Cold Hands
Audio version now available.
My daughter’s hands get cold. Not like normal cold. Really cold. They turn a splotchy blue and white, which is visually concerning as a parent. It has to be some kind of circulatory thing.
When we skied as a family when our kids were younger, we often had to come in to warm up because of Cathryn’s hands. For the rest of us, and most skiers with questionably fitting boots, the toes were the pain point. Even with ski mittens and chemical hand warmers, my daughter’s hands would get cold.
As a soccer player, it was fashionable to wear little cotton gloves on cold days. In Colorado, the girls play high school soccer in the spring, which means training outside in January. The fashionable cotton gloves were never enough, but Cathryn didn’t want to be the only teenage girl in ski mittens on the soccer field. She would come off the pitch and put her frozen blue and white hands under her jersey on her belly searching for temporary relief. Belly heat was insufficient relief for my agony as I bore witness.
Cathryn is now a fourth-grade teacher in Minneapolis. She lives three blocks from where Alex Pretti was killed on Saturday morning–so close that she texted us about it a full hour before the news coverage began. Cathryn spent all day and part of the night on the streets with her neighbors. Her feelings and thoughts were a combination of mourning, anger, hopelessness, and resolve.
The only thing I could think about were her hands. I still can’t stop worrying about my daughter’s cold hands.
When we were Cathryn’s age, my wife, Sheri, and I lived in Saint Paul, across the Mississippi River from Minneapolis. We lived in an apartment less than three blocks from Sweeney’s Saloon. On crowded weekend nights, it was often easier to walk home to pee rather than try to navigate the patrons and wait in line for a urinal. While Cathryn was peacefully protesting and honoring the life of her neighbor, she ducked into her apartment to use the bathroom. I was struck by the differences in how my daughter and I used the proximity to our home bathroom in our young 20s. I was working on my budding addiction, thinking only of myself–my comfort, my pleasure, my buzz. Cathryn, armed with only mittens and hand warmers, is trying to save her neighborhood, her country. Alcohol rendered me useless at her age. My alcoholic example inspired Cathryn to choose a different path. I could not be more proud of her bravery and resolve. And I could not be more worried about her hands, her destiny.
The thing I cling to as it relates to the safety of my daughter is her feeling of responsibility to her students. She works at a school with a big Somali population, and her students have grown to trust her. She has to answer questions like, “Can ICE come into our school and take me?” And, “What happens to kids when their parents get deported?” She is determined to be a bastion of safety for her students, and that keeps her making sound decisions about her own safety.
But the safety of her students and the safety of her neighbors is a balancing act. She is already on the front lines five days per week, trying to keep her kids focused on learning so they can have a future not dominated by fear. And now my daughter spends her weekends with a whistle and phone camera, shoulder to cold shoulder with her neighbors.
And the only reprieve I get from my worry about how this will all end is when I worry about my daughter’s cold hands.
I have written about Trump’s addiction to power. Like a family tormented by an alcoholic patriarch, when the brain hijacked by addiction belongs to the president, our whole country suffers the collateral damage. If my concerns–about my daughter and our president–have you convinced about my political affiliation, you are most likely wrong. This is not a political essay. I am not taking a controversial position on policy. I believe every sovereign nation should control their own borders. But I know enough about history to know that there are only two ways people can be governed. The population can consent to the governance, in which case a small number of officials can lead and enforce laws effectively. The only way to govern people who do not consent to the fundamental policies is with a totalitarian state requiring brutal and deadly tactics, and nearly as many law enforcers as people being governed. The people of Minnesota do not consent. Unless our power-addicted president finds recovery, he will not have access to the empathy and rationality that is devoid in addiction. Addiction is, above all, selfish. Unless he finds recovery, this can only end very, very badly.
I appreciate the emails I have received urging me to stay in my own lane and write about alcoholism. Honestly, writing about the impact of high-functioning alcoholism right now feels like standing in the eye of a hurricane and worrying about sunscreen. Or eating a whole family sized bag of Doritos and worrying that the corn is not organic. Alcoholism has been the most impactful tragedy and trauma of my life. Until now. Now a different manifestation of addiction has my attention. Even though most don’t know what to call it, it has the attention of the world.
This is my lane.
As Mark Carney explained last week, what the world order is experiencing is not a transition, this is a rupture. In the lifetime of everyone who will read this, the United States has only experienced transitions. Like a swinging pendulum, sometimes we like the direction things are going. If you are like me, probably more often than not, you don’t. We transition back and forth because a pendulum is the frustrating result of pairing human intellect and democracy. It sucks, but history has proven that if we value freedom, it’s the only viable way. Free and frustrated. That’s what it has always meant to be American. That is coming to an end. Thinking about my daughter’s cold hands now serves as a respite from the predictable terror.
If you read all of this and you still think I’m making a political statement, go ahead and unsubscribe, because I can’t help you. You are in a cult, and alcoholism is not your biggest problem.
In a sick way, we are in a global petri dish, learning together what addiction does to a family, and watching neighbors pull away, doing the only thing they can do–shutting their doors and longing for the old days before the consequences of addiction spilled out into the streets. Some of you are shaking your head in sad understanding. Others think I am blowing the situation out of proportion, and still think I’ve crossed a line veering way out of my lane, trying to see connections that don’t exist.
