I wish I could reach the white women who voted for Trump. I don’t want to hold myself above them for being more moral or better informed than they are. Nevertheless, I wish I open their eyes to see that Donald Trump is harming America and its interests, even (especially) interests that Republicans and Conservatives embraced until very recently.

My loved ones live in a cloud of befuddlement, seemingly blind to Trump’s broken promises, rogue anti-constitutional behavior (threat of a third term), and stoked with fear—fear that Fox News serves up to fill a purpose in their vulnerable existence.

I lost one friend when I told her I had been given the Covid vaccine. 

“Um, I will not be getting the vaccine.” She commented, haughtily, and I never heard from her again.

My mom still will not get her recent Covid booster. She tells me she was afraid and now just can’t seem to schedule an appointment. I offered. I am on shaky ground with another friend. She knows I am a Democrat. She is a wonderful person and a Conservative. Our politics meet close to the middle. Nevertheless, there is a line. For years we avoided talking about politics. Now we avoid talking to each other. 

What do we do? What do we say? How do we hear each other? How do we heal? How do we hope? How do we protect the ones we love? It’s like I am walking in a blizzard. The noise distracts me from any sort of productive focus. That’s why I decided to write. Historically writing helps me clear my head. I need to document our current moment. Oh my God, what is happening? I am actually freaking out!

America! Why?

Stop telling me to be patient and to let Trump have time to lower the price of eggs. Eggs? Do you even remember that the high price of eggs is why you voted for him?

“The jump in egg prices was due to an outbreak of Avian flu that occurred before Trump took office, although how he deals with the outbreak going forward is on him.But this is very similar to the story of the pandemic and Biden. The media kept telling us that people don’t blame the pandemic for inflation, they blame Biden. If Biden can be nailed for inflation caused by the pandemic, we should be able to nail Trump for soaring egg prices caused by Avian flu. After all, people don’t see Avian flu, they see high egg prices.”

And immigrants? People he made you afraid of, (xenophobia)! They are legal immigrants, immigrants who are now being plucked from their everyday lives. Not rapists. Not gang members. Everyday people are being taken. What happened to,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Next it will be college students exercising their free speech. And as our free speech is algorithm’ed away by a South African non-elected dictator, the richest man in the world, determined to hurt the poor, the disadvantaged and the different:

“Rather than ideas competing freely on their merits, algorithms amplify or suppress the reach of messages… introducing an unprecedented form of interference in the free exchange of ideas that is often overlooked.”

You can quote me on this because after the college students are silenced, you will find next it will be people like you and me, a middle class white woman who is trying to use her voice:

“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Look at history. First they came for the immigrants. Soon everyone who pushed back against the current regime was taken by plain clothed, masked officials under the cover of darkness and marched to a prison camp which soon became a death camp where millions were forced to strip down, abandon their belongings and their clothes. Naked, they had their heads shaved and were given a prison number to “serve as efficient management of camps,” which was tattooed on their forearms; dehumanized. It really is Nazi Germany 1933.

No! I am not being dramatic.

Look at El Salvador and the immigrants that were recently flown there via a Trump order. Trump openly ignored a judge who told the Trump Administration to stop the flights. The plane flew on. Men, with no due process, abased and placed in an El Salvadorian prison camp, a camp that is not their home country and left to be ignored, brutalized. How will they get justice? 

My mom says and I quote,

“I like the lady who does my nails because she is an American. I can understand her. I couldn’t understand those other ladies.”

Implication: “English is not their first language. Immigrants are something to be feared. They are not like us.”

In my Mom’s defense, she is eighty-four and wears hearing aids. I can understand why she wants to be understood by the person she pays to do her nails. Unfortunately, her comment is clouded by the fact that Fox News and News Max run nonstop in the background of her home. 

I reminded her that at age fifteen her grandfather immigrated from Luxembourg. 

“Mom, I bet your grandpa was hard to understand when he immigrated here. I hope people were gave him a pass.”

She nodded. 

I am not implying that my mom doesn’t get to choose who she pays to do her nails. What I am saying is I hope she will see immigrants differently. I hope she will consider that maybe there is a world beyond what Fox News is spoon feeding her.

My mom immediately followed with,

“I am not a racist.” 

