Again it's been a long time

Once again, I am both shocked by and all too aware of how long it’s been since I last wrote here. Nearly three months. Then, it was summer, a bit slower. The kids were away, music was everywhere.

Now, Oliver is a high school freshman running cross country, thinking about Homecoming, and immersed in the maker space he’s built in our basement and in the acting conservatory to which he was accepted. Jack is a high school senior applying to college, struggling with AP BC Calculus, invested in robotics and squash, and just over a two-week bout with pneumonia. I do NOT recommend pneumonia for any high school senior in the midst of first semester and the college application process. It wasn’t helpful or fun and he’s still “paying” for it.

Just yesterday, I was prescribed antibiotics for what is either shitty bronchitis or pneumonia, and I feel truly terrible. Last month I was in an awful wreck (am fine) so we’re now also car shopping amidst all the mayhem of life. Obviously a car is just a thing, but the event itself was enormously upsetting and could have been deathly, and this not having a car for the last five weeks is just a regular reminder of all that.

I admit to feeling great despair right now, about the world and our collective future. There are so many bad actors on the global stage and here at home, so much hatred and bloodshed and what too often feels like gleeful destruction. In times like these I realize anew just how naive I am in some ways. I truly do not understand such maniacal desires for power and wealth. I don’t understand Putin and Xi, Orban and people like Mike Pence and Kevin McCarthy. Trump is clearly trying to stay out of jail; his lunacy and desperation are, in that sense, “understandable.” But my god, just shut up, go away, and take some responsibility, man. Your behavior is so widely damaging. What kind of a person really cares not about burning an entire country to the ground for their own personal gain? I know, naive. But I don’t understand.

And don’t get me started on all who enable such malicious behavior. As if the strongmen ever actually take care of the people they use in their ascendancies. LMAO when not crying.

In WV, I see place after place in utter decrepitude. The poverty breaks my heart. But the trump flags flying in front of so many of those homes vex me. trump wouldn’t deign to shake hands with these folks much less do anything to actually help them. Almost no one in the GOP would. Our collective civic education is in such tatters. Truly, I am just speechless about so much of the lies that circulate as gospel. Recently, on NextDoor in our WV area, a poster was freaking out about “the protests in MAJOR [his caps] cities near Martinsburg and how he was ready to defend his family if it comes to it.” Four different people responded with “what are you talking about?” notes, and ultimately he deleted the post. But there are millions of people with guns out there ready to “defend” their families (read: kill scary “others”) based on falsehoods and hate that is rooted in those lies. It’s terrifying, to be honest. And deeply upsetting.

Last night, I took a large amount of Advil, donned a N95, and met Mom and Dad at an event with Heather Cox Richardson and Jane Mayer. If y’all aren’t familiar with them, Heather is an American History professor at Boston College and a prolific writer who, maybe 4 years ago, started writing Letter from an American, a newsletter-cum-record of the US and our democracy during the trump era. Jane is a New Yorker investigative journalist, one of the very best, who is not only the chief Washington correspondent but also an expert on dark money in American politics.

One of the most interesting parts of their discussion focused on trump followers and the behavior of those who follow and love strongmen. In short, once people descend down the rabbit hole of rabid followership, the worse the authoritarian behaves, the stronger their fealty to him. We see this, of course, daily with cheeto and his minions which makes the fact of his likely GOP presidential nomination all the more worrisome. He must not win. If he does, he will never leave, and his cult followers will feel both validated and empowered, even more than they already do.

Meanwhile, Israel. As I’m sure you are, I am horrified to near speechlessness about the brutality of Hamas’s invasion. Again with my despair about humanity and its future. This thread is one of the best and most educational I’ve read, and I encourage you to all spend time with it. I would also suggest reading the response by Tal Morgenstern who argues thoughtfully with some of Saul’s writing and then Saul’s response to Morgenstern.

Regarding all of the above, what the world too often lacks, in addition to civic education, are critical thinking as well as patience and respect for complexity and nuance. So little is black or white, and no one benefits from snap judgments that are rooted in soundbites rather than understanding of what are often decades- and centures-old conflicts. It is really fucking hard to get good information these days. It takes way more effort than most people have time or the inclination for.

If you can, please support excellent journalism and the dissemination of it. Good journalism costs a LOT! Personally, I find The Atlantic, The New Yorker, C-SPAN, ProPublica, Reuters, and Associated Press to be excellent. I’ve also read Haaretz a lot since the weekend and find it very thoughtful. Generally, I also very much appreciate NPR and BBC.

