Day 2

I am setting out on another four month trip. Heading down to Texas for a month and then to New Mexico, to Rusty’s RV Ranch, one of my happy places, for the dose of quiet and dark and stars I so desperately need.

I left home yesterday, Saturday, reluctantly. It was hard to leave with all of the ICE activity in Evanston. Activity is not the right word. Brutality. The events in Evanston on Friday were extremely unsettling. Wrong words. The terror unleashed was shocking, sickening.

Before I left, I had been walking my granddaughters to school in the morning. Everyone was on alert, more and more as the days passed. 

Parents at corners watching for ICE. 

Parents being cheerful and upbeat on the outside to shield the children from what’s going on. 

Children walking happily into school. “It’s pajama day for the whole school Bubbie!” my granddaughters excitedly tell me.

It is surrealistic. 

It felt good to be peripherally part of that school community. I didn’t know if I should leave. I felt like I was helping being there. 

But there is a drive in me to go out into the world, to meet people I don’t know who think differently than me, to try to understand. In my bones and cells I feel, I know that we are being divided against each other. Somehow, I think that if I can connect with people different than me, and try to understand, it will help. Am I naive? I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s what I need to do.

Anyway…

Here I am at a small RV park in Lincoln, Illinois called Camp A While. Gotta love that name. It is run by two brothers around 30ish. I’ve been here before. The brothers, Eric and Todd, are so kind, so helpful.

I had a series of small problems with the trailer yesterday. I went through a truck wash cause my trailer was dirty dirty dirty. Can’t be a bad ass woman with a dirty trailer. But I left the fan vent in the bathroom open and a bunch of water from the truck wash, mixed with a bunch of yucky yuckiness was collected on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t draining. And I couldn’t get the cap off my sewer hose to dump my sewage, and my refrigerator wasn’t working. But, I figured it all out and everything is in working order, except that today I have to find a new toilet ring and replace it. Not sure that’s the right word, but it’s the rubber thing that seals the toilet so it holds the water in the bowl. More than you want to know?

I will be keeping in touch with my people at home and will go back home if things get worse, if I am needed. I don’t think people around the country know how bad things are in Chicago. The media isn’t reporting the truth of it. I also will be sharing news about that.

Right now I am looking out my window at beautiful farmland. Can you see that mailbox beside the road? Something makes me happy about that. It looks peaceful out there, idyllic. I let my heart hold that feeling. 

Sending love to you all…