November 10: Mushrooms, Donald Dump, Naps

Alas, the story as I had fixed it in my mind proved to be only partly true.  The Bings often cook wild mushrooms, and they know what they're doing.  This particular mushroom had grown outside, under a sycamore, on high ground that the flood hadn't touched.  So the flood had nothing to do with it.  But it's still a good story, and I like to think that the flood left them a gift, a consolation prize, so that for years to come they will be finding edible mushrooms here and there about the house, dinner on the bookshelf, hors d'oeuvres in the piano.  It would have been nice.

Dillard is talking about a devastating flood that destroyed the home of the Bing family.  The waters covered the floors, climbed the walls, filled the shelves and oven and beds.  Ruin.  And then out of the ruin came something good.  A feast of mushrooms.  Think of it.  It would be like having your house burn down and then finding Hershey bars in the ashes. 

I know that I can't keep writing about the ruin that Americans made of America this week.  This blog could easily become a series of rants for the next four or (God forbid) eight years.  I won't do that.  There has to be something good coming after the flood.  We just have to keep looking for it.  Call it mushroom hunting.

I have felt exhausted all day long.  From the moment I got up.  Something like a hangover after all the tension of the week.  The election of Donald Dump, as my eight-year-old son calls him.  My class observation last night.  (By the way, I have no idea how it went.  It was over before I knew it.)  I am coming down from all of that crap.  I took a two hour nap this evening.  I never take naps.  And I'm still tired.

It's going to take me a while to recover from this week.  I still can't watch the news.  Every time I see Donald Dump's face, it makes me physically ill.  Literally.  There are people marching in the streets of America, protesting.  And I want to go to bed and pull a Rip Van Winkle.  Maybe by Thanksgiving I will feel better. Or Christmas.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for naps.

Wake me up in 2020