All the Love in This Trembling World

1960

A stifling night in Oklahoma.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

We lie,

young husband, young wife,

on top of the sheets

in the smothering darkness.

Not the smallest stir of air to bring relief.

Not even a distant rumble to promise rain.

We lie naked,

careful not to touch,

wishing we could suspend our bodies

above the suffocating bed.

Then the siren shrieks.

A certain knowledge slams into our hearts.

This is an air raid!

The worst,

the worst,

the worst has come.

This is the end!

Without speaking,

we leap from the bed, grab robes—

not to leave the world in the same state we arrived in—

make our way to the kitchen.

The radio waits there on a shelf,

my girlhood radio

that once brought “Fibber Mcgee and Molly”

and the creaking door of “Inner Sanctum.”

My husband turns the knob.

It is the task of husbands

in such moments

to take charge.

Then we stand side by side,

together,

alone,

in the emptiness of the night kitchen,

still without words,

the siren screeching our doom,

the linoleum floor

almost cold

beneath

our bare

feet.

A crackle of static fills the room.

Nothing more.

Just static.

Then

music.

Only music.

No human voice announcing our fate.

We wait.

Wait.

Wait.

What else is there to do?

The music ends.

Silence.

And then, at last, a voice.

“This is a tornado alert,” the announcer says.

We gaze at one another

from beyond our newly inhabited graves,

then return, still without speaking,

to our bed.

The realization doesn’t arrive until the next morning.

We live on the second floor of an old frame house,

a house with no basement,

no safe retreat from storms.

A tornado

could have killed us

as neatly

as any

nuclear

bomb.

But I do not believe it.

1962

I’m a high school English teacher

standing in front of my class.

The topic,

some piece of 19th century literature,

irrelevant to my students,

almost irrelevant to me.

What we’re not talking about is the ship

loaded with nuclear warheads

steaming toward Cuba.

The P.A. system squawks to life.

The principal comes on,

his voice ripe with authority.

Evacuation instructions

in the event of a nuclear attack.

If/when/if/when the Soviets attack.

Common wisdom says that they—

the they who are known to want to do such things—

will lob one of their missiles into Lake Michigan,

efficiently taking out Milwaukee and Chicago in a single strike.

And all towns near.

We are a town near Milwaukee.

Taking out our school,

our students,

me

in a single strike.

I am only a few years older than my students,

too young to wonder what they are feeling,

what they might need from their teacher.

I have but one thought.

I am so far,

so far,

so far

from the man I married.

Did I love him so wholly

that I could think of nothing more

than hurtling back to his arms

ahead of the bomb?

It’s a question I didn’t ask.

I knew only that I was determined

not to die

alone.

1964

My parents’ summer yard,

my son,

this longed-for child,

tiny model of a perfect human being,

crumpled in my lap,

too new to sit,

to smile.

Almost too new to believe in.

My godfather sits across from us,

his face pulled into a familiar scowl.

Did he scowl just so

when he stood behind the examination table,

his hands straying over my body,

settling there?

Telling me something was missing in me,

some light.

Telling me he would fix what was missing.

Adding that all this meant nothing to him,

this body stuff.

Wasn’t he a doctor, after all?

Now, in the sweet summer sunshine,

I see his scowl,

aimed at me,

at my son,

and once more something alive within me

curls into hiding,

into tight,

fierce

hiding.

“How,” he asks,

his voice rough with accusation,

“can anyone bring a child into a world such as this?”

I am silent as I have always been silent before this man,

though I know too well the world he accuses.

Haven’t I sought out the obituaries of strangers—

the old ones, fifty years, sixty, seventy, more—

to envy their long lives?

Knowing with absolute certainty

that such longevity

would never be mine?

But having produced this child

out of a need more fierce than fear,

I wrap myself around my infant son

and make a silent promise:

“Don’t listen,” I say to him.

“You must not listen.

I will keep you safe,

safe,

safe.”

2014

For fifty years the Cuban missile crisis has gone unexploded.

All that terror …

children in schools taught to duck and cover,

duck and cover,

as though any ducking, covering could be enough.

And yet for fifty years the charm has held.

The Berlin wall tumbled,

the Cold War staggered to an end,

the Soviet Union collapsed

amidst our self-congratulation.

I remember exactly where I stood,

halfway between kitchen and bathroom,

when I heard the report:

“The United States stands alone in the world!

All power ours.”

Now we will be the evil empire, I thought.

Fifty years later documents surrounding the crisis released.

Even the recordings JFK secretly made of the bluster

gathered at that polished table.

(All the talk innocent of what we know now,

the Cuban silos already armed,

we with power over nothing.)

Such plans they made.

For the government’s retreat to an underground city

and there to stand strong,

to stand strong,

to stand strong

against the annihilation.

They even tried dropping bombs on Soviet submarines.

Imagine

if just one bomb

had reached

its target!

By luck—

and perhaps by the grace of Khrushchev—

fifty years later

I am still here.

2025

Eighteen years my son has been gone—

dead, such a final word, dead—

attacked not from the sky

but from within.

A disease with a name,

Lewy Body Dementia,

though no one knows how,

why

or even for how long

it nestled in his brain.

No one knows for Peter’s oldest son, either,

for my grandson,

for Connor,

following his father

even into death.

A faulty gene?

Both exposed to an unknown toxin?

I want to know, though knowing would change nothing.

I want to know, though I can change nothing.

I want to know.

The world I leave to my living child,

to my other grandchildren,

more terrible even

than the one

my godfather condemned.

We stand at the edge of a perfect storm,

no siren sounding.

War without end.

Nuclear arms scattered across the globe.

Drones so readily conceived, so easy to use.

The government of the wealthiest nation in the world

collapsing.

Homelessness.

The working poor,

the ever-increasing numbers of working poor.

Climate chaos.

Racism.

Epidemics.

And on

and on

and on.

Has the long life gifted me

since that stifling night in Oklahoma

been only the briefest pause

before the desecration?

In my heart I stand, again,

barefoot in that night kitchen,

listening to the sirens’ shrieking doom.

I have come to understand only one thing:

All the love in this trembling world cannot save us.

And yet we must love.

We have nothing else.