If you are like me, (though maybe some of you are not), you felt a relief on January 20th when the Inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris went off smoothly, indeed gloriously, filled with hope, music and poetry. Then later that evening, the “Celebrate America” special, which I managed to tune in just in time to hear Black Pumas with their wonderful song “Colours,” which moved me to get up and dance in my apartment, which is often filled with colors of its own from my hanging crystals that catch the daylight. The title of their song, and the lyrics, “all my favorite colors, my sisters and my brothers,” was so appropriate, because as Biden’s Inauguration visually showed, it was a day embracing an America with a renewed palette. So many colors, whther they be racial, ethnic or religious that truly represent America. And think about the glorious colors the women attending proudly wore. Michelle Obama in her purple coat and jumpsuit, Kamala Harris in her bright purple blue suit, Jill Biden in her turquoise peacock delicately sparkling coat and dress. We saw brilliance, texture, even in Lady Gaga’s buoyant black and red dress, with the red skirt and train insisting on its space… look at me! And the young poet, Amanda Gorman, with a bright canary yellow dress and red headband encircling her hair, proudly reaching towards the sky.

We saw that America before, one full of racial and ethnic representation on TV when Biden opened the presidential debates with beautiful faces of young people, distanced in our time of Covid-19, and yet together as one, recognizing so many variations, not just black and white. Such a sharp contrast to then President Trump, who couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “racism,” let alone denounce it, or to say he didn’t support white supremacists, claiming he’d never heard of The Proud Boys, only to tell them to “Stand back and Stand by,” which they did in yet another example of why words matter.

Is it a diverse America that feels so threatening to those who fear losing what they consider to be “their land,” their position of privilege, even if poor or working class, in what Isabel Wilkerson in Caste brilliantly calls the “white dominant caste?” This deep divide is evident since it’s clear not all can agree on what America is and who counts as a real American. Yes, the divide has long been present, but never so visible, so undeniable as in the last five years, culminating in the violent insurrection of many Trump supporters told on January 6th that they needed to “fight” for their land, and that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness”— a country they would otherwise lose if he didn’t remain president to “clean up the corruption in our nation’s capitol.” The irony astounds. I think of the words to the Woody Guthrie song “This land is your land, this land is my land,” and how some have rewritten it to “This land is my land, it is not your land.” These are the words that came into my mind, imagining a repurposing of words intended for good, just as parts of the Bible and religious ideologies have been repurposed for violence.

The Inauguration came only fourteen days after the insurrection against the Capitol, which has so aptly been called “the Temple of American democracy,” a “sacred place,” that rioters sought not just to take over, but to desecrate (as in desecrating a sacred place—insisting it is NOT holy). They set out to destroy and defile, like the man who sat in Nancy Pelosi’s chair, put his feet up and later boasted “I scratched my balls.” There’s another man who bragged that he’d taken “a dump” in one of the bathrooms and refused to flush it. And we now know that many of these people were there to harm and kill. A makeshift “gallows” was quickly erected outside the Capitol. Was this perversion of justice intended for Vice President Pence, suddenly considered a traitor because he was going to preside over the counting of electoral votes, signaling he accepted the legitimacy of the Biden win? Or could others be hanged, such as black and Jewish legislators? Is it an accident that this happened just as Georgia’s election of their first black and first Jewish senators were confirmed? Rioters held Confederate flags, but also in that crowd were armbands with swastikas, apparel with Auschwitz references and other signals of anti-Semitism. Yes, racism and anti-semitism (plus misogyny) were intertwined and on full display. For many white supremacists, Jews aren’t and never have been considered White. Meanwhile, a few progressives of color on the left categorize Jews as part of the white dominant oppressors, which also depresses me. But there, at the Inauguration, with people of all colors, so many dressed in color, with some Republican Senators joining Democrats, with three former presidents from both parties, I felt hope for something better, a dream of “My Promised Land,” as the title of Obama’s new memoir put it, a dream implicit in Woody Guthrie’s song.

It has only been a week since that glorious Inauguration, celebrated in color and with color, lifting my spirits. Like so many people, I felt that something big had shifted, that our world had changed, that there is a new day with light instead of darkness, growing as the sun now moves higher in the hemisphere and the days grow longer. But at the same time, the Impeachment trial is about to begin and we need to consider: can there be healing without justice? Or unity without accountability?

Only a week later, I am worried because the toxins are still here; the angry people, including the racists and anti-Semites yet to be revealed, will not disappear. Still, I want to celebrate, and I do. I feel a new happiness and energy, and yes, hope, but we must not forget. Many Senate Republicans who went into hiding on January 6 fearing for their lives, suddenly have amnesia and are once again driven by their political ambitions, as opposed to preserving democracy, with the majority of them turning against impeaching Trump for inciting resurrection urging his supporters to march down to the Cap, told to “fight” for their country.

