Injustice Is As Unchanging As the Wind and Tide

"Unprecedented times?" A full-throated and early resistance would be truly unprecedented. It's not too late.

It was a wild day, an unruly day that would not be fettered or hindered or inhibited - would not be kept within any established confines or bounds.

In the morning, I woke up to a thrashing, threatening wind and the story of a couple who had both been put in a detention center in San Diego: he a German citizen; she an American.

The wind was constant, swirling the eucalyptus trees and cottonwoods constantly, spraying a fine mist of sand in the face of anyone who dared venture out. Wind gusts were said to be up to 35 miles per hour, although they felt much more powerful, and in the evening we learned that the president's administration had deported a two-year-old American citizen without "meaningful process."

I don't know why it should be so, because the wind has often been stronger than this - I have seen a desert gale pick up wrought-iron patio furniture and throw it - but the unbroken blowing and the constant crashing made the day strange. The news made the day frightening. Together, they made the light wrong.

An American citizen in an ICE detention center? I kept thinking.

At noon, there were loads of groceries to go pick up. Later, there were shows to watch; podcasts to record. Jasmine tried a macaron today - a vanilla one. She loved it.

Bob's Burgers is coming back at the end of next month, I read.

By evening, we were flicking through our phones as Jasmine watched a video. Someone wearing a GoPro had filmed a visit to a snow-fox retreat in Japan. Jazzy was mesmerized, watching the little sprites prance and gambol in the snow.

A two-year-old? I kept thinking.

Around nine, we went into the bedroom, both bemused, not ready for sleep, but feeling that it was the right thing to do, somehow, at the right time. I had layered extra blankets on the bed, because the wind was so, so cold: It was a ghastly 42°, at a time when we ought to be closing in on twice that. Of course, I'd prematurely had our furnace turned off a few weeks earlier during what turned out to be only Fool's Spring.

So the three of us got into bed, shivering, with Dave in the middle, and huddled near each other. On TV, there was a YouTube video of waves crashing on a beach: our preferred sleep soundtrack. I nestled into Dave, and on her side, so did Jasmine. Suddenly we were all warm.

I listened to them breathe. I listened to the swamp cooler on the roof, clanging and clunking, so tempest-tossed in the wind that, paradoxically, it felt comforting.

And an odd sensation came over me. I furrowed my brow as I slid further under the down quilt: What is this?

Aha: safety. It was the feeling of being safe and snug here in my little home, tucked in bed with my little family, while the cold wind raged outside.

But then I felt something else: something so readily identified that I gasped.

Sick. I felt sick.

An American citizen in an ICE detention center. A two-year-old American citizen deported - practically a baby. And Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And all the others. I gagged.

I am not better than they are. I just have a different life. But I might easily have lived my adult life as a foreigner myself, had I chosen to stay in Germany or in Canada during the years I'd lived there.

This thought was too much. Willing my mind to go blank, I stared at the TV. I watched, soothed by the predictability of the waves, coming in so rough, with so much momentum, only to dissolve upon the sand before being pulled back out again.

But no, I realized. The waves don't dissolve. They don't disappear. It's all the same water, the same ocean, locked in a timeless dance cycle that will repeat and return until the moon goes dark and there is no one left to remember what happened.

Or maybe no one does remember, even right now.

For we have been here before. And again before that, and again before that. Really, most of human history can be elucidated solely through times like these.

It's just that we were supposed to be safer. We were supposed to be better.

Winds of change do blow through. But our story is mostly tide in, tide out. Sunrise, sunset.

An American citizen in an ICE detention center. A two-year-old American citizen deported. And so many more.

We can do better if we choose to. But I wouldn't bet on it.

I closed my eyes and pulled the quilt over my head, entirely meaning to fall asleep and think more about this later. After all, there are still prescriptions to pick up, new tires to buy, vacations to book. But then I sat up.

Right now, somebody has just run out of time. And apparently, it could just as well be me.

Or you.

So you and I had better thank our God for safety when we have it, because it is not guaranteed - no, not even to us. And while we have Him or Her or It on the line, let us ask what we can do to bring safety - to be safety - for someone else.

Let this terrible wind blow the slate clean.