the physical experience of the chest crack, the sternum sawed open, the heart cut, the stitching and the medications and the pain and the pain meds. I only have to witness, and try to encourage and uplift. I only have to empty pee and fetch water and rub feet and manage prescriptions.

I don’t have to suffer like he does.

(If even the medicine hurts too)

But I am tired.

I’m tired of witnessing his suffering. I’m tired of him having to suffer. I’m tired of how life keeps teaching us that you have nothing if you don’t have your health is the truest cliché in existence.

Fuck the fog back off the mirror.

I’m tired of waking every night in terror just to listen for his breath and of waking in the morning with my teeth aching from grinding them in my sleep, with my hands aching from making fists all night.

I want our life back, the life we had when he had his health (even though if I follow the trail I don’t know where that life existed). I want to just be normal.

“You’re lucky to have Amy,” one of his friends told him after he heard about another heart surgery (some people have started to think oh, Kendell, another heart surgery! No biggie, he does it all the time and others are…more compassionate, more understanding that it is worse, much worse, not easier, each time), trying to lighten the conversation. A statement that’s probably true unless you know how small my capabilities for nurturing and nursing are. But the other way around is also true: I am lucky to have him, with his laughter and his drive and the way he takes care of me by taking care of everything, by the way we work together (he runs the weed eater; I mow) and because of our history and our family and our us-ness.

I don’t want to lose him and I am terrified of losing him.

(still your heart moans bride)

Which is why we are trying it again, one more time. This time, they are trying a mechanical valve (as his others have been first bovine and then porcine). This time, we will try to come out on the other side of the odds (four percent of replaced aortic valves fail, and of those failures ten percent fail because of scar tissue, so it’s a medical issue no one pays attention to because who would make money off such a tiny percentage?), even though on the other side is life-long blood thinners and monthly INR checks and worrying about a stroke or a brain bleed for eternity.

November 14. Deep breath: we’re doing this one more time.

Goodest grief is an orchard you know. But you have not been killed
Once.