Barring life and the way it can, well, get in the way sometimes, I catch up with my aunt every other weekend. My family always lived in California, and she mostly always lived in Colorado, so for the first half of my life, her voice always reminded me of Christmas. It was something I only ever heard seasonally, and in my mind it had a lovely musicality that paired neatly with memories of Christmas Eves of family and pasta and baked fish and selecting a single present to open ahead of Christmas morning.  

Because of that distance, and likely also a lack of commonalities that created as much distance itself, we weren’t particularly close while I was growing into my adolescence. But in the September of my second or third year of college, my aunt emailed me to let me know that she had an upcoming work trip to The Hague, and she wondered whether I’d be interested in taking the short flight from Norwich, where I was living at the time, to Amsterdam to come spend the weekend with her. A broke college student, she even offered to pay for my airfare, so off I went.  

I arrived on a Saturday morning and we proceeded to walk all around the city, having coffee after coffee, pastry after pastry, making our way to the blustery overcast seaside and through sprawling cobbled squares, all the while just talking. And we talked so much.  

She shared family histories, snippets of lore that had created the dynamics I’d grown up with and in observation of. I showed her my smartphone (the year was 2010) and all of the handy features it had, and when she got home, she promptly purchased her first iPhone. We talked about finances and budgeting, and when I got home, I promptly opened a savings account.  

As much as I know nostalgia has an ability to gloss over memories like these with an almost infallible filter, I look back on that weekend as one of my favorite souvenirs. Sure, on the first morning I spilled coffee on my leggings, and because I hadn’t wanted to check a bag I then had to wear coffee-scented trousers for the rest of the trip. But it was also the start of a wonderful adult friendship between two people who previously had simply been blood-related peripheries in each other’s lives.  

Lacking a lifelong equivalent of Spotify Wrapped, I can’t say for sure – but I would bet that in that single weekend, my aunt and I spent more time together than we had across the rest of our existence thus far combined. It was the first time we got to exist independent of the rest of the family, the first time we were able to experience each other as individual adults and not as Aunt and Niece or Adult and Child. In just under 48 hours, it cemented a closeness in us that I am grateful to say remains to this day, and is likely the seed for our current habit of catching up. 

All of this to say, we now speak roughly every other weekend – again, barring life and its lifeness getting in the way – and just like they did in The Hague in 2010, the things we talk about range from our work to politics to family to dreams and aspirations. The last few times we’ve spoken, politics has inevitably come up, and we’ve spent long stretches bemoaning capitalism and its many failings. A failing in particular that came up a few weeks ago was how well we’ve all been trained to have a preference (and delight in said preference) about the most ridiculous things, such as what hot beverages can be consumed from a particular mug. Because, and I know this is not unique to my aunt and I – certain mugs are for coffee, and certain mugs are for tea.  

(If we’re really diving into it, certain mugs are for English breakfast teas, others for fruit-laced white teas, and still others for hot chocolate, but I digress.) 

Capitalism, and the American political system that we live in and supports it, just feels so tough to face right now. Because the world is already filled with so much awfulness. Just, truly awful, horrific stuff. The kinds of things that if we’re being frank, have always been happening, just without a 24/7 news cycle and social media to witness it anywhere in the world in real time. It’s a privilege but I’m deeply resentful that something I wanted to be excited about – getting to vote for potentially the first female president – is actually super frustrating and disheartening because while I made the decision to go with “it’s a strategy, not an endorsement”, it still feels like an endorsement of genocide. And if it is, that’s something I have to live with. 

It feels very impossible to work against that tide of awfulness, especially when I’m reminded that something like having a preference about a cup – something I really enjoy having a preference about – is ingrained in me because of such a broken system. BUT. Something else I talk about with my aunt, and that I talk about a lot with my best friend, is how much we can do, even if it feels like we can’t.

Voting isn’t just about federal offices; it’s about local ballot initiatives (and how all three of Washington State’s can go fuck themselves, funded by Let’s Go Washington as they are). Having preferences isn’t just about spending money and aesthetics; it’s about supporting the people that create them or supporting second-hand shopping and the right to repair movement. These things are also about the joy to be found in the human condition – sure we are capable of truly horrific things. And yet, at their most basic, most humans will still want good and to do good, to find joy and to create and build community.  

So that’s the angle I’m leaning into. Befriending and looking out for our neighbors. Donating locally. Supporting small businesses that are about what I’m about. Taking a cat off the street and getting him neutered (and becoming obsessed with him. His name is Kevin and you’ll hear more about him one day). 

It’s not a perfect system – it is a broken system. Revolution could be nice, but let’s be real: the other side is way too well-armed for me to feel that anything good could come of it. So me and my coffee mug (it’s from a breakfast joint that’s been open since 1929 that Aaron and I went to with his best friend back in April) are going to just do our best.