On Warmth.

I've spent a lot of time over the past week thinking about being warm. Mostly because it has been Texas cold for the past couple weeks, by which I mean it's dropped below freezing most nights and I've been wearing lots of layers for highs in the 40s. But some of the days had highs below freezing, too, which is objectively quite cold. So I spent a lot of time harrumphing about that and how I left the North to escape winter so I don't know what the hell Texas is trying to do. Then again, I'll think to myself, a week or two of winter is exactly what I'm looking for- particularly when the "cold" weather is still in the 40s most days. So while I don't enjoy feeling cold, it is overall fairly acceptable to me. 

There was even one freak day this week that was almost 80 degrees and I ate my lunch outside in a tank top and took the kids to a park to run around after school. I am a big fan of tank top weather in January. And then the next day it dropped back down, and while the coming week should be warmer, it's also supposed to be extremely rainy. So. You win some you lose some, I guess. 

But today I was out in pretty cold weather and drizzle to participate in a rally/march in support of Palestine and Yemen. It was a bit chaotic and also miserable weather to be out in and I kept thinking to myself that I was absolutely allowed to bail on the march and head back to my car and my warm, dry house. And each time I thought this, I immediately thought of the people living in these places who don't have homes any more because they've been bombed out. Who don't have families to commiserate with, who don't have any more of their winter clothes, who have lost everything. And a few hours of discomfort while warmth and safety await me afterwards seem like the least I can sacrifice. 

I've never had a problem with paying taxes, because to me taxes feel like a subscription fee for participating in society and help ensure that the people who need help are helped. I realize that taxes fund many more things than just aide, but it's how I like to frame it for myself so that I feel good about them. These days, however, the knowledge that my tax money is currently funding bombs and death weigh really heavily on me. I don't want to be complicit in this brutality. I don't want this blood on my hands. And my heart breaks for the people who are living fragmented lives right now at the hands of my government's corruption. 

As I thought about staying warm, I remembered this piece Neil Gaiman wrote based on crowdsourced information about what being warm means to people. He did it as part of fundraising to help Syrian refugees a few years ago, and it is equally powerful in light of Palestine and Yemen today. (Incidentally, one of the most powerful books I read in 2023 was As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh, which is about a young woman living through the recent terror in Syria, working at the hospital in her city as a pharmacist because even though she only finished one year of pharmacist school she was the most qualified person left, and grappling with whether to flee on a refugee boat or stay and keep helping people there. Absolutely heartbreaking and horrific and easily the book I would point to if anyone wanted to get an idea of what the people of Gaza are going through right now, when every single one of their hospitals have been bombed.) 

I have little new to add about this genocide.  But I will say again that I find it repugnant and am consistently disappointed by how little is changing or improving as the atrocities pile up in the middle east. I hope that wherever you're reading this, you're warm and know where your next meal is coming from. And I hope that someday soon the people left in Palestine will have this security too.