During the worst of last month, when John McCain was rising in the polls and the market was crashing and George W. Bush was popping in and out of the White House doors like a guy in a cuckoo clock, people told me that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Hah. What about a nervous breakdown? What about the weight gain that came one pound at a time, in step with McCain’s rise in the polls? What about the specter of financial ruin? The anxiety has been purgatory — not heaven, not hell, but perma-suck. And I haven’t even gotten to my own private wolf attack yet.

But how can you dwell on your own (pitiful) encounter with a wolf when so much of the national dialogue has been about the variety of large, majestic mammals that Palin enjoys killing for sport? When I first heard about Palin, I felt as though Dick Cheney had prematurely come back from the dead — another Strangelovean Christian shooter. (When Cheney accidentally shot his best friend in the face, they were on a ranch for fancy right-wing Christian shooters. Are there undisclosed locations where, if you know the right people, you can club baby seals, or harpoon whales?) However, Palin is not smart like Cheney. In fact, I don’t even think she’s as smart as Bush. And the thought of enduring another dense and incurious leader in the White House is terrifying. The world has roared with laughter at Bush, has routinely voted him the most dangerous man on the planet — and, in some cases, has actually recoiled from him as though from hot flame. Remember the look on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s face when Bush snuck up behind her at the dinner table and massaged her shoulders? Can you imagine, for one moment, what she would make of a Palin presidency?

But Bush is so five minutes ago. And besides, some otherwise reasonable people choose to believe a kind interpretation of Bush Jr. — that he was naive and well intentioned, convinced he heard the voice of God. He spoke to a higher father. Every so often, glimpsing the smug and gregarious ignorance of Bush, I’d be reminded of Helen Mirren playing Elizabeth II in the 2006 film “The Queen,” when she says to the newly elected Tony Blair, “Mr. Blair, you are my 10th Prime Minister. Mr. Churchill was my first. He sat right there.” In other words: Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Last week was better, and the trapped-bee feeling abated somewhat: Barack Obama’s polls were rising, and the crowds at Palin rallies became so toxic that famous Republicans like Christopher Buckley had to backpedal or jump ship, lest they be associated with her. She still has a few staunch friends. Of course, even Richard Nixon had loyal friends at the end, or at least “friend”: that nice Bebe Rebozo.

But we still have 21 of these nerve-rattling days to get through. Race is still an unknown factor; one of the savviest people I know says Obama will poll ahead by 10 points but only win by 3. On top of this, the Wall Street wolf has now arrived at the door, snarling and gnashing its teeth. (Hang on, I will tell you my wolf attack story in a moment.)

So with all of this going on so close to home, how can we hang on, take care of one another, make a difference, live lives of purpose and dignity and joy — without losing our minds?

I will tell you: Remember the bees, and look up. Don’t stare at the bottom of the jar in which you are trapped. Turn off the TV for half an hour, and look up. Don’t look at the Wall Street traders in their distressing guise as bees, trapped on the floor of the exchange. They are not prisoners, like the bees; they are volunteers. Instead, look up at your computer and find a good charity site where you can send whatever you can afford. Go to  Oxfamusa.com or DoctorsWithoutBorders.com. Send what you can to Planned Parenthood in the name of Sarah Palin. Send what you can to Obama’s campaign in a swing county in your nearest swing state. The Republicans are wrong: You don’t always lose if you share. You actually get really, really happy.

I send $25 a month to a place where my family has adopted children since 1992, and I send money off to Planned Parenthood so that teenage girls and women will not be trapped into having babies they don’t want and for whom they can’t provide. Whatever you can send is the right amount. If you can’t send money, send a promise to volunteer a certain number of hours. Can you put in 15 hours between now and the election? If not, use what you do have and do what you can. Picasso said, “If I don’t have red, I use blue.”

And then look up again — look up at the ceiling that has trapped you inside and get yourself outdoors. Take a 15-minute walk and say hello to every single old person you see. Stop and talk to them if they want to. Wash the car, which you know you’ve meant to do for over three weeks now, or wash the dogs out back. (Trust me on this — people have mentioned your smelly dogs to me more times than I can count.) If you don’t have dogs, or a car, clean something big, like the windows. Get wet! This might spritz you back to the feel and sensations of your body, the miraculous now, the clean dogs or car, the living children you can help feed today.

You can always rush back inside and turn on the TV again. You’ve only given up a little money and a small amount of time, yet you might be feeling better already. When the prophet said, Cast your bread upon the water, I think he meant that it’s the casting, the giving away, that floats back to us as a gift on the waves.

OK, OK: The wolf attack. A few days ago, trapped as I was on the bottom of the Palin bee jar, I looked up, saw that the sun was shining and took my two dogs to a local park. There is a big area in my rural neighborhood surrounded by redwood trees where dogs are allowed to run free. And run free they did.

Then a gorgeous young couple arrived — upscale Burning Man types — with a wolf. Granted, it was a scroungy wolf, like some refugee from the killing fields of Wasilla, Alaska, or a huge ratty old Beanie Baby. But it was golden and had long golden-black wolfen eyes and that distinctive, sexy slink.

“Hey,” I said, nice as pie, “is that a wolf?”

They nodded. I wanted them to like me, because they were both so great looking, and so elegant and mellow. It was a girl wolf, named Ferrin. She looked like she had seen better days, like they had bought her at a consignment store. They took her off her leash. She immediately tore after my dogs and nipped my big mutt, Bodhi, in the hide, hard. It was terrifying. Bodhi yelped and raced over to me, and just as I started to suggest that maybe Ferrin would do well on a leash at a public park with children playing several feet away, Ferrin suddenly turned, like a heat-seeking missile, and bolted in my direction. I didn’t have time to react. The wolf ran straight at me and hit me in the face, hard, so hard that I thought she had broken one of my front teeth.

Now, along with a nervous breakdown, weight gain and financial ruin, appearing in public with a broken front tooth is one of the things I am most afraid of.

I screamed in fear. Perhaps it is not news that I am just ever so slightly more tense than the average bear. But what only another religious type would understand is that, at the exact same time I felt so afraid, I automatically knew that God or goodness or good, orderly direction would see me through and that, all evidence to the contrary, things were going to be OK.

And they were: I was badly shaken up, but the tooth was not broken, just very sore. And the attack was maybe not so much an “attack” as a “bonk.”

The Burning Man couple rushed over and helped me to my feet while apologizing, making sympathetic noises and rubbing my shoulders. They were lovely. They put Ferrin back on her leash. I piled my dogs into the car, drove home, wrapped myself in a blankie and ate my body weight in New York Super Fudge Chunk while watching cable news for the next two hours: heaven.

So what did I learn that day? I learned that fear is appropriate these days, much of the time. Don’t let people tell you that you can’t have faith and fear, as if you have to choose. The old saying goes, Faith is fear that has said its prayers. This is the best possible time in the history of the republic both to stay extremely afraid and also to keep the faith: If you feel too much of one, look around deep inside for the other. When you are really lost, take the next action that feels most right, and insight will follow. Justified fear is how we are going to win this election, and our faith in goodness, truth and the Constitution is why we must.

And, it almost goes without saying, wolves really don’t belong in public parks, any more than they would in the office of the vice president of this nation.

She would not have been happy with either McCain or Obama for opting out of public finance: She would mention Phil Gramm at the drop of a hat, McCain’s chief financial guru, whom she always called the senator from Enron. I think she would have been intrigued by Obama, for all the game-changing aspects he’s brought to the arena, for upending all the assumptions about whether someone could win with such a spooky name. She’d have cheered his speech on race, been amazed by his speech in Berlin. She’d have been pissed at the Democrats for not being as robust as they should have been on civil liberties, even as she reasserted her heartbreaking faith in American democracy, the faith that if we stuck together, we’d figure it out in the end. We’d somehow help the poor.

She would have celebrated the tidal roar of support from younger voters, who have the vision and stamina to fight for someone who would hold the nation’s leaders to account, people who would fight to make this a country where it was once again safe to be a small child, or a very old person, which it has not been for approximately 7.6572 years.

She would have known all along that this election was going to be as tight as a tick. She would have had the sense to be afraid but to not let her fear hurt her. She would have done one constructive thing after another: Sent money to swing states, offered her car to volunteers from out of town, let young campaign workers sleep on her couch.

