Dudula Is A Sad Symptom of Unresolved Perennial, Colonial And Political Issues
The author was inspired to pen the poem following the recent resurgent spates of xenophobic attacks, threats, deaths and persecutions. This time around these terrible turbulences, protests and afrophobic attacks are initiated, directed and executed under the banner of the Dudula Vigilante groups or the so-called Dudula movement.
 
Roots and Rules
Dudula means to drive back, repel, repulse, beat back or push away.  The Alexandra Dudula Operation was set up in 2021 in Alexandra, one of the lowliest and most lawless areas of South Africa. It seeks to ensure that jobs and business opportunities go to the South Africans, hence like the Dudula which was born in Johannesburg, it strives and hopes to drive out all undocumented immigrants from their communities and the country.
Dudula is a splinter group from a segment in the Put South Africans First movement which executed and promoted ant-immigrant sentiment and campaigns on social media networks. The Dudula movement claims that it seeks to conscientize and galvanize the South African government to take action on undocumented immigrants and those who are alleged to be involved in criminality. While criminal activities cannot be condoned or ignored, the group seems to be bent on making life a hell for the black immigrants in general and for the undocumented ones in particular in mostly in low-income communities. They are on a rampage in townships where they pump up anti-immigrant sentiment to the highest level. Ironically, while they condemn the illegal activities of the immigrants, the Dudula members  have been found on the wrong side of the  law by taking law into their hands as if they deem themselves above the law.  
 
 
Traction, Expediency and Populism
Why do groups like the Dudula movement seem to be gaining momentum in spite of their anti-development, anti-black, anti-panAfricanism and anti-unity and peace denotations and demonstrations? For instance, the Dudula groups seem to be spreading across the breadth and width of South Africa. Do they represent the sentiments and concerns  of all black South Africans?  Are they fighting a  genuine cause?  Are their aims ,objectives and agendas sustainable and sound? Are they targeting the real problem-causers or they are scapegoating other black victims? What is subtle and obvious about such groups? Are other voices of reason conspicuous by their silence or absence? What about other hidden and hideous forces at play? The author believes that the Dudula movement is taking things in such a sad and simplistic or one-dimensional fashion. This attitude risks isolating South Africa from the rest of Africa. No nation is an island, no matter how powerful or prosperous, it deems to be.  What goes around comes around. All lives matter. South African, Nigerian, Ethiopian or Zimbabwean.  Black or white.  Rich or poor. Humanity is one. Arrogance boasts and blinds. Life humbles.          
 
Cruel and Crude Machinations
One of the possible reasons why the Dudula groups seem to be gaining momentum is the harsh realities that South African blacks face on a daily basis. They have been marginalized for too long. Think of the visibility and accessibility to the increasingly frustrated black South African of another poor black person from another African country who is trying to eke out a living, by doing a menial job or operating a little spaza shop. Historically, we all know of the plight and blight of black people the worldwide, the South African black comes from a previously disadvantaged group.  He/she probably  feels  that the other African brother or sister is taking up his/her job or space. There is an appearance and a feeling of immediacy to the crisis. Is it that immediate?  Is it that visible or immediate? Is it new? Is the other ordinary black person the causer? If all the undocumented and illegal immigrants go back to their countries of origin, will the crime and unemployment levels significantly go down?   
 
The disillusionment that political independence does not necessarily translate into economic independence and prosperity for the ordinary citizen is ear -deafening and unbearable. That there is a fierce competition for jobs and other economic opportunities with foreign nationals is uncontestable.   However, the problem is deeper and wider than what meets the eye. It is deeper and older than the adverse effects of the covid-19. The pandemic could have worsened the situation but like the undocumented vendor who is selling his/her wares on a pavement, its disappearance is very unlikely going to be the ultimate panacea for the ordinary South African economic woes and poverty. All these two seem to be mere sacrificial lambs in a crude and cruel game of political and colonial machinations, perceptions and indoctrinations, involving political participants, powers, multinational entities and entitlements. 
The sooner these vigilante groups wake up and realize that the tragic realities of the shacks and abject poverty in these poor and marginalized communities is not coincidental and artificial the better for the country. The socio-problems which are faced by the ordinary black South Africans are structural or systemic and hence these transcend the emergence and existence of the pandemic and the immigrant populations. When all the key players accept these unfortunate realities, then meaningful, hopeful, honest and life-changing discourses and protests will begin.  For now, what I see are nothing else but damaging, dangerous and deceiving purges and tragedies of prejudices, controversies, misconceptions and misdiagnoses of alarming proportions. These anti-black demonstrations and persecutions will not augur well for South Africa`s image and relations on the African continent and beyond.          
 
 There is no doubt that poverty is the main driver of this kind of anti-immigrant sentiment.  Poverty is a pain and a stain no person should bear or parade. Economic growth is key. Poverty is mainly driven by joblessness, laziness, greed and the mismanagement and underutilization of Africa's abundant resources and options. The national cake is not shared and eaten equitably. That is another stark and sad reality. Economic parity is a rarity and an ideal in Africa.  Corruption is a cancer. Selfless and exemplary leadership is a must if the ordinary citizens are to be redeemed from the yoke of economic and social frustration, dilapidation and depravation.
 
Multifaceted Challenges and Charlatanism
The author believes that the current resurgent black- on- black persecutions that have risen their ugly head in that rainbow nation have serious social, legal, economic, political, cultural and psychological implications and complications. Only honesty will or can reedem the situation otherwise charlatanism will make sure that it resurfaces and rules time and again albeit in different shapes, sizes and colours in spite of the concerned outcries and from genuine victims and the affected communities and countries.
 
A Ticking Time Bomb
Socially, it means that South Africa is not only becoming an unsafe and unfortunate destination and nation by the passing of each day for the poor, undocumented and illegal black immigrants but also it is a potential danger zone for other black South Africans who could be overzealously, randomly and wrongly harassed, arrested or detained by the South African police officers on a number of spurious grounds, including on the suspected and suspicious grounds of being an illegal immigrant.
 
Of Brothers and Bribery
For instance, one could be interrogated or arrested for failing to produce South African identification documents or for failing to prove one's citizenship status by failing to state or identify the exact parts of the body in a manner that is deemed linguistically unconvincing by a police officer. It is a common secret that  a number of  South African police officers who stalk and interrogate pedestrians on the streets are  motivated  more by a personal ,hidden and selfish desire and agenda to grease their palms than to professionally keep law and order.  Legally, this  could trigger heightened citizens' suspicions, resentment and even lawsuits.
 
Fans, Fears and Frustrations
The persecutions and killings have not only created a lot of fears, anxieties, controversies, debates, perceptions and misconceptions within and without the boundaries of South Africa about their real political, social and economic motives and nuances of the Dudula Vigilante groups, but more importantly, have isolated, questioned and dented the image of that beautiful Southern African country which Mandela wanted to be a rainbow nation. In a situation of desperation and frustration, it is easy to fall prey to populism and apportion the poverty blame on the next person who is also a victim of bigger conspiracies and principalities.  Foreigners in South Africa now live in fear.  This is not the first time. The brutal attacks and vilifications against black immigrants are an exhibition of the presence of Afrophobia that is rooted in the minds of the coordinators and supporters of the violent attacks.   Will the xenophobic attacks deter migrants?         
 
 
The Problem of Solidarity in the Corridors of Power
The major chunk of the problems ordinary citizens have to contend with is that African leaders have a long tradition and history of babying the bad that other African leaders do in the spirit of promoting and protecting a false and skwed sense of solidarity, territorial integrity and brotherhood. It looks like it is their mission to protect their cohorts, clubs and friends at the expense of their nations and citizens.
 
 They hardly call out or  call to order the misdemeanors ,omissions and mismanagement of funds and votes etc  by  their incumbent colleagues and neighbors. For instance, it is fresh on our minds that the former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki once deliberately trivialized the political and economic decay in Zimbabwe, and he did that in the glare of the world. He did that during our time of need. The year was 2008 after the country’s disputed March 29 elections. This is the kind of panafricanism that l find dishonest and self- defeating. 
Values and Norms
The tragedies and ironies of the spirit of Ubuntu are tragically playing out in today’s South Africa for the entire world to see. It is sad. Values are important in any given society because they constitute the glue of love, humility and humanity. Once a society or a people lose basic values, like beliefs in the respect for the sanctity of life, the fiber of that society becomes shameless, shambolic and shivery. What happened to the spirit of love, dignity, integrity, hospitability, brotherhood and sisterhood? If the fight for economic opportunities and survival means going on a road that dehumanizes and destroys an innocent soul, then what happened to one`s inner voice? Is it dead?  Vincent Van  Gosh says, “Conscience is a man`s compass”.
 
The Spirit of Ubuntu is Threatened And Dying
Nelson Mandela preached and put a lot of emphasis on the need for a just society where even the blacks would be empowered, uplifted and respected:  culturally, politically, socially and economically. Is that spirit of Ubuntu alive in South Africa? It is not dying,if not already dead and buried?  Where is the spirit of empathy and sympathy in the senseless killings of black souls in cold blood for the mere reason that they are illegal immigrants or they are undocumented? This could seem like a kind of meting out mob justice by the disgruntled citizens, but it has long term consequences that are self- defeating and damaging. Where do these recurring spates of killings leave South Africa in a community of decent and democratic nations? How do they impact tourism? Justice?  International relations? 
 
Facing the Haunting Ghosts of the Past
Broadly, politically, socially and economically speaking, the capitalist and racist forces, the  dishonest, corrupt , incompetent ,self-serving and greedy African leadership are all in complicit in this mayhem, whether they like it or lump it, whether they agree or disagree. That South Africa  has a long road  to achieve her socially equitable economic independence in spite of being one of Africa's powerhouses, is beyond debate. Is there  a political will to engage the key stakeholders?  To hold the bulls by their horns?
South Africa has to look herself in the face and honestly and seriously face her social, economic and political divides and disparities .The majority of black South Africans still live in abject poverty. Though this sad reality or state of affairs has psychological, ideological and economic manifestations and implications,  the victims of these inequalities ironically find themselves venting out their frustrations and sufferings on other political and economic victims from other African countries, who also happen to be black, poor and desperate.
 
