The last two weeks by Irit Umani

I don’t feel as sanguine as Irit, nor do I feel safe enough to limit my media intake, but I do appreciate her image of this country being on the cusp of giving birth to a new reality.

Trump Faces Mounting Pressure and Calls for Resignation, Removal—Bloomberg

Pentagon put significant restrictions on D.C. Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests—WaPo

Too Little Too Late: The List Of 11th Hour White House Resignations—Talking Points Memo

January 7, 2021

The last two weeks
by Irit Umani, Austin, Texas

Last night, after watching with horror a violent attempt at a coup in these United States, a thought came to mind. I was thinking that the next two weeks are like the last two weeks of a woman’s pregnancy. I remembered saying, so many years ago, at the end of my own, that “the last two weeks of being pregnant feels as long as the previous eight-and-a-half months combined.” A woman is “cooked”: ready to deliver; sleep is difficult; there is discomfort; the body is heavy. And yet it leads to the delivery of a new life. A completion of a long period of germination, creation ends with deliverance.

The next two weeks, it will be good to take more rest, watch less media, prepare for the joy of a new life being born for a nation.

There are no words that I can find for what took place at the Capitol yesterday. So I put my focus on the fact that at the end, the system, the pregnant body of a nation, worked. Truth was affirmed, born in pain and with the resolve of a woman giving birth.