And Now We Gather

Building community will keep us strong

Sherrod and I with some of the 140-plus patriots who are not giving up on our country. I highly recommend hanging out with people like them. Photo by Carrie Wager.

Good morning from our home in snowy Cleveland, where the temperature is currently seven degrees. In our kitchen, the local NPR station (WKSU) just announced that it’s even colder at Cleveland’s airport. I giggled as I stood at the stove. All these years later, I still hear comedian George Carlin mocking such weather updates, “’cuz I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport.”

On this Inauguration Day, we find our laughs where we can.

This is the current view from our kitchen door. As you can see, the sun has yet to rise, and our deck is a graveyard of potted plants. The lighted room to the right is where I am sitting right now, writing to you. Until this fall, I had never succumbed to such gardening neglect, and after the first snow the evidence of my surrender really bothered me.

Events in recent weeks have changed my view. After a two-week bout of bronchitis and then a fall over a loaded clothes basket that fractured my right shoulder, I am willing to see the snow-covered plants as evidence of my priorities. Some things really can wait.

As a wise person recently said to me, if we don’t make time for our wellness we’ll be forced to make time for our illness. I wanted to plow ahead after the election as if I was in complete control of everything. My body had other plans.

I was talking to Sherrod while carrying an armload of clothing and distracted as usual. It’s as if my brain said “enough,” and declared itself unwilling to continue the charade that life is normal right now. Down I went.

My body has forced the issue, and while I am not up to thanking it, I am acknowledging its wisdom. I’ve written before about how I see grief as that monster banging on the door until we let it in. We must sit with it until we get bored with each other. We’ve reached the point where this creep is fraying my last nerve. Good news, indeed.

I am writing now about my arm injury because photos are starting to pop up featuring me in an arm sling. People want their selfies, especially when Sherrod is with me, which is always right now. This is driven as much by kindness as habit, I remind myself. They’re just happy to see us.

I have reached the age in which any problem can be greeted with a single reassurance: I have been here before. In this instance, it is accurate to the point of embarrassment. Last April I took a tumble on wet pavement as I was racing in platform sandals and cracked the same shoulder. This time I landed on padded carpeting and Sherrod was swift with the rescue.

As soon as I landed, I knew I had lost full function of my writing arm. I was afraid I might end up in a cast this time, and so I made an immediate decision. I would not go to the emergency room until I wrote my first Substack essay of the New Year. I set my Uplift desk as low as it would go and proceeded to peck out the piece I had been thinking about for days.

This may have struck Sherrod as lunacy, but this is where love comes in. Instead of trying to talk me out of it, he simply gathered up his reading and sat on the sofa in front of my desk.

“Let me know when you’re ready to go,” he said.

As I later texted my dear friend Benjamin Dreyer, I wrote through the pain because that’s how this year is going to go. To which he responded, “Connie Marie Hortense Estelle Schultz! Ye gods.” My new byline, should I ever find the nerve.

Yesterday, we made our way through a snowstorm to a community center in Richmond Heights, an eastern suburb of Cleveland. A crazy endeavor, perhaps, but weeks ago we had accepted an invitation by Mayor Kim Thomas to gather with Democratic activists and talk about what comes next. It would be our first joint public event since the election, and we are aware of what it says when we show up. We are not giving up.

A young former campaign staffer, Terry McCafferty, offered to drive us, which became an even greater blessing as neighborhood flurries turned into highway whiteouts. We all agreed that few would make it in such a storm, but we had given our word. We felt sturdy in our commitment.

Boy, were we wrong. The room was packed. More than 140 people showed up, and some had to stand. So many familiar faces, and new ones, too, including a school board member in his early twenties. Sherrod and I walked down the center aisle to the front of the room, speechless. Quickly, we found the words.

We gathered as a community, and in community we searched for signs of hope as the snow continued to fall. Sherrod and I quickly pointed out that it was easy for us to find reasons to hope, as we were looking at more than 140 of them. In the next hour or so, we explored all the ways we can help one another stay engaged and connected. I’ll be exploring these ideas with you throughout the year.

Yesterday, I shared on social media this photo. It was my view during my final visit to Sherrod Senate office in Washington D.C., in December. Most staffers were already gone. The walls were empty, and towers of boxes were everywhere. But our grandchildren Milo and Ela were there, too, and they were laughing as they set up a pretend office and bounced around on an inflated ball chair.

Their joy was a welcome reminder that life is never one thing. When I look at this photo now, I think of that and feel the victory of love.

Ah, and here comes the sun.

View from my desk at 8:54 a.m.