Words Are Not Necessarily Actions
Is it not time and prudent for African leaders, businesspersons, political parties and the generality of Africans to discuss these unpleasant and perennial issues in a real, robust, honest and soul-searching manner? Black on black persecutions and killings will continue in South Africa as sickening skeletons in our closet if African journalists,  citizens, writers, historians and activists continue to hide  under an ostrich mentality that these unjustifiable and  unacceptable levels of poverty ,corruption , brutality and social disparities dogging Africa will simply go away of their volition. That is an illusion! Let the selfish and myopic pretenders and puppets sit down, the concerned panafricanists and patriots stand up and play their crucial roles or else history and their legacies will judge them harshly.
For a better, stronger and united Africa to emerge, concrete and corrective measures have to be taken. The meaningful conversations should be based on facts, not sentiment. They should not be grounded on exaggerations, indoctrinations and misconceptions. For instance, poor and marginalized communities are neither a creation, a result, a manifestation of immigrant populations in South Africa nor coincidental and artificial but structural and systemic. Wrong diagnosis begets wrong medication. This is just a brotherly piece of advice.   
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.  The Smithsonian selected her photo to represent all teens from a specific decade.​​

​‘Ding’; a text message appeared on my smartphone.  My fingers tapped to open it. Three of my great-grandchildren with their mom were standing in front of a large showcase in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s ‘Girlhood, it’s complicated’ exhibit.  A blown up photo, and some costume sketches were shown: me, and my designs... circa 1950's.  My actual skirt, in the snapshot, was in its own enclosure; my maiden name appeared.
 
“Did you know?” the text asked.  “You’re representing all teens in the 1950's.”
 
Well, how would I know!  What curator can contact people whose items were accessioned.  That skirt had a Deed of Gift signed in 1974 and was part of “Suiting Exeryone” exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Division of Costume.  Well, it’s 2022 and the item might have just been stored.  Oh my gosh! 
 
“Of course, who’d believe ‘that’s my grandma’,” text continued.
 
During high school, I often sat in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s costume wing sketching the clothing; then I’d draw my modernized version of the design.  Staring, holding thin charcoal strips ready to fill blank white pages, I wondered how the women felt as people rather than costumes.  Did they love, hurt, have unfilled dreams, satisfied lives?  Were shoes too tight, dresses too confining?  Was it difficult to launder many layers, rush to outhouses in storms, had any pedaled bicycles or just giggled if rain fell on their faces outdoors? 
 
My mother taught me to sew, make personal patterns, also to do most anything by hand.  Did she like dirndl skirts I made with wide belts circling my tiny waist?  She looked elegant sophisticated and I found ‘me’ in pastels with gentle flowers.  When she entered our living room in black silk velvet glamour, guests hadn’t seen her in a Swirl wrap garment spending the day preparing meals she’d serve them in our dining room.  None saw fatigue, stove burners simmering food she’d chopped, beans she’d strung.  None would see, hours later, her hand washed and dried dishes/glasses/silver, nor tedious job laundering/ starching/ ironing cloths and napkins.  Was that possibly why I wondered about mannequins as ‘people’ whose costumes were shown but not thoughts or feelings as humans?
 
A month after I turned twenty, during my junior year in college, my forty-five years old father died of a heart attack. My mother, alone, made people around her comfortable, being there for them without guilt if her advice was shunned, and kept her grief private so others could reach for life-oriented joys.  I commuted to grad school at night;  she even kept to herself the fears for my safety standing alone at the 116th Street subway station to begin the trip back to Queens County. Under her ‘garments’, she was courageous, determined to give her daughters opportunities she didn’t have, creative, intelligent, and camouflaged a void so huge from my father’s death that she never even dated another man but was always cheerful around people and encouraging for their wishes and dreams.
 
In 1974, when the Smithsonian’s Division of Costume accessioned and displayed that skirt plus a pair of socks I hand-knit, I didn’t attend that opening due to a leg injury, and I knew about that one.  Now that one of my grandchildren has told me that I am the face of the 1950's American teen, distance and aging will prevent me from seeing this in person.  I told that granddaughter how I hand-made the top, in that photo, from a pink silk remnant material my mother had, I also wore that skirt in college with its Merry Go Round appliques, and that it would still fit me today fifteen grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren (so far) later. My enduring marriage isn’t noticed by viewers looking at my sketches or me.  Does any wonder about the girl who danced in such a skirt, and how her life turned out?  Think where she’s sitting posing (an undergrad dorm room before a Homecoming party) or even realize there were no hair dryers, curling irons, perma press clothing, one phone shared by sixty-six girls? I lived on the 4th floor and no elevators, dress codes meant skirts only even in severe winter weather, hand written lecture notes, non-electric typewriters.....
 
Why was I chosen to represent all teen girls from the 1950's?  I don’t know, but I so like that a skirt, my dad’s fingers touched, and a top I made from my mother’s fabric drawer material is in my memory.  “That’s my grandma” allowed me to find out that this exhibit opened in October 2020 and will actually tour beginning 2023. Will anyone wonder about ‘me’, the person, as I did long ago when sitting before the costumes in the Met?    
 
 

The day Nigeria died was the day we all started blaming one another for the problems caused by us. It was the same day we died having the stenches of her scars, sorrows and tears. We ate sorrow and drank pains as we carried these stenches everywhere we go. We became libraries: a library of thoughts and a library full of corruption, bigotry, favoritism, nepotism, unemployment and unnecessary books about our heroes past, about our failed system of federalism; about our patrotic brothers and sisters burnt down in the streets of Nigeria. Their blood spilled under the burning weather. We saw this blood and said nothing about it because it wasn't one of our businesses at that moment and none of our relatives were among those killed— we moved on with our activities. "All man for himself" Some said. Now, this evil has gotten home. It has eaten deep into our families and we seek for help from strangers rather than ourselves.

Meanwhile, Our houses in the streets of her shores, borders, municipal, and metropolis became sick — sickled, with fire everywhere. We watched this land rose every morning with anger, pushing down many things. We kept running away from our problems, into the hands of foreigners who thrust us aside because we do not belong to them. You know?  I do fear confusion! Confusion that may come now and divide us into what we already know by ourselves because the union of two people is always being made possible by one person not the two parties involved. When you cough, do you still have a brother that tells you to take care? Do you still have?

How does one grieve a living soul? Or a land of abundance made poor like ours? How does one die while still living in a country like ours? Our Leaders have made us wanderers, lost souls seeking for confinement! Is there a future for Children yet to be born in Nigeria or those already living in Nigeria? Are they going to kill our children just before they grow up or are they going to kill us before we give birth to them? 

Mother once told us sometimes ago that a boy was picked in his street last two years by some Police men and he has not returned to his parents since then! Is he dead or alive? we don't know! A neighbor told a story of a Boy shot dead close to his office. He was wearing dreadlocks. They said he was a terror to the society. They said he was not supposed to be on dreadlocks. Is this how we are all going to die as Nigerians?  Perhaps, we are going to be killed like those in Lekki tollgate with Flags in our hands asking for our rights as Nigerians. Or we die hungry, rolling on the ground with our stomaches while they embezzle the funds that is made for us. Or perhaps we join those who proudly took away their lives in Third main bridge. Nobody cares about us while we live, maybe they'll talk about us when we jump into the sea. By then, we will appear on the front page of Vanguard newspaper or The nation and the matter ends there for us.

It was in that house on the other side of the road that one of my friends' dead body was found. His parents had gone to one of those warehouses in Lagos to look for palliatives when a neighbor found his dead body, dangling in the air. He committed suicide because he became tired of living in a country that has no future for him. Chibuike is dead. Memories I shared with him hunted me for a while. Some night I wake up and I feel tears at the corner of my eyes but when I remember the times we shared, I smile. You could tell how free and liberated he felt and expressed himself whenever we decided to forget about this land. I was almost like a light he couldn't let go even though I had my own struggles about what tomorrow holds for me then. But I gave him my time - most of it. I listened while he talked, and when he was done I would just take his hands and kiss them. He had the most charming smile and dark skinned
But this land stifled him like a wandering fowl. So, I understood that all the dead people in Nigeria are made into stones. We carry them like an autograph everywhere we go. Perhaps, we may die like them and the Government may say nothing about us. Or maybe when they kill us, the Government would lie about our death to foreign ears and nobody would probe them further for any information about our death.

Is there still hope for employment for graduates in this land flowing with milk and honey? Is there still hope for good education in Nigeria? Will ASUU keeps going on strike monthly? Tell me if you know of these things.

I don’t carry this grief always. I don't remain in every sadness like I do always when I watch how this land that was made to protect us kills us daily. Whenever I remember home, I remember a string missing in every smile we lose to the grief of Loved ones and template of hopeless youths scattered all over the places, confused. Because being a Nigerian is a sin, we have learnt to change our identity everywhere we go. Because having the Nigerian name is a crime and we must fasten our agonies to hide every truth away from the world to accommodate ourselves in other to fit in; perhaps pretend that we are all well in this country from the tweets we send out on dailies or the memes we gather to make ourselves happy despite the calamities befallen us. However, we have developed different strategies to make ourselves happy despite the hardship abounds in the country.

Dead things don’t tell of the dead and a dark blue sky can’t tell of happiness in a land like ours. Have Nigerians forgotten about the Chibok girls like that? Are they back home to their parents? Or are we still waiting for them to return home as promised by our President? Are they one of their political lies? Which father attach no meaning to his children's tears? Which mother would see her children pleas as violence? You are longer a country, Nigeria! You are a land thirsty of blood! You are a home full of dramatic ghosts. You are a house whose foundation is faulty. You have made your Police as vultures to their brothers. You have exposed your soldiers yourself. You have made your Doctors flew home. You've made your children homeless. You've made your mothers Childless. You've made your Youths useless. You are longer a country, Nigeria! You are a tasty water causing diarrhea. You are a mouth seeking for more while your hand has not given out to anyone.

My neighbour travelled last week so that his money would not be borrowed to complete the 2021 budget. Perhaps staying in Ghana would help him to keep his sanity intact. 


In Fela Kuti's voice: you were long gone before now. Eedris Abdulkareem tapped our shoulders in 2004 and reminded us that you were no more but they chased him away. He was accused of blaspheming and you did nothing, Just nothing. When African China rose in 2007 and narrated to us the crisis he saw, we hoped you would change another wrapper from the old ones you were given but we were disappointed to see you still like this.

Now, the youngsters believe that the only Christmas worth doing for themselves is to leave your shore to foreign land. Some of them believe more in fraudulent activities rather than hard work. Seeing your passport is nothing to foreigners whom you were better off  than before.  Your currency has been devalued severally by those you put up there! 

Who has naked you, Nigeria? Who has called and you refused to pick?  Who did you offend that they treat you like you are a nobody — a nuisance?