The last time I saw her, she was several weeks away from death, spending most of her time in bed, hanging out with her best friends and her dog. And you know what she was doing, off and on, the weekend I spent with her? She was working on her last column, about the need for Americans to fight like hell to stop Bush’s proposed surge in Iraq. All she had at that point was a great ending: “We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!’”

She was also rereading parts of her favorite books when suddenly she wanted to have a dinner party, because I had never met her great friends, “Shrub” co-writer Lou Dubose or populist heavyweight Jim Hightower. This was a major obstacle to happiness for all concerned. She adored those two men, and I was commanded to call them. Unfortunately, Lou, her longtime collaborator, was out of town. So, instead, she told me Lou stories for half an hour.

No one loved her stories more than Molly, especially those about the art and absurdity of politics. This was part of her greatness. She reigned like a queen — imposing carriage, great sense of style, with a mind and smile that radiated warmth.

In between trying to write her column, she would call out to me. “Associate Party Planner!” she would say. “Front and center! We have a problem!” So I would appear with the clipboard I had been issued, stretch out next to her and her dog, and we’d fiddle with our menu or grapple with the despair and bitterness of having discovered that none of the cloth napkins matched. Lou couldn’t come, and two of the good plates chipped. We agreed: It was a nightmare.

Her brother Andy was in town, though, as was her great assistant Betsy Moon, with her boyfriend. Jim Hightower and his wife, DeMarco, could be there.

It was really not an ideal weekend for a party, what with her being close to death, unable to walk much anymore or to stay awake. Also, she had to get chemo that morning. But I ask you — what are you going to do?

Obviously, have the party. Everything she loved, one more time.

Her niece and nephew came.”I don’t have any children,” she once wrote, “so I’ve decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.” And she adored these two (although later we conspired to set the table so that they got the two chipped plates).

She was so excited about her party that she insisted I make place cards.

She slept a lot the day of the party. The chemo had knocked her for a loop. But she managed to work on her column a little. I Googled it just a moment ago. Here’s what she wrote, “About the only politician out there besides Bush actively calling for a surge is Sen. John McCain. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote: ‘The presence of additional coalition forces would allow the Iraqi government to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own — impose its rule throughout the country. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed.’ But with all due respect to the senator from Arizona, that ship has long since sailed. A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country — we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls. We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented.”

She got up from bed a few times to sit with me at the table. We drank tea and ate dried cherries and told each other stories. She was such a performer, with that marvelous Texas Hill Country accent that used to get stronger with every drink. But she and I had both been sober for some time by the end of her life. Her stories were precisely delivered, and her face so in control, as if she had trained with Marcel Marceau. I can see her looking over the tops of her reading glasses — mugging, mimicking, liberally using old lines even as she pulled new whoppers out of the ether. Sometimes being with her was like watching fireworks on a small scale. Finally, she’d lean forward to deliver the money line, while fluttering her eyelids, then throw herself backward into her chair, roaring up at the ceiling, as if she were laughing at God.

Then she’d lean forward again, hoping that you might have a story, too, and get the log rolling again.

I swear, she might be the only person who can help get me through these last 33 nerve-wracking days. She would not have taken Sarah Palin lying down. She would laugh her ass off, and do something every day to defeat McCain. She would eat with beloved friends, put people together who simply had to know one another, who might together be able to throw a wrench in McCain’s Rube Goldberg machine. She makes me want to move around on the floor with her one more time, standing on her shoes like I used to with my father when I was a little girl, and he was teaching me how to waltz.

When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, “Don’t you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?”

And he said, “Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian.”

I have been in a better mood ever since, and have decided not to even say this woman’s name anymore, because she fills me with such existential doubt, such a sense of impending doom and disbelief, that only the Germans could possibly have words for it. Nor am I going to say the word “lipstick” again until after the election, as it would only be used against me. Or “polar bear,” because that one image makes me sadder than even horrible old I can stand.

I hate to criticize. And I love to kill wolves as much as the next person does. But this woman takes such pride in her ignorance, doesn’t have a doubt in the world about her messianic calling, that it makes anyone of decency feel nauseated — spiritually, emotionally and physically ill.

I say that with love. As we say in Texas. (Also, we say, “Bless her heart.”)

