Whew

Crisis averted? Every Thursday, I Zoom with 5 girlfriends, all 1967 graduates from Naples High. One I’ve known since early elementary school, perhaps it was first grade; the others moved to town by junior high. Sixty years of friendship. My high school class was the last under 200 graduates. We all knew everything about everyone, or at least we thought we did.

In our last Zoom, at the very end, our most conservative and quietest member said, not once, but twice, “You all are too radical for me.” Wow. It passed without comment. We said our I-love-you's and goodbyes, but that stuck in my head. For her to say that was a big deal. What to do? I let it buzz around in my brain, several nights waking up and thinking about my response, because I knew I couldn’t just let it be ignored. This was an opportunity to deepen our conversations. I decided to write the group early in the week about how important I felt it was to hear each other’s political opinions. Not to try to change one another, but rather to hear other voices. If we couldn’t do it in our group, what chance does our divided country have?

Inertia struck, and this morning, before we Zoomed tonight, I was preempted by an text from our group organizer, a text that left out the woman who had made the comment, so the rest of us could decide how to handle it: 

"Hi everyone. I have left of (name deleted) for this email only. Are we on for tomorrow? I would like to suggest we stay away from politics for (deleted). I also do not feel any of us were radical. Let's go forward together. Thoughts? Love you all"

 What I should have done was said I didn’t participate in behind the scenes activity, but, of course, I had to jump right in:

“(Deleted)’s statement that we are too radical for her caught my ear, and I have been pondering it all week. Rather than avoiding politics, perhaps we could embrace the idea of discussing issues important to us. I would love to hear your thoughts. You are all intelligent and interested/interesting people. We would have to establish ground rules and figure out how to keep the discussion balanced so some people (me), who are extremely comfortable speaking up, don't dominate the time. Then how to encourage the more quite ones to share. I think this could be quite enriching.”

 From there, it became complicated. My response bounced back from one of the numbers, so one women didn’t get see it. I forwarded it directly to her. Did she get the original text? 

Another woman responded to the string:

“(Deleted) is an important part of our group and I'm sure we all appreciate her commitment to staying connected  with us.  Right now she is clearly not comfortable with any discussions that can in any way be connected to politics.  Because of that, I would prefer that we NOT discuss anything political in our Thursday group.  Those of us who enjoy political discussions could do so in a different zoom meeting ... I'm sure Pam could think of a creative title for that group!  Bottom line for me is that while none of us consider ourselves "radical" (Deleted) has told us that she does NOT want to listen to or participate in political discussions.  I say we honor that request.”

I hadn't hear that our friend didn't want to talk about politics. Maybe she had opened the possibility. But fine, whatever. I still thought it would be a missed opportunity, but I’d thrown out my idea and received no support. Suddenly the group seemed boring. Would I bother to organize my Thursdays around this meeting? Frankly, today I’d planned to go bike riding with our granddaughter at Orlando Wetlands to see the roseate spoonbills roosting. Might not be back in time to Zoom.

Then, I got a call from another group member. After a long, long discussion, eventually we realized she’d never seen the original text, nor my response, but only the second woman’s response. That was her starting point. She had already telephoned the woman whose number was wrong, who also didn’t see the original text and maybe not the second response. It wasn't clear. Way too much chaos. I confessed my anger at myself to responding to the non-inclusive text. The caller and I agreed that triangulation is  a bad idea.

What to do? I certainly didn’t feel obligated to try to fix this mess, nor did she. Seemed like lots of elephants in the room. Should she tell the texter the next step was hers? Ignore the original call of radicals? I thought that was the worst idea, because no response to such a deliberate statement, a repeated statement, was to discount our friend’s feelings. She is so unlikely to not consider her words, it must have been important to have her say them. We agreed on that point and that we were not going to rehash today’s text chain, first because it was so disjointed, and second, to admit we’d left our friend out, trying to fix things without her, was completely wrong.

How did it work out? I didn’t go see birds. The first half of the Zoom call was innocuous, with our friend being about 20 minutes late, since she still works and the day had run long. Finally, with a half hour left, our leader said she’d like to talk about the comment. She didn’t feel we were too radical. Our friend stated some of the Trumper points, such as losing 2nd Amendment rights and the fact that looters/thieves in Portland and Seattle aren’t being prosecuted like the Capital rioters are. We all agreed that criminals of any and all political beliefs should be handled the same. I said I think we going to Hell in a hand basket, and it’s just a matter of which part collapses first. Apologies were given and accepted. A few tears shed. All seems well.

We could talk politics without losing our friendship, just like I suggested. Much more interesting than not. And I’ve learned how hard it is to stick to my principles when I have an opportunity to share my thoughts. Dang.