An Igbo man said he was better than a yoruba man few days ago and the yoruba man stabbed him on the back then the government went to Brazil to borrow money to settle the issue. An Ijew man said he owns the oil well in Delta, then, a Fulani told him the well belongs to his ancestors. He showed him many wells that his fathers built in Delta state from Katsina. The Ijew man in an argument killed the Fulani man, the government flew to China to borrow money to settle the family of the dead man. When an Hausa man looked at a Benin man and told him he looked like a ghost, the Benin man realised that he has to dine with a long spoon henceforth.  It is no longer a big story that we are a lost people. Therefore, we have allowed religion to divide us. There are those who still fast and pray for a miracle to happen to Nigeria. Those who baptized logic into a demon. Just like Juliet, the choir mistress, who dodged bullets until she choked on hallelujahs and died that is how many of us who placed the problems in this land in the hands of God without solving it would die. Maybe, God will prepare a room for them in Heaven.

Meanwhile, the Senators have learnt to stage drama everytime they meet to discuss. Even those that doze off during meeting are paid sleeping allowances and those who fight while they conversed are paid fighting and quarreling allowances. The only reason I have finally summoned up the courage to speak about this is because I am certain a lot of us who might come across these things as they evolves are in the same state of frustration as I am but we killed this very land ourselves. We made this country what it is today the very day we started avoiding taking up our responsibilities as patrotic Masses we are. 

How do you feel when you recite the national anthem? Do you read meanings to the wordings or you just say it just like that?

In fact, the masses say the government is the problem but Government says the masses are problem.The masses are waiting for the government to fulfil their promises of one Dollar to one Naira while the government are waiting for the masses to obey the traffic rules and stop throwing dirties on the streets. To whom do we fault the problems of Nigeria?

You won't find Jesus in Nigeria to resurrect her. You won't call his name in Nigeria and expect him to come because we are still sick at 60, just like we were, the very day we were born and christianed Nigeria.


©John Chizoba Vincent
​

​               When I was a young girl, there was a little, old, brown house that was situated down from where I lived.  This house, which was really a shack, would actually serve as a home for many different people over a span of many years.
               It was a very odd looking construction for many reasons.  For one, the little brown house sat far back away from the road; it could not be seen by anyone who may be driving by.  The driveway that led to the house was the same one used by the owners of the big house that sat closer to the road.  This shared driveway arrangement between the two houses caused problems.  Throughout the years, whenever the little brown house had occupants, and there were numerous short term transients, the owners in the big house had to move their car so that there was room for the other one to get by.  Sometimes the driver would steer the car off of the driveway and this would enrage the owners when they saw the flattened grass and the tire track marks. 
Fortunately, for the big house owners, most of the occupants of the little brown house didn’t even own a car.  People really needed a car to get around in the country, but there were still some unfortunate people who were stuck in our rural and secluded area without any means of transportation.  Lillian was such a person.  She was stuck and isolated in the little brown house for several years.  The lack of transportation, however, was the least of her problems. 
 
               The little brown house was originally built as a temporary place to shelter the owners while their real house, the big one situated closer to the road, was being built.  The little house was never meant for permanent human occupancy.  But that’s not how it ended up.  After the big house was finished, the owners decided to not tear down the little one because they saw an opportunity to make some extra money by renting it to poor people. 
               The construction of the little brown house was in the shape of a box.  It was built on top of a crude cement slab which extended about three to four feet beyond the base of the construction.  One door led to the inside, where, if you moved to the right a few feet, you could easily see the other three rooms because there weren’t any hallways.  Each room measured one-fourth of the box-like construction.  The room which served as the kitchen was immediately to the right where an old, rusty sink and an electric stove took up most of the space.  If you looked out of the only window in the kitchen, you could see the backyard, the field, and the outhouse.  All of the houses in this rural area had wells on their property and although there was running water at the kitchen sink, there wasn’t any toilet or bathtub.  The occupants had to heat the water on the stove and get washed up at the kitchen sink. 
               The other two rooms in the house were used as bedrooms.  There weren’t any doors leading into either bedroom nor were there any closets.  Both of these rooms had one small window which barely let in any light. 
               Oddly enough, although the little brown house did not have a hot water heater, it did have oil heat.  The owners had a very basic heating system installed to help warm the house during the bitter, cold winter months.  A silver colored oil tank sat outside in the backyard, immediately next to the kitchen area.  I rarely saw an oil truck come to fill up the tank.  Lillian never bought oil while she lived there.  Instead, she heated the kitchen by turning the knob on the oven to the highest possible temperature.  After about ten minutes, she’d open the oven door and everyone would huddle close to it for warmth.
               The outside of the house was covered with brown shingles, much like the kind used on a roof.  The pattern of the shingles was like bricks, but the house never looked like a real brick house.  Most rustic cabins looked and functioned better than this box-like construction.  Today, various zoning and permit regulations would never allow such a building to be rented out to people.  Although everything about its existence was also illegal in the 1950’s, the rules were ignored.
 The construction looked exactly like what it was.  A shack.  Lillian and her four children lived in this construction for several years.
 
I was ten years old when they moved in.  I never saw a moving van (a big one wouldn’t be needed) or even a small pick-up truck.  They must have moved in when I was at school.  It seemed like they just appeared one day.  That’s how it always was at that house.  Tenants would appear and disappear.  They would sneak out late at night and then new tenants would magically appear seemingly out of nowhere. 
One early evening, when I was alone in the backyard, I noticed a very faint yellow glow emanating from one of its windows.  I could barely see it through the pine trees bordering our field, but it was a definite glow.  The little brown house had been completely dark for several months after the last family had moved out and I was starting to get used to the dark silence by the field.  I decided to wait until the next day to meet my new neighbors. 
               The next morning, I knocked on their door and introduced myself. 
 
               Although Lillian was only in her early twenties, she wasn’t young looking, nor was she pretty.  The burden of raising four children by herself had already taken its toll.  She was rail thin and walked with a limp due to a hip and back deformity that made her look like she was leaning to one side.  It may have been scoliosis.  She told us what it was one time, but her actual medical condition never quite registered in my mind. 
               Lillian also had missing teeth on the top row of her mouth, and this caused her to speak with a lisp.  You had to listen very carefully when she spoke.  There was also a permanent, one-inch, jagged scar above her upper lip, perhaps from a childhood fall or a push or punch from a boyfriend or husband.  After we became friends, she told me that her husband was in jail; perhaps it was for domestic abuse, I often wondered. 
               Aside from being excessively thin, Lillian was also short.  Her dark brown hair was only about an inch in length below her earlobe and it was not really cut in any particular style.  In fact, her hair was usually teased up high, and often looked like she just got caught in a wind storm.  After Dianne, my girlfriend down the road, and I became regular visitors at Lillian’s, one of our favorite hobbies was shampooing and setting her hair on rollers, even though there wasn’t anyone to impress with a new hairstyle. 
               Lillian lived in the house alone with her four children.  David, the oldest, was seven years old and was rail thin like his mother.  Likewise, Robert, a year younger, was also very thin.  He was also mentally disabled; no one could understand him when he spoke.  Next came Brenda, Lillian’s first girl, a year younger than Robert.  She had big brown eyes and short, light brown hair.  The baby, Ellie, was a year old.  She looked just like her sister, except a miniature version. 
 
               I rescued Ellie once when she was left alone with her siblings.  Lillian was actually at my house using the phone.  This wasn’t the first time she had left her children unattended.  I was in my backyard when I heard Ellie screaming and crying.  By the time I got to the house, she had stopped screaming, but she was still in her crib, whimpering, naked, except for a droopy, soggy diaper that reeked of urine.  David, Robert and Brenda were watching TV in the living room, oblivious to their baby sister’s needs.  I reached in, grabbed Ellie out of her crib and then went back into the living room to ask them about her bottle.  The TV had their full attention; none of the kids looked at me or responded when I asked them again about Ellie’s bottle.  In the meantime, I took off the baby’s soiled diaper, which by now had almost completely fallen off of her tiny body, and I dropped it on the floor.  I was so upset when Ellie started to cry again.  She had a terrible, red, diaper rash and I wasn’t sure what to do next. 
               “Where is Ellie’s bottle?” I demanded again, this time raising my voice loud enough to be heard over the cartoons.
               Brenda looked over at me, and without saying anything, she scooted off the couch and walked into the kitchen.   The other kids never took their eyes off the TV.   I followed behind Brenda with Ellie, now completely naked, riding on my right hip.  Brenda pushed the kitchen chair over to the sink, hopped up on it and moved plates and bowls around in the sink until she was sure there wasn’t any bottle.  I looked inside the sink too, just to make sure. 
               “Look in the refrigerator!” I yelled, this time shifting Ellie to my other hip. 
I scanned the kitchen table top, but there was no bottle in sight, nor could I find a diaper or rash ointment.
Brenda hesitated and then grabbed the handle of the refrigerator door with both hands and tugged hard.  She backed away and almost lost her balance as the door flew wide open.   There wasn’t any food inside.  Not even a half empty jar of mustard. 
 
Dianne and I were invited one time to eat with Lillian and her kids.  We didn’t want to accept her food because we knew she was so very poor, but we could tell that she really wanted our company that day.  She fried hamburgers for everyone and then she opened and heated a few cans of vegetables.  Most of Lillian’s food came from the government.  I didn’t know exactly what that all meant, but a lot of the cans in her kitchen were different from the cans in the supermarket and from the ones in our house.  Big silver cans of peanut butter, cans of potted meat and other strange looking canned goods with black lettering on the outside were all lined up on the homemade cupboard that Lillian had constructed out of boards and cinderblocks.
After she dished up the food onto our plates, we all sat at the crowded table and proceeded to eat.  There wasn’t enough room to sit together comfortably at the table, but we managed.  I offered to share my seat with Lillian, but she wanted to stand.  David was trying to hold Ellie steady in his lap (she didn’t have a high chair) while trying to maneuver the food into his own mouth and then into Ellie’s.  Brenda and Robert shared a chair and were stuffing the food into their mouths as fast as they could, while Lillian was passing out plastic glasses half-filled with red Kool-Aid. 
All of a sudden, I noticed a bunch of black moving dots all over the table!  I looked closer and realized that there was a trail of ants all over everything and that they were quickly making their way toward everyone’s food!  Lillian noticed the ants too but she didn’t say anything.  Rather, she calmly took her index finger and proceeded to kill each ant.  Dianne and I looked at each other, but we didn’t say anything either.  In the meantime, Lillian continued to kill the ants with her finger and the kids continued to shovel the food into their mouths.  Dianne and I looked down at our plates and ate as quickly as possible.
 
Dianne and I weren’t Lillian’s only visitors.  From time to time, Lillian’s parents would come to the house and take her and the kids shopping.  They weren’t much better off than Lillian, but at least they owned a car.  One August, before school started, they took David to a big discount warehouse that sold irregular clothing and other miscellaneous items.  David came home with a big plastic bag filled with an assortment of brightly colored shirts and pants.  Brenda got jealous and started to cry when she saw David’s new clothes.  Lillian reminded her that David was starting school in September and that she would be able to get new clothes when it was her turn. 
David had already been left back twice at his previous schools before he moved to the little brown house  Now, he was starting yet another new school where he had to get used to new surroundings and teachers.  He had to start at the very beginning again because he couldn’t read or write.  Lillian tried to help him, but she couldn’t read either. 
 