It was like she had been coached, given a script, and prepared to talk to her woke, leftist, non-christian daughter. How can I penetrate this messaging? How can I penetrate the fact that my mom believes I am the bad guy, better, that I am on the wrong team? How can I have a conversation like we were able to have during the George W. Bush years. I literally have a personal connection to the men who created the torture program for Guantanamo Bay. It broke my brain then. Now this dark piece of trivia feels like a helpful bridge. Like,

“hey, I know one of these dudes. His family seems really nice.”

How can we unify and save this ship before it goes down? I am not sure. Help! 

The alarm is angry drunk loud. It is called an Enuresis Alarm. Beginning in the 1930s, the alarm functioned as a bedwetting treatment, used to wake (thrust) a child out of a deep sleep, alerting them that they wet the bed! It worked by attaching a sensor to the bed, a pad, or your underwear. Once wet, the sensor alerts. I recall that the version I used looks like a vintage baby monitor. The alarm was attached to a pad-and-bell alarm, which meant that the sensor pad was positioned in the bed between the waterproof mattress pad and the fitted sheet beneath me. 

I worked my way up to this deafening, discordant, psychological warfare. For months, maybe my entire short life, I wet the bed. There were no Pull Ups or 5 year old child size diapers back then. I would have probably peed through them anyway. Honestly, I wet the bed so much that I dreaded going to bed.

At least one hour before bed, I resolved not to drink any liquids. Then I would find myself standing next to the kitchen sink, gulping down a refreshing glass of water. I can hear my parents’ voices,

“Beth, please, please stop. Do not drink any more. You will wet the bed.”

Once my bed wetting became a thing, I was advised,

“Beth, if you wet the bed, quietly change your pajamas. See if you can sleep on your (wet) sheets. If they are really soaked, you can get us. Remember, you don’t want to wake your sister.” (She and I shared a room.)

I was four or five years old. I was a barometer of the world around me. I dreaded that my older sister would be witness to my middle-of-the-night disruptions. I mean, she endured my fear of the dark. Because of me, we kept the door propped open and the hall light on. She was also aware of my vivid nightmares wherein alligators would eat my family, which always seemed strange because we lived in Minnesota. How much more could I ask of her? (A lot).

On those frequent bed-wetting nights, I recall that she heard the alarm before I did. I can picture her disorientingly calling my name,

“Beth, Beth, wake up. Beth! Please! Beth! WAKE UP!”

They must have heard her or the alarm because seconds later my parents’ footsteps weakly clumped down the hallway. “Not again!” sighs my step dad, (who I call dad), as he flips on my bedroom light.

 “Bethy, Bethy, you need to wake up,” My mom urges.

The alarm’s bleating is all encompassing. Utterly discombobulated, I try to move. My body feels like it’s stuck in quicksand.

“Turn that thing off!” Dad yells, referring to the alarm.

I watch the cord fly as it is yanked out of the wall. I am pulled out of my bed. I sit on the pile of wet sheets, out of the way.

“Bethy, you are all wet. Stand up,” Mom says.

“None of the other kids wet the bed,” one of them murmurs.

“Can you find any clean sheets? She does this every night. We need to keep a pile of clean sheets. It’s expensive to wash all of these sheets constantly. We need to think of something else,” Dad insists. 

At that, like the chaos during a hospital’s Code Blue, Mom runs into the hallway. I hear the accordion doors open and then the sound of her hands as they furiously dig through our linen closet. She returns with a mismatched set of twin sheets. My dad grabs and hurriedly examines them.

“Where is the mattress pad? Why didn’t you get the mattress pad? Do we have a clean one?”

Mom runs back into the hall and returns seconds later with a pile of sheets. Handing them to him she urges,

“Use these as a mattress pad.”

Hastily he begins remaking my bed.

“I hope she doesn’t wet the bed again. I don’t want her to pee on the mattress.” I hear him mumble.

Dad pauses. Mom walks over and finishes making the bed.

“Beth, someday you are going to have to do this yourself,” Dad says.

Mom interrupts, “Bethy, come here. We need to get you out of these wet clothes.”

Like a searing smack to an elbow, I am alert. Immediately I feel exposed.

“I do not want to take my clothes off.” I think.

I want to be dry. So I awkwardly take off my soaking pajamas and soggy underwear. I put on my dry pajamas. As I change, I look over and notice my sister. She is sitting up, wiping her eyes. She looks tired. I stare. She looks really sweet in her nightgown and tussled hair. Now I am horrified. I hear the voice in my head,

“Beth, you did this to her.” I start to cry.

