* * *

Eight days ago, with just a few hours notice, Annamarie and I drove to my parents' house in Three Oaks, Michigan, so I could take care of my dad after hip replacement revision surgery. He had his hip replaced when he was thirty-seven, due to rheumatoid arthritis, he is now fifty-four. Last August, they had replaced the metal ball and plastic cup that form the inner assembly of his artificial hip, due to wear and tear. Since then, he had dislocated his hip four times, each time requiring an emergency room visit. Thus, they went in again, and changed the ball and cup assembly to a larger size, one that is less likely to dislocate. When we drove down to their house, he was still in the hospital, having just had the surgery that morning.

* * *

Seven days ago, we got up at 5:15am, Michigan time, to take my mom to the bus that would take her to Midway airport, where she would catch a flight to Las Vegas, where she would board a bus to the small Utah town where her parents and one older sister live. Her father, my grandfather, was dying.

Around 9:00am, Mom called the house, and told us that Grandpa had just died. She was still at Midway.

That afternoon, we retrieved Dad from the hospital. That night, I had to help him change his clothes, and re-do the dressing on his hip incision.

* * *

For the next three days, it snowed, until my parents' house was covered in almost two feet of it. On the third day, Dad began to feel ill, with stomach pain, headache, weakness, and trouble breathing after standing briefly.

* * *

Three days ago, at around 8:45am Dad called his doctor to see what to do about his symptoms. They said to come in to their office later that morning to see what was going on.

About thirty minutes later, they called Dad back, and told him to go to the emergency room, as his symptoms might indicate a pulmonary embolism. On the way to the hospital, Dad called Mom, and told her where we were going. She was in Las Vegas, waiting for her flight to come home. Later she would tell us that during the flight, she broke down, because having Dad go to the hospital right after Grandpa died was too reminiscent of how Dad's dad had died.

After five hours in the emergency room, with blood work and x-rays, we were told they couldn't find anything wrong with Dad, and they sent us home. Dad decided it must just be the stomach flu.

Shortly after we got back to Three Oaks, Annamarie arrived, bringing Mom from Chicago. Mom had brought two jars of orange marmalade with her. It was Grandpa's favorite jam, and Grandma had just bought two jars of it before he went to the hospital, and couldn't bear to eat them. Mom kept one, and we brought one home to Chicago with us.

* * *

Two days ago, I went back to work, and had a cup of coffee. I should have known better, as coffee often upsets my stomach. But this time, it wasn't the normal coffee effect, it was much worse. I made it through the rest of my shift, then came home and tried to kill it with off-brand Pepto-Bismol. I didn't work, I ended up getting up in the middle of the night for half an hour of diarrhea, and Annamarie drove to get off-brand Immodium at 5:30 in the morning.

* * *

Yesterday, after Annamarie had left for work, I got up, went the the bathroom, and felt as if I were going to vomit and pass out, sweat pouring off my body. I only managed to stay conscious by bending myself over the edge of the bathtub, with my head down in the tub, for about five minutes before I was well enough to sit up again. Luckily, just as I was getting myself in order again, Annamarie arrived back at home, having been feeling ill herself, worried about transmitting whatever I had to her co-workers, and worried about me. I called Mom, and let her know that I had the same thing Dad had, so it was definitely an infection of some kind.

After two doses of Immodium, my digestive system calmed down, and I spent the rest of the day laying around, plying my stomach with mild foods.

* * *

This morning, feeling mostly well, I ate my dead grandfather's marmalade.

I really only began paying attention to politics around the 2000 presidential elections, which I suppose isn't very surprising, since I was 18 at the time, and that was the first election I was able to vote in.   Due to that timing, for the entire time I've been emotionally committed to what happens in our nation's government, the people I've been opposed to have been in control of most of the government, and it felt like whatever it was I wanted to happen, whoever I wanted to see in power would lose, no matter how impossibly illogical, morally misguided, and sometimes evil the opposition was.

I often feel like I exist in a different mind-place than most other people, because so many hold opinions that I cannot understand anyone holding, and that group seemed to always win at politics. This feeling, of course, is always in tension with the fact that so many people that I actually interact with, my friends, co-workers, most of the population of the internet, even most strangers I meet here in Chicago, seem to be within the mind-place where my kind of logic works.  A lot of this seems tied to the differences between urban people and non-urban people.  My jobs cause me to travel to the affluent suburbs rather often, and when I do this, I often feel like I've entered a territory hostile to the very way I think, as well as to my outward appearance and lifestyle choices.  The phrase that best sums up my experience in those places is "Sir, can I help you?" in a tone that makes it clear the "Sir" is not an honorific.

Yesterday, and in the days leading up to yesterday, I dared not hope that the Democrats would do as well in the House and Senate as they were predicted to do.  After all, I had the dreadful disappointment of the 2004 election to show me that even when I was certain that things must change for the better, they would not.  The fact that they took the House by a large margin (you were right, Ian), and may take the Senate (come on Virginia and Montana) shows me that maybe more people share my mind-space than I thought. 

For me, this is not just a political victory.  It is also a victory against a deep personal feeling of alienation from the mainstream of our country. 

Finally.