It's four days later. Four days of Life in the Boomer Lane engaged in a wrestling match with herself. Good LBL vs Bad LBL. Good LBL believes in her heart of hearts that all human beings are equal. She believes that we all, no matter who or where we are, have the same basic needs. She believes that common ground is there, if we are willing to set aside our defenses and work toward the common good.
Bad LBL wants to stick out her foot and make Good LBL trip. Bad LBL doesn't want compromise or conciliation or making nice. Bad LBL wants an uprising, a conflagration, a second Civil War. Bad LBL wants our next president to do something that will get him impeached or sent to jail. Bad LBL doesn't want Obama to make nice to him or world leaders to promise cooperation or Michelle Obama to serve tea to the the future first lady. Bad LBL wants to see, up close and personal, that our next president is exactly who she believes he is, and that the fallout will be exactly what she believes it will be.
Bad LBL wants no one to show up to the inauguration. She wants his hotels to fail, his business dealings to evaporate, his daughter's clothing line to collapse, and his sons to run out of hair gel. She wants something so bigly serious about him to be uncovered before the inauguration that he will never be sworn in, except to testify in court at his criminal trial.
Let's be clear: LBL doesn't like Bad LBL. It reminds her of the times she taught troubled kids and had to maintain a persona that went against her basic nature, in order to maintain classroom control. She rarely smiled. She certainly never cracked jokes. She set tough boundaries all over the place. She didn't build a wall, but she would have if she could. She spent a lot of time silently saying to her students, "You don't know this, but I'm really a good, funny, caring person."
Right now, Bad LBL has the stranglehold on Good LBL. LBL, herself, just has to wait this out. Until she calms down. Until she finds a positive way to direct her energy and her resources. Until her sixth grandchild is born, due 15 days before the inauguration. She will focus on that, rather than on the scaffolding going up along Pennsylvania Ave.
She will wrap her new granddaughter in her arms and tell her that the great big world that she has just entered is a huge, scary, overwhelming, at times disappointing, but always glorious thing. That her great-grandparents came to this country in order to survive, and that others deserve that chance, as well. That, as a human being, it is her responsibility to leave this world in better shape than when she entered it. And, as a woman, it is her greatest responsibility to never allow anyone to grab her pussy, whether it be in the form of the unwanted attentions of a boy or the decisions made by an unjust government.
Earlier on Huff/Post50: