Everything in Minneapolis is normal and not normal all at once
Oh, we're hanging in there.
Minnesotans are traditionally stoic and often give toned-down answers when asked the simple question, “how are you doing?”
These responses need to be graded on a curve and evaluated for tone if you want to get a true picture of accuracy.
In general as a state, and in particular a Twin Cities metro area, the default response lately to the question of how we’re doing is, “Oh, we’re hanging in there.”
That is our cry for help.
When people ask what it is like to be living here during this unprecedented surge of immigration enforcement, which feels like an occupation of our space, the thing I keep coming back to is this:
It feels like everything is normal and not normal all at once.
Being alive in 2026 already required an overflowing amount of cognitive dissonance just to get through a day reasonably happy.
This moment is a force multiplier.
Comparisons have been made to 2020 and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, and I think that’s a starting point in terms of how a lot of people feel on edge.
It is hard for me to draw a perfect line between the two because our family lived in the heart of Minneapolis at that time, barely a mile from the chaos on Lake Street. We could smell the fires. We could feel the tension more acutely. We watched a neighbor patrol our street with a shotgun.
That was also in the midst of the early days of COVID. My recollection of the time was that of nothing feeling normal and everyone walking around in a daze.
We were not hanging in there. We were over the edge, and it took a long time — debatable if it ever happened completely or near-completely — for everyone to come back.
In part because of the residue of that time, our family moved to suburban Eagan in 2024. There were other practical reasons for the change, but the desire to get away from that feeling was perhaps the most visceral one. It was about the place itself as much as it was about where we were when the trauma happened.
I’m further away from the protests and conflict now, but this moment also has broader borders. ICE agents are in the suburbs. Agents are in greater Minnesota.
My sense is that a lot of people who aren’t specific targets right now — and I cannot speak to the experience of those who are targets other than to understand that their level of fear and sense of normalcy has been upended to a level countless times greater than my position of relative privilege — have a collective experience that feels both normal and not normal all at once.
At the bus stop in the morning, parents exchange pleasantries about the weather before the conversation turns to the latest developments both broad and personal:
A teacher who has noticed a sharp decline in attendance and who is also preparing for a fresh round of hybrid learning in her district. A neighbor who wonders if an upcoming night out in Minneapolis is safe. Family friends from Mexico who are afraid to leave the house.
And then back to a conversation about youth sports and crazy schedules.
In one text thread with friends we are making plans for a road trip to see baseball games this summer. In a separate thread talking about the impact of all this on our kids and their schools.
On social media, my feed bounces from NFL highlights to the latest statements from our elected officials to NBA trade rumors to multiple video angles of Renee Good being shot and killed to a snarky pop culture reference to someone’s earnest description of their own fresh hell to the best song everyone needs to listen to right now to reposted videos and comments of questionable intent beyond attention-chasing.
We contain multitudes. We seek some sort of normalcy. We pause but we never stop.
We had a rare night in the middle of last week where none of the kids or adults in the house had any obligations or plans.
No after school sports or activities. No play dates. No games to watch. No appointments. Not even a smidgen of homework.
The night before, as I was playing a bedtime card game with our 11-year-old, I asked her the question I always ask before she falls asleep: “What was the last really good thing that happened today?”
It’s a practice I gleaned from social media, purportedly cribbed from a study from a Scandinavian country (sorry, can’t remember which one), that is supposed to help kids (and adults) go to sleep with a sense of calm and gratitude.
Usually she has something readily in mind. Sometimes she has to think about it for a minute. On this night, for the first time that I could remember, she had nothing.
Had she been internalizing obviously false rumors at school? Had the not normal drowned out the normal? Or was it just a blah day, like all of us have?
No matter what it was, it hit me in the heart when she drifted off to sleep without remembering a single thing positive memorable thing about her day.
When I realized the next morning that we had that obligation-free night ahead, I caught her at breakfast before school and told her to think about something fun the whole family could do after school.
We batted around a few ideas but settled on this: A trip to Mall of America so she and her siblings could spend some gift cards they had received for Christmas, which seemed like forever ago but was really just a few weeks back.
