“It’s a new day. I need to enter the day fully. I have my sword and shield at the ready. I have my books, my spirit and heart. What comes?”

— John Patrick Shanley

Nov. 9. It is a new day and a sunny one.

I got up, not right away. I got up reluctantly, slowly, but I got up. After She was off to teach another day, I made my bed — that’s essential. “Always make your bed first,” mother said. It tells your body and spirit that you’re ready to start the day.

I washed, shaved and dressed, not in my usual casual, “who cares” manner — sweats and hoodie — but in good slacks and cashmere sweater, like I was going to Mass with her. I went down and made my breakfast, fed Jack, took him outside and gave him water.

It’s a new day. I do need to enter fully.

I didn’t turn on the television to the political news, which has been my habit for the past year. I let it sit there, black and shiny and silent in the corner. I could feel it waiting for me to hit the button. I did not. It’s a new day, and that box will have to get used to it being a new day from this day on. It will not go again that early.

What happened last night, Tuesday, Nov. 8, is behind me now. Not fully, not like the Indians losing the World Series, or the loss of leaves, but behind me nonetheless.

For those of us on the left, what happened was terrifying, cataclysmic, like a great earthquake, a cathedral fire, a death in the family.

For many it was a victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one; they don’t know that yet, but they will eventually.

But I won’t speak of that today, because I was awakened by my daughter calling from Hawaii, where she’s attending a conference. She heard the dull pain in my voice, the fog of despair. Then she repeated all the words I had taught her as a child, about hope, courage, perseverance.

I didn’t know that they had sunk that deeply into her consciousness; I smiled in the dark.

She buoyed me by reminding me how I walked picket lines in the ’60s and worked for Bobby Kennedy, and how I called home that night from the Ambassador Hotel to say that I had just seen Bobby carried out. She reminded me that we were all alive and healthy and successful, and that we were still family, and that no president can change that.

Then I went down and made my oatmeal and tea the same way my Irish immigrant grandmother did every day of her life. I sliced a banana into it and shook in some nuts, brewed my tea and sat at the table with my newspaper, the one that pays me so I can buy my oatmeal and tea.

And then my youngest FaceTimed from the car in Los Angeles, as her husband was driving her to her office. She sobbed as she spoke, tears rolling down from under her big movie star sunglasses. She’s more like me than the other, barely able to hold it together. Like the rest of us, she has always been politically active, always fighting for causes.

And she was a warrior in this latest battle, writing letters, making phone calls the way I did for the Kennedy boys and Obama.

She could hear the darkness in my voice, mumbling like I was answering from the bottom of a well, inside a cave, down a tunnel, that kind of darkness. It made her sob harder, and I had to shape up, brighten a bit. She cautioned me to take my heart pill and baby aspirin, to drink water and stay alive, because there is no political loss greater than losing me. They’re both afraid, I think, that at this point in my life, last night’s titanic loss would push me to that last door.

But I have more political battles to fight, more shouting to do, more words still in my mouth, bubbling up from my Irish heart.

Looking out at the last of the leaves on the oaks still hanging on as they do each year, I’m emboldened. I watch them bucking the wind and the rain and refusing to fall. Very often in the spring, there are a few still clinging to life. Sometimes I pluck them down and gently lay them on the new grass in honor of their valiant defiance.

Yes, John Patrick, it is a new day. And I do need to enter this day fully; I do have my sword and shield at the ready. I have my books, and my writing, my strong women about me to strengthen my spirit and heart. What comes? What comes indeed?

Tomorrow, John Patrick; tomorrow comes.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.

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