“Mom, when will my bed be ready?” I ask.

I scan our twin beds with complementary yellow and green handmade comforters. I am really tired and wish I could climb into my sister’s dry bed. The yellow walls seem brighter. I cannot escape. Everyone is there because of me. 

“Bed’s ready,” Dad effusively says.

I climb in. My sister is already back to sleep. My parents leave the room, turn off the light.

“Please leave the door open,” I plead. (They do.)

A few weeks later, I found myself in the hospital. I was told I was there to have a special surgery to fix my bed wetting. Something about scar tissue. I remember people coming to visit me, and someone bought me a stuffed animal. I do recall getting an enema and the nurse explaining that they would insert a tube.

“This way we can make sure everything is out of you.”

I was awestruck as I watched the container fill with the contents of my insides. I know I was put under general anesthesia. I remember fighting the anesthesiologist as they put a big, black mask over my face.

The surgery did not fix my bed wetting. Nevertheless, by the next year, when I was six, I stopped wetting the bed (like most kids do at that age). 

Fast forward to now:

Recently, my husband looked at me, alarmed.

“You are holding your breath. Do you know you are holding your breath?”

I have been coughing since June. I have been coughing so hard that I would vomit. When I cough, I feel peoples’ stares. Several people have insisted that it was my cough that made them sick. I often lead a conversation with,

“You might hear me cough. I assure you I am not sick. If you would feel more comfortable, I am happy to leave.”

My big secret: I also cough so hard that I leak. And what I mean by leak is I pee a little. I didn’t want to. I do. Then I began wearing pads. I also began holding my breath. Holding my breath seemed to make it all stop, at least the coughing, (and the peeing). 

Years ago, and after my c-sections, I tried pelvic floor physical therapy. Consequently, every time I coughed, I brought back to mind the exercises: kegel, breathe, kegel, focus. Now every time I cough, I determined to kegel my way out of every leaky, pee-filled moment. From June – December, I have existed in a slight panic, always knowing an extra bad coughing spell would equate to a pad full of urine. Resolved, I continued holding my breath and power kegeling every all-consuming coughing spell I had and might have.

I heard it again.

“Beth, you are holding your breath.”

It was my doctor. She was trying to listen to my lungs.

“Oh, I do that. My husband says that I hold my breath.” I left out about the pee. She already knew about the cough. “I often coughed myself to sleep. I am so tired of coughing that I hold my breath.” I opined. “You need to stop holding your breath. You need to breathe,” my doctor advised. I tried to breathe. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Your chest shouldn’t move.” My chest moved.

By October I was determined to breathe. That is when I found myself enrolled in eight physical therapy sessions. “I hold my breath. I have this cough. I think my pelvic floor could use a tune up.” I told my male PT. “I don’t do that.” He said. “I assumed so. I wanted to give you the big picture.” I answered. Without missing a beat, he asked if I had been to therapy.

“Coughing can give people real PTSD.”

I felt he was onto something. I also felt my tears. I tried to say something else.

“I’m sure some core work would help. Core work always helps.” He said.

In the next breath, he had me doing planks. My diaphragm hurt. I started to cough. My body was not ready. I began canceling our appointments. Soon, I cancelled all of them.

Last week I made my way to a legitimate pelvic floor physical therapist. She is going to help me get my pelvic floor muscles back to their original strength and function. Yes. This also means better bladder control. We talked about how I hold my breath. I expected her to have me do some core work, planks or kegels. Instead, we talked.

“People in your situation think they need to hold tight and strengthen their muscles. These muscles are stuck in a fight or flight mode. What is going to help you not leak is to relax, breathe and heal.”

That is what I needed to hear. Over and over again I need to hear these words: “relax, breathe and heal.” As I relax and embrace my scars and my secrets, I wish I had a time machine. I wish I could go back and tell little, freckle-faced me,

“Bethy, it is going to be ok. Relax, breathe. Your bed wetting days will pass. You will heal.”

Honestly, I wish literally anyone would have said,

“Hey Bethy, it is ok to wet the bed. Wetting the bed is normal and what some kids do.”

I cannot time machine myself back. What I can do is move forward. I can learn to relax my pelvic floor. And when I think the next cough or hard swallow will kill me, I can take a cleansing breath. I will be ok. In fact, the other day I coughed. I choked. Then I remembered,

“Relax, breathe. You will heal.”

I am getting there.