Will there even be a conviction? I’ll always remember how close we came to losing our democracy, how it is fragile and that problems still remain.

It could happen again. We have work to do.

I’ve had no time for much of anything these last weeks while focused on finishing a semester of teaching. That said, I’m hoping to close one difficult chapter and begin a new one by taking a few moments to reflect and wrap up the past year as I look forward to 2021 with hope. The winter solstice has passed, Saturn and Jupiter had a rare alignment, signifying a positive change in the universe; and the days are already starting to get brighter and longer.

The past four years have been awful in so many ways, personally for me and politically for many. 2020 alone practically devastated the entire world with the scurge of the Covid-19 virus. And unless you haven’t been paying attention, we all know what happened in America throughout them all: violence and threats by right-wing white nationalist extremists, anti-Semitism, racism, the murder of Black women and men at the hands of law enforcement, as well as attacks on our democracy and Constitution by those in the highest places of power.

I look back on what my personal life has been this year, the first after my husband Tony’s death from a cruel neurological disease that stripped him of so much, traumatizing us both. It’s been a year of trying to recover from my personal post-traumatic stress during a time the raging pandemic has changed our world, adding new stresses for everyone.

I still did everything I could to stay strong and be normal, even after Covid took over our lives, creating unnatural, enforced isolation. I threw myself into teaching, continued to do some research and writing, cooked tasty and healthy meals daily (accompanied by good red wine, of course), regularly did pilates on Zoom with my trainer and even bought a rowing machine. I end this tumultuous year, I think, as strong as I could be, given the circumstances.

And there have been good things, so much to be grateful for as well. Teaching proved the biggest surprise and the greatest gift. My students kept me going, gave me purpose. To my surprise, I managed to create a sense of community on Zoom, even with a class of thirty five. I loved my students—they felt it—and they (well, most of them) loved me back. It was maybe the most powerful, transformative teaching I’ve done in many decades. We did serious work. As several students noted, I did not avoid talking about death and mortality. Discussing John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions on the occasion of his near-fatal illness, and Sir Thomas Browne’s meditation on mortality and memory in Urn-Buriall, we faced our shared fears of oblivion and our desires to be remembered. I told my students we could talk about anything, but also that it was necessary to have fun, that learning itself be fun. They showed up, day after day, and I’m so glad they did.

The semester now ended, I’m turning in the grades, having read probably the best, most interesting set of papers I have ever received. The joy this gives me is immeasurable and invaluable. So many of my students said this class was their bright light in a dark fall, kept them going, that they loved the readings, the openness, warmth, and energy of our virtual classroom. Well, it kept me going too. I wanted above everything to make them feel engaged for 75 minutes, twice a week, to find happiness in reading and talking about literature with one another. I wanted them to feel hope, that they were moving forward, not stuck, and if they did, I did too.

My pilates teacher tells me, “we teach what we need to learn.” I try to teach hope in the midst of challenges and sometimes a sense of doom.

I also wanted our time together to be fun, since there was some scarcity of that in the middle of a pandamic and “fun” can be such an undervalued concept. I remember many years ago when I started teaching my class was reading a Hemmingway story from In Our Time, where Nick breaks off a relationship with his girlfriend, saying only, “it isn’t fun anymore.” I thought (and told my students), how immature; just what you’d expect a young guy to say. Now? I’ve changed my mind. “Fun”—a sense of pleasure, joy, lightness—is important, something increasingly rare in our own time. One of the greatest compliments I received this semester from a student was: “Thanks professor for a fun class!”

And part of what makes for fun is having a sense of humor, however dark. My husband Tony certainly had a dark sense of humor. This year had some darkly comic moments for me, all of them related to his death. First, in January 2020, Social Security declared me dead. They stopped my monthly payments, took away those I had received since Tony died and informed Citibank that my checking account needed to be closed! Took me four months to get SSA to recognize that I was alive. Then there have been struggles and delays over getting the monument made for Tony’s grave. We’d bought a double plot, but I couldn’t figure out which plot he was buried in and which was “mine” (did I really want to think about this???). Well, I suppose I could just wait until “my time” comes, but it mattered, because wouldn’t I want the inscription for Tony on the correct side of the tombstone, over him and not me? It took months for me to figure it out!  The monument was supposed to be completed in mid-December, but again a delay, because eight people in the factory came down with Covid. All are recovering, thank God.

Though I’m eager for the closure having a granite monument on his grave might bring, all this has been a lesson in patience. But sometimes I wonder: has Tony’s spirit, wherever it is, been finding the darkest comedy in some of this? Does his sense of humor live on, even in me? Humor, in just about any form, is one of the ways we survive. So, it’s only appropriate that on the footstone of his grave will be inscribed the famous Mark Twain quotation, “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”

May we all enjoy many blessings in the New Year: Health and love, family and friends, laughter and peace.