There are two things you need to know before I post this picture.
1) It happens to be October, and so I have done a lot of recent writing about breast cancer risks and prevention. (Want to know them? Here’s what Susan G. Komen has to say.)
2) I was shopping for wine when I took this picture. Even though I was well aware that alcohol increases your risk of breast cancer. By a lot. In fact, only one drink a day is reasonable, ladies — if that. And if you have 4 or 5 drinks a day, well, your risk is up by 50%. True Story.
So, there I was, wheely-wheeling down the Target wine aisle in search of some breast cancer causing wine for a nice relaxing evening on the coach with my husband, when I spotted this…
Really? Really.
For all their apparent best intentions, these pink ribbons need to back off. Enough already. They need to be kept for things that actually DO something to prevent breast cancer. Those things that, would you believe it, raise money for research. They should not be about how much better consumers feel about the products they buy when, in real life, only $ 0.000001 of what they spent lands anywhere near any real research.
“Oh GOOD I can buy this Cuisinart because it’s PINK and helps stop breast cancer! Oh and here’s a pink spatuala! And this cereal box has a ribbon too! Good! We’re protecting breasts everywhere with MY SHOPPING!”
Um, no.
(This has all been said before, of course. It’s called “pink-washing“, but I’m saying it here, too.)
“But we’re raising awareness!”
On an enormous bottle of cheap wine? Don’t insult me. Who are we kidding. Keep your pink ribbons off my booze. I know what that wine is doing and I know it has nothing good to do with breast cancer. I KNOW BETTER. And so should all of us.
Needless to say, I did not buy THAT particular bottle of cheap wine. I bought another brand — one without any cheery health-related logos, thank you very much.
I was supposed to fly out of Boston that day. But I changed my flight to the 12th. I had a conference in Texas to get to but there was just too much oh-so-important work to get done. So, instead of boarding a plane that morning, I was speed-walking across the Northeastern University campus at just about the same time they were getting on those planes only a few miles away.
On such a bright, cloudless, calm day, with everyone milling about their work mornings, why would anyone expect terror? Going to work, going through the routine of the morning commute is something we depend on, and trust deeply — our own daily clockwork ticking by and proving that all is well. We each have a work to-do list of so much busy business. We all carry with us the office drama, what will they need of me today, will any of it ever get done. Hair still wet from the shower, lip gloss still slick, subways, the usual streams of people, walking, bags over shoulders, newspapers in hand, Dunkin Donuts, cars, buses, crossing streets, blue skies, cool, fresh breezes, the sounds of the city, the sounds of normal.
Because all of these people going about their morning commutes so calmly would not be here if it was not ok, if it was not normal. Right?
I think about the many, many people of New York City and Washington D.C. and those stepping onto early Tuesday morning commuter flights feeling the same way that day. Work. Office politics. Needing coffee. Did I put out the trash. I have to sign the kids up for soccer practice. To-do lists, their own lives, all equally important, dusting the sleep cobwebs from their minds.
A perfect, cloudless Tuesday morning could never betray this routine, this trust of normal.
I was sitting in a meeting around 8:45. We went through the agenda around a conference table with a group of managers. No one was particularly excited to be there, it was just another Tuesday morning meeting which better end soon because I had so much to do before tomorrow.
I think of how many other people were settling into meetings too. Or checking their voicemail while browsing news stories online. Or taking sips of coffee from the vendor down the hall who is just so damn nice for having been at work for three hours already…
And then it happened. Our meeting carried on. So many meetings in New York City and Washington D.C. could not. Of course, we just thought it was a small plane.
But then it wasn’t. Stunned and staring at each other. And then one hit in D.C. and I bolted from the room. My mother worked next to the White House. I knew what had happened.
Can you understand that much horror in a moment? Probably not. I fell apart while others told me to calm down. But they didn’t understand the horror, either. Still, I stayed in the office. I was too afraid to get back on the subway system that got me to work hours before, and — while I dialed my mother’s phone number over and over and over — I stared at the Prudential Center from my office window. It looked so much like one of the towers, so why not.
