Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken, and life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!
From “The Mary Ellen Carter,” by Stan Rogers
I first heard of the song “The Mary Ellen Carter” when a friend posted it on Facebook on Easter about a year into the pandemic. It’s not literally about Easter, but about a shipwreck, and more broadly, resilience and not giving up on valuable things when others have. Because of when John posted it, I often think of it at Easter now. Though I haven’t lost life, home, love, or friends, some people already have, so the song’s message is certainly needed now.
Here are a few things we are not giving up on:
Wednesday: Justice
A week ago today, Beth, Noah, and I went to protest for Kilmar Abrego Garcia in front of the Civic Center in Silver Spring. Seeing the plaza fill up with people reminded me of this protest, almost five years ago. There was a group of people in pink, fluorescent vests that read “Rapid Response Choir” on the back, which made Beth laugh and say, “Everyone has to have their thing.” The choir was practicing “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and accompanying themselves with bongo drums and a tambourine.
We had responded rapidly as well, only hearing of the protest that morning. Beth made a sign that said, “Stop the Abductions Now” on one side and “Bring Them Home” on the other. Mine said, “No Concentration Camps” on one side and was blank on the other because I forgot to do both sides. We were there early, so we paced back and forth across the plaza to get some steps.
When the program of speakers began in the area where there’s a skating rink in the winter, people moved in closer to hear. It was mostly state and local elected officials and people from non-profits. Being packed in, I could see a lot of signs. Of course, there were signs that went right to the point, saying things like “Bring Kilmar Home,” “Detention without Due Process is Kidnapping.”
There was someone holding a sign that quoted the Emma Lazarus poem from the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor…The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” There were a lot of signs that said things like “Due Process,” “Rule of Law,” or “No Kings.” These are the things we want these days—it’s that basic.
Signs thanking Senator Van Hollen were among the most common because the day of the protest was the day our senator was flying to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia. Most of the speakers cited his visit and people clapped enthusiastically each time. It’s interesting that Van Hollen was the one to step up because he’s the more moderate of our senators. He’s on the Foreign Relations Committee, though, so maybe that’s why. Or maybe this was just his moment to rise to the occasion.
Toward the end of protest, I dropped my phone on the hard cement that’s under the ice rink part of the year. The screen didn’t just crack, a small piece of it fell out and you could glimpse the inside of the phone through the hole. Surprisingly, it didn’t immediately stop working, but fairly soon it had stopped responding to touch, even though I could still see messages flashing across the screen.
To make a long story short, it took three days to get it fixed and for someone who didn’t even get a smartphone until 2015, I had an embarrassingly hard time living without one for that long. I missed my podcasts the most. It was difficult to motivate myself to take walks or do outside chores without them. I also felt as if I was wasting the glucose monitor on my arm (which is read with my phone). They only last two weeks and my insurance has decided to stop covering them and I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do about that, so missing three days’ use of what could be one of the last ones was disheartening.
Friday: Art
Beth had the day off for Good Friday. She worked on our fence in the morning. We’ve been scraping off the loose paint, sanding it, washing it, and rubbing it down with vinegar to halt the growth of mildew in preparation for re-painting it. We’ve been at this for a couple weeks. It’s a big project (and not one we chose—the city cited us for peeling paint).
That afternoon, at Noah’s suggestion, we visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. DOGE had already been to The National Gallery of Art, so it’s clear the Smithsonian and art in general are in the crosshairs. It seemed like a good idea to see uncensored art for free, while we still can.
We started in the Portrait Gallery and since I didn’t have my phone, I asked Beth to take pictures of Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Moving at different speeds, we kept drifting apart and reuniting so I didn’t remember to ask her to take any more, but I was particularly drawn to paintings and sculptures of writers—Sappho, Edgar Alan Poe, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, etc. Speaking of writers, we caught the James Baldwin exhibit which was days from the end of its run. Afterward, I wished I had lingered longer there, but I found the photos of Baldwin with Nina Simone particularly joyful.