We felt this grief and nausea during the run-up to the war in Iraq. We felt it after the 2004 election. And now we feel it again.

But since there are still six weeks until the election, and since the stakes are as high as the sky, which should definitely not be forced to endure four more years of the same, we have got to get a grip. There are millions of people to register to vote, millions of dollars to be raised. We really cannot go around feeling flat and defeated, with the need to metabolize the rotten meat that this one particular candidate and the media have forced upon us.

One of the tiny metabolic suggestions I have to offer — if, like me, you choose not to have her name on your lips, like an oozy cold sore (I say that with love) — is to check out a Web site called the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. There you can find out what she and her husband would have named you if you had been their baby. My name, Anne, for instance, would be Krinkle Bearcat. John, her running mate, would be named Stick Freedom. George would be Crunk Petrol. And so on.

First of all, go find out what your own name would be. Then for one day refuse to use the name of these people who are so damaging to earth and to our very souls — so, “I don’t have to understand anything, it’s all fuzzy math. Trust me. I’m the decider.” From now on, when working for Obama, talk about Obama, talk about his policies, the issues, the economy, the war in Iraq, poverty, the last eight years, Joe Biden. You don’t have to mention Crunk Petrol, or his sidekick, Shaver Razorback.

And you sure as hell don’t have to mention Claw Washout — she is absolutely, hands-down the most ludicrous person ever to be nominated. She’s a “South Park” character. There was a mix-up. Mistakes were made.

Everything you need to know about how to bear up during these two months is already inside you. Go within: Work on your own emotional acre. Stand still, and hurt, and feel crazy. Then drink a lot of water, pray, meditate, rest. Rest is a spiritual act. Now, I am a reform Christian, so it is permissible for me to secretly believe that God hates this woman, too. I heard God slam down a couple of shooters while she was talking the other night.

Figure out one thing you can do every single day to be a part of the solution, concentrating on swing states. Money, walking precincts, registering voters, whatever. This is the only way miracles ever happen — left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe. Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe. The great novelist E.L. Doctorow once said that writing a novel is like driving at night with the headlights on: You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey this way. It is the truest of all things; the only way to write a book, raise a child, save the world.

As my anonymous pal Krinkle Bearcat once wrote: Laughter is carbonated holiness. It is chemo. So do whatever it takes to keep your sense of humor. Rent Christopher Guest movies, read books by Roz Chast and Maira Kalman. Picture Stick Freedom in his Batman underpants, having one of his episodes of rage alone in one of his seven bedrooms. Or having one of his bathroomy little conversations with Froth Moonshine. (Bless their hearts.) Try to remember that even Karl Rove has accused him of being a lying suck.

Reread everything Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower ever wrote. Write down that great line of Molly’s, that “freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right.” Tape it next to your phone.

Call the loneliest person you know. Go flirt with the oldest person at the bookstore.

Fill up a box with really cool clothes that you haven’t worn in a year, and take it to a thrift shop. Take gray water outside and water whatever is growing on your deck. This is not a bad metaphor to live by. I think it is why we are here. Drink more fluids. And take very gentle care of yourself and the people you most love: We need you now more than ever.

Our fight was ostensibly about the car. We have an old beater that I let Sam drive whenever he wants, although because I pay for the insurance, I have some leverage. It’s a good deal for him. But I had taken away his car privileges earlier that week because he’d been driving recklessly, hit a curb going 20 and destroyed the front tire. So he felt mad and victimized to begin with, my huge, handsome, brown-eyed son. And actually, so did I. That morning, I asked him to wash both cars, as partial payment for the tire I’d had to buy. It was a beautiful sunny day, and he had other plans, which I made him postpone. Then, with perhaps the tiniest bit of sanctimony, I went for a walk with the dog, to let him work in peace. When I got back, though, the cars were still gauzy with dirt.

I mentioned this, as nicely as possible. “I washed them,” Sam said, defiantly. I called him a liar. He produced two filthy washrags: “I’m not a liar,” he said. “I just did a lousy job.”

And I lost my mind. I slapped him across the face, for the first time in our lives. He didn’t flinch and, in fact, barely seemed to register it. He gave me a flat, lifeless look, and I knew I was a truly doomed human being, and that neither of us could ever forgive me.

