I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a personal memory the words bring up. It’s about how books connect with your life.
***

“Or maybe we didn’t remember, we just knew.”

———Toni Morrison
——--The Bluest Eye


THE usual dank basement smell turned scary around the time the dishwasher broke.

The repairman said, “A mouse chewed this hose.”

I fought the urge to vomit.

The basement had the stench of danger before we spotted the droppings.

The odor stalked me when we searched the pest aisle at Lowe’s for traps. I had to sit down, lightheaded from fear. When my husband calmly disposed of the first dead mouse, the smell chased me outside in a panic. The next one, I hid in the bedroom, struggling to breathe, as the smell suffocated me. I refused to be alone in the house. When my husband had a coffee date, I waited for him in the driveway. At home or not, inside or out, the smell assaulted me. I ran.

In the therapist’s office, I clutched a pillow. Phil leaned in, the cue that he was about to deploy his you’re-safe-here voice. “The mice are a symbol,” he said. “They were part of your childhood environment.”

The houses I grew up in were constantly infested. I didn’t remember this; mysiblings told me.

Phil said, “The mice are a symbol. Your dad was the monster.”

My siblings’ recollections had filled in the blanks about other parts of our childhood environment. The parts about Dad’s violence.

I didn’t remember the whippings and snatchings and you-better-nots, but when the smell of mice hit my nose, I knew.

Travel back to the election of 2008 in this excerpt from Stumbling toward the Buddha, 10th Anniversary Edition.

Palin Power: On Discovering the Emptiness of Knowledge

2008. On the first night of the Democratic convention, I clicked out of Politico.com, MSNBC.com, and NYTimes.com, turned off the radio’s political analyst, and raced to the den to catch public television’s coverage. I’d been a Yellow Dog Democrat since the autumn we turned playground foursquare into a political forum: pitypat if you said you were for Kennedy, but if you said Nixon, we got you out right away. (Years later John Dean vindicated my early instincts.)

The wife of our nominee––Senator Barack Obama––headlined opening night. The senator personified my party’s big tent ideals, but Michelle … she was something else altogether. She was somebody like me. Hips like mine, almond-shaped eyes like mine, hair straightened with the chemicals that had smoothed my tresses back when I was her age, the acrid odor easily summoned in spite of the intervening years. Her presence on that stage filled me with pride and righteousness. It was personal.

As the convention unfolded over the week, a procession of elected officials lauded the vision of the Democrats and poked fun at the Republicans. I nodded in agreement when they recounted the failures of the current GOP administration. I yelled my approval at their proposals for whipping our government back into shape. Conventioneers, draped in lanyards bearing their credentials, hooted and stabbed the air with placards. We were Democrats, and we knew what the country needed, by God. I remained in front of the television from opening gavel to grand finale, when Barack described the election as a defining moment.

The Republicans gathered the following week. I tuned in to hear what the other side was plotting. When their politicians poked fun at the Democrats, my back stiffened. Their personal attacks went too far. I shook my head as they enumerated the mistakes (or so they called them) of previous Democratic administrations. They claimed those who fell for wrong-headed left-wing propaganda and liberal media bias were either gullible or stupid. What? We Dems possessed well-researched facts; those Republicans held misguided opinions. I jeered at their proposals, while conventioneers, draped in lanyards bearing their credentials, hooted and stabbed the air with placards.

Why did they look so sure of themselves? So … familiar? It didn’t make sense. The conviction I’d felt as a liberal was shining through conservative eyes. My left-wing self-assurance echoed in the cheers of a right-wing mob. My conviction. My self-assurance. How could they be expressing my zeal? Was it possible I felt theirs?

People I’d known to be Wild-Eyed Fanatics were crystallizing into People Like Me.

As conservative politicians took to the stage and denounced my left-wing party, I was dumbfounded. But not because of their beliefs. I was dumbfounded because of mine. Beliefs––that’s all I had. Not knowledge. Beliefs.

Republicans knew we were wrong in exactly the same way I knew we were right.

They railed against crime. I understood. After all, I knew it was no big deal to leave my front door unlocked, in the same way my neighbor knew to triple-bolt hers.

They railed against taxes. I got it. After all, I knew it was fair that everybody pay them, in the same way my accountant knew I should pay nothing.