               One of Lillian’s girlfriends also visited occasionally.  She also liked to do hair, so one time Dianne and I allowed her to wash and set our hair.  We brought all the supplies, including the shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, brush and hairdryer.  It was a fun afternoon that included smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and listening to Lillian and her girlfriend talk about various adult topics that we never heard at home.  We weren’t allowed to smoke cigarettes at home, but that didn’t stop us from smoking them at Lillian’s.  We learned how to take long drags and inhale without coughing.  We thought it was exciting to listen to Lillian and her girlfriend talk about all the things that our own mothers wouldn’t discuss with us. 
               After Lillian’s girlfriend was finished with us, we walked to Dianne’s house to show off our new hairstyle.  As soon as Dianne’s mother saw our heads, she told us that our hair was teased up entirely too high and that we needed to comb it down immediately.  Although we didn’t think so, apparently we looked too grown up and sleazy, according to Dianne’s mother. 
 
               Lillian’s new boyfriend was another visitor.  I first met him when I knocked on Lillian’s door early one Saturday morning.  Lillian answered the door in her underwear and let me in.  She introduced me to him and at first it seemed like he was interested in what I was saying, because he kept nodding and smiling, but soon it was clear to me that he couldn’t understand a word I said.  I wondered to myself if he had spent the night.  I couldn’t figure out how he had gotten to Lillian’s house since there wasn’t a car parked outside.  Then I wondered who had brought him there and how had Lillian even met him in the first place since she rarely went anywhere.  All of these thoughts, and more, were swirling around in my mind as he continued to nod and smile.  He didn’t understand anything Lillian said either, but I was old enough to understand that Lillian's interest in this guy didn’t involve talking anyway, so a language barrier didn’t matter. 
 
               Lillian’s new boyfriend became a permanent fixture at her house and within a few short weeks, things got really, really bad.  Lillian was now constantly preoccupied with her new boyfriend; she ignored her kids and often sent them outside to play until well past bedtime.  The fun afternoons of doing each other’s hair were over.  Dianne and I didn’t even bother to ask Lillian for cigarettes anymore.  Now, on washdays, the new boyfriend’s clothes were seen hung on the line alongside David’s not-so-new-anymore school clothes, and Robert’s, Brenda’s and Ellie’s old clothes.  Lillian started yelling even more and she’d even curse at the kids if they really got on her nerves.  Some of the vile things she’d say to them was often worse than her regularly administered slaps, which caused dark red marks and lots of tears. 
 
               No one called the authorities to report neglect or abuse.    Back then, people usually minded their own business when it came to domestic matters.  Family matters were considered private and the police didn’t like to get involved unless absolutely necessary.  People would give money, food and clothing, but they wouldn’t call the police.  Today this kind of family situation would warrant having the kids taken away and put into foster care. 
              
My mother always gave Lillian my younger brother’s outgrown clothes for David and Robert.  Other people also tried to help out.  One time a lady from the Salvation Army brought a big box of food.  Another time a farmer down the road dropped off some meat from a slaughtered cow.  People in my area always helped others, but Lillian never got the kind of help she really needed while she lived in the little brown house. 
 
Dianne and I rarely visited anymore, and when we did, we only stayed a few minutes.  Lillian eventually stopped answering her door when we knocked.  We could hear the TV and the kids inside.  We knew she was in there.
Lillian, her new boyfriend, and her four kids, disappeared one day.  I must have been at school when they left.   
 
Over the years, many more people came and went at the little brown house, as quietly as Lillian, until one day the owners finally tore down the shack, along with that wretched outhouse in the back.  The ground was seeded and fresh, new, green grass grew in the spring.  The owners in the big house, the one closer to the road, now had a bigger backyard, and they no longer had to share the driveway. 
 
Once that shack was torn down, everything looked better.  

              I merged the rented Dodge Caravan over three lanes, gingerly looking into the passenger side mirror, the rearview mirror rendered useless because of endless stacked boxes behind me. I took the Via de La Valle exit, an offramp I had taken endless times throughout my childhood in San Diego. Raia- my trusted, durable travel companion-  stirred from her awkward position, crouched in the median between my seat and the passenger seat, head on my shoulder, eyes closed, swaying as the car veered across the lanes. Her eyes slowly opened. She looked ahead. Ever so slightly, she began to wag her tail.
        Tom Petty provided inspiration for the last legs of the journey. I turned down Learning to Fly.  Slightly less cliche for the end of a road trip than Free Fallin, a song that, of course, Jerry McGuire singing in a convertible made a must-have for any road trip. I wasn’t going to end my own voyage with that level of cliche. 
          We came to a red light as we exited the freeway.
         “We made it, Raia.”
…….
This specific transition begins on February 29th, 2020, Leap Day. What a momentous, unique day.
 I woke up that morning groggy, having returned to my Park Slope, Brooklyn studio early on Saturday morning. 1AM early. Another late night, courtesy of a delayed flight from Atlanta to New York City.  Another conference in the books.
 My job was as the Chief Executive Officer of a non-profit called Generation Citizen (GC). For the last twelve years, since graduating from college in 2009, the job was my life. My life was the work.
 I spent almost every waking moment meeting with staff members and donors, writing strategy papers and e-mails, and managing the latest staff crisis of the day. When I wasn’t doing those tasks, I was thinking about doing those tasks. Or feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing those tasks.
I was in the last legs of my journey, and my energy. I had successfully (I guess depending on your definition of successful) built up the organization to become one of the most pre-eminent education groups in the country as we focused on transforming civics education, ensuring that young people learned politics by doing politics, bringing energy to a traditionally staid subject.
I was proud. I was utterly exhausted. The type of exhausted that a few long nights of sleep does not cure.
My complete focus on work meant I was on the road about 50% of the year, meeting with my team at one of our six sites, attempting to convince rich donors to give us money, or attending a hob-knobby conference where do-gooders would converse over panels and breakout sessions in ornate hotel ballrooms, opining on how we were saving the world for the less fortunate.
I railroaded every romantic relationship I had been in, constantly professing that I was too busy to concentrate on building a future. I rarely got home before 9PM, oftentimes opening up my laptop before engaging in pleasantries with whomever I was dating at the time. I was always out the door by 6AM, needing to at least get in an early workout before a day of meetings.  I slept fitfully, usually because of an unhealthy diet of caffeine and alcohol, that I told myself I deserved, because of my intensive exercise regime, and the aforementioned stressful work environment.
I told myself the work ethic was necessary to build an idea to a thriving $6 million non-profit. The schedule more accurately stemmed from a desire to escape everything else in life.
In reality, I felt a deep sense of void and loss in my life, knowing that any meaning behind work could not fill the lack of real connection with actual individuals.
And so, on this morning of February 29th, I was only months away from leaving Generation Citizen. I had given notice months before and was planning to leave at the end of June. I wanted something new for myself. I wanted the organization to survive, and thrive, without me. I wanted some rest. I was excited, and terrified, about the pending transition. My entire sense of identity was on the table. My ability to run away from the problems in my life was on the table.
To that end, I woke up on that Saturday Leap day morning with these emotions at the forefront as I waited for the coffee and water to adequately mix in French Press. Accelerating the process, I stirred the coffee and looked absent-mindedly ahead into the abyss of my studio apartment.
Saturday mornings, the reality of not sharing that coffee with someone else was more acute. I wished that I wasn’t heading right into work.  But that I was.
For that Saturday morning, just having finished that conference the night before, I sprinted to  the subway, having just bought another cup of coffee at the Starbucks above the Union Street R line subway, getting ready to attend a training for college volunteers for GC, ostensibly my last one as CEO. But at the back of my mind was another possibility for the day.
Months ago, after failing at the most serious relationship of my life , one of six years, which necessitated the move to the studio, I applied to, and for some god-forsaken reason, was approved, to adopt a dog from an adoption agency in Brooklyn. At the time, I wanted to demonstrate that, despite the ending relationship, and despite moving into a studio on my own when friends were getting married and buying homes, I was somehow moving forward in life.
A dog, I thought, could prove that.
My friends had willingly lied in reference checks and said that I could be a responsible dog owner despite the hectic travel schedule that allowed me to evade life.  For months, my better angels had prevailed. I had talked a big game of getting a dog, but never came close to pulling the trigger. I figured that as my work and travel schedule had impeded any meaningful and sustainable human relationship, assuming a dog could fill the void was probably something close to animal abuse.
But something felt a little different this Saturday morning. Maybe I had enough. Maybe the work transition was close enough that I felt change was actually possible.
At the training, acting more as the personable boss than as a responsible person, I couldn't stop showing my staff members a picture of a dog I had recently spotted on the adoption website. Over the last few weeks, I had pulled up the pictures of this particular dog on the Badass Brooklyn adoption website at least three times a day.
The dog was a Beagle mix from Alabama named Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser from the Netflix show Outlander (which is literally an impossibly long name for a dog). Having grown up with a rambunctious Beagle of my own, I was smitten from the picture. Tan face, black body, playful eyes.
Her cuteness was not up for discussion.
My decision itself definitely was.
 Was I actually serious about adopting a dog? After playing with the idea for so long? My upcoming schedule, after all, was already filled with three different work trips to conferences in Austin, San Francisco, and Boston. Just in March.
“You won’t get her,” said one staff member, Brooke. “There’s no way.”
“Maybe I will!”
“Bullshit.”
            “Maybe I’ll get her to prove you wrong.”
I left the training and stared at the picture on the subway back into Brooklyn.
As I walked from the subway at Union and 4th to the Petco several avenues over, I ran into Boris, an old friend- one of those rare but fun encounters in the vastness of New York City. He ran another social entrepreneurial organization, and I knew him to be as busy as I usually was.
“Great to see you man!  How are you?” I gave him a hug.
“Doing alright!  Just had a baby boy- man is it a lot of work!”
He showed me a picture of his new son and regaled me with stories of how different his life had been. He was trying to travel less, be there for his wife and son more.
 I couldn’t help but feel that his life was moving forward, precisely by focusing less on work.
We both promised to catch up soon.
I slowly walked into the pet store. The desire to do something that would cause my life to be fundamentally different had strengthened significantly in the short walk from the subway. I needed a change.
I took a deep breath as I walked in.
“I’m here for the Beagle mix?”
At the back of the store, I was greeted by a cute dog, no taller than six inches, but long, almost like a dachshund. She saw me, quickly jumped up, surprisingly high, lifting off her hindlegs, to say hello, reaching my face. She jumped three times. She just as quickly went back to the others around her.
The adoption agency staff didn’t have too much time for pleasantries, or for my existential musings.
“Want to play with her a bit? She really is great. Playful. Cute. Housebroken.”
What more could you want in a dog?
“You have until 11:30 to decide if you want her!”
Great, I thought, 25 minutes to decide whether I want to say yes to an animal that would be in my life for at least the next twelve years.
I have trouble committing to dinner plans.
I had woken up that morning assuming that this would be an exercise in vanity. I sat down, the dog jumped in my arms, and wrestled with my red windbreaker, attempting to puncture it, and pull out the feather inner lining.
This one could be a keeper.
I thought about the exhaustion from another Friday night conference. I thought about how Boris’ new life had fundamentally forced him to change his old ways. I thought about Brooke telling me that there was no way I would actually adopt a dog.
I needed a change. A change more foundational than just leaving my job. A change that would cause me to lead my life differently.
Why not have a change instigated by something as cute as the dog chewing on my arm?
Typing into my phone as the dog attempted to nose it away so I would keep petting her, I texted my friend Brad, who had agreed to come with his wife Julia. I needed affirmation.
They arrived as the dog and I engaged in another wrestling match.
“She’s really cute.”
“Should I get her?”
“It’s a big commitment. But she’s really cute.”
She was really cute. Not sure one is supposed to make big decisions entirely based on looks.
            11:26.
            I needed a change.
            She was incredibly cute.
            My mind raced. This was one big way to force a change in my life.  A real way to mark a needed transition. I needed to force the change.
            I closed my eyes.
            I took a deep breath.
            “Okay,” I told the adoption agency. “I’ll take her.”
            Brad and Julia laughed.
“Holy shit! You’re actually doing this!”
The agency shoved paperwork in front of me, seemingly wanting to make sure I didn’t back out. Five minutes, a few signatures, and a decent sized check later, they gave me a leash, and a dog.
            “She’s yours!”
            The agency took a picture of the two of us, our first as a family. They showed me the picture after. I had stifled a smile. The dog looked completely terrified, clearly trying to escape my embrace. The agency never posted the picture to their Instagram account.
“What do I do now?”” I asked Brad and Julia.
“Well,” Brad said, “You probably need some...stuff? Food? Bowls?”
            “Right, of course.” I ran around the store, dog nervously accompanying me, scooping up gourmet dog food, and bought inexpensive bowls, a bed, and a kennel. I added in a stuffed hedgehog to replace my fleece as a chew toy.
            Brad and Julia walked the dog and me to my apartment a few blocks away.
            “You know,” Julia said, trying to change the subject, “McKinsey is talking about halting all travel because of this COVID-19 thing.  Maybe you’ll actually get a lot of time with this dog.”
            “All travel? That’s absurd,” I had heard a bit about the virus. I assumed it would inconvenience a few people.  But travel?  Who could survive without travel? Certainly not me.       
We stopped in front of my apartment.
“By the way, what’s her name?”
            I looked at her for a second.
“Raia,” I said, “Uraia means citizen in Swahili. So, Raia.”
I had lived in Kenya for three years in high school and visited many more times. I had thought about the potential name from time to time, whenever I played with the idea of getting a dog. I appreciated the symbolism of the Swahili version of my organizational name. But I had not known to leave the U off until that moment. It just sounded right. The first decision of the day that I categorically felt good about.
            “True to form. Good luck!” They took off, and we were alone.
            Just the two of us.
 Raia’s stubby legs refused to climb the five stairs leading up to the Brooklyn Brownstone. I picked her up, struggling to carry her, her new kennel and the food. I placed all three in my left arm, jockeying my keys from my pocket with the right hand, and kicking open the outside door. I placed Raia on the ground and opened my studio door, but, despite gentle coaxing, realized she would not be descending the four stairs leading down to my first-floor studio.  I threw down the kennel and the food into my studio. It crashed down, but the move allowed me to carry her with two arms this time around.
 I placed her down gently, and tore open the kennel vigorously, trying to put it together quickly, without even glancing at the instructions. My phone rang. My friend Emma, wondering if the picture I had sent her of a dog was actually now mine.  I ignored the call.
I looked to see how Raia was acclimatizing. She was christening her new abode, squatting on the rug my dad had purchased while serving as a Foreign Service Officer in Afghanistan.
 I picked up her poop with tissue paper and attempted to flush it down my toilet. It began to overflow. I plunged it quickly, and sat down in my bathroom, cross-legged. I closed my eyes. Had I actually just adopted a dog?
            And that’s how Raia and I began our life together.
…..
 
