Four Years Ago

Four years ago I was disappointed. Actually more than disappointed. I was upset that a person I believed was entirely inappropriate for a leadership position of any kind was elected the president of the United States of America. 

I was a stay-at-home gramma. I had left my job before retirement when my mother was diagnosed with ALS and then, after her death, my father contracted cancer, suffered from congestive heart failure and had a massive stroke. When he died, my daughter-in-law went back to work and I had a baby. I went to church and walked with the stroller. My circle was small. 

My niece referred me to a "secret" Facebook group, women of a certain age who were privately venting and crying about concerns. And from that group I found information about the Women's March in Washington DC. I wanted to go. I wanted to speak. 

I found a bus leaving for Washington the day after the inauguration. We were not disrupting the process set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America. We were not going  for any violent end. We were exercising our first amendment right to speak at a permitted venue with a permit to do so. The next weeks were filled with posts with important information. As numbers increased, I would donate more money to fundraisers for port a potties. 

I felt I was the only person I knew in my small town who felt as I did so I bought a ticket for one on a bus leaving at 1 am from an airport two hours from my home. My family expressed lots of concern, but I was going.  A few weeks later a bus was added only 45 minutes from my home and I was able to sell ticket one and purchase a ticket on Bus 2.  

I went to the bus at 11 pm one evening with my apron with the slogan "Women go higher than rude, crude and lewd" and a piece of cardboard. I met about 60 men and women from this small college town, most older than myself. It was the senior bus! I sat with a lovely retired bookkeeper named Daisie who was concerned about the repeal of Obamacare affecting her adult son with autism. 

We arrived in Washington DC - not that easily. Our bus broke down on a highway in some state somewhere around 4 am. After waiting over an hour with no repair person, our driver got on his CB and had other buses with an empty seat or two stop to pick us up in small groups. The bus Daisie and I were on got lost in Washington, threw up his hands and dropped us off in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Neither of us had ever been to Washington, but the local people were more than gracious and pointed us in the right direction. 

We walked for 10-12 hours that day, mostly nonstop. We saw college students, young mothers with babies, groups of teachers and nurses, older women such as ourselves. Everyone was respectful, helpful and kind. Many of us had brought extra trash bags for garbage. We were all "that kind" of person. We shared provisions, talked to everyone, took millions of pictures. But we never even got close to the program or the  march. There were so many women! We did march, we walked in a tight crowd on a parallel street about 3 streets over from the "real" march. Police officers and security were wonderful with questions and directing us. We were all respectful and grateful. 

Our day was not over since we had to find what happened to our bus home. A very nice woman in a uniform showed us how to find the metro that went straight to the parking lot where we hoped our bus would be parked. We finally got to sit down for about 30 minutes. We went to a lot where there were thousands of buses. After almost an hour - we found our bus! 

We drove home to a snowstorm and I got to navigate my way to my house where my nervous family were holding a vigil. The cell phone reception in Washington DC is awful and my phone was dead by the ride home. 

It was the most meaningful day in my life (okay after marriage and childbirth). I stood up for my opinion in a legal and meaningful way. What happened today in the Capital of our Country is worse than what I could ever witness. I will never forget the pictures from today. I will never forget the sadness and how sickening it was. I will never forgive my neighbors, friends and church family who rode those buses today. Yesterday was one of the worst days in the history of this country.