The cameras panned the audience again.

The members of the Texas delegation sported identical red plaid shirts and white cowboy hats. I waited for my habitual scorn to list their deficiencies, waited for my disdain to restore balance to the world. Waited in vain, because I couldn’t say with certainty the Lone Star State even existed. You’d never see its familiar shape, peer out of an airplane as long or often as you want. Texas was a belief.

Disoriented, I wrapped up in a throw and sank back into the couch. A massage of my temples provided no relief. The political fire in my belly sputtered out. There would be no yard signs, buttons, or tee shirts. They don’t make bumper stickers for Republi-Crats.

A fresh round of applause from the convention floor. A speaker introduced the candidate for the vice presidency: Sarah Palin. Conservative. Charismatic. Controversial. The political blogosphere rumored she supported a party that advocated Alaskan secession from the US.

“Ladies and gentleman, the next vice president of the United States.”

My knees weakened. My palms sweated. Butterflies were fluttering. I wanted to pace, then fought back an urge to rush to the nearest restroom. Symptoms of … stage fright?

Stage fright.

But why me?

“Sarah Palin.” She strode from behind the curtains. The hall erupted in a roaring, foot-stomping ovation, which whiplashed me from Get out of here! to I’m about to obliterate my opponents.

She click-clacked across the stage, waving, grinning, and throwing kisses.

I felt my feet encased in her stiletto peep-toe pumps, and with each step she advanced, the floor pounded against my soles.

Thousands of adoring fans chanted, “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.”

They may as well have shouted, “Dawn, Dawn, Dawn.”

I didn’t understand my visceral response to her. It scared me, but I couldn’t make it stop. Sarah Palin was pushing me off a cliff.

She took her place at the lectern.

My confidence swelled as she read her speech; she and I had prepared for this big moment. She—I—did not step on our applause lines. She delivered our zingers with the timing of Chris Rock.

Her final “God bless America” set off another wave of thunder from the floor, where new signs had appeared: “Palin Power,” “Hockey Moms 4 Palin.” The presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, joined her on the stage. The crowd roared. The ceiling parted. The balloons dropped. My chest swelled with pride.

You go, girl. Work that crowd.

She winked into the camera. At me.

I plummeted into free fall––became this woman who I wanted to dismiss, adored this woman with whom I felt no kinship. She was no Michelle Obama. My adoration transcended pride and righteousness. The physical space between Sarah Palin and me imploded, as a singular humanity displaced the conceit there had ever been two of us.

The Buddha said, “In the seeing, just the seen.” There she stood, seen, she and her Republicans, undistorted by the stories my so-called knowledge had composed. My entire store of information turned out to be a collection of beliefs, which I’d mislabeled facts. The whole idea of knowing fell apart.

The campaign lurched forward, an exercise in democracy equally meaty for political analysts and gossipmongers––God, certainty, and outrage on both sides of every issue. When companions opined about the candidates, I kept silent. No longer saw the GOP as the party of evildoers, no longer viewed the Democrats as saviors. My interest in politics, whether environmental, feminist, or social, became less frantic. I relaxed. The election was a novel––a darn good one, but I could put it down any time.

…
Author’s Note, looking back from 2024
I no longer believe in the righteousness of the American political system. Democracy is a belief system, a religion for its true believers.

I miss the hope I had in the system, before Barack unleashed drones that executed innocents alongside the supposedly guilty, before Barack gaslighted Flint’s lead-poisoned families by pretending to sip from a glass of their water.

Call it what you will— America, politics, democracy—I no longer practice the faith. I vote out of habit, the way Mother used to drag us to church every Christmas.

I collect sentences and pay tribute to the authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a personal memory the words bring up. It’s about how books connect with your life.

*****

“No one could rival Arthur Less for his ability to exit a room while remaining inside it.”

—Andrew Sean Greer
--Less


Diversity training session in a small conference room. Except for the facilitator and me, everyone in the room was white. The facilitator instructed us to pair up with the person in the room we knew least well. I was a new employee. They barely knew my name. Circling the conference table like ring-around-the-rosey, they all paired up, leaving me standing by myself. The facilitator and I exchanged an OMG look, but I don’t know what happened after that, because my spirit walked right out the door.