When I finally reached my mother, she had somehow made it home. She was in Roslyn, VA. when the plane hit the Pentagon. She saw the smoke come up. And while everyone stopped and stared, she grabbed her purse and ran, made it out of the parking lot that was locked down ten minutes later, drove over sidewalks to escape the city and made her way back to the house. If you knew her, that wouldn’t surprise you either.
And while we talked on the phone, I watched the traffic jammed up Huntington Avenue, pushing out of the city. Not one car went into the city. The only car I saw pull up there was my husband’s who came to rescue me out of the city a few hours later. We u-turned, and joined the crawl away.
I came home to an answering machine with my father’s cries. He was in east Africa. Had I taken a plane out of the city that day?? Had I??! Where was I!? The only one he reached was my sister-in-law, who was being evacuated out of her office in Disney World. Because, well, why not.
We know the horror of that day now. But then, with our hair finally dried from morning showers and work clothes still on, we all sat in shock.
What the hell was going on?
I still find it fascinating that September 12, 2001 in Boston was as normal as it was. I found myself on the same subway train into the city, sitting across from the same people I always do. Papers open, pictures of terror on the covers. None of us said a word. And I went into to work for another meeting around the same time as I had the day before. We all talked some then, but there was work to do. It was another beautiful Fall day in Boston and there was no reason not to get down to business. Our buildings were still standing, after all.
Our morning routines, our busy-work and meetings and office chit-chat meant that much.
What else was there to do? Wait? Remain vigilant? Put a flag up? Buy some duct tape? Drive to New York City? Drive as far away from New York City as possible? Never fly again? Never go into a building again? Never trust a person who looks anything like the men who got on those planes that day?
No. Normal came back because we needed it so Goddamn badly. Like a brick dropped into water rushing to the sewer, around the chaos we fell back into line. It had to be fine. I still needed a shower the next day and those deadlines were still looming. While first responders only a few hundred miles away were digging in rubble for men and women who had just sipped their morning coffee seconds before their death one day before, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a 1 cream, 2 sugars and a paper.
We needed normal then, like we need it now 10 years later. We hold on tight to what part of normal we have left — the part that was not reduced to rubble that day — while we wait for what’s next.
I would assume that it is only natural for parents to try to protect their children from their greatest fears. Our past traumas that haunt us just can’t possibly happen to these fresh, new lives. Untouched. Unscathed. Perfectly perfect, with no worries at all. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that when I make Mac N Cheese for dinner, I scream for everyone to clear far, far away when I retrieve the rolling, boiling pasta from the stove.
“Hey, back OFF. I don’t want you to get hurt like Mommy did. BACK! OFF!” And they always do. Mommy’s puckered scar makes for a fantastic safety lesson.
Ironically, for work, I had just written all sorts of articles about firework safety. All sorts. Did you know that one innocent sparkler can reach temperatures as high as 2000 degrees? Well, I did. And I had smugly decided we weren’t going to buy any fireworks this year, dammit. We were going to watch other people’s fireworks from a friend’s driveway. We should be safe enough.
When I was burned, I remember what my skin looked like immediately afterward. Red raw and then white, white, white, with skin peeling. A horrid memory for a three year old. But there it remains, tucked in my history, while my mother wrapped me in an old baby blanket. With flashing lights at the end of my front walk. And my father running up from a taxi parked at a hasty angle. I don’t remember much else, however. Except for the smell of Ivory soap, which they used to scrub it clean nightly. If I smell it today, it makes me gag. Horrid stuff. I don’t remember the screaming, but I remember that soap. Oh, and the dingy, nude-toned ace bandage, wrapped and wound and ragged about my left arm.
My youngest stepped out from behind the car while I sat comfortably in a friend’s chair in her driveway. It was almost dark and there were kids everywhere. But I knew it was him. And he had a sparkler. His face, lit by the sparks, was alive and THRILLED. So, what thoughts raced through my head? Well, these: 2000 degrees. He’s so excited! Am I a horrible Mommy if I take it away?
It took only those few seconds of thought for it to happen. A tiny spark jumped onto his arm. He’s never held a sparkler before, so jumping sparks are not normal. Or ok. So, instinctively, he flicked the sparkler. Down. And coals from that 2000 degree sparkler shot into that small spot where a little boys crocs meet his ankles. One actually slipped under. And stuck.
I thought his screaming was from the small spark. I was embarrassed. I was annoyed that I had to chase my screaming child up the driveway. Really, all over one little spark? I had no idea about the coals embedded in his feet.
But I did once we pulled him inside, terrified screaming bouncing off the vaulted ceilings, and stripped his shoes off. And there it was. Red raw, large patches of white, and peeled skin. And so much screaming.
I’m not going to say I handle panic well. But I have done ok-ish with emergency situations before, going into a zen-like, partially denial-based, ”it’s all going to be fine” trance.
I didn’t this time. This time I panicked and had to stop my own scream. I asked someone “what do we do?” And cried and grabbed my child and pulled him away from everyone trying to treat him as if he JUST NEEDED ME. I could fix him, no one else.
It happened to be that the guy with the goofy, over-sized, red, white and blue top hat at the same 4th of July gathering we were at was an ER doctor. Somehow, our pediatrician was called. Somehow, this 4th of July guy called in meds for us. I heard “3rd degree” and “burn unit” though. I most certainly heard those words. And I thought of Ivory soap and felt sick.
We see a plastic surgeon on Friday. And my running, wild boy is now wrapped in those very same dingy, unraveling ace bandages. His left foot is the worst. I have actually found myself saying “You got a burn just like Mommy!” As if that is something to be proud of.
My mom was in the kitchen, with her back turned, when I decided to crawl onto the stove, attempt to bypass that boiling water, and make a grab for donuts.
I was in a folding chair with a beer when he emerged behind that car with a sparkler handed to him by… well, it could have been anyone that night.
The worst stuff, the stuff that YOU think is the worst stuff, can happen to your children. I get that now. The control we have over their lives is nominal. But maybe, as I am only NOW (over a week later) able to clean his wounds by myself and tell him how great his feet are looking (kind of, not really), I am figuring this lesson out. Our children force-feed us our own demons. They make us deal with it, grow-up about it, handle it. It’s just a burn. On a limb. I lived with mine without incident, he’ll live with his.
My fears, his fears. My healing, his healing. The left side puckers, regrows, scars over, and moves on.
My kids are being watched this summer by their Dad. And now they look like this.
I could probably end this post here. Yep, with Mohawks to show for it, Dad is in charge all right.
But wait. There’s more.
You see, it has been such a 180 for this household. After being home with my boys for 8 years, suddenly I’m the one working all day and my husband has taken on the boys. He’s a college coach and, while he still has to go into work during the summer, he can set them loose in the indoor gym or drop them at swimming lessons on campus. It’s not perfect, he’s pulling his hair out trying to balance everything, but he’s doing it.
And the boys are better off for it.
I read this article the other day about how good roughhousing is for kids. And I see the logic, I do. But I don’t “get it”. When my kids wrestle and yell and pile-drive one another in the carpet, I freak. They laugh and scream and consider it sport while I holler at them to JUST QUIT IT. I look at them like they are insane. I tell them to get ahold of themselves, to CALM DOWN for crying out loud, to get outside IMMEDIATELY. “What is WRONG with you?” I ask. And I probably have a look of such disgust on my face while I shuffle them in a giggling pile out the door. And then I turn around and sigh at the destruction left in their wake. What. The. Hell.
So, now that my husband is home, what does HE do when the pile-driving commences? Usually, he ignores it. Or laughs. Or joins in. Or, if they interrupt him too much, he tells them to get outside too. But he never looks at them like they are wild, unnatural beasts… like I do.
