right

I'm going on record here: I am horrified that this country elected Donald Trump. To me, racism and sexism and xenophobia are deal breakers. It's like saying, "My boyfriend is really great, except he hits me." Not hitting you is the bare minimum. Not being overtly racist and sexist and xenophobic is the bare minimum in a president. I am horrified that overt racism and sexism and xenophobia are not deal breakers for 47.5% of this country.

We are all racist and sexist and xenophobic to some degree. We were all raised in a society that told us that black people are a little scary and don't have good intentions, that told us that women are bitchy if they stand up for themselves, that told us that people from somewhere else have weird, unpleasant ways that would bother us if we had to experience them.

But we have to fight that. We have to fight it. If we don't fight it, we are part of the problem. When we vote for someone like Trump, we are saying, "Racism isn't important to me. I don't feel the effects of it in my life, and I don't care that other people do." 

So don't tell me that people who voted for Trump aren't racist. Don't tell me that they aren't sexist. Don't tell me that they aren't xenophobic. They accept these things in other people. They don't speak up against them. They don't, above all, reject them in their leaders. 

I hope, I really do, that our institutions and law are strong enough to prevent Trump from becoming Hitler. I hope that social pressure is enough to keep Trump from becoming Hitler. But there is a very real chance that this is Germany in 1934, and we just elected Hitler. 

I grew up in the Midwest. I understand why people vote Republican. I will never understand why anyone voted for Trump, especially not anyone who claims to be a Christian.

Because I will tell you this: Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who stereotypes black people and calls them "the blacks" to other them. Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who treats women like objects and grabs them without their consent. Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who threatens to make Muslims carry ID cards (sound familiar? see Germany in the 1930s, Rwanda in the 1990s, just prior to the start of genocide in both countries). 

If you voted for Trump and are reading this saying, "But, the Supreme Court! He didn't mean those things!" let me tell you this: the man would say anything to get elected. He would tell you anything about the Supreme Court and Obamacare and immigration and how he's going to bring jobs back. But you have literally no idea what he will actually do. He changed his story every time he blinked. He denied statements that he made days earlier, that were on tape. He will do what is best for himself, not for you. He cares about no one but himself. 

And more: he pandered to the racism and sexism and xenophobia in some (hopefully small) segments of our country. He gambled on the fact that most people wouldn't stand up against that. And he won. Most people didn't stand up against that. They accepted it. If this is 1934 Germany, 47.5% of the country voted for Hitler. If this is 1964 Alabama, 47.5% of the country voted for the white supremacist governor. Trump lost the popular vote, but he won enough people in my home state and others like it that he won the electoral college. 

I don't know what my Oma would do if she were here, but I know this: she stood up against Hitler when the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis. I can't imagine what she would have thought when her party elected a man who read Hitler's speeches for inspiration. She couldn't even stand the sound of German being spoken. I am so glad that she never knew that some of her children and grandchildren voted for a man who used Hitler's strategies to get elected, who talks about minorities  as if they are the source of white people's problems just like Hitler did, and who, I fear, may turn out to treat minorities the same way Hitler did. 

I worry now, speaking out about these things. I worry that I will have to stand in the gap and risk death to stand up to Trump. But I'm doing it, because it is the right thing to do, and because my Oma did no less. 

little me

When I was growing up, computers were just starting to be widely available. We had an Apple computer in our dry room in Liberia (the room with air conditioning and no windows to keep things from molding in the edge of the rainforest, one mile from the salty ocean damp). I would sit at it and laboriously type out answers to the questions asked by girls in Sunday schools at churches back in the US. They always wanted to know how the weird missionary girl lived over there in Africa. 

"Yes, I like M&Ms. I like the green ones best."

Then we would print out the letter on the dot matrix printer and I could make chains out of the side paper with the little holes in it.

Also, cameras involved film. We still have very few pictures of my little sister as a tiny baby, because the rolls of film got lost in the mail on their way to my grandparents in the US. 

The pictures from when I was really little are still those old ones that came in squares, and the color is all a bit yellow. 

The first time I remember being recorded on video was in junior high, when my friend and I interviewed my Oma and Pops about their experiences in the Netherlands when it was occupied during World War II. 

I never imagined seeing myself on video as a little kid. It just wasn't a thing that was possible, so I never thought about it.

Enter the Dutch relatives. 

I know that we US Americans like to think that we are on the cutting edge of technology, but my experience is that the Dutch relatives have us beat every time. They are also way ahead of us in fashion, but I digress.