Then I grounded him for the night.

I felt I had no choice. Slapping him did not neutralize his culpability: It simply augmented mine. He looked at me with scorn. “I don’t care what you do or don’t do anymore,” he said. “You have no power over me.”

This is not strictly true: He has little money of his own, and loves having our old car to tool around in. Also, he realizes that families are not democracies, and he’s smart enough to obey most of the time.

We stood in our driveway looking daggers at each other. The tension was like the air before lightning. The cat ran for her life. The dog wrung her hands.

I felt a wall of tears approaching the shore and, without another thought, got in my car and left. Nothing makes me angrier and more hopeless than when someone robs me of my reality by trying to gaslight me. I started to cry, hard, and not long after, to keen, like an Irish woman with a son missing at sea.

Recently I have begun to feel that the boy I loved is gone, and in his place, a male person who so pushes my buttons, with his moodiness, scorn and flamboyant laziness. People tell me that the boy will return, but some days that is impossible to imagine. And we were doing so well for a while, all those years until his junior year of high school, when the plates of the earth shifted inside him. I’ve loved and given him so much more than I ever have anyone else: And I’ll tell you, a fat lot of good it does these days.

I should not have been driving, but since I’d restricted Sam’s driving privileges, I couldn’t make him leave. So I drove along, a bib of tears and drool forming on my T-shirt. Why was he sabotaging himself like this, giving up his weekend, his freedom and his car, and for what? Well, I sort of knew the answer. This is what teenagers have to do, because otherwise they would never be able to leave home and go off to become their own people. Kids who are very close to their parents often become the worst shits, and they have to make the parent the villain, so they can break free without it hurting too much. Otherwise, the parent would have to throw rocks at them to get them out of the house. It would be like in “Sky King,” when the family has nursed the wounded animal back to health, and tries to release it back into the wilds, shooing it away — “Go ahead, Betty! You can fly!”

So even though, or because, I understood this, I cried harder as I drove than I have since my father died, 27 years ago. God invented cars to help kids separate from their parents. I have never hated my son so much as when I was teaching him to drive. There, I’ve said it, I hated him. Sue me: It’s actually legal, because sometimes he hates me too. He always drove too fast, cut corners too sharply, whipping around in the ’95 Honda like it was a souped-up Mustang convertible. But still somehow a few weeks ago, he tricked the California Department of Motor Vehicles into issuing him a license. I hate the way most young men drive, so cocky, reckless, entitled. I suppose they hate the way I drive too — careful, poky, all but shaking my puny fist at them as they pass.

I started letting Sam drive himself to and from school, which I loved, and to his appointments, events, practices. I also ordered him to make emergency runs for milk, and ice cream sundaes. But then watching him leave recently, I saw him peel around the corner nearest to our home, endangering himself and anyone who might have been on the street. I threatened to take away his driving privileges, and he slowed down, for two days. Then he sped up when he thought I wasn’t looking, and lost his rights for a week.

What has happened? Who is this person? He used to be so sane and positive, so proud of himself. He used to call himself Samwheel when he was 5, because while he couldn’t pronounce Samuel, he knew it was a distinguished name. He used to care about everything, but now he mostly only cares about his friends, computers and our animals. He threatens to run away because he wants his freedom, and the truth is he is too old to be living with me anymore — he wants to have his own house, and hours, and life. He wants to stay out late, and sleep in, and smoke, and because I won’t let him do any of this on weekdays, he sees me as a prig, or a dominatrix, John Ashcroft, or Ann Coulter.

I wept at the wheel on a busy boulevard in the county where I live. At first people were looking over at me as they passed in the next lane. I wiped at my face, and snorfled. Then I noticed that people were dropping back. Eventually, there were no cars in my immediate vicinity. I felt like O.J. in his Bronco on that famous ride. I started calling out to God, “Help me! Help me! I’m calling on you! I hate myself, I hate my son!” I wanted to die. But I have to believe that Jesus prefers honesty to anything else. I was saying, “Here’s who I am,” and that is where most improvement begins.

You’ve got to wonder what Jesus was like at 17. They don’t even talk about it in the Bible, he was apparently so awful.

But then I said the stupidest thing: I said, “I’ll do anything you say.”

