What a Quarter in a Parking Lot Meant to Me Yesterday
I’ve been in a bit of a sleepwalking, shambling state since Wednesday.
That itself is not altogether terrible, probably just a result of stress hormones deployed by the parasympathetic nervous system flooding my body like Novocaine, blocking pain signals, dulling the senses, replacing a racing heart with a floating feeling. In these times, I feel like I’m behind thick glass. I’m grateful for it but it’s also discombobulating for who rather likes being embodied. Thank goodness for the wisdom of the body and its ability to override your choices sometimes.
John and I were walking Wednesday afternoon — the day after the election, the day we knew — and noticed together how strange and unreal the day felt outside in our normally busy neighborhood, too, like that inner weather system I was feeling was externalized. The air was heavy, almost soupy, the sky was gray, the mood was somber and quiet. John remarked that this was how it felt in our other old neighborhood, also usually active, on September 11th all those years ago.
Back in 2001, we were among others walking, as if doing a performance art processional, to the local park; we were all quiet, solemn, in our heads, moving through the sad syrup of the day. It also felt like you could hear a pin drop. John was right. The day after the election was like that, too. It felt heavy with that thick, disembodied, sandbagged, moving-through-a-public-tragedy way. Like you’re watching a movie, but also inside it, but also miles away but also not. It is akin, too, to the days after a major traumatic event when your body is floaty with old cortisol.
The day after the election, I took a bath at 3:00 P.M. I work from home so if I’ve done my work, I can do that kind of thing but I rarely do. It feels like cheating, like I’m a slacker, but there was literally nothing else I could do with this body that felt right, and I certainly couldn’t concentrate. I just needed to float. I found a packet of lavender salts under the sink the other day, before the election, and somehow I filed that away in my mind. As I sank in the tub, in the steam, lavender wafting, the sunless afternoon gray sky poking through the bathroom window, the thing that felt right was to read Joan Didion, specifically her essay collection, The White Album. She wrote with such cool, sharply precise verse, and that was exactly what I needed. No emotions, just the facts as interpreted and described by the observer herself. If she can write about tumultuous times of the late 1960s — assassinations, protests, murderous cults, war, pandemonium — with such grace and equanimity, I can surely attempt to live through this mess now.
That day-after morning, neither John nor I wanted to get out of bed to check the news, so I went to the shower, clanging around to try to wake him up. After waking up at 4:00 in the morning on Tuesday so restless to vote, the feeling hadn’t been great when we went to bed. I came back to the bedroom to get dressed after showering and John was awake. “He won,” was all he said. I crumpled on the edge of the bed, sobbing, wailing, crying, heaving, shaking, rocking, yes, all the things the rightwing mocks us for, and it moved through me like an aggressive vomiting session, the kind where you pop a blood vessel in your eye. Ruby-Mae shook, too, but mainly she was strong for me, kissing my hands, my face. Before too long, our son, 22, came into the room, somber. “I know,” is all he said, his hand on my shoulder. “I know.”
Curiously, after that big deluge, I haven’t been crying much but it’s because of the internal fog that’s rolled in, the one I described. Oh, and just 25 MG of Zoloft a day.
Yesterday, Thursday, in this fugue state, I went to our local Aldi. A terrible thing happens but life goes on, one foot in front of the other, in that blasé, unfathomable, almost comically absurd way. Our food pantry was getting a little light and the last thing I want people in our neighborhood — perhaps already worried about deportation, about their trans kid, about caring for their elderly parents without any support or safety nets, about losing their insurance — to also have to worry about is hunger. It’s a small thing. We can load up our pantry with decent food for about $50.00 and it means something to someone. It means a warm meal, some cereal, some pasta, some soup, a nutrition bar, almond milk. (Speaking of, if you ever want to donate in-person to the pantry, shelf-stable non-dairy milk is the most popular item and thus the biggest need.) It also always makes me feel better to fill it, a little hit of serotonin in the mix of stress hormones. Is it selfish to admit that this is part of the motivation, even just a small part? I don’t much care.
In the parking lot, dissociating like a snake shedding skins, a woman I passed who was loading her car asked if I wanted her cart. Oh, sure, win-win. She doesn’t have to take it back. Like a zombie but a move all Aldi shoppers will recognize, I started to hand her a quarter — a bright, shiny, handsome one from 2024 — to replace the one she left in the cart. (See, Tucker, Russia is not the only country that incentivises returning carts for your quarter back, but I suspect you’ve never stepped foot in an Aldi, let alone pushed a shopping cart.) Anyway, as I started handing her the quarter, she said, “Oh, I don’t need that, but thanks. Keep it.” I held out the quarter still, “Take it for next time,” I implored, like a Jewish mother telling her son to bring a sweater just in case. “It’s all good. Leave it for the next person,” she said, getting in her car with a smile. I thanked her and told her I would, putting my quarter back in my pocket. I left the cart out for the next person with the quarter in it.
Obviously, I am not saying this is everything. A quarter won’t change someone’s life. We need much, much more than quarters or even money. But it is to say, damn, if my fog didn’t lift substantially after that. Maybe it was a coincidence; maybe not.
The point is, there are good people. There are kind people. There are considerate and caring people. And we need to be those people.
Marla Rose is cofounder of VeganStreet.com.
