Quiet Wednesday evening contemplations...

24 July 2024: Thinking this evening about how quiet the house is now that it's back to "normal" with the girls gone. This summer especially, with the book manuscript being finished early, no administrative work, and no incredibly demanding university service has given me more free time than I have had since college. As I've written about, it's been wonderful and strange and, at times, unsettling to have so much time with myself (and only myself) to do with as I please. A single woman with no children and a comfortable income, I have a kind of freedom so many others do not have.

Tonight, I keep thinking about all of this in connection to JD Vance and his thoughts on childless people--particularly childless women. (And, weirdly, those with cats? seriously--there are so many weirdos over on the right, just obsessed with people's private lives.) For Vance, people like me are less important, less valuable because we aren't invested in our country in the same way parents are. Add in his beliefs that professors are the enemy, and boy, do I check all of his boxes as a target of disdain. It's strange to feel those boxes get checked and not feel...sad? 

But the reason I feel sad, at least tonight, isn't because I am disappointed in my own life or my own choices. 

I am sad because people like Vance must not know and love the same God that I do, or must not listen to him very closely. Because my God tells me that everyone should be invested in children and their future and the planet--and everyone includes people outside of the country. 

I don't need to even try to convince Vance or those like him that I do my best to follow the greatest commandment (and fail so often), but that my goodness--my ability to try has nothing to do with whether or not I have children. I also believe that my life and my work has been an investment in children and the country and the world. Of course it has been, or else why do it? But again, I don't need/want to convince him or anyone else of that right now.

What makes me sad tonight is that this weird stance reflects such a depressing hollowness in the heart of so much right-wing ideology. It has to be your blood for you to care. Fight for your blood, your people, your stuff, your guns, your rights. But fighting on behalf of others, including people not like them? They can't even imagine it without derision and suspicion. It's so f*cking sad. 

I am so glad not to live in that world anymore.