The Waiting

 I met "Rivas" in 2016, after Trump somehow beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency. He was sort of a carpenter for my brother-in-law, a young guy learning the trade. He was Mexican, but for all intents and purposes, American as he had crossed the border with his family at the age of six. He had the same vague memories of Mexico that you might have of any place you lived at that age, some twenty years later. Your mileage may vary of course but think about coming from a village in another country to Anytown, USA, at a young age. Your folks might not even know it at the time, but your job is to be an American and learn English while they work. This is also the story with many Greeks and Slavs I worked with in the restaurant business, however in the case of those guys, they were bilingual as they translated for their parents. For whatever reason, Rivas left his language behind and went about being an American. 

He wasn't a bad worker. I was used to being around hard-working actual Mexicans though, that didn't talk so much. He liked baseball and, though a Sox fan, pretty much liked the Cubs- but not then- star catcher Willson Contreras. You know, he turned out to be right that Contreras was an egotistical goofball. Story for another day. But what surprised me was that he liked Trump and all that he stood for. He was a better judge of ballplayers. 

This was when Trump was making noise about the Muslim ban on top of his border taunts about Mexicans and closing the border. How could he support a man who wanted to deport him to a country he barely knew, with a language he didn't speak even as well as me? "I just like what he stands for", he shrugged. Rivas was indeed, very much an American. 

I last saw Rivas before Trump 2.0 when he did some drywall work at my late mom's house. We didn't get much opportunity to chat about anything beyond, "Hey, how ya been, man?" but he seemed quieter and more mature. The Biden years had been good to him. 

The Biden years were good for everybody. Almost all of us know that now. People weren't being kidnapped and disappeared off the streets, by goons who hide their identities as well as their faces, on Joe's watch. That's not the America we had last year. Busboys, landscapers, fathers of Marines, and Iranian born moms had pretty carefree lives. Six months ago, that was the America we all had. 

Now, we are strangers in our own strange land. How soon before we forget what life was like in America? Why are we suddenly living in a Martin Niemoller poem, waiting our turn?