How come nobody told me it would be this hard?

March 17, 2026

As I was staggering through my dog walk yesterday morning on newly icy, slushy sidewalks due to a freakish mid-March snow, and a blast of wind slammed a nearly blizzardlike wall of ice flecks into my face, I wondered why no one ever told me that pet ownership in Chicago is so hard.

Oh, I’ve had dogs in Chicago for almost 20 years. I should know better. But no. Everything has its own difficulties, new every morning, and always a surprise.

Just Friday we drove down to Urbana to fetch a spring breaking college student. It’s a simple drive. One highway, mostly straight. I have done this dozens of times, in many types of crazy weather. But I haven’t driven in such wind. This straight shot of a drive across the plains felt like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. High winds gusting up to 70 mph buffeted the car, pushed semi-tractor trailers around like toys, knocked over a very long RV, and whipped up a mysterious tire-related fire burning in the dry-grass median. The tire’s apparent owner was a quite full car-carrier pulled over on the opposite shoulder, the driver standing outside his door and looking across the highway at the line of flames stoically. In two hours of gripping the steering wheel with a steely will I had blisters on my hands. How did I not know how ridiculous it is to drive through high winds? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

And why has no one ever mentioned how, um, challenging it is to have a kid in college, and to witness them doing things that turn out to be triggering, like, for example, barely making the deadline when turning in an application? In just such a recent instance I, helpful mother that I surely am, kept sending all-caps texts: TURN IN WHATEVER YOU HAVE. JUST TURN IT IN NOW. College kid took the time in the final half hour prior to the deadline to call and let me know that this wasn’t helpful, very politely. Meanwhile to pass the minutes, instead of gnawing on my arm, I filled out an application of my own–for a writer’s retreat. Pounding away on my little laptop keyboard as if it was a race against time (it wasn’t), I rapidly poured all my worry and frustration into what would surely be an outstanding application (right?), checked it and double checked, and bam! hit send, moments before midnight on the east coast for no particular urgent reason beyond displaced anxiety. Within about 90 seconds I got a reply from the director, the general theme of which was “no,” very politely. Not only had the application period not yet opened up, but also, I did it wrong.

Surely, it’s not just me. Trump must be wondering in his secret heart, why didn’t anyone tell me it wouldn’t be so easy to obliterate Iran, of a weekend? And why is it so hard to come up with even one coherent reason for doing so? You see, I am not alone.

For me this question abounds. It is everywhere. Who knew it would be so hard to maintain democracy? Why didn’t anyone ever say? Certainly our founding fathers had a suspicion, hence they tried, as well as they could, to set things up to keep tyrants at bay. Many others have known, too, over the ensuing centuries–mostly those for whom this democracy was never functional in the first place. They spent their time, notably, not looking around confused and asking, Why didn’t anyone tell us how hard it is to maintain democracy? But instead they worked to secure it. We would do well to learn from these patriotic Americans now, rather than gawking, baffled, at the failure of checks and balances, the open scorn for the Constitution, flagrant disrespect for the rule of law, and the ongoing rollback of rights. We white Americans notice it now, but Black Americans have always seen. Nobody had to tell them, and they never had to ask, because they’ve lived it every day for 250 years.

Even now the Senate is poised to push through new legislation, unctuously titled the SAVE America Act, as if it, and only it, will. This legislation doesn’t save or preserve anything; it instead strips away the right of many millions of people to vote, maybe even me. I changed my name when I got married, essentially conservative gal that I am. Should this thing pass, I will have to produce a birth certificate and a photo ID in order to vote, or a passport, and a marriage certificate or signed affidavit that can verify the name change. I can see it now, when I’m at the polls….Why didn’t anyone tell me it would be this hard to vote? At least I have a passport. But these things aren’t cheap! No one should have to buy a $180 credential to vote–call it what they will, the folks who wrote this non-saving SAVE Act know it’s merely a pricey new poll tax.

The Illinois primary is this week, and I, essentially conservative gal that I am, will for sure vote; I always do. I took my kids with me to vote starting when they were babies. I send postcards telling others to vote. And while I still can, I feel I ought to. But there are other takes on the role of voting in our current context. Is it actually effectual for liberty and justice for all? Colten Barnaby asks us if our shrug-shouldered nose-holding choice of the lesser of two evils fixes anything, while Black thinkers have noted for a century that it has maybe made the problems worse. How, then, can we make our vote work harder? Qasim Rashid offers possibilities with an app called Sway. How can we organize to enact real change? Jess Craven’s Chop Wood, Carry Water offers short explainers of current legislative issues and what action you can take to impact the process.

There is so much to do. And it’s all so hard. And if I have to ask, why didn’t anybody say it would be this hard? Why didn’t anybody tell me it would be so hard to maintain civil rights for us, for all Americans, for me?, the only possible answer, the only real answer is, I just wasn’t listening.