Maybe we could squeeze in a couple amusement park rides, too. Maybe we could try to forget about everything happening in the nearby world for a night and make sure she had an answer to the bedtime question.
It was a good idea for the first 20 minutes we were there, and eventually it was a great idea, but for about an hour in between it was a nightmare.
All the kids had money to spend but different agendas. Then they wanted us to buy outlandishly expensive things and my wife and I became the worst parents as we steered them back toward reality. Then the 9-year-old and 6-year-old became hungrier than they had ever been, and JESUS CHRIST HOW LONG DO WE HAVE TO BE AT BATH & BODY WORKS.
The breakdown, of course, was as predictable as the rebound. Everyone ate. Moods improved. Instead of trying to do seven more things, we all headed to the Lego store. The kids started assembling mini figurines representing the entire family. We even coaxed a small dog out of one of the employees that bears at least some resemblance to our pug.
Our 6-year-old found the perfect Lego set to spend his gift card money after sobbing earlier about not being able to find a good dinosaur toy at any of the various shops at the mall.
It was getting relatively late, almost 8 on a school night, but Nickelodeon Universe was right there. Maybe just a couple rides?
I bought them what I thought was enough points for three rides each, and they ran to a safe but fast ride on elevated chairs that went around and around. Our 6-year-old measured his height against the minimum with an upward slant, and the young worker let him on.
They laughed and screamed, then came down and shouted AGAIN. They were the only ones on it, so they cruised through the line and did it once more. From there, they sprinted to a roller coaster, definitely a step up from anything the 6- and 9-year-olds had ever tried.
The catch was that I had to go on it, too, because the 6-year-old was too short to go on it without a chaperone. Fine.
I hadn’t been on a real roller coaster in at least a decade or more, and it was as intended: a little frightening, definitely exhilarating, something you had to be exactly in the moment to experience.
I thought that was the end of our points, but it wasn’t. We could do the roller coaster and another ride still. The kids ran down the stairs to tell my wife (who was waiting patiently and enjoying their glee but had no interest in any rides) all about it and to demand that we be allowed to do it again.
As the kids compared notes from the first time on the ride, my wife leaned over to me. “There was another shooting just a little while ago,” she said.
I paused for a moment, my complicated reality shifting to not normal.
“Do you think we need to leave?” I asked her. She wasn’t really sure, and neither was I.
Time makes decisions for you when you don’t act. I looked at her and then at the kids, who were oblivious to the news. I led them up the stairs for another trip on the roller coaster, catching up on all the details on my phone while we waited.
Were things going to take another turn? What exactly had happened? More broadly: What is this world coming to?
Then we got on the ride. By the time we were done, it was 5 minutes to close and the kids were begging to squeeze in one more trip on the high spinning chairs, this time with me on them as well.
As they ran to make sure the ride didn’t close, our 11-year-old yelled at the top of her lungs I LOVE RANDOM WEDNESDAYS.
They didn’t want it to end, and neither did I.
So around and around we went one more time, spinning and laughing and trying to hold on a little while longer to normal.
Random Wednesdays sound awesome. I'm having a hard time with my social media and the Strib with the mix of terrible news, violence and then the sports updates (or who has that good burger these days). I know the sports monster must be fed, and we would be speculating on Brian Flores or Joe Burrow even if a nuclear bomb had gone off in St. Paul a couple of days ago.
It sounds like the trip to The Mall was a great idea, and, clearly, the kids had a fun time. Ah, to be a kid. And, of course, seeing one's kids being joyful gives parents joy too. Unfortunately, adults in Minneapolis and elsewhere have had to deal with the horrible actions of Trump and his lackies. Attacking and/or talking about attacking other countries--and our own country's people--without a right to do so is a major aspect of an authoritarian government. What do you expect from a president who is a convicted felon, was a candidate who blatantly attempted to cheat to win an election, is a traitor who tried to overthrow our democracy? To change our situation, we need to get out of office anyone who has supported and/or continues to support an incompetent group that undermines our democratic, humanistic approach to society.