some of y’all have heard stories about my Aunt Mothman on @ShutdownFullcas. what you probably don’t know is that she was student teaching in West Virginia in 1970, not too far over the border from Kent State, when she heard a group of student demonstrators had been gunned down.

she was just out of college, was maybe five feet tall if her hair set just right, had just learned to drive, but she got in a car and drove straight there. a couple of days later she got on a bus to Washington and joined the protest marches there.

my mother tells me that up to that point, my aunt had always been something of a a goody-goody. yes ma’am, no sir, never a toe out of line. but she was shocked into action, and for the rest of her life, she never fell back into her former self.

because the thing is, there were always gonna be more kids.

we lost her earlier this summer. dementia. she spent the last six months of her life locked away from her family, not knowing why, in a nursing home under Covid quarantine.

I think she would’ve liked today. to see everybody in the streets who fought for other people’s kids.

don’t fall back now, is all I’m saying.