Sweatshirts With Positive Quotes

We head to that corner of the basement. Rev straddles the weight bench and sits down while Declan sits on a yoga ball and leans against the corner. They fall into these positions so easily that I wonder if this is their space, the way Rowan and I claim her room or the plush couch in my basement. I’m not a violent person, but hitting something sounds really good. I draw back a hand and swing, throwing my whole body into it. Ow. Ow. The bag swings slightly, but shock reverberates down my arm. I think I’ve dislocated every joint of every finger, but I can feel it, and it’s the first thing I’ve truly felt in weeks. It feels fantastic. I need one of these in my basement. I grit my teeth and pull back my arm to do it again. “Whoa.” A hand catches my arm in midswing. I’m standing there, gasping, and Declan has a hold of my elbow. His eyebrows are way up. “So . . . yeah,” he says. “I don’t want to be sexist here, but after the way you talk about cars, I didn’t expect you to throw a punch like that.” I draw back and straighten, feeling foolish. “Sorry.” “What are you apologizing for?” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “I just don’t want to watch you break a wrist.” “Here.” Rev half stands, holding out a pair of black padded gloves. He’s pushed back the hood of his sweatshirt, and I wonder if he’s grown more comfortable around me—or if he’s just warm. “If you really want to beat on it, put on gloves

My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently. But really, when it came right down to it, I didn’t care. No matter what I looked like, it just didn’t feel right sending Marlboro Man into the cold, lonely world day after day. Even though I was new at marriage, I still sensed that somehow--whether because of biology or societal conditioning or religious mandate or the position of the moon--it was I who was to be the cushion between Marlboro Man and the cruel, hard world. That it was I who’d needed to dust off his shoulders every day. And though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he felt better when I was bouncing along, chubby and carrying his child, in his feed truck next to him. Occasionally I’d hop out of the pickup and open gates. Other times he’d hop out and open them. Sometimes I’d drive while he threw hay off the back of the vehicles. Sometimes I’d get stuck and he’d say shit. Sometimes we’d just sit in silence, shivering as the vehicle doors opened and closed. Other times we’d engage in serious conversation or stop and make out in the snow. All the while, our gestating baby rested in the warmth of my body, blissfully unaware of all the work that awaited him on this ranch where his dad had grown up. As I accompanied Marlboro Man on those long, frigid mornings of work, I wondered if our child would ever know the fun of sledding on a golf course hill…or any hill, for that matter. I’d lived on the ranch for five months and didn’t remember ever hearing about anyone sledding…or playing golf…or participating in any recreational activities at all. I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman. Or slept past 5:00 A.M.

We serve a hard, edgy crowd. Nearly all the women are black. Few make much effort with appearances any more. Most arrive with hair mashed and twisted, in unwashed sweatshirts and dirty jeans. There is grime under their cracked, badly painted nails. A handful have white teeth, but most passed long ago from yellow to brown. Several have problems with drugs. A few are quite obviously HIV-positive. The women drag themselves through the line like forgotten spirits shuffling off toward the River Styx. They are neither enthusiastic nor reluctant, neither fatalistic nor indignant. They are, for the most part, utterly without affect. They do not grin, cry, laugh, complain. They are merely present. In college, we would-be revolutionaries pretended that the oppressed would one day rise as a mighty army to smite the capitalists, overthrow the system, and establish a truly just society. Well, here are a couple of dozen of the most oppressed people in America, all lined up for their food, and the greatest passion they are able to summon is for brief but heated argument over who got the larger portion. Half may be dead in two years. If not for the hopeful, innocent beauty of their children, who still return a smile for a smile, I probably could not bear to come at all.

Americans are acutely unaware of the past and the future. Also, the present. History is infinitely malleable for them. So is reality. Are they just undereducated, indoctrinated, chronically indifferent, hypnotised, or too damn busy makin’ a buck? Consumed by consumerism, they wallow in army fatigues and self-regard, coveting the next dynamite Apple doodad or an AK-47, plasma screen and some Nikes. They have worried everybody and ruined the earth, all so that they can prance around, effect insouciance, drink beer, watch football, guzzle Sloppy Joes and Oreos, wear pro-Auschwitz sweatshirts, make pipe bombs, absorb incessant rock music, object to positive discrimination and the public display of female nipples, wonder whether the mailman has shut the mailbox properly, and choose a new euphemism for excretion yearly.