My mom sent out a video this morning from one of our Dutch relatives that was made for my great-grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary in early 1983. I was three. 

Whoever made the video had filmed my Oma and Pops and their kids and grandkids at their house in the Mitten, and suddenly there was a little blonde bob of hair above a red plaid overall dress, mostly ignoring the camera to play. For a split second, when my cousin D. looked up at the camera, three-year-old me turned toward it, too, unsmiling, just looking.

It was the weirdest sensation. I didn't know that little girl was still out there. 

I remember being her. I even remember that party in the Netherlands, I think (unless we were at the 65th anniversary - was there a 65th anniversary party?). I remember crowds and stairs and being small among a bunch of Dutch relatives and playing with other kids. 

I just never thought I would see her again.

My mom said she cried when she saw it. 

salad

I made a salad for SHO's birthday party this weekend. I made this salad, actually, even though I was slightly skeptical. 

(Mostly I was skeptical because my primary experience with kale was the two summers circa 1990-1991 when my family lived in the muck of the AZO river valley amongst the greenhouses and the old Dutch farmer down the street gave us unending supplies of kale and sweet corn. I think we ate boerenkool and sweet corn literally every night for months. We were broke, and it was cheap.)

The good part about this salad is that I got to spend the entire weekend complaining about the need to massage kale. 

"I don't have time for that. I have to massage kale."

"I would have bought your birthday present already, but I had to massage kale."

"I need time to shower and massage kale between the hike and the party."

"I need a massage myself, and instead I am massaging kale."

See? It works brilliantly.

The fact is that I had no idea how to massage kale. Surely there is a knack to it?

But right about the time the party was to start, there I was, massaging kale. It turns out to be much easier than it sounds. Anyone can do it. I think I did it quite well, actually. I might even have a talent for massaging kale.

I'm still not sure what I think about that salad, taste-wise. Kale has such a strong taste, but it is somehow tempered by the grapefruit. A bit of grapefruit in each bite removes the bitterness of the kale.

I must like it enough, because I'm making it again right now to take to work for lunch. It is a nice alternative to the salad that I finally got sick of after four years: baby spinach, red pepper, carrots.

Do you know how tedious the same salad gets every single day? It's a relief to find a new salad base. (Don't even talk to me about iceberg or romaine lettuce. I have no time for light-colored leaves. They are a waste of chewing energy. And one of the things in mixed greens tastes like dirt, and I don't know which one it is.)

toilet

The house that feels like home in the Netherlands is three stories tall. The stairs are steep and curving and narrow in both directions - side to side and front to back. I mostly walk up them on tiptoe and down them with my feet sideways. The lower set of stairs just twists a little, but the second set makes a full 90 degree turn.

I sleep in a little room under the eaves and rafters on the third floor. The only toilet has always been on the first floor.

I don't know why the Dutch so like to have only one toilet in a house, but they do. And it's always in a tiny room with a tiny sink that only has cold water.

During the day, it is great to have the toilet on the ground floor. Statistically, most of one's incidences of needing a toilet are going to occur during waking hours.

But my Dutch family also loves beverages - tea, coffee, juice, Rivela, milk, wine, beer, hot chocolate, anything - and my great uncle and aunt constantly offer them to us. I once kept a running beverage log while I was here, just accepting every beverage I was offered, and the number, I believe, ran to 19. (12? 19? I can't really remember. Over 10. But 19 sounds familiar.)

AND, my Dutch relatives have no qualms about coffee at bedtime. Frankly, I have no qualms about coffee at bedtime either, save one: coffee makes me have to pee.

The problem with needing to pee in the middle of the night when your bedroom is on the third floor and the bathroom is on the first floor of a house with steep, curving, narrow staircases, particularly when you are clumsy, is the high likelihood of falling and dying. Or falling and making a clatter that wakes everyone up. Or falling and damaging yourself and lying helplessly at the bottom of the steep, curving, narrow stairs trying to decide whether to wake everyone up to help you stand up.

(None of those things have happened. But I am very, very careful, no matter how sleepy I am when going down the stairs.)

The situation has, in theory, been alleviated by the installation of a new toilet in the sink/bath room on the second floor, except not, because the new toilet requires pulling a string to get the water flowing, and then waiting a while, and then pushing a button that results in flushing plus a horribly loud noise. Oom C. calls it the spaceship toilet, and it does indeed sound like a rocket at liftoff.

To spare the people sleeping on the second floor, I still stumble all the way down two flights of steep, curving, narrow stairs in the middle of the night.

But today I remembered not to drink coffee after dinner. Maybe that will help.