George Floyd Square is depressing. But that’s not where the story ends.

2022-04-25

Dear reader,

Back at my desk last Monday, something was up. I had cried a lot the prior week, but that wasn’t the problem. That made sense.

I’d gone on a weeklong journey from Halifax, Vermont to E 38th and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That’s the intersection where George Floyd was murdered in police custody on May 25, 2020. Genevieve Hansen was walking by. She was an off-duty firefighter and EMT. She offered first-aid. The police wouldn’t let her. She called 911. Her witness testimony helped put Derek Chauvin in prison.

News coverage of Genevieve Hansen’s testimony in the George Floyd homicide trial

I had questions. I asked Genevieve if we could talk. We did for much of Monday. We also laughed and cried. She showed me around what is now called George Floyd Square.

I’m inspired by Genevieve’s act of bravery, and many more magical stories I encountered. Driving home, I felt sure that Monday morning I’d sit down and start writing. 

The depression took that out of me. It triggers mental scripts that tells me I’ll never be enough. I feel overwhelmed by the world.

It started two Mondays ago. Not right away. For the first half of the day I was excited. Genevieve and I had talked on the phone. We met for breakfast at Modern Times, talked until early afternoon. We felt energized coming over to E 38th and Chicago. It was my first time there, her first since the verdict. Now, after only half an hour, I was dissociating.

I couldn’t process the painting of the angel on the pavement. Every time I saw the red backlit CUP FOODS sign I felt like I was watching YouTube again, not life. I wanted to get to the hope. The depression tells me to wait. Grieve the tragedy.

Genevieve Hansen, a power lifter, met with me last week to talk about life. Here we are outside the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis.

There’s no news blaring from the gas pumps at the closed Speedway on the corner. Business at CUP FOODS is slow. The sign at the former bus stop, now used clothing exchange, says “Buses do not stop here.”

E 38th and Chicago is calm, quiet. I had room to think about death, and privilege. I had the privilege last week to visit George Floyd Square and be only depressed, not murdered.

I felt lost. I wasn’t hungry, but lunch was feeling like a good excuse to take a break. That’s when Jay Webb appeared, a carpenter on his lunch break. Jay didn’t seem to pay any mind to the center rotary he parked his pickup in—windows down, music on. The SUV behind him could wait. He was planting a spring garden.

“I’ve got one more to plant,” he said. “Does anyone want to help?”

Jay started the garden around the 16-foot-high “Black Power” fist in intersection rotary during the riots. To me, the riots looked like Minneapolis coming apart. Locals described it to me as a coming-together. Neighbors left apartment doors open for neighbors to check in. All watched for out-of-state plates—common then, not as much now.

A gentle giant, Jay had manifested a flower garden from the riots. Businesses gave him riot-damaged stock. Last week, someone had given him hostas. Jay gave me a hosta.

Jay gives me a hosta to plant at George Floyd Square last week. (I hate hostas.)

I don’t feel right hating a plant, but I hate hostas. Not because of the plant itself. The verdant hosta thrives in shade and multiplies like rabbits. When a gardener gives me a hosta, I feel like I’m doing them a favor.

Holding the hosta Jay gave me, I knew that all gifts, all hostas, are blessings. It’s privileged to weight and meter love.

We each come as we are. We do what we can.

The depression tells use we’re not enough.

Genevieve helped put a racist cop behind bars. The depression asks her, “Could you have saved his life if you had been five minutes earlier?”

Genevieve believed in her power, believed she could help a man breathe. It only occurred to her later she could lose her job for it, almost did.

And the depression is right. I’m not enough. Genevieve is not enough. The world is too much sometimes. George Floyd needed cigarettes. Derek Chauvin interpreted his behavior, and that of the pleading crowd, as “out of control.” The need for control had no need for George Floyd’s liberty to breathe for nine minutes and 29 seconds

The depression tells me this is all too big for you, me, or Genevieve to do anything about. Yet Jay’s garden says, show up. An open hand is enough.

Jay and I planted the hosta. We talked about the soil, how his crop is not the flowers but the humans. I marveled at the hosta. I felt it as pixie dust on a tough journey.

I came back to the Square later that evening. I needed more time to take it all in. I still couldn’t believe that George Floyd had been murdered. Right there, behind the Jersey barrier. And if we didn’t have witnesses like Genevieve, none of us would believe it. And nothing would change. Being a witness is enough, I told myself. I sat for hours, studying the square, studying my thoughts.

“Buses do not stop here.” Me and Oliver ponder the Cup Foods sign and all that is George Floyd Square.

At all times I was there, George Floyd Square appeared ungoverned, except by the calm and trust we all remarked on. But I also felt afraid I was trespassing. One of the things I did while I sat was ready my answer. What if  a car window rolled down and I was questioned? What I was doing in the garden at E 38th and Chicago at 9:30 p.m. on a Monday?

“I planted a hosta here today,” was what I would say. I felt the love of Jay’s garden in that, but  privilege. I’m descended from a string of Northern Europeans who, like myself, owned the land they planted gardens on. George Floyd was a great-great-grandson of a born-slave, died-freeman.

The only person who questioned me that evening was a white man, a tall Dutchman passing through. I wasn’t prepared for his question—“What are you praying for?” 

I thought back to Jay. Even as he was showing us around, I was thinking of all my reasons his garden won’t grow. A shade-loving hosta next to a Speedway? No way. But if that is all I bore witness to, I would still be grinding the angel into the asphalt.

E 38th and Chicago is seven minutes from the burned-out 3rd Precinct headquarters. The stack of precast-concrete in place of its front door is a memorial to the death of trust in our protectors.

The appearance of love in this ungoverned Square makes it the new center of the 3rd Precinct. 

What I told the Dutchman is that if I wasn’t depressed about George Floyd’s murder before, it’s because I hadn’t sat with it. To stigmatize that depression, whether in myself or in another human, would be to push away the emotional truth of it. And yet, when I stop pushing it and sit with it, despite or even because of my worst fears, magic happens. And it’s not a magic that happens to us as we wait for a savior. It’s the magic of simply showing up as yourself, wherever you are. Whether that’s for your family and friends, or whether that’s to a place where loving witness is needed, like this intersection.

A text I sent my son.

I want to exist as me, even with depression. If I show up anywhere with an open heart, I hope that someone will accept whatever I have to offer. I told him, I know also that parts of my heart and mind still remain unopened. And I’m praying for those too, that they will also be accepted as they are, as what I can offer today.

In offering,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm

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