June 20, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
Saturday was a most beautiful day. Summoned, I believe, by the beautiful Melissa, for her wedding to Dominic. And it was a day for us all.
For the first time in weeks, I was able to protest without getting soaked. Sun out, sunglasses on, I spent the hour alone, thinking of my friends Rich and Christa and John, who served and thankfully made it home. Responding as best I could to the honks of appreciation, of solidarity, a shared concern that 9/11 has brought us neverending war. Thinking of my friend Peter who has joined me whenever he can get away from his retail duties at Hildi B’s. Peter who served so long ago in Vietnam, when we were young.
Melissa brought sun to Morven, who was able finally to begin haying his wet fields. Morven, a touchstone for me these days, gets up so much earlier than the rest of us, working so very hard at the farming life pretty much all of us take for granted. What in the world would I do with milkless espresso? And if that wasn’t enough, Morven, the most generous of men.
Sadly, Morven’s pressing labors kept him from the ceremony.
I will probably never return to Camp Wa-Wa. I didn’t even know Wa-Wa was hidden there in the hills of the South Berkshires/Northwestern Connecticut. But it provided the perfect backdrop for Ian’s invocation to love and for Melissa and Dominic to exchange their vows in the woods before that lovely lake.
For me the most wonderful thing about that ceremony were the mothers counseling about, celebrating love. I know it was Father’s Day yesterday, but what an extraordinary thing it is that women do when they become fierce and conscientious and loving mothers.
This sweet Saturday made me appreciate the power of a loving family. You could see it in the faces of Melissa’s mom and brother and sister; in what they said about their daughter, their sister. You could hear it in the voices of Dominic’s family as they sung to the new couple. It made me very happy for them but a bit sad for me. Because my family was so often fractured by stress, religion, politics, poverty, and mild mental illness.
Melissa and Dominic are very different but take these differences in stride; their mutual affection is palpable. And even more important to me, their mutual respect is unquestioned.
Even for me, increasingly uneasy amongst too many people, and the “too many” threshhold seems to drop with every passing day, this was a most beautiful day. I left after the toasts, so glad I had gone to the wedding but getting tired, glad to be going.
I slept from nine to two in the morning, suddenly too awake to sleep. And made the mistake I often make at moments like this. I checked the computer. And there was the disturbing news from Istanbul, Turkey.
I don’t know if you have been following the demonstrations at Gezi Park and Taksim Square but this is a battle for the commons. For a public square. For the trees. The public versus the private interest.
And on Saturday the police routed the people in their park. With tear gas, water cannons, pepper spray, rubber bullets. And, like Tahrir in Cairo, much too many casualties.
Anyone who knows the story of our trade union movement, the civil rights movement, of the anti-war movement knows about tear gas, of being beaten. But it is always so heart-breaking to watch the police wade into a crowd, letting loose. When it seems it’s become personal. Why won’t they just go home, these rebels, radicals, the rabble? And, of course, the powers that be have so often demonized the dissenters – it’s no wonder the cops are so ready to drive them away, smash them into submission.
And so I was worried about my friend Ahmet who I imagined in the very thick of it. Ahmet who inspired me, and joined me each day, as we began our demonstration about Iraq and Afghanistan these many years ago. My friend Ahmet who left teaching economics here to return to his home in Turkey.
As I tried to find sleep, to banish the sight of the water cannons, I kept imagining Charles Dickens. It’s probably sad yet revelatory that rather than dream of the beautiful women of the wedding, I remembered the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities.”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness …”
I embraced the vision of the love I had witnessed, of that most beautiful day. But took a sleeping pill just in case.