Raia spent most of the day on the other side of the studio apartment, eying me warily. She continued to relieve herself on the rug whenever I looked away. 
A dog walker came by to meet her before commencing weekday walks. She met us for about ten minutes, making sure that dog and owner were both sane. As soon as she left, Raia cried, and attempted to follow her. Raia seemed quite obviously dubious of this new arrangement with me. Pleading for help.
I told my parents I had gotten her on Sunday, more than 24 hours after the fact. My dad refused to talk to me because he thought the idea was so dumb. My mom asked if I could still return her.
That night, after yet another incident on the rug, making me wonder what else the agency had lied about, I lay down on the non-rug covered portion of my studio. I began sobbing uncontrollably, the sort of tears I had not experienced for years. The type where you have to attempt to take a deep breath in just to get air. Raia wandered over, quizzically looking over me, probably wondering what she herself had gotten into. Probably missing Alabama.
I was supposed to transition from the only job I had ever had, that had defined my entire identity, in three months. I had no idea what was next, professionally or personally. And now I had this new dog. The fact that I had no one to help me take care of the dog compounded the loneliness that had come to define the last year, and the many transitions in my life.
Ten minutes later, I had no tears left to muster. I locked Raia in her cart and ascended the stairs to the small loft that held my bed, and nothing else. I stared at the ceiling, the noisy cars of Union Street providing their nightly symphony. I wondered how the dog was sleeping downstairs.
The next morning, as it always seemed to do, travel saved the day. I ran away from life. I left my apartment for a train to Rhode Island at 5:30 AM for a full day of meetings and guest-lecturing in a college class.
 I wasn’t completely heartless. I took Raia for a quick walk at 5AM. I took her for another walk at 9PM when I returned, splurging on the Acela to make sure she wouldn’t be home alone for too long (she did have a walk with her new dog walker in the middle of the day).
When I returned, she jumped at the kennel that had entrapped her for the day. I quickly let her out. She was clearly excited by her freedom, running around the apartment. It seemed, though, that this excitement did not extend to me- the couch got more attention than myself. At the moment, she felt more nuisance than man’s best friend.
I realized that I couldn’t quite use travel as an excuse to escape life, when life now included an actual dog I was responsible for taking care of.
Not that I would have that option for much longer.
The first week together was an exercise in getting to know each other better. Every morning, I descended the stairs of the studio loft, knowing that my first act of the day would no longer be enjoying my first cup of coffee or quickly heading to the gym, but rather, walking Raia. I felt bitter. She was still cute, but not as cute at 5:30 AM on a frigid New York City morning.  We were still very much getting used to each other.
That weekend, our first full weekend together, a Generation Citizen Board member, Tom, invited me to his place in upstate New York. I almost cancelled to take care of the dog, but he said she was welcome to come, as long as she was housebroken. I abided by the words of the agency, rather than my own experience. Of course she was.
We got on the Metro North train together on Saturday morning- both of us having no idea what to expect from this first train ride. Every single person who walked by stopped to remark how cute my companion was. After some initial nerves, and panting, and barking, and crying, Raia settled into the bed I had brought to place on the seat next to me. I worked, typing with my left hand, petting and calming her with my right hand.
We arrived in Hillsdale, and Tom picked us up at the train station. He first remarked on her cuteness. He secondly remarked on how incredibly crazy I was to get a dog, since he knew my travel schedule. 
We set off for a hike with his dog, Sparky, and Raia. I wondered how Raia and her stubby legs would handle the steep, four mile hike, but I followed his lead and let her off the leash at the beginning of the hike.
She was the happiest I had seen her in the week since we became family. She ran in front of us on the trail, only to turn on a dime and come sprinting back to us. She chased Sparky off the trail. In the last, steep ravine to the top, she scampered in front of all of us, looking back at the top, wondering what was taking so long.
I caught up to her at the top and sat on a ledge. She put her front legs in my lap, clearly delighted to see me join her. I smiled. This was a dog worth changing life habits for.
 But then. Just as Raia and I were getting used to life together, life changed.
The mysterious virus had descended into New York City, disrupting life as we knew it.
I was making the call that our team would work from home indefinitely. We quickly had to move to shift our civics education curriculum online.
I celebrated my mid-March birthday with Brad, Julia, and their dog Lizzie. It was the last time I entered someone else’s apartment in New York City.
Everything in New York City shut down.
Raia and I made friends at the dog park- only to have it locked shut.
We made friends with neighbors down the street who had a Beagle, only to have them leave for family in rural Georgia.
Zoom calls became the norm.
Studio apartment became office and office became studio apartment.
Raia couldn’t imagine life without me home all the time, and I couldn’t imagine being in quarantine without her.
I told GC’s Board of Directors that I would stay on as CEO longer than I had planned if it would be helpful, with an uncertain financial climate, and a search process for my successor made infinitely harder because of the pandemic.  They accepted, extending my tenure from June until the end of December. My team, the same who joked around with me when making the decision to get Raia, expressed deep frustration. They said it was because of a lack of clarity on the direction of the organization. It was hard not to take it personally.
Our original plan was to have a glamorous, end of CEO-tenure gala in April, celebrating everything we’d accomplished in our 10-year history: educating over 100,000 young people in our experiential civics education curriculum, passing laws in states across the country, spearheading a national movement to lower the voting age to 16.
Instead, weeks after the announcement to the team that I was staying longer, I sat in front of my laptop, starting over an e-mail I had written and rewritten dozens of times.
“Today, I regret to confirm that we will be reducing the size of our GC team. In order to do so, we will have to eliminate a number of current positions. All role eliminations will be communicated on an individual basis by the end of today.”
 We were letting go of 20% of our 40 person staff. The long e-mail, attempting to be as empathetic as possible, outlined why we were making the changes, expressed deep apologies, and contained explicit notes on how if individuals were being let go, they’d be invited to a Zoom video call later that day.
I hit send. It seemed both dramatic and unceremonious.
I had nothing to do but wait. I walked across the room, and lay down with Raia, who was starting to stir from her morning nap.
At that moment, I was beyond grateful for her. She just wanted to go out for a walk. But she was the only thing in the world providing me comfort, some sense of purpose, and hope that I would feel better than the lonely, ineffective leader I felt that I’d become.
 