I hope the latter are correct. I hope the ones who unsubscribe are right that I’m seeing ghosts.
I hope my daughter’s cold hands are a self-inflicted wound.
Maybe I should shut up and buy some sunscreen and wait for the next hurricane to hit Colorado.
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13 Comments
Thank you. THANK YOU. We can no longer sit on the sidelines and not do what little we can do about what is happening to our neighbors. THANK YOU for being brave and speaking up. Our way of life is at stake and the lives of our community members hang in the balance.
Thank you for reading and supporting our work, Justine.
My hands get that cold blue too! And i am in recovery so totally love reading your posts. Very interesting how you talk about this in the addiction realm – makes sense.
ICE is just enforcing the laws that Congress has passed. If you do not like it you can always write your congressman to get them changed. I do wonder did you write this stuff when Obama was deporting more than double what the current administration has? Did you write anything or protest when 60 illegals died while in custody under Obama? Did you write anything, or protest when Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray, and the MANY, MANY others who were murdered and raped by illegals in this country?
You say I am in a cult cause I want US citizens to be safe and not have to worry about these things. My neighbors kid was hit in by a car by an illegal alien who was driving drunk. No protests for that. last I checked it is illegal to Obstruct, resist, or interferewith an officer performing their duty . While not illegal to conceal and carry to a protest, it is illegal to obstruct and interfere with said weapon and reach for it. Actions have consequences. The problem is people seem to forgotten about that.
I do not want to unsubscribe, even though you say I am in a cult cause I want the laws enforced (just like they have been since they were enacted), but to paint with such a broad brush and be so narrow minded, unlike you. If you want to kick me off I understand, but not that it was cause of your intolerance and not mine. 🙂
Hi Andy! This essay is not about policy or politics, it is about addiction. As I said in the piece, I agree with the majority position that we need to control our borders. I think the crimes you specifically mention are tragic and a legitimate cause for anger and grief. But I am not aware of them being related to an addiction suffered by a president. That’s why I didn’t write about them. Obama struggled with nicotine, and was a moderate drinker, as far as I know. But I am not aware of any of his policies or decisions being influenced by addiction – even the ones I disagree with, and even his policies that harm my family. I can see the incidents that you reference as tragedies and reprehensible. I wish you could see the actions resulting from Trump’s power addiction as reprehensible tragedies as well. The block that prevents you from seeing that, and the references to the actions of past administrations as we witness an illegal siege on the streets of an American city – that is the cult behavior I reference.
I miss you, Andy. I won’t remove you from our distribution list. Thanks for reading and considering, my friend.
Another great piece! I am so proud of your daughter. I know personally how as a teacher can internalize a student’s pain and fear. Keep talking to her about that and let her know that what she is doing is helping more than she can know. You and Sherri have raised a wonderful young woman.
It is impossible to go through a day without something this administration is doing that impacts family, community and our country. While there is disagreement as to whether the impact is a positive one, I think we all need to be able to express our beliefs. That is what you are doing and I applaud that.
Take care and thank you for your bravery.
Thanks for reading, Tara, and for your continued support. Thanks especially for your encouragement for Cathryn!
Hear hear, Matt. Your lane is addiction, and your personal stories are your superpower. I couldn’t help but notice the tiny slip from Addiction to Power to “Addition to Power” — it opened up a whole other lens: Trump as a strategic accumulator rather than a compulsive destroyer?! Not sure which is scarier.
I have always loved the USA – the land of freedom and liberty – yet the polarization we are now seeing hurts and dehumanizes everyone. My heart goes out to those standing up for humanity, choice, and the founding values of the country.
So far the stories in the news are about strangers but reading about your daughter brings it close to home for me too. May she be safe and hold on to the love
I fixed the typo for clarity, but it doesn’t make your point any less interesting. An addiction to power does manifest in accumulation, indeed. Powerful insight, Anne.
Hi Matt I still read your blog. I teared up immediately when you wrote that Cathryn is a 4th grade teacher. Of course she is I’ve never met her but know her from your sharing how special she is. I don’t support the violence the masks etc. I will pray for your daughter’s safety and all who live there.
This President does not have my vote for anyone of this. He does work for us not the other way around. I guess it’s time to start my writing too. I will write my letters of protest it’s better than doing nothing. Wishing you and Sheri all the best, Cindy
It is good to hear from you, Cindy. Thank you for reading, and thanks for your support.
Thank you for this Matt. I love “this is my lane”. Cathryn’s cold hands are doing good things there…unlike the hands of some others. She sounds like an incredible woman. I’ve lost a fair bit of sleep thinking about that guy, a nurse like me, on his knees getting executed. Never touching his weapon, shoved to his knees after helping that woman. I look every day in the WSJ for news there’s been an arrest, or…anything. It’s on my mind every day. I try not to get into an obsessed fretfulness about it, as I tend to do; but it’s an effort. Addiction in whatever manifestation is scary, demoralizing. The chronic anger and “me against the world” and fight-picking and absence of humility is scary. I recognize a little of it in an old version of me. Thanks for sharing the good with the bad, the outrage followed by the hope.
Scary and demoralizing are good word choices to describe addiction. I hope we can all get a full night’s sleep soon, Angela.