Assault Life

I've been awake for hours, as is usual for me.  Around 3:30 a.m., I was aware of a growling, motor kind of noise.  I assumed it was one of the trucks on my street of lots of trucks--the neighbor kid, home from his job in a restaurant?  

But the growl went on and on.  At one point, I wondered if I was hearing a generator.  But then, the engine revved, and the noisemaking engine drove away, only to return minutes later.

I continued to wonder what I was hearing or more specifically, why I was hearing it.  A family living in their car?  Kids of driving age with no other place to hang out?

When the sky got a bit lighter, and the noise persisted, I went outside.  I pretended to be looking at the sky to gauge the process of the tropical system that's over us.  I noticed that the idling truck was parked in the wrong direction, which meant that I could see that it had "Assault Life" lettered across the top of the windshield.

I felt a chill, even though I didn't feel immediately threatened.  I know that it's a play on the common bumper sticker that has variations on the "Salt Life" theme, people declaring that they'd rather be boating or fishing or diving or other sea based activities.  Or maybe it's a trendier way of declaring one's pirate affinities.  Probably some adolescent's way of trying to seem hip and cool, probably not an assault rifle in the truck.

But I did have a moment when I thought about how much effort I spend each and every day tamping down my knowledge of how bad our planet-wide situation is, how threatened we are as humans specifically, how the future of the U.S. seems to hang in the balance, and how as a woman, I feel the threat of assault each and every day.  There's a tangible sense of menace.

I've felt that menace before, but it's rarely felt so personal to me.  As a woman on the far side of midlife, you might think I would feel less menace, not more.  In The Handmaid's Tale, I'd be one of the Marthas or one of the women sent the Colonies. 

These days, while the U.S. west burns with literal fires, and many cities are on fire with demonstrations, while the political situations in many countries gets more dire every day, it's hard to know which threat is most pressing.

And yet, I remind myself that I've often felt that the people/nations/things I hold most dear are under threat.  So let me respond, as I often do:  let me get some bread dough set to rising.