It's not any late Saturday in October
It’s about 9:00 am on Saturday, October 24th. It is starting to feel like fall. The back yard is alive with birds - a mix of daily visitors (CA Band-tailed Pigeon, Scrub Jay, Anna’s Hummingbird, Towee) and those that are migrating (Junco, Northern Flicker Woodpecker). A Song Sparrow has been around for a bit and their melody fills the air.
It's one of those Saturdays where, if you stay off social media and don't listen to any news, it's easy to think it's like any other late October Saturday.
My restlessness tells me that that is not true.
We are “in it.” I think of it as a reckoning with the roots and the realities of this federated union of states.
When I say “it” - we are in the beginning.
November 3rd is not the end but a milestone moment in our history - a relatively young history. Part of me wants it here, so that I know better who we are as a nation, and as a Black female, I will have more information so as to determine how best to move within it. As a colleague stated earlier this week “I like to see my racism upfront.”
And yet, I am also someone who never wants time to move faster than it does. I don’t crack a magazine cover until the month it is dated. Birthday cards remain unopened until the day of.
Time is the one resource we cannot save, change, or renew (let's talk later about A Wrinkle in Time - the book, not the movie), so I try to stay in the present as best I can.
So on this Saturday, 10 days and counting I am binge watching Killing Eve, in the front bedroom which is the smallest room in the house, shades and windows open, door partially closed, sitting on the bed hugging a giant Babar (not really a surprise is it). I am waiting for the day to turn to the night with the hope that tomorrow my restlessness and dis-ease might lesson a bit, so I can do what I need to do, but mostly to enjoy what is and the promise of what I know will be, eventually.
About The Author:
Jara Dean-Coffey (jdc) is Founder and Director of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Founder of Luminare Group. For the past twenty-five years, she has partnered with clients and colleagues to elevate their collective understanding of the relationship between values, context, strategy and evaluation and shifting our practices so that they are more fully in service of equity. For more about musings + machinations click here.
