The march last weekend was incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring, life-affirming and while I will eventually write more, I'm still processing...
So, instead, here are some images that struck me in our travels to DC and home again:
Rocks like chocolate, stacked up to make the Allegheny mountains that we drove along and through, a stream running along beside the turnpike, sparkling and clear and free...
Women working construction in Pennsylvania -- hard hats, orange vests, hard biceps holding tools or flags...
Wind generators, in a row of four, on a hill, turning and turning -- giant, white and beautiful in their simplicity...
My children sleeping in their carseats -- safe and flushed with sleep, eager to continue our journey...
A sea of faces, bodies, women, men, children, holding hands, holding signs, holding forth... all standing up for the same rights -- for me, for you, for our kids and grandkids -- so much difference but all of us there for the same basic simple reasons...
Holly Near's voice ringing out over the millions, the face of Ana Gasteyer and her 2 year old daughter Francis on the jumbotron screens...
The incredibly sad faces of women holding signs that read "I regret my abortion" and wanting to hold them, absolve them, and wish better times and better options for their lifetimes too...
Hand lettered signs in all degrees of artistic perfection and total amateurism -- t-shirts and posters and puppets -- a giant uterus, complete with fallopian tubes -- drummers and barefoot dancers with home-made tamborines...
The beautiful woman sitting high up on the traffic signal near the Capitol -- "Vote as if your life depended on it" her sign read -- and thirty cops nearby ignored her 'til a million marchers passed, then helped her down, unharrassed and unharmed...
Sling babies, stroller babies, backpack babies -- kids holding hands, riding on shoulders, carrying signs -- chosen kids, wanted kids, kids like my kids who shouldn't have to march like this ever again, but who will, all the same...
My sisters, my mother, my children, the women I left at home but carried with me in my heart and on my cell-phone...
I remain overwhelmed by it all -- by the feelings of love and solidarity and safety. It's still too much right now to take it in...