Three weeks later, June 19th to be exact, Raia and I went for our morning run around Prospect Park, which had become a much needed staple during the pandemic. When we started the routine, I thought her short stubby legs wouldn’t be able to handle it. But she had come to love her long ears flopping in the open wind, galloping gleefully for all those around her to admire.
About a mile in on this morning, she began to tug and pull on the leash. Is this a joyful act of play, or a forceful symbol of resistance?  Pull back, and we’re playing a fun game. Ignore, and she doesn’t stop. Yell at her, and well, nothing. So instead, I run forward, harder, pretending she’s adding to the workout.
At the end of the run, rather than heading back home to make breakfast and get ready for another day of endless Zoom meetings, we stopped at a car-rental agency.
I picked up a mini-van, driving it three blocks down Union Street, parking in front of my apartment.
 I had told my landlord in January that I’d be taking off and extended the lease from April to May to June, finally deciding it was time to go- to head back to my hometown of San Diego.
Given the size of my apartment, the fact that my parents were in San Diego, and, well, the uncertainty of everything, I had decided to leave. I felt guilty to leave New York City as it had just endured the worst of the pandemic, and so many had left its borders. But in seasons of change for me, I knew this was the right move.
The decision to move wasn’t impulsive and wasn’t really due to the pandemic. I spent my childhood growing up abroad, moving every two to three years. I had been in New York City for ten years and needed a change- figuring that leaving GC was as much of an impetus as anything. New dog. New city. Eventually, new job. Maybe.
I locked Raia in her kennel, placed my quarantine-bought dumbbells in front of the two building apartment doors, and began transferring up my shoddily-packed boxes of books and clothes into the minivan. The sound of Raia crying and tearing at the cage that entrapped her accompanied me throughout the formal moving process.
An hour later, the boxes took up every spare space in the mini-van, save the seat behind me. I plopped Raia’s bed on the one open space. I gave a silent prayer that she would survive the 45 hours of driving.
We left the apartment for the final time. We took one last walk around the block. One last jaunt into Konditori, which had served as my local coffee shop for every day of the pandemic. One last ice cream from Uncle Louie’s, the Italian ice connoisseur directly next to my building.
 I threw Raia’s bed onto the one spare ounce of space in the entire minivan. I plugged in directions for Newport, Virginia. Eight and a half hours away. We took off east on 5th Avenue. As I merged onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, I realized the weights were still blocking the doors to the apartment building. 
…..
Loud whimpering persisted from the back of the van. I glanced back. Raia was attempting to shuffle around, but she had no space to move. The endless turns and mergers of the highways that surround New York City finally gave way to the interstate moving steadily south. Raia decided to give up, sighed loudly, and collapsed into her bed.
            With Raia down for the count, the open road ahead became a mirage of thoughts fading as the buildings of New York City faded into the background. Twelve years of running a non-profit.  Three serious relationships ended. Four months of leading the organization from my apartment, having just conducted the first round of staffing cuts in my tenure.
The recognition of the privilege I had to be leaving New York City and wondering if it was actually the right decision. Fear for our country, with a pandemic that had ravaged so many, including a city I had loved for so long, and exposed all of the inequalities that we attempted to hide behind closed doors. Leaving New York City, which had become the epicenter for both the pandemic and the protests for racial justice. On Juneteenth, perhaps the first Juneteenth that the entire country had actually paid attention to.
And then, just as reflections started in earnest, I stuck in one of my Air pods and joined a conference call on Generation Citizen’s budget with our Board Finance Committee. The failsafe, years perfected way to avoid thinking about my feelings. 
A few hours and a few calls later, Raia had finally started to stir, and I needed to make my first stop for gas. We paused in southern Virginia, two hours south of Washington, DC.
Over the past few months in New York City, mask wearing was omnipresent, stores sparsely populated. I had left before outdoor dining, or really anything, had opened up.
I entered the mini-mart. Not a mask in sight. A line of eight people deep waiting to pay.
I had read in the news that individuals in the rest of the country were not taking the pandemic as seriously. But to see it in the flesh after living in the epicenter of the pandemic in New York City in March and April was both horrifying and astounding. I felt irresponsible even being inside the mart.
“That’ll be $8.75. And what’s that on your face?” The attendant snickered. 
A few hours later, we stopped at the Foot of the Mountain Cafe in Buchannan, Virginia. Views of the Shenandoah Mountains abound as the sun set in the distance, an orange hue lighting up a sky devoid of the buildings I was so used to seeing in New York City.
Loud music came blasted from within the restaurant. Old college football games on the televisions overlooking the bar, devoid of the opportunity for any current sporting events. All stools occupied. I gingerly kept my distance from the waiter, placing an order for a hamburger I felt I desperately deserved. I took it to the parking lot, away from the mask less. I bit in, Raia jumping up to get some, me kicking her away.  Juicy, tender meat- so necessary after the endless day of travel.
Feeling guilty, I realized the need to feed my companion.
“Dinner time for Raia,” I sang! One of the few sayings that came out of my mouth that she genuinely understood. She jumped up, her hind legs almost getting her to the height of my face.
“Sit!”
She sat. I filled up her bowl in the van and put it outside. So began our routine for the next week for feeding.
An hour later, we arrived at our remote farm, booked via Airbnb, who had assured us they had followed all necessary safety precautions. Using my iPhone light to find my bearings, I followed the check-in instructions, entered my room, and passed out within minutes.
I was awoken by a hound’s distinctive howl.
“Raia!” I looked at my phone. 6:30 AM. “Go back to sleep!”
She didn’t stop.
 I sat up. Her small but mighty hind legs jumping up incessantly at the window.
Grazing cows, feet away, ignored the little creature.
“Goddamnit, dog,” the goodwill that had built from months of her serving as my muse was dissipating.
We went for a short run through the farm area in Newport, passing cows and pigs and chickens along the way. The smells overcame me: grass replenished with morning dew, the manure of the cows that had woken Raia up, crisp air, filled with the many trees, still green after the spring. After living in New York City for months, it was all intoxicating
The hills provided such a workout that Raia’s stubby legs had to constantly work to catch up, leaving no energy to pull on the leash. The homes with Trump 2020 flags menacingly flying outside the front porch provided perspective.
After a breakfast of fresh-laid chicken eggs, we were back on the road. Raia fell asleep quicker this time around.
 I spent Saturday morning calling friends. When talking to Pete and Dave and Emma, I was present as I headed westward on I-40- unable to surf the internet on my phone while talking. I had no ready-made excuse to hang up, no Zoom call to attend to. The result was deeper conversation: on my feelings leaving New York City, on how Pete was doing with plans for a large wedding foiled, on Dave and his wife’s challenging attempts to get pregnant, on Emma’s struggles taking care of her aging father. On the realities of life in pandemic times.
The weekend’s accommodations were at a cabin ensconced in a farm in Sparta, Tennessee, about an hour outside of Nashville. I decided that we’d break up the trip with two nights in one place, and a staff member had recommended the spot.
Dan, Joanne, and their two German Shepherds greeted us. No masks, of course. They showed us to our quaint studio cottage, approximately the size of my Brooklyn apartment. But instead of being adjoined to noisy Union Street, it was directly next to a chicken coop. The anxious chickens proved as loud as the speeding cars down the narrow Brooklyn street.
Raia successfully pulled the leash away, immediately ran over to the wire coop structure, vaulted off her hind legs, and howled. Despite being fully protected inside the structure, the chickens panicked. Feathers flew everywhere.
“Probably best not to let her off leash,” Dan laughed. “Can mess up their eggs.”
That night, we joined Dan and Joanne as they played guitar and banjo on their patio, dulcet bluegrass tones harkening back to a simpler time, providing a needed companion to my Angel's Envy bourbon.
I could barely believe that I was in such a scene only two nights after leaving Brooklyn. It was almost too perfect of a stereotype. I was relieved. I relaxed for the first time in months. Which naturally led to me feeling guilty that I was allowing myself to even feel those thoughts.
I could tell Raia was similarly elated. She began the impromptu concert playing with Dan and Joanne’s German Shepherds before tiring, lying peacefully in my lap. She too seemed relaxed, unperturbed by moving cars or small studio apartments. The farm life seemed to fit her.
“How have things been the last few months?”
“Rough man,” Dan sang. “Rooooough.”
Joanne continued in harmony while he simply plucked at the strings.
“Farming business is down. No one is visiting. No one is buying shit. We’re fine, but goddamn it’s hard. And this goddamn government won’t do anything. We gotta get this Trump asshole out.”
I told them about how challenging it was in New York City over the last few months.
Dan sympathized but articulated his different reality.
“We basically socially distance all the time from everyone anyways. We don’t know anyone’s who’s gotten the Corona.”
The pandemic was visceral for me- it was rare to go a day in New York City without hearing someone who had gotten it: neighbors and friends alike. I knew people who had died. But many people, most people, like Dan and Joanne, did not know anyone who had contracted the disease. Their economic livelihood had been decimated. And a government that they did not trust in the first place had provided very little support.
The cultural warfare that had emerged between the masks and the mask less led to misplaced anger. The blame lay primarily, and almost exclusively with a federal government that did not take care of its people. And lied to its people. There was no sense of one America, all united to defeat the virus. It was every person on their own.
The next morning, our one day of pausing from driving, we went for a beautiful five-mile hike in nearby Burgess State Falls. Upon arriving at the hiking trail, several dominating signs noted that dogs were not allowed on the trail. I pretended not to see.