When I come home in the evenings, I find everyone getting along. One pack of boys in three sizes. They are quietly laughing about silly things and seem relaxed into the evening. And (unlike myself at 5:30 pm after a full day of boy-dom), my husband doesn’t seem all that harried. I suspect the majority of their crazies have probably already been expelled. But no more mess than the usual upheaval betrays the madness that probably occurred in my living room only hours before.
So, we must ask. With three boys and then… me… which one of these things is not like the others?
I don’t GET rough-housing. But maybe if I did, maybe if I stopped worrying who was going to crash into the coffee table and split their head open, maybe if I moved with the insanity more often than fight it — it would actually be easier on all of us? A “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” kind of thing?
Still. I don’t get it. But they do. And they truly seem better off for it, with Dad at the helm setting an example for whatever male-ness they hope to be.
And what do I do? Duck and cover and ask that they NOT jump on the bed while I paint my toes.
And hand out smooshy, lovey hugs when the days is done and they are weary from thrusting out their bony chests and verging on whatever it is they will become.
Who cares about air conditioners. I had one of those days that grinds you to a halt and abruptly puts your priorities in check.
My 4 year old, who turns 5 next week, graduated from preschool tonight. He wore a blue gown and a mortar board on his head with a 2011 tassel hanging off the side. He held his chin high, and seemed thrilled to be counted as one of the big boys now. My little baby is an elementary aged child.
My 8 year old, who also had his last day of school today and now counts himself as a third grader, is most likely transferring schools next year to be closer to home. Tonight, when he was getting ready for bed, he crawled awkwardly into my lap… and cried. He quietly admitted that he is very very sad to say good-bye to the same friends and the same class he has known for 3 years. I never, ever expected this reaction from him. Truly. Never.
My aunt called tonight to tell me about my cousin graduating from high school next week. The very cousin I babysat for hours and watched Barney with while at college. He drives and texts and doesn’t tell her very much and is leaving to college. I remember this boy in his Radio Flyer wagon. She said she is having a hard time letting him go. How is this happening.
My father had minor-ish heart surgery today. Minor, but still surgery. He’s ok. But. You know. Anything can happen. And I only have one parent. And I really, really love him.
My friend had some horrible things happen to her son this weekend. It’s the worst-case scenario stuff that you say could always happen but then never expect actually will. Such bad stuff. And I don’t know when and if it will be over. I don’t know how to help.
Oh and my new air conditioner was installed.
Yeah, exactly. Who cares.
Sometimes life turns everything upside down all at once, scatters it out across the floor, and lines all of it back up again in very deliberate order. Am I paying attention? THIS matters. That doesn’t.
My father in surgery, children leaping into entirely new phases in their lives, bad things happening to good people – THAT matters.
An air conditioner, or how much it costs to replace it, certainly does NOT.
Am I paying attention? I better be.
Grateful for my life. My children. My family. My time with everyone. My job. My means to even pay for that F-ing air conditioner. This moment, right now. So, so grateful.
You know what? I should not sit down to my computer, still in my work clothes, with kids yelling all around me, and throw down a post like a lump of potting clay needing to be molded into a frenziest sweat right after work.
Well. Ok, sometimes I guess I should. Because this here blog is WAY cheaper than therapy.
But really? Later on in the night, once the kids are in bed and I’ve stopped caring about the laundry… I know it’s fine. And THAT’S when I should write my post.
Or maybe after I’ve made a dozen cupcakes for my soon-to-be five year old and I feel like parenting seems a wee more under control than it did the day before. Maybe that’s a better time to write. With a nice batch of perspective sitting warmly on my plate.
Whatever.
The bottom line is that cupcakes simply make everything better.
It’s almost to the point where I can’t turn on the news any longer because it might terrify my kids. Or. It might terrify me.
