a Sunday between heatwaves

Apparently, based on some meta review, eight in ten of these unfortunate creatures who have to hop on one leg and use walking aids for an extended period develop bursitis in at least one shoulder joint once they start walking unaided again. Something about the cavity below the joint and leaning to one side for weeks and so on. Count me as one of the eight in ten. There is of course a light at the end of the tunnel and physiotherapy. I am crossing bridges on a daily basis.

We are living between two heatwaves. The garden is dry, we water a bit here and there, mostly drip feeding the vegetable beds and filling up trays for the birds and hedgehogs and insects. Early morning is the best time, with a semblance of dew in the air. I walk down to the berries and pick a bowl for breakfast. The radio in the kitchen reports on the theatre of cruelty called world politics, government is understood as the exercise of rule that secures its power through brutality and everywhere the vulnerable are punished for their vulnerability. My brother furiously and disbelievingly shares a lead article in the most conservative of Sunday papers that suggests the fires in France and Spain may have been caused by leftwing agitators who want to push their climate change agenda. Where to begin?

In their silent, unspoken way, the protection my parents were able to offer me was that they had survived Hitler and the Second World War. That they had understood what had happened, even if it meant suffering and lifelong guilt. And yes, they forced on to my generation the traumas of the perpetrators, the victims and the bystanders. But at the same time, they were able to explain to me that the democracy I was born into would prevent it from happening again. All through my childhood, my teenage years and ever since despite all the distance I put between us, I have lived with their fears and their traumas and I felt sorry for them and tried to understand their harshness, their nightmares, their weird habits, their silences. It's all because of the past, I used to think.

But today, their fears are becoming real. I am witnessing the uprising of political fantasies of violence, racism to an extent that even I feel threatened, me, a (once) blond, blue-eyed middle class, educated, independent woman. The magic words of my parents, grown out of their multiple traumas, and their belief that democracy works and would protect us, can no longer keep me safe.

And here I am, watching the dragon flies hovering over the bronze fennel, and all I can offer to this world is to try and summon grace, to step lightly, hold on to nothing and remain open.