The hike was down a ravine and up over a waterfall, through various streams of flowing but harmless water. I carried Raia over every body of water. She can stand up to cows and chickens. But water is where she draws the line.
We returned to the parking lot, wind picking up, thunder in the distance, drops of rain beginning to sully the dirt. I started the minivan. I drove forward. The van came to a screeching halt. I had driven over a large log meant to indicate a parking spot.
I accelerated forward.
Reversed backwards.
Nothing but smoke and burnt rubber.
A park ranger ran over. I continued to wonder if mask orders had not yet arrived in this part of the country.  But I needed her. She looked under the van.
“Oh, this is a doozy. I need backup.”
Twenty minutes later, she arrived with two other rangers. They realized they didn’t have the equipment they needed to prop up the van and saw off the log. They called for more backup. More backup did not include any masks.
They saw a whimpering dog in the back of the van.
“Did she hike with you?”
“Sorry.”
“Some pretty obvious signs at the front there.”
I guess I pay attention to mask regulations, but not state park rules.
They pried the van up, and finally sawed off the log.
“Try to see if you can get it to start?”
I had been observing them outside, Raia inside. I reached inside my pockets.
“Oh shit,” I realized my pockets were empty.
They started howling. 
            “Really? You left your keys in there?”
Raia frantically jumped on the window.
While the rangers went to call a locksmith, I pried open one of the back windows, pushed the boxes even further in, and squeezed in. I unlocked the car from the inside.
“We’re good to go!”
            “Shit man. Might want to relax a bit there.”
I guess my relaxing the night before had been a mirage.
We all laughed. I expressed my gratitude. 
Monday morning, we were back on our way. The road to Memphis on I-40 was paved with endless work phone calls: with other civics education organizations, my direct reports, our Leadership Team. Raia, bored of my jabbering, passed out quickly.
There’s something about driving endlessly on an open highway that is profoundly humbling. Most of my identity for the last decade had been fundamentally predicated on being a non-profit CEO. I found value and self-worth in attending high-profile conferences, leading a big team, gaining accolades.
No one in the middle of Tennessee cared about my job as a non-profit CEO. Despite the highfalutin language I used with donors about Generation Citizen’s huge reach and big systemic impact, the vast majority of young people in this country had no idea what GC was. Most young people were still not getting an effective civics education .
The next few days were full of new sights and sounds, a geography that varied from floral to forest to desert, many conference calls, and new explorations for Raia and me.
We walked through a ghost-like Memphis, disappointed that we could not visit the famous civil rights museums, recognizing that urban dwellers were indeed wearing masks irrespective of the party of their governor. We were able to enjoy mouth-watering take-out barbeque, a take-out, pulled pork sandwich that I ate in the backyard patio of our Airbnb, Raia jumping up the entire time, trying to get a piece.
We stayed for a night in Mountain View, Arkansas, a town of 2,786 people known for, well, its views of the Ozark mountains, and folk music. We entered a mobile home park that promised a folk concert, only to realize that the concert was indoors, only comprised people above the age of 75, and had zero masks.
I did sit down in the back of the room, attempting to enjoy the music for at least a few moments. Raia, however, was either not a fan of the environs, or of the music. She loudly began whimpering, wanting to get outside. I received a barrage of angry looks. Mask-use optional, but disrupting music is completely unacceptable.
We ventured to Oklahoma City, a town I had visited many times because GC had opened up an office in Oklahoma’s capital. I had an outdoor dinner with one of GC’s staff members, Amy. I realized it was the first time I had seen a staff member in months.
It’s challenging to know how a team feels about you when your only engagement with them is through a computer screen. The ability to connect, to listen, to talk, was so needed for the soul. I was grateful that my team, or at least Amy, recognized the lengths to which I had gone to ensure the organization survived in the midst of a pandemic. It was the first time in months I felt actually appreciated as a leader.
While we engaged in conversation about work and life alike, Raia ran amok in their backyard, exploring every corner, smelling trash cans and the grease that emanated from the outdoor grill. She ended the night passed out in my lap as the bourbon once again flowed freely.
When you talk to coast-to-coast road trip warriors, which is a surprisingly large group of people, everyone notes that the stretch on I-40 between Oklahoma City and Albuquerque is the worst. They are right.
It is completely straight. It is completely desert.  It is completely devoid of civilization, save the town of Amarillo, whose “Big Texan Steak Ranch” 72 ounce steak competition is advertised for 200 miles outside the town (because again, there is nothing on the highway).
If you eat the 72 ounce steak in one hour, on a stage, you get it for free. I ventured inside the steakhouse to buy some water for Raia. I quickly left when I realized that the steak competition was alive and well, crowded and mask less. I had a temporary lack of empathy for any Amarillo citizens participating in the endeavor, but quickly harkened back to my astute analytical thinking that it was the government, and the broader dysfunction of our civic culture, to blame.
Albuquerque’s desert vistas were breathtaking at sunset and sunrise, the sun lighting up a cloudless sky as we descended into the town from a windy highway. Chicken enchiladas with a southwestern, tangy red sauce could be a diet onto itself, and proved to be my dinner and breakfast alike. I contemplated extending the stay.  Unfortunately, after the second serving of enchiladas, this time, the breakfast variety, we set off at daybreak,
An hour into our drive, in the middle of yet another conference call, I looked out my side mirror and realized that my flopping bike was nowhere to be seen. Somewhere, either at our adobe studio, or enchilada-making restaurant, someone had taken my entire bike rack off the back of the minivan. It had survived a pandemic, six-eighths of a cross country road trip. But it could not survive New Mexico. I was both furious and impressed with whomever now has a purple Signature road bike.
The last night of the road trip was spent outside Flagstaff, Arizona in a cross-country ski area, doubling as a hiking area in the summer. We had an outdoor dining excursion to a Flagstaff brewery. IPA and pizza in tow, compliments to Raia flowing. Unlike Foot of the Mountain, masks were adorned everywhere at the brewery, which was strict on the number of occupants it allowed outside at a given time. The beer was good. The mountain views were stunning.
Sipping the bitter IPA, brewed at the high altitude of Flagstaff, I smiled at Raia, who, exhausted from the day, was asleep at my feet.
I wondered if she had any sense of our collective journey. Maybe she was frustrated that she was sleeping in a different bed every night. I was sure she was sick of the van, putting up more of a fight every time we circled close to it.
It’s a strange relationship- human and dog. I had shared this intense, immersive cross country journey with an animal who had no sense of the gravity of it, and whom I could never reminisce with it about. But I was so grateful that she had been on the journey with me.
My constant side-kick, who wouldn’t judge me when I left my weights behind and drove over parking structures and lost bikes. Who had met and barked at cows and chickens and old Bluegrass musicians. Whose exuberance, and incredible jumping hind legs, endeared her to everyone she had met along the way- from Trump conservatives in Virginia to farmers in Tennessee to GC staff members in Oklahoma. Whose nose had picked up every smell along the way- from crisp, newly dewed green grass to pulled pork sandwiches to spiced enchiladas.
I had decided that Raia should enter my life because I know that I needed a change. Everyone I knew thought I was crazy for making the decision. Thousands of miles away from New York City, on the verge of a new city and a new life, and eventually, a new job, Raia was now the one constant.
 On our last day, we stopped in Sedona, Arizona, for a hike up a red-rock butte, Raia gamely making it to the top and stunning views, in 90 degree weather. She began the hike scampering, passing other hikers who feigned jealousy at the small dog with the stubby legs who was making a mockery of their own efforts. Closer to the top, closer to the sun, further away from the shade, she began to struggle. I carried her up the last steep ravine.
I opened up my backpack as she panted heavily, nosing in, expecting water.  Nothing.
I frantically looked around me. Some fellow travelers at the top, who had been jealous of Raia minutes before, lent me a bottle.
“You hiked all the way up with a dog without water?” The judgment was evident. Pet control could be on its way soon to repatriate Raia.
“Give me an effing break,” I thought, both frustrated and ashamed.
I had, after all, successfully traveled across the entire country, keeping a dog alive and healthy. What did he know about me? About my ability to raise a dog in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a transition, in the midst of a road trip?
“Thanks,” I said though. “I really appreciate it.” Which I did because I’m not totally sure Raia could have survived without it.
When we got back down, Raia, perhaps for the first time in the entire trip, bounded into the back seat, desperately seeking shade. It was the last time she had to hop in the van.
We sped through the Arizona desert, averaging around 90, as we hopped on the 8, traveling just north of the border, signs warning of migrants who might be passing through the freeway.
As the 8 turned into I-5, the freeway I had taken so often growing up in San Diego, I was finally able to turn off my phone’s Google Maps function for the first time in days as I knew the freeway routes intimately.
The feelings overwhelmed me. Only eight days earlier, Raia and I were in New York City. Now, together, we were in a town where I was born, but had never thought I’d ever live in again. I felt lucky to have made it, to be close to my parents. I felt grateful to have seen so much of a country that was so vast and diverse in ways I never knew before. And I felt deep appreciation for the dog next to me, who showed her love constantly, but would never understand just how much she had meant to me. How much she means to me.
The Pacific Ocean was on our right. The sun was setting, a pink hue overtook the horizon. I could make out the white tips of the waves as we passed over a bridge. Raia curiously looked over.  She had seen mountains and prairies and deserts and red cliff buttes. This was her first ocean.
We pulled into the driveway. Raia eagerly hopped out of the car. I picked her up and kissed her.
She, oblivious to it all, but what a damn trooper.
 

Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker who teaches poetry in city public schools. She writes for London Artlyst, American Book Review and LiveMag. Her book “Any Island”was published by Spuyten Duyvil.

​“Unless we remember, we cannot understand” ‒ E. M. Forster
 
The nineteen-fifties brought a great postwar building boom to the New York City boroughs, with developments in Queens especially creating an affordable facsimile of suburban life for returning soldiers and their young families. In author Marc Jampole’s debut novel, The Brothers Silver, Ed, Ethel, and their two young sons, Jules and Leon, live in a middle-class Queens enclave, where divorce is still an uncommon embarrassment. With cinematic immediacy, we encounter the Silver family in the middle of their contentious split. Jules, the elder, “less favored son” and narrator, finds himself in the middle of his mother’s emotional breakdown and his father’s feckless half-abandonment. A younger brother, Leon, is emotionally needy and unpredictable. The reader is directly thrust into the midst of a severely fractured family. Before her first hospitalization, Ethel beats her baby son, Leon, which Ed sees as a possible explanation for his younger son’s wayward behavior. Through memory and dialogue that ring true, Jampole thrusts the reader into the maelstrom of a dysfunctional family, where no silver lining awaits the troubled Silver brothers.
It is up to the articulate protagonist, young Jules, to deal with his mother’s boss when she is too depressed to continue working. Ethel periodically breaks down and is filled with rancor for their father. The house is in disarray, meals are forgotten, and angry diatribes against their father are a daily curse. Both academically gifted boys are a great source of pride to their rakish father, who disappears and reappears with no schedule or provision of financial stability.
Manhattan beckons to the disenfranchised boys like a shining Mecca. Relatives like Uncle Jack introduce them to the wonders of city strolling, from the Village to Times Square. Manhattan appears and reappears throughout the book, as in “Manhattan, my paradise away from home.”
For Jules, life becomes a fragile balancing act, where he implores both parents to cease using him as an unwelcome sounding board. “Not a word about my mother,” he warns his father, Ed, echoing the same desperate sentiment in reverse to Ethel, his mother. Life with Mom includes her sporadic participation in Temple activities, specifically typing meeting notes for the Sisterhood and occasional manic bouts of cooking and cleaning. It also is the reality of her suicide attempts and frequent job losses, which put the family in economic free-fall. Even Jules’s Bar Mitzvah is tainted by his mother’s father, Pop Pop, an obnoxious and drunken grandfather. Poor Jules dreams of being Wally, the popular, polite, and perfect older brother in the current “ Leave It To Beaver” television series, with June, a stereotypically happy housewife and mother. Instead he is a kid with a dad who skips out to avoid child support and a mom who buys a car with his Bar Mitzvah money.
Jampole, a poet and lyrical writer, presents scenes like Jules watching the JFK funeral with his pill-popping mother that ring true and traumatic, as is the portrait of his volatile kid brother Leon (or Lee). Just a few years older than Leon, it is Jules, instead of his non-responsive parents, who has to visit with the school psychiatrist to shed some light on the misbehavior of his brilliant and misguided sibling. It is the accident-prone and irresponsible Leon who once discovered their mother with slit wrists. But when both boys find her after another suicide attempt by gas, a kindly neighbor helps them deal with her without police or hospital interference.
Unsurprisingly, early in the book Jules realizes, “The triad of my family’s eyes is filled with suffocating quicksand.” Though he desperately wants to save his family, he also recognizes, “I don’t have the skills or strength to help.” Always, Jules lives with his parents’ overwhelming favoritism towards his younger brother, whom the family views as a young Adonis. Meanwhile, the articulate Jules is steadfast in his self-involvement and woefully lacking in self-awareness.
The next chapter, written in the acerbic voice of the father, Ed Silver, shows him at this point trying to rescue his younger son, Leon, from a drug-filled and aimless life. “I used to talk to my boys,” he moans. Although he greatly prefers Lee, he describes his sons as “…real thoroughbreds. Jules was always a mudlark who likes a heavy track, but I thought Leon was a Triple Crown winner, a stud.” Ed is a man who describes a lover as “She’s running thirty, which is already over the hill for women.” We learn that Ed, also abandoned as a child, came from a family that suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the father, who disappeared to avoid legal consequences. The same man who raped his daughters and fled the consequences goes on to find success in Los Angeles. Ultimately, he uses connections to try to help Ed locate his runaway grandson, the much-favored Leon, who has joined the flock of would-be hippies in Haight Ashbury. Ed longs to start a business dynasty with Leon as a vital part of his dream. Meanwhile, Leon longs to get away from his family, basking in an uncommitted and downwardly mobile life.
Thus, we watch the two brothers carry their dysfunctional heritage into their adult life. It is this familial trajectory that shadows the estranged siblings’ adventures and misadventures, straight out of a Baby Boom time frame. Both share paralyzing frustrations and a lack of compassion, as they stumble and search for a semblance of adulthood in the Age of Aquarius.
Lee, after an interlude of fleeing his parents, moves down South with his loving Aunt Ginny and Uncle Emil, who is his mom’s brother. The aunt and uncle are among the book’s most likable characters, desperately trying to provide some stability for their troubled young nephew, even at the risk of his being a bad influence on their own two sons. Their loving, natural repartee reflects some of the rare untainted love depicted in the book.
After brief interludes as a welder, then a hospital orderly, Lee retreats to an uncommitted life in a teepee. “It’s a Thoreau kind of thing, I want to simplify my existence.” At this moment of time this might sound like madness, but it was a viable counterculture alternative in the last millennium, an “off-the-grid” choice.
Jampole’s lyrical voice resounds in chapters like “The Mirror Shatters.” Amid lamentations of despair, Jules details and categorizes his emotions through fractured pieces of his past. From digressions on moving schools seven times, to guilt about his mother’s suicide attempts, his memories are explored with rambling details or koan-like brevity. Guilt, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Shame, Panic, and Pride provide a framework for the narrator’s personal pain.
Another literary leap is the inclusion of a wistful and surprisingly articulate love letter from one of Leon’s former girlfriends, who declares, “… you’re perfect because of all the damage you suffered.”
Various chapters explore the jaded perspective of Jules, who, in one of them, visits a San Francisco Mikva, only to experience a flash of paternal compassion when he befriends the young kid who works at the dilapidated Jewish bathhouse. The fifteen-year-old boy, quoting his rabbi, discusses the esoteric power of Hashmal, the knowledge spoken of in the Kabbalah, while Jules confesses his guilt about getting stoned with the boy, who hastily assures him he also shares dope with his thirty-three-year-old mother.
Another chapter focuses on Lee, the self-destructive kid brother and “God of the here and now,” espousing the “deadbeat” life and his pride at the choice to tune in, turn on, and drop out: “A deadbeat lives in a here and now devoid of planning or looking back.” The critical evaluation of his brother continues caustically, as in “The so called here and now in which Jules lives is always full of the future.” Of his parents, Ed earns only contempt: “But he never intimidated me because I always had a secret weapon. He cared, and I don’t.” Did Lee really have sex with his mother, or is it an LSD-induced fantasy, a replay of warped ancestral history? After the supposed incident (or hallucination), Lee never again speaks directly to his mother.
These alternating voices flesh out the pain and confusion of a familial past filled with trauma. One voice I wanted to hear more of was that of the beleaguered mother, Ethel, whose disappointments and mental illness continued to shadow the lives of her sons. Even if Ethel is a victim of the rigid “feminine mystique” described by Betty Friedan, she must be more than the one-sided portrait of a desperate and depressed housewife. In the one chapter dedicated to Ethel, “Her Seventh Attempt at Rest,” she invokes a breathless diatribe of her failures, crushed self-esteem, and suicide attempts. I would have liked more illumination into the woman who was living in “the glorious agony” that taints her progeny.
These varied familial visions provide glimpses of a shared reality from equally articulate but wildly different philosophical outlooks. To survive, Jules wordlessly abandons his aimless California life, his passionate and volatile romance with El, a complicated older woman who supports him on her pension. Both sexual explorers, they spend months hitchhiking the country, bickering frequently, and staging emotional and jealous scenes. After dramatic incidents when Jules coaches a neighbor through childbirth, or confronts El for her extracurricular sexual escapades, the reader can only question “the whipsaw between tears and joy that I accepted for four years,” and why this bickering couple chooses to stay together. Then, abruptly, Jules flees, leaving his bohemian and aimless world behind. He decides to save his own life, thereby walking away from the restless existence into which he has fallen.
The less favored son decides to go “straight to straightsville,” ultimately transforming himself into the successful survivor, who lands a decent job and creates a family. “...it was my decision to throw away my old life, and I did it the right way this time, a complete excision of everything having to do with my past” is the justification that propels Jules into a career that expands financially and professionally. “I am a stowaway in my nuclear family of women... Always the outsider” on the “road more traveled.” Where other men might feel gratitude for a life change that encompasses stability and parenthood, Jules still clings to his identity as a cynical outsider, despite “a mortgaged house at the end of a cul-de-sac.”
Down south, Lee continues his marginal existence, with the added pleasures of love affairs, recreational drug use, learning guitar, and an active countercultural social community. “My brother believed that participating in society in any way made you part of the system of exploitation,” muses Jules. His death, from a fall from a dilapidated roof he was repairing, may have been a suicide. When Jules goes to the funeral, he arrives alone, as his lawyer wife was unaware he even had a brother. Jules views Lee’s aging hippie friends who attend the funeral as “jagged pieces of vitrified sand that somehow fit together, the unplanned life my brother led.” He is unable to see that Lee’s life may have been more than the sum of self-chosen poverty and transgression.
After reading his mother’s diary, found midst Leon’s papers, Jules decides to take a road trip out west, honoring the great American experience “to slip back in time.” “I started this trip to feel like a homeless Ulysses, roaming to be free, to fly free of home, or merely free of death, or at least the perception that one will die.” Through social media, he traces old friends across the country in an attempt to discover “what happened to those I left behind.” Is it merely boredom that propels the self-described “settled, upper-middle-class, middlebrow Jules” to embark on a search for the “wander years of my youth”? In his on-the-road odyssey, Jules shows no curiosity or sense of discovery. Moreover, why is it that he can find no common ground with or respect for his old friends?
At the same time, Jules seems to find no comfort in his new life as a corporate worker and family man. “For the past twenty five years I’ve lived in a waking sleep in which I speed blamelessly through my rebuilt life in suspended animation....” His search for community is a search for himself, the choices he has made, and an understanding of the anger that propelled “a jet of pure fury unsalted with guilt or regret.”
With “sharp fanged scorn I learned from my father,” Jules judges his old comrades harshly, with a disturbing lack of empathy. A former Rasta pot dealer has transmuted to a doctor specializing in pediatric psychiatry, leading Jules to view him as switching from pushing pot “to shilling pills, this time to kids.” Seeing his old friend, who lectures him on “preadolescent boys with ADD,” makes Jules “want to break him in two, rub his bloated face in pig shit....”
Another old friend, a former frat boy, now has become a jaded software success running for Congress. From meeting an overweight horseshoe hustler to a former artist, now a corporate art salesman, Jules declares, “I have nothing in common with these bumblers.” Why does he feel so superior to his peers? Why is he so bitterly critical of his old comrades?
One of Jules’s last encounters on the road is with Gigi, whom he knew as a nubile teenager once renting a room in his house. His description of Gigi years later is as cruel and petty as his conclusions about his old male friends. From noting that her “flawless cheekbones now look worn and cracked” to observing that “She’s packed on a little weight everywhere,” Jules’s cynical comments echo his father’s misogyny. Gigi, who works in a Tahoe casino, informs him that El has died from breast cancer. Though he claims not to have thought of El for years, Jules memorializes her death in these terms: “Now at sixty, the woman who ruined you and made you live beyond ruination.” Both parents, brother, and old lover are dead. The reader wants to shake Jules out of his self-indulgent despair. After all, a wife and daughter are waiting for him, although his description of his partner as “conventional and controlled” and “lacking vision to look beyond her own middle-class sensibilities” echoes his own misguided notions of superiority. His daughter is but a mere footnote in his musings.
Jules, after his road trip, shares childhood memories of his happiest times with his extended family, before the birth of his brother, in terms of beach time with his then-doting parents. Then there is a shift to his father’s gathered siblings, his brother’s birth, and, subsequently, his demotion from adored only child. Following that is the beginning of his mother’s unexplained and traumatic absences. Our final glimpses of Jules are those where he is soothed by nature ‒ from hilltop to rivers to Central Park. Comparing snippets of overheard conversation, “Well, I mean, like, so, anyway...” to the “meaningless chirp of birds” rings true to anyone who has eavesdropped on contemporary conversational inanities. A beautiful unknown birdwatcher produces “a momentary erotic frieze.” Cold air awakens Jules from his dream state. We leave our troubled anti-hero “not wondering if the journey upstream has ended or if I have stumbled upon another dream.”