I put $10 in my tank at a time. Not like that’s the smartest strategy. Because there are reports that it will climb to $4.00 at anytime. So gas is actually “cheap” now. But $10 is what I can do sometimes.
My front yard grass won’t grow. It’s a lot of dirt. It gets tracked into the house all the time. I’m trying to fix it. But there are bugs trying to eat it and the stupid chemicals I don’t want to use aren’t really working so far.
Speaking of bugs, I think we have termites.
We left out the huge barrel of meat sauce that I made and my kids love. That was supposed to be our leftovers for awhile. Into the trash.
My best friends live far faaaar away. And I really need miss them.
I think my hot water heater is about to die. Along with my garage door opener that already died in a puff of smoke a couple months ago. And I am whistling past the graveyard that is my refrigerator. Let’s not even talk about it.
And you should see the peeling paint on the front bumper of my car. Long story, came that way, not our fault, hassle to deal and I just haven’t been mean enough to get someone to pay for it. So there it peels.
I’m not patient enough with my children. Just because they track dirt in or toss the chicken I cooked for them or tackle me from behind while I’m tying some one’s shoe or fight fight FIGHT over who gets to play Club Penguin. Just because they do those things does NOT in ANY way mean I should be so pissy with them.
Little things tweak me and poke me and nudge me into a scowling, grumbling, totally self-involved, bad mood.
But what a waste. They are only LITTLE things.
We are actually so good, really.
Why, WHY waste energy on the things that don’t really define my life at all?
Last weekend I was with my brother. I woke up in a state because a small freelancing job I am highly underpaid for was driving me batty. And, while screaming little boys with very little sleep tore madly around the house, we still had a Chuck E. Cheese party for my nephew to get ready for. Dark clouds had gathered over my head.
But leave it to my brother, who knows me and knows how to make it better. He rescued me from the kids and had me come get the birthday cake with him. He said we have to go find our sense of humor. Along the way, we picked up a box of Girl Scout Cookies. And he played old school R&B like Keith Sweat and KC and JoJo and we crooned and ate cookies and LAUGHED and took our time.
This morning, I was very lucky to happen upon a fantastic Ani Difranco concert posted on her Facebook page. If you need a little Ani, go here. It’s great. Really. But I also heard the song “Smiling Underneath” for the first time in awhile. Once again, her lyrics get me where I’m at.
And I thought of my brother and I, without the kids, eating Girl Scout Cookies in his car, singing badly, just being, noticing that the sun was shining and that life was fine.
It seems, even when it is practically against my will, I can shake it off and recognize the small stuff for what it is. Just… small.
I don’t mind waiting in line
no, no
I don’t mind if the bills pile up and the work is slow
I don’t mind the gas or the groceries or the drive
As long as I’m with you I’m having a good time…
…I don’t mind spilling my hot sauce on my white shirt
I don’t mind that twinge when I walk in that knee that I hurt
I don’t mind my gums peeling back or my hair getting thin
long as I’m with you, I win
long as I’m with you
We could be stuck in traffic for over a week
with a car full of Quintuplets who are all cutting teeth
and around my neck could be a flaming Christmas wreath
and I’d be smiling under
smiling under
smiling underneath
Perspective.
Screw the termites. Seek out your most loved ones. Then find cookies.
Because holy crap. When did I turn into an old lady?
Well here’s the thing. Just when you think you’re all grown up and secure about your looks, you’re – well – you’re not. Silly me, I thought this kind of insecurity was specific to acne and teen angst years. Not mature, confident, “totally in control” late thirties years.
Yep well. I bought this anyway.
Because I have lines on my face. Lines! Those weren’t there before, I swear. And I use sunscreen everyday just like the magazines tell me I should but still. Lines? Unbelievable. And no thank you.
Where is this sudden self-indulgent bit of vanity coming from anyway?
Of COURSE a woman in her late thirties has lines and creases on her face. What, did I think it just wouldn’t happen to me? Did I think that aging is something that happens to everyone else and I would simply become some ageless exception to the rule?