Now this always gets God’s attention. I could feel him look over, sideways, and drum his fingertips against each other. “Hello!” I heard him say. “Go deal with this, dude.”

So I drove home, wiping at my eyes, and when I stepped inside, Sam said, his voice dripping with contempt, “What do you have to cry about?”

I staggered to my room, like Snagglepuss onstage. I sat on the floor, and thought about his question. The answer is, I don’t have a clue, but all the honest parents I know — all three of them — are in similar straits. Their kids are mouthy now, and worse; they could care less about school, and some are barely passing at this point. They drive like movie stars from the 50s, like Marlon Brando or James Dean. You can see in their driving that everything in them is raw. No wonder teenagers make such good terrorists.

And me. I think the moment Sam was born, it was all over. I recognized that the things I hated about my parents — their fixation with homework, and getting into a good college; their need to show us off, and make us perform socially for their friends — were going to be things Sam hated about me some day. I also knew that I would wreck his life in ways my parents couldn’t have even imagined because I was single, broke and barely sober. I knew that God had given me an impossible task, and that I would fail. I knew deep down that life can be a wretched business, and no one, not even Sam, gets out alive.

It turns out that every kid has this one tiny inbred flaw: They have their own skin and their own will. Putting aside for a moment the divine truth of their natures, all of them are wrecked, just like the rest of us. That is the fly in the ointment, and this, Sam, is what I had to cry about.

When I finally stopped my sobbing, I called my friend Father Tom, who is actually one of Sam’s dear friends, too. I told him my version. He listened.

“You’re right on schedule,” he said. “And so is he. And I was worse.”

“You swear? Thank you! But it’s still hopeless,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Call the White House and volunteer him for the National Guard.”

“Anything else?”

“Let the hard feelings pass. Ask for help. Mary and Joseph had some rough moments, too. See if you can forgive each other a little, just for today. We can’t forgive: That’s the work of the Spirit. We’re too damaged. But we can be willing. And in the meantime, try not to break his fingers.”

I sat on my floor and after a while the dog came over and gave me a treatment. Somewhat revived, I tried to figure out the next right thing.

After a while I went and kicked my son’s door in.

“Go clean the cars properly,” I said. “Now.”

And he did, or rather, he hosed them down. Then he went back inside and slammed the door. I went inside and filled a tub with hot soapy water, and took it downstairs to Sam.

“Go wash it again,” I said. “With soap, this time. And then rinse it.”

I went inside and did everything I could think of that helps when all is hopeless. I ate some yogurt, drank a cool glass of water and cleaned out a drawer. I took my nice clean car to the market and bought supplies: the new People, a loaf of whole-wheat sourdough and a jar of raspberry jam. I lay on the couch, read my magazine and ate toast. Then when I started to doze, I turned on CNN softly and watched until I fell asleep. I woke up a few times.

The first time, I was still sad and angry and ashamed, and knew in my heart that things weren’t going to be consistently good again for a long time. I was willing for the Spirit to help me forgive myself, and for Sam and I to forgive each other, but these things take time. God does not have a magic wand. Also, I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.

Then when I woke up again, I saw the last thing on earth I expected to see: Sam in the same room as me, stretched on the other couch, eating yogurt, and watching CNN too.

“Hi,” I said, but he didn’t reply. His legs hung over the sides of the couch. Then I dozed off again. When I woke up, he was asleep, too, with the dog on the floor beside him. He was sweating. He has always gotten hot when he sleeps. He used to nap on this same couch with his head on my legs, and ask me to scratch his head, and before that to crawl into bed beside me, and then kick off all the covers, and earlier still, to sleep on my stomach and chest like a hot-water bottle. He and the dog were both snoring. Maybe I had been too, all of us tangled up in one another’s dreams.

Everything in the room stirred, dust and light, dander and fluff, and the movement of air, my life still in daily circulation with this guy I have been resting with for so many years.

Good people who have watched their country’s leaders skid so far to the triumphal right would have to do something. I mean, wouldn’t they? Am I crazy? Otherwise, those people’s children will ask them someday, when we are all living in caves, “What did you do to try and save us?” And the children will be so angry, and they are so awful and unpleasant when they are mad, even in the dark.