American kids and American guns

What if a gunman shot up your child’s school and what you had left were text messages? Or a shoe? Or just the memory of saying goodbye that morning? Or any of a number of things parents hold onto when they’ve lost their hearts.

I have been horrified by gun violence in America for years, and my kids have both had to participate in countless drills at school over those same years. Last spring, I happened to pick Oliver up from school just before a gunman opened fire on another school nearby. On our drive home, he received a message from a friend asking if he knew what was happening at Sidwell and in the neighborhood. The school locked down (many kids still there), police cordoned off all surrounding streets, helicopters flew in, and ultimately we found that Burke was being attacked. I remember Oliver and I sitting in our backyard, listening for hours to the rotors of the circling copters (we live close to school), and me thinking “shit this was close; keep it together for Ol.”

Yesterday morning, I received the first of the above texts from Jack. Halfway through our hour of exchange, I heard helicopters fly in. Shit.

J is at any age where I rarely share anything remotely private about him, but I feel the need to publish our exchange because it is both so simple and also everything. Only later yesterday afternoon, as we rearranged his room and put out his new plants, did we acknowledge to each other how scared we’d been.

I, he, all of us are so fucking sick of this.

One parent compiled some of what they heard their kids and their friends saying once home. Their words are lacerating, and I agree with them completely.

“Even though no one was hurt, it’s not true that nothing happened. Everyone was terrified. People were crying. It was so scary. I don’t want to go back tomorrow.

Don’t pretend like nothing happened. Why is everyone so numb to this? We are so ***king scared. This wasn’t a tornado warning. It’s not fine."

"If this is so terrible, treat it like something that’s terrible."

"If you go to school in America, this is going to happen. We have been training for this since kindergarten. That doesn’t mean that today felt like nothing. I thought there was a possibility of dying."

"Do you know how long an hour is when you think you are going to die?"

Why do put our children, parents, teachers through this? Why do we accept this as ok? Guns are worth this? “Freedom” -such a bastardized word now- is worth this?

Ultimately, thankfully, there was no gun. But there could have been. And look what the threat of one did. And for good reason. The odds aren’t really in the kids’ favor.

Another day of school lost. Another hope of normalcy lost. Kids hiding in kilns (yesterday). Kids showing substitute teachers how to lower the blinds and properly lock the doors (yesterday). Kids shushing each other (yesterday; all the time). Teachers finding long poles to wield should an intruder break in (yesterday; all the time). Parents showing up at school, terrified (yesterday; all the time). Parents and kids texting, with fear slipping into the efforts to mask it with love and strength (yesterday; all the time).

Today, a long-term sub Jack has didn’t show up. He’d called a kid a hideous slur, so good riddance, but shit. Jack said, so casually it was like a sharp knife to soft butter, “yesterday I could have died, and today I have no teacher.”

What are we doing? WHAT ARE WE DOING?

Oh, look! I'm rage-mute-so-writing again! Guns, abortion, a broken democracy.

Ah, yes. Last time I wrote, not even a month ago, women were losing rights left and Right. Yesterday, the “very fine” misogynist white religious jackass governor of Oklahoma SUPER took away Oklahoman women’s rights by banning all abortion from fertilization on. Do you know that literally no one knows when fertilization happens? Do you know that most women have no idea they are pregnant for at least six weeks unless they demand and pay for a super-sensitive hormone test?

I found out that I was pregnant with Oliver that way. I had not ovulated regularly or at all in years, desperately wanted a second child, and was trying everything under the sun to regulate myself: pills, hormones, cupping, acupuncture, morning temperature readings, warming foods. I also had an out-of-network doctor because Tom’s company paid for Cadillac care.

When my super-sensitive, private-GYN-administered hormone test came back, I was at the gym. I raced outside to try and hear the results. “You are barely registering as pregnant,” she said. “But, you seem to be pregnant.” That smidgen of hope is Oliver, but it just as easily could have been a false positive, a to-be miscarriage, or any of another outcome.

I was lucky that that cluster of cells was ok and hung on. I was sick as shit for at least 14 weeks because I had to take daily progesterone to try to ensure that the pregnancy made it through the first trimester. I had a 2-year-old at home and a hard-working husband. At 8 months and two weeks, my water broke as I read on the couch early in the morning with that almost-three-year-old.

