I just had the most loving experiences at the bank and the post office. I don’t know what is going on, but sometimes this feeling of love and joy and contentment overwhelms me and it oozes out of me in all these unlikely places, like with the bank teller or the man behind the counter at the post office. Race was playing into it all as well, because I am so grateful when I can have a feeling of love and connection with people from other races. I am sure that is racist, but aren’t we all. I don’t even know what the word means sometimes. I am not color blind. I see that the young man with tattoos up and down his forearms in the post office selling me stamps is black and I think to myself, “I wonder if his friends rag on him for putting on that US Postal Service shirt and going to work” which is probably racist too, and then I think “I am glad he got a job and is earning a living but at the same time maybe he dreams bigger and what are the possibilities?” which is probably racist too but it’s the truth. And then I say I want the special edition stamp about the civil rights march and he looks but they are out of those and so I choose the Emancipation Proclamation stamp even though I wrote a paper in grammar school about how Abraham Lincoln was a hypocrite and had slaves himself. But I am not sure I was right about that because Gita Drury said I was wrong.  (And my Dad just said it was Jefferson with the slaves, and I am sure he is right about that). And I see that the bank teller is an adorable Latina with matching sparkly ear rings and a necklace and I think about my dear friend who I can’t name who didn’t want to tell me for many years that she and her boyfriend are here illegally because she thought I might turn them in because I am a lawyer. And while it hurt that she misunderstood me or the difference between unethical and illegal in my own mind, I told her that I understood because I do, and that I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in this country and work hard and pay your taxes and know you can be thrown out at a moment’s notice.

So that was my morning.