15 minutes

Today I was given 15 minutes to clear off my desk.  The guards I used to say hi to in the morning put my things onto a security belt and had me step through a metal detector.  It didn’t matter that I walked through these doors for 3 years.  I no longer worked here; USAID no longer existed here.  I had exactly 15 minutes to take down my awards, pack the art I collected from Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa.  To grab my USAID mug and collect the blanket I kept at my desk when my biggest problem was that it was always too damn cold.  I took pictures of my white board that listed our clinical trials and (with color coding and exclamation points of course) showed their status: Enrolling patients! Follow up data collection!  Close out!  Someone made it into the lactation room to collect the pictures of USAID babies that hung on the walls who had “graduated” from their mom pumping.  When I walked out of the building with my bulging suitcase a large crowd cheered loudly for me, holding banners that said, “USAID’s work mattered, YOUR work mattered.”  My husband held my baby and took pictures of me to mark this sad, fucked up, but important day to remember. 

Today would have been my last day of maternity leave. On Monday I would have gone back to work to the invariable thousands of emails in my inbox.  (I had a whole plan for going through these emails, it involved espresso and Chappel Roan.)  I would have gone back to my little desk with my packed coffee (because USAID didn't even use our funds for office coffee) and my 8am calls with South Africa.  Back to the Zoom calls where we planned with pharmaceutical companies how to make longer lasting HIV prevention products for women.  Back to that delicious roast beef sandwich from the place next door that I would eat at my desk during my lunch half-an-hour so I could listen to webinars on how to increase project localization in the countries we worked in.

Maternity leave was wonderful.  I loved getting to know the little human that came out of me.  Her smile is the only thing getting me through these dark days.  But I was excited to get back to what was not just another desk job.  Our work was meaningful, and my life felt more meaningful from doing it.

I’m sitting at the desk in my home office right now drinking tea from my USAID mug.  The baby is napping.  My husband starts his paternity leave on Monday, and I don’t get to go back to work.  I’m trying to reframe this next chapter for myself as an “opportunity”.  An opportunity to write more, exercise more, take a class, apply to jobs.  But I just want to get back to work.

My new friend and neighbor texted me today: “Everything you’ve done so far for the world is so important and valued by so many people.  These fuckers don’t know what they’re doing messing with people like us.  We’re not just going to give up.  Next stage is a new type of figure it the fuck out and help the world.  Happy to have you as a neighbor and looking forward to plotting, planning and raging with you.” 

Oh girl, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands now.  Just wait and see how I can fight.

I'm mourning

He killed my post partum peace

And now I’m mourning

I’m mourning 3am tik tok cats now rage Signal chats

I’m mourning mom group day care reccs, now who lost a job, lost a house, lost a right

I’m mourning the job I loved, the work that mattered, drawn and quartered

I’m mourning my body, again my own, now owned by the white men with the laws, the guns, the power

I’m mourning my post partum peace

Why can’t I think about how to move to a better school district not how to raise my baby in another fucking country

I am mourning the mother I was on January 19^th

  

This is happening

There’s a giddiness that comes when standing at the precipice.  I remember a similar feeling waiting in line to buy gallons of water in preparation for hurricanes in Key West.  Strangers would turn to each other and compare preparation status.  “My shutters are up but I still have to buy the sandbags.”  “They have them on sale at Home Depot.”  It was terrifying but thrilling.  I felt a similar community feeling during COVID.  It was so scary but also a little exciting.  The whole world was watching the same channel and cheering their health workers from the windows.

USAID went dark today.  There’s no website, we don’t have access to our buildings, most of my colleagues were fired.  I’m waiting for my termination notice any second now.  And again, there’s a little spark of electricity.  I’m on signal chats where people who made it into the building are offering to pick up things for their coworkers at their desks.  People are downloading data from websites before they go down. There’s a protest outside the main USAID building.  Once again terrifying but… a little thrilling.  Only this time it feels misplaced to me.  I don’t think things are going to be ok.  This is no quick hurricane and even if we have a vaccine, it won’t be allowed to be distributed.

We were so close to epidemic control of HIV across the world.  A status we clawed our way to over decades.  These changes are going to kick out the fingers of our progress and plummet.  The damage is done, and it will leave more than a scar.  And every day brings a new terrifying reality.  It makes you wonder how long did it actually take for Rome to fall?  At what point will history remember us as the people who stayed in Gilead for too long?  Next month? Next week? Tomorrow?

My new baby is sleeping next to me (obviously or how else would I have had the time to write this).  I had so much more optimism when we decided to bring her (painstakingly) into this world.  Maybe the ultimate action of optimism, an oath that I saw hope enough to bring her into it.  And now a silenced part of me is terrified that my hope was naive and stupid.  But when I look at her beautiful, sleeping face a rage of tears and fire stick in my throat and make my hands shake.  She is the reason that me and her father will fight.  I don’t know what that will look like yet, but I dare you to fuck with us. 

She's stirring so I have to stop writing and begin my guessing game of is it poop, hunger or gas?  And that will distract me from the constant pings on my phone.  But I know tonight when I'm in her dark and quiet nursery instead of a lullaby I'll whisper, I will fight for you.  I will fight for you until you can fight beside me.