To March

March: to tramp, trudge, protest, picket, advance, progress, step-out, strut, swagger

JANUARY 21, 2017; THE CROWD is so jammed together that rocking foot-to-foot is difficult. On tiptoes, pink pussy hats blended the sea of heads into lilac, interspersed with rainbow signs:

I Am Very Upset; Just No; Get your filthy laws off my silky drawers; I’ve Seen Sturdier Cabinets at Ikea; Put Government Under the Microscope; Climate is Changing Why Aren’t We?; There Is No PLANet B; Celebrate Diversity; Ya Basta de Discriminacion; Girls Just Wanna Have FUNdamental Rights; The Future is Nasty; Men of Quality don’t Fear Equality; Womens’ Place is in The Revolution. We Can Do It. We The People.

There are no edges to this crowd. Everyone’s focus is on a stage we can’t see, speakers we can barely hear. We vibrate to the roars of the crowd and thousands of hands fluttering in the air. Helicopters overhead film the human sea covering Boston Common – a place older than the Constitution, one speaker reminds us.

I hear a yell and turned to see my six-foot, 13-year-old daughter drop her “LGBTQ Against BiGotry” sign and slide to the ground, face grey and eyes dilated. Someone, somehow, gets a message to the medics. An impossible isle opens, and we carry her through standing waves of people to the medical van. The waves crashed together behind us as we march through: immigrant father, migraineur eldest daughter, my veterinarian sister, our pirate librarian, me, and the medics carrying my youngest. Strangers pat my back. That is my Women’s March. That is the crowd of diverse, peaceful, concerned people who are also immigrants, reliant on health care, professional women, fathers of daughters, LGBTQ community, and so many others concerned about their endangered human rights and the environment.

My daughter rallies, and we struggle through the crowd to the Beacon Hill Bistro to watch what the helicopters see on CNN. Pulling back allows us to see our lilac sea repeated in DC, Chicago, Denver, New York, Austin, LA.

Soon images are coming in from the entire nation. Scenes of smaller (sometimes braver) protests flash from across the planet. Seven continents, including climate scientists in the Antarctic: “Penguins for Peace,” “Seals for Science.” The newscaster finally returns to a Boston Commons that now looked like a snake swallowing its tail as talks end and the March tries to begin along a route already overflowing with people.

My daughter wants to MARCH again, so we dive back into the crowd until we hit the roadblock of Beacon Street where no one is moving at all. Miraculously, we spot her tall sister alongside my unmistakable mustachioed husband in his homemade pink pussy hat bulling through the crowd like a dad making way for his daughters. And the March finally gathers momentum in a swaggering, strutting progress of 170,000, in a national movement of 3 million, in a world that shows its solidarity – and we along with them.