You Never Know
Complicated grief in a complicated time, The Sixes, Pair 1, Part 2
I drove to Portland Friday night to meet my oldest son for dinner. As I made my way up State Street, I got stuck in a line of cars.
People blocked Longfellow Square, and other central locations along Congress Street. They gathered to protest the Department of Homeland Security’s “Catch of the Day” sweep, targeting 1,400 people who live in Maine.
I sent texts to my other two sons while I waited, inching along in the fog of exhaust that climbed in the air as the temperature fell.
“Have fun tonight,” I pecked to my middle son, who planned to meet friends in the Old Port after work.
Hours would pass before he saw it.
“Be safe,” I added.
My youngest son often spent evenings in Portland, visiting friends, swilling strong coffee in cafes, or browsing bookstores.
“Are you here?” I sent him a blurry picture of the crowd.
“Not tonight,” he replied.
I sighed, half with acceptance because I fully expected him to be in the throng, and half with relief.
Because we live in a time called You Never Know.
I am the mother of men in a time called You Never Know.
You Never Know what will happen. Where. To whom. Or when.
As if you ever do. As if I ever did.
Never.
Never in the wildest depths of my Complicated Grief the year after my mother died could I - even unintentionally - fear-manifest the world we now live in for my six-year-old boy in his karate gi, practicing his first kata. Or my three-year-old “Toilentator” with his toilet brush sword. Or my baby about to take his first steps.
Yet here we are.
At the Longfellow intersection, police rerouted the busy Friday night traffic, gesturing to make their directions clear.
Chants of “No justice, no peace, get ICE off our streets” followed me as I turned left, and wound through the West End behind a driver obviously trying to match up their GPS guidance with the one-way streets, braking, backing up, hitching ahead.
It was no trouble. I was in no rush.
My oldest son was driving the other way around Portland’s downtown giving a friend a safe lift home because his friend is an international student living in Maine with a legal study visa, and the sort of skin color targeted by ICE.
And because You Never Know.
The march was wrapping up by the time we settled into a window seat at the Green Elephant Bistro. Protesters waved signs at us as they walked by. We gave them thumbs up.
My oldest son studied the menu, comparing the Siamese Dream Curry Noodle with the Thai Ginger Noodles, as if this was the most important decision he’d ever make. If only. I suspected what was really on his mind was the choices a good man sits with when his country is on fire.
He picked the Siamese Dream as surely as I know he will fight for peoples’ rights to live, work, and study in this country without fear of persecution, deportation, and execution.
My own entree was a mild pineapple fried rice, which I ate slowly, listening to my son compare actual Japanese history to the FX adaption of Shogun, which we recently watched.
A born teacher yet to embrace his gift for synthesizing complex ideas across centuries in a way that makes them relevant today, he launched into an analysis of samurai strategies that avoided bloodshed. I’m usually his rapt student, but my mind and heart wandered (just a little).
My oldest son is the only one of my kids who remembers his grandmother. Barely. And not exactly. It’s more of a felt memory, he says, of being loved. The other two were so young when she died, but I hope somewhere in their nervous systems they encoded love, too.
I held onto these children for dear life, my life, and their lives 20 years ago. And every year since, every year always (though I’ve loosened my grip). In the saddest of early days, I loved them frantically, scrabbling to a shaky emotional high ground where I could live without their grandmother, who loved them every bit as much as I did, even if our relationship with each other was always fraught.
My kids were what I lived for in the fallout of my broken heart.
We didn’t talk about it. Not exactly. But what was on the table between my oldest son and I over dinner Friday night was what we might die for to be on the side of history that values moral decency, human life - all life - and the good of the planet we share.
Because You Never Know.
You never do.
Someone with an “ICE OUT” sign tapped the glass of the Green Elephant as we sipped our lemongrass and jasmine tea. We looked up as a group of protesters walked by, words of resistance frozen in breath that trailed in the air behind them.
We looked up and met their eyes.
The Sixes: My Reading from the Journal of Yesterday project for 2026 is a series of paired posts drawn from the diary entries of 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. Part 1 - for paid subscribers - shares transcription from one (or more) of these old journals. The intention here is to show my stripped down, straight from the heart, awkward and messy humanness with no claim to good writing. Part 2 - for everyone - reflects on it with the full power of my narrative might and the hope that with craft comes connection to readers in the here and now.
Beautiful, Raye, beautiful.