We also went through an exhibit of portraits all the U.S. Presidents in order, including this one of Barack Obama. His was the most recent one. There are placeholder photographs of President Biden and Trump who have not had their portraits done yet. I saw a preschooler in a MAGA hat lingering with his parents near the Trump photo, which was upsetting, but I suppose we were lucky to see only one such hat in the roughly three hours we were there. But still, on an innocent child…
We left the museum and got pizza at Wiseguy and ice cream at Haägen-Dazs, went home, and watched the first two-thirds of The Last Showgirl, too tired to finish it.
Saturday: Rest
There were big protests all over the country on Saturday, and millions attended. There were at least three separate events in D.C. to choose from. Beth went to another march for Abrego Garcia, this one starting at the Washington Monument and proceeding to the White House. I thought about going, but I didn’t. I had not slept well the night before and I was feeling fatigued and generally burned out. I felt a little guilty about skipping the protest, but Maya reminded me that self-care is important, too.
Beth dropped me off at the mailing center where my phone was being fixed on her way to the Metro, and I picked it up. Within ten minutes of getting it back, I texted Beth to demonstrate that it was indeed fixed, checked my blood sugar, and restarted a podcast that had been in progress when the phone broke three days earlier. I walked for almost an hour and when I got home, my mood was much improved, and I had a big appetite. I had a veggie burger, broccoli, carrot sticks, and a half dozen tater tots for lunch and I was surprised how good the food tasted.
Over the course of the day, I read six chapters of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (for book club), Noah and I read from Norwegian Wood and watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale and later we made crispy gnocchi with roasted asparagus and leeks for dinner and then all three of us watched the end of The Last Showgirl. It was just the kind of day I needed.
Easter: Tradition
We don’t usually have big plans for Easter, but I’d sent North a care package—a box full of Easter candy, packed with Easter grass—and they’d received it the weekend before Easter. “It’s good to know the Easter Bunny delivers,” they said when we spoke to them that morning.
We had candy, here, too. I put Noah’s in a basket, but I didn’t hide it, just left it on the kitchen counter, and Noah commented the Bunny “didn’t do a very good job” hiding the goods.
Beth and I had been going back and forth about whether to dye eggs this year. I wondered if it was a strange thing to do with no minors in the house (though I announced I will carve pumpkins at Halloween for the rest of my life and then Beth said she was visualizing me carving a pumpkin on my death bed).
Anyway, I asked Noah if he was interested the day before Easter and he said yes, so Beth bought extra eggs when she did the grocery shopping on Sunday morning and after Noah watched a Formula One race and Beth and I washed part of the fence, we gathered to dye the eggs. We did two each. Beth’s are on either end of the line, including the red egg holding a protest sign. Mine are the red and purple one covered in stickers and the green and yellow one that says “Resist” in white crayon (the whole word isn’t visible in the photo). Noah made the blue smiling one and the pink and teal one with the white zigzag. It was fun. I was glad we did it.
Easter Monday: Memories
The next day, Beth and I were back at work and Noah worked on treating a stretch of the fence with a vinegar solution. I made egg salad out four of our Easter eggs and served it on toast with crudites for dinner. It seemed a shame to peel off their colorful shells just a day after dyeing them, but I was storing them in the fridge, so no one was seeing them anyway.
Earlier in the day I was walking through the living room, and I caught sight of another Easter egg, a pale green wooden one from the 2014 White House Easter Egg Roll, with Barack and Michelle Obama’s signatures printed on the back. And it occurred to me that this year’s Easter Egg Roll, sullied with corporate sponsors who seem to be trying to buy their way out of federal lawsuits, was underway right then. That was a depressing thought. But I took the wooden egg off the mantle and set it next to my computer to keep me company for a few hours while I worked. Every time I looked at it I remember taking my eight-year-old child to have an iconic Washington experience, in brighter days.
Earth Day: The Environment
I had hoped to plant some sunflower and zinnia seeds on Earth Day, but I didn’t get around to it. My only observations of the day were making a cream of spinach soup for dinner (because it was a vibrant green color) and writing a check to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I’d read about how federal cuts and a budget shortfall in Maryland will endanger the decades-long cleanup efforts that have been moving in the right direction but are not finished. This breaks my heart because I love the bay.
But I haven’t given up on the Earth, its large ecosystems or our tiny corner of it, so I will eventually plant those seeds. Keep planting yours, too.