Heh. Maybe. But I’m not. Clearly.
So I bought this.
And I’ve been actually smoothing it on ever day or so. Because moisturizing is important anyway, right? Whether any such thing called Revitalift actually revitalifts the creases off my face. Or if all that snazzy encapsulated (…wait let me read it off the box…) Matrixyl and Sepilift actually irons decades of sun and time off of my face. Yeah, not that I think it really WILL. But I have to moisturize anyway so I might as well give something that boasts “firming” a try while I’m doing it… right?
*SUCKER*
I can’t believe I bought this.
I can’t believe I really care that much.
I can’t believe I haven’t bought into that whole “lines are signs of wisdom and experience and we should wear them with pride” stuff.
I can’t believe age happens.
But really.
I just can’t believe I bought this.
(And many thanks to my husband who reassures me that while this may be old lady cream, it doesn’t make me smell like one. Thank God for that at least.)
This is what happens when I finally tackle cleaning my own closet while the boys are at school. And while standing under the closet’s fluorescent light, in a nest of dust bunnies, between piles of old clothing ready to be heaved, I find stuff and get distracted.
Like an enormous bag of tattered nursing bras that need to be (not given away but) thrown out. Oh but sigh. Remember when I wore these everyday? Remember when my babies were so little and sweet and snugglie? AND MY BODY NOURISHED THEM? And then I stare at that nasty bag of bras and get all philosophical about the many meanings and miracles of life.
*heaving wistful sigh*
Or how about the pin-striped, sear sucker suit my oldest boy wore to my best friend’s wedding when he was just one year old. He couldn’t even walk yet, and there are still grass stains on the knees.
Or my graduation hood or an old dress of my mother’s or pictures and letters and wrapped presents (I wonder what they are?) and toys I heaved in there because my boys were fighting over them and the shirt my husband wore on our first date.
And then, out of nowhere, drops a sweet, fluffy winter cap my first born wore when we lived where there was real winter. A dear little powder blue cap, with pom poms, and flaps for his ears and a snap for under his chin.
This is what happens when you find that stuff.
You grab your child when he gets home from school, squeeze that infant’s hat on his head and force the snap together under his grown chin and make him stand there for a picture. And then you clutch them to you and blubber about how grown they are while they squirm and demand to see the picture and have a good giggle before yanking it off and bounding out of the house to go play zombies with the kid across the street.
This is what happens when I clean.
And it’s not pretty.
(…What is WITH me and all this nostalgic closet cleaning??? But my logic was that if I could do 3 closets and 13 bags for my mom, I could do it for myself too. And what satisfying results! Still. *eyeroll* Get a GRIP woman.)
Since the shooting this past Saturday, my page has sat blank. Something needs to be said here of course, but what sense could I possibly make of it? However the longer I think about it, the more resigned I feel that no sense can be made, unless you blame each of us and all that we stand for – our freedom.
While her speech made my skin crawl in its attempt to stir and shock, Sarah Palin’s reaction to the shooting was right in one regard. We are too quick to blame. Of course, it’s in our nature to demand a reason. A why. Something to shake our finger at. Something that we can fix quickly (like having Sarah Palin take down her cross-hairs) so it never happens again. Something to change.
We could change. We need to change. But I am afraid we are the victim of our own doing. While cross-hairs implies violence, no doubt, we can’t blame one tasteless political image for Saturday’s horror. There is a whole lot more involved here, in my humble opinion. In fact, I suppose I am not even surprised this happened. And my resignation and expectation scares me a great deal right now.
My father and I talk politics a lot. Having been a government employee for his entire professional life and a D.C. resident since the very early years of my life, his insight is usually very good insight, even if it sways Republican a bit too much for my liking.