Jack asked, “Mommy, why did you pee on me?” I went to the hospital, leaking everywhere, stopped progressing, was induced with pitocin, overreacted to said pitocin, was taken off the pitocin and told to walk, laid in pain while a nurse and an anesthesiologist argued OVER my body about “checking my progress” vs “administering more drug,” and finally gave birth to Ol at 4:16 that afternoon.

None of this is terribly germane to anything except A) pregnancy often takes a shit ton of effort, will, discomfort, sacrifice, hope, and luck, and B) women DO NOT go through this voluntarily, much less forcibly, to have their children shot to death in school classrooms and then receive nothing but vapid “thoughts and prayers” from cowardly, craven assholes who could do everything to prevent such slaughter but don’t.

Last month, just after my birthday, a friend and I went to Bethesda Tattoo to get our noses pierced. Simply making the appointments for our piercings took an insane amount of time and effort on the part of my friend who, by the way, has three children under 12. Let me tell you, if you don’t know, that Bethesda is super white and super wealthy. We weren’t trying to slink into a shady Claire’s for an illicit anything.

Upon arrival, we were asked to: wear masks, present AND upload both our driver’s licenses and Covid vaccination cards, sign and upload multiple waivers, choose implant-grade titanium jewelry, wait for said inert jewelry to be sterilized, have our noses sterilized, have the piercer’s hands and work area be sterilized, argue about placement on nose re: where the piercing would land, COMPROMISE about said placement because the piercer “wouldn’t put my name on” just any location, pay $150, AND swear to not remove our jewelry until July. This was in April. I am 46 years old. I was not trying to purchase drugs or a weapon. I simply wanted a sparkly stud in one nostril.

The fucker in Texas turned 18, quickly bought two assault rifles and kazillions of rounds of ammo, shot his grandmother in the face, and murdered 19 children and two teachers while the police did nothing, before, mercifully, being killed before more died. The entire massacre took less time than it took for me to get my right nostril willingly pierced.

I didn’t go through two pregnancies and the incredibly challenging, relentless work of parenthood since then, to work harder to get my goddamn nose pierced than keep my children safe at fucking school. And did I mention 2+ years of keeping everyone safe and alive during Covid?

I live in a blue state whose senators -Cardin and Van Hollen- despise the NRA and would never deign to take a cent from their murderous coffers. My representative -Raskin- speaks publicly and proudly, and has for many years, on behalf of gun control and the right of regular folks to life as gun owners have to firearms. I have it “good.” It doesn’t feel that way.

Six weeks ago, Oliver’s school went on lockdown because a nearby school was the target of a rogue shooter. Oliver attends one of the most prestigious, expensive, aware, and coddled schools in the whole goddamn world. I could not give two craps about its name or reputation. I share these details only because NO ONE is safe. Not any school, not any place, not for any amount of money or blue’ness or woke’ness or whatever. I happened to arrive at pick up just as the school was locking down; some of Oliver’s friends were locked inside for four hours, their parents told to stay away. The school did a great job, but they shouldn’t have had to be so brave and so strong on a Friday in the nation’s capital or anywhere. The kids shouldn’t have had to play games and hide in thickly-walled gyms and under desks while a mad guy with access to assault weapons and infinite ammo shot up the school just a few blocks away.

One of the teachers murdered at Robb Elementary (in Uvalde, TX) yesterday had a loving marriage of 24 years and four children. Her husband died last night of a heart attack. We can hope it was not prompted by grief and outrage and horror, but I think we all know that it was. Now, four children have no parents, so many parents have no children, a school and a community are forever traumatized, and we as a nation have to sit and watch while every single one of the GOP politicians again do nothing, whine about feeling attacked, and offer the emptiest, most offensive thoughts and prayers.

Houston, not 300 miles from Uvalde, is hosting the NRA’s annual convention starting tomorrow/today, depending on when you read this. It begins Friday, May 27, 2022, and TX governor Abbott, Flaccid Cancun, and Toxic Cheeto are all slated to speak. All still plan to speak and are likely going to be paid to do so. Houston is still hosting. None of them care. The NRA doesn’t care. The good guys with guns never do anything, either because good guys don’t have guns or because no one does or can stand up to a gleefully armed person hell bent on killing. The kids and teachers shouldn’t have to be the ones safeguarding themselves. And NO American leader should be continually okaying the fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death for American children.

Guns ARE the problem. Misogyny IS the problem. This country is broken. I want and am trying to leave.