I, for one, do not want to answer that I did nothing, or that I ranted and flailed, showing up to support my own interest groups, candidates and concerns.

Instead, I think we should lay down our differences, and have a revolution. I am wondering if July 14 works for everyone.

My father wrote a great novel about an antiwar march in 1970, called “The Bastille Day Parade,” in which many protesters carried signs that read, “Turn Off the Lie Machine.” In choosing July 14, I would like to pay tribute to him and to the people of his generation, who are surely turning in their graves, as if on rotisseries, with horror about life in their beloved America. They were passionate in their fight against fascism, and Joseph McCarthy, their commitment to civil rights, and to libraries, and to good manners. All of us were raised to be polite, as honest as we could manage, and to live as if the word “fair” meant something, which all sounds a little Amish at this point. A renewal of these values would be the major plank of this revolution.

In this revolution, there will not be any positions except kindness, and libraries. We will not even have a battle cry, as that can lead to chanting, and haranguing: Hey, hey, ho, ho, all that chanting’s got to go! We would simply look one another in the eyes, shake our heads, and say, “This just can’t be right.” We will not try to figure out what it all means: Iraq, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Terri Schiavo, abortion rights, the Downing Street Memo, domestic spying, immigration, the Kyoto Accords, the Geneva Connections, Tom DeLay — none of it. We all know what kindness means, and I think we can all agree that libraries are sacred, and our revolution will decree that we will fight tooth and nail for these things, politely.

Mostly we will show up and say things like, “Giving India massive nuclear assistance? I don’t know — that just can’t be right.” “Madge, maybe I’m nuts, but John Bolton, at the U.N.? Can that be right?”

I am hoping for a large turnout even though so few people showed up to mark the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. This was dispiriting, but let’s not dwell on it. That was then, almost two weeks ago. This is now. Nearly 50 million people voted for Kerry, and I’m hoping for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million (although I know the press will way underreport the turnout). We need precinct leaders to get the word out, although not the kind who go door-to-door while people are eating, then threaten sweetly to come back later. Bitter neighbors are the very last thing this revolution seeks.

We would all show up on Bastille Day, propelled by the ferocious, heartbroken belief we’ve carried since childhood, that America is a republic, of 50 states, united and humane.

It would be nice if everyone would turn off his or her cellphone that day.

Also, I thought we could all wear green — not because we have an environmental position we are pushing, but because trees, grasses and the natural world are just so incredibly beautiful and precious. Nature = life. Some will suspect that this is inching dangerously close to a “position,” what with everyone in green, hundreds of shades of green — and if I am being honest, it’s true that the tiniest point might be made that a black-and-white worldview, a Manichaean good vs. evil color scheme, is wearing out its welcome.

Additionally, it would be great if everyone could bring a bit of fruit to share, and maybe a few dollars, in case one runs into someone desperately poor.

Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone who needs it, whereas in America, people amass and hoard as many bananas as they can to sell for an exorbitant profit. So half of them go bad, anyway.

Maybe, come to think of it, that wasn’t Mother Teresa. Maybe that was Ram Dass, or my neighbor Irmgaard, but it doesn’t matter. Trust me: Fruit is a nice touch. Apples, oranges, it doesn’t matter, and it would not be mandatory that you bring any fruit at all.

All we would ask is that you show up and help us foment a revolution, based on kindness and that silly old idea our parents taught us, about fairness. Maybe we’d sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” No offense in that, really, is there?

But we won’t sing that if it is going to stir up a lot of debate and screeds and distraction. I was just thinking that both of my parents died here, on this land that they loved. They were both born abroad. A lot of our parents have died, people who made sure their children read John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson and Langston Hughes. I would show up for my parents, by proxy.

Never mind; we don’t have to sing that song. Still, I cry when I hear it.

We will just all come together. Bastille Day. Ix-nay on the cellphones and the speeches. Like Woody Allen said once before I turned on him, 80 percent of life is just showing up. We will show up and foment a loving revolution, wearing green: I just looked up “foment,” to make sure that this is what I meant. It comes from the Latin “fomentum,” which means a warm poultice. One of the definitions is to apply a warm cloth, dipped in warm water or medication, to a body that needs healing; and that is exactly what I meant.

I’m thinking noon-ish.