I’ve got critters in my attic. They moved in about a month ago, I could hear them scurrying around, running back and forth and generally having a field day. I was hopeful that they were squirrels versus anything else, like raccoons, which might be harder to get rid of given how smart they are. The animal control guy came out and put a live trap up on the roof with the promise that he’d have them out of there in no time. After several nights of not sleeping well because of the constant pitter patter of tiny squirrel feet across the ceiling as well as the dog constantly waking up to growl at them, I’m pretty well worn out. Still, I am a big fan of squirrels, when they’re outside of the house.
This evening when I got home I could hear the cage rattling and realized we nabbed the first one. I’ve noted that this evening I haven’t heard the pattering across the ceiling; now I get to listen to the rattling of the cage right above my bedroom window. I am grateful for the distraction this evening. Somehow caged squirrels are a lot easier to focus on than issues of unrest, protests, and violence that are unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri and across the country. Even as I type this I have a window open following the protests, hearing the explosions of tear gas canisters as they’re fired from launchers aimed at protestors by the police.
For me, this evening, I cannot concentrate fully on gratitude and squirrels or the unfolding violence in Ferguson, Missouri and what it represents. While I remain grateful for the blessings in my life I am also aware that I live in a space of relative privilege and safety. In spite of this I could be as easily victimized as the next person simply because of how I look: my race, my age, my gender, and other elements of my identities that make me vulnerable. It is wearying and disheartening. My father was a champion for civil rights for people of color back in the 1960s. Those were difficult and often violent days. We are 50 years from some of that early work and still we are not safe.
I am a grateful but weary warrior. Tomorrow I will go to work and do what I do to help others react, respond, release all the while shaking my head and wondering if we’ve really come very far at all. Tomorrow is indeed another day. The sun will come up and we will continue to try to make sense of what is happening around us. The contradictions of the mundane things of this life–commuting, going to the office, picking grandma up from the airport, trips to the grocery store to buy things for the Thanksgiving feast–juxtaposed with teargas and gunshots, fires and such. And up on my roof, the cage rattles. It is all so very odd. And so it goes.