During this past year’s Mosque issues in NYC and the potential threats of Koran burnings, I vented to him. I was outraged. And angry and frustrated. So we talked about 9/11 and the havoc it has wrecked on our country. He said something to me that stuck. He reminded me that we live in a free society. FREE. While wonderful, a true blessing and something to take pride in, we are also open for attack. Our freedom, our rights and our open society means we can’t clamp off or stifle every single threat to our nation. It just can’t and won’t happen.
Last week a man with a slew of unchecked mental health issues and a pocket full of Walmart ammo cut down innocent lives, including a 9 year old girl ironically born on 9/11/01. His mug shot reveals his glee, his pride in his work. It’s disgusting.
So who do we blame? Yes, Arizona was in Sarah Palin’s cross-hairs. Yes, journalists and politicians (don’t sneak out of this so fast, Sarah) continue to fan the flames of our differences, widening a very deep chasm already established. Yes, we throw around language to stun and incite (like “blood libel”, Sarah) and create news headlines and rile up the crowds and get everyone on OUR side because WE know best. And oh yes, we are a bunch of self-righteous know it alls who must get our way no matter the toll it takes. Win. Votes. Shake things up. Push the limit. Be outrageous. We do that because we can. We get what we want.
But now we do all of this in a time when information is immediate and available. Get on Facebook, get on Twitter, turn on the news, check your blackberry, all of your news feeds – and you know where everyone is. In days before, when a leader could spout off irresponsibly and offensively about some other politician or another – it wasn’t caught on some one’s iphone and posted to youtube the next day. Everyone has access.
Another part of our freedom is our right to bear arms. Sure, ask me how much I hate guns, the automatic variety in particular. Ask me how much I hate weapons or anything used to harm another person. Ask me how much I hate how my boys pick up their baseball bats and shoot them at each other. Go ahead. But my opinion does not matter. It is written in our constitution that we can carry a gun. So if that’s your thing, it’s your right to do it. And you can march up to Walmart and pick one up along with some milk, bread and maybe the new Toy Story 3 DVD. It’s your right.
So we have self-righteous rhetoric. We have access to every kind of information. We have the right to bear arms. We have freedom. And? We have a small minority of mentally ill people who share all of this too.
So if it wasn’t this particular imbalanced man who was going to find out where a politician he didn’t agree with was going to be and gleefully gun men, women and children down with a sparkle in his eye… it was going to be someone else.
This is what happens. This is what we can expect to happen.
Yes, we can work to individually assist any person with mental health issues or anyone we might suspect of having mental health issues.
Yes, we MUST check ourselves and the language we throw around. We have to think ahead about our shock-worthy, exaggerated, attention grabbing one-liners that guarantee a spot in morning headlines. What do they mean, really? What are you saying? What can those words actually do?
Yes, we need to keep discussing gun control and stop normalizing violence in video games, on television and the rest.
Yes, we have to take responsibility for the kind of access we have and the kind of access to ourselves that we give others, strangers included.
Yes, we need to stop helicopter parenting our children, telling them they do no wrong, and allow them to be held accountable for their actions. That way, maybe we can grow up to be a society of thoughtful people who think about the needs of others BESIDES our own.
But we can’t take away our freedom. Or our freedom to choose to do any of the above. Its our right to make choices, one way or the other. And no amount of policy or government will stop hate unless individuals take a stand to do so one person at a time.
Our country is not well right now. I am reminded of the shooting deaths of RFK and MLK Jr. during difficult times. I hope we can find our way back to some kind of national confidence and security. And peace.
But until then, we can’t take back the violence on Saturday or all of the parts and pieces it took for those lives to be taken in the first place with one quick fix.
We can breath in our own space, however. And decide. Is THIS how we want to communicate our thoughts and ideas? Is this the best way to share information? Is this how we want to use our right to bear arms? Is this how we treat others with opposing political views? Are we better than this?
And while we do what we do during our everyday goings on, we must ask ourselves: Are we doing any good?
Because, thankfully, individual choice is part of our freedom and we have the ability to make this better. If we want to be better.
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