Amidst a natural calamity, there is nothing to do but wait. You’ve sought shelter, hunkered down, writhe with dread, but what’s to do? The rescue workers are at work – dousing flames, searching for survivors, extracting the tumor – but you cannot help them, you are not trained, and don’t want to distract them. You want answers – oh, how much! – but none can be had until the calamity pauses and damage can be assessed. All may be changed! – irrevocably! – what if! – but until you know the dimensions of the horror, best to remain calm, harbor strength for the ordeal to come.

America is flailing, screeching, weeping through its calamity. We put a gun to our heads, pulled the trigger, now wonder at the pain. Soon enough, everyone will come to regret their rashness, even the rashest, for life will be worse, but so far we can only whine we didn’t realize “how bad it would get.” Who in their life hasn’t made a stupid mistake they wish they could reverse? My life is littered with such luckless lurches. But there’s no going back, no redo’s, we must endure our result, pick ourselves up “and through a changed day move on.”

I resist reading battlefield accounts till we know their full extent. I steel myself for the mass funeral of my hopes – justice, equity, decency, charity, truth, mercy, community, mercy, each in its flag-draped box. There will be many casualties. The old America – of our Founding Fathers and of my father – will be forever lost. I will mourn them all at once, not one at a time, I haven’t the strength.

In the meantime – the only time we ever have – I must busy myself. Doing what? No use getting up in the morning to mourn. No use moaning to a pal, who’s likewise grim. Amiable conversations these days commence with a shared groan, then stipulate that will be the last of it (though the commitment’s hard to keep). We refuse to let this calamity destroy our joy, dammit! – more than it already has.

I’m hard put for topics for our morning stroll. It’s the old joke: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” “The elephant in the room” is another cliché (though insulting to our pachydermous kin). Panic grips us, which we would not share. “How you feeling?” a friend asks. “OK, all things considered,” I answer without answering. Lying can sometimes be kind, if kindly meant.

I send my mind out to play to tire itself – into games, puzzles, poems. (A poem is both a puzzle and a game.) I write about my fears and tears by not writing about them, as here. Before November Fifth, I howled like a coyote; no use now. Nothing to be done till the storm passes and the air clears.

For our frontline troops – those we’ve elected – or anointed with our attention – it’s confusing how to proceed. Fight or wait. James Carville, with his usual saltiness, urges his party to let the foe “punch themselves out.” That’s my inclination. The quicker things grow unbearable, the sooner we’ll wake. Yet how terrible to wish a cruel crisis on one we love! Can it be that what’s worst for America, at this anguished instant, is what’s best? (The Russians beat Napoleon by burning their beloved Moscow to the ground.)

We wait – like T.S. Eliot’s grim women of Canterbury outside the cathedral. (Reread the first pages of Murder in the Cathedral for comfort in this troublous hour.)