9 May 2020: Daily Thoughts

I haven’t yet felt able to write about the grotesque murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia on February 23 by a white father-son duo, hence my delay. Arbery, just 25, was jogging through his suburban neighborhood when he passed a white pickup truck. He was, as are pretty much all joggers, unarmed. In the truck, as we now know from this horrendous, graphic video, were Travis and Gregory McMichael, the former in the cab, the latter standing in the bed. Gregory seems to take an injurious shot from the bed, while his son Travis runs towards Arbery who tries to defend himself but is shot twice more in the torso at point-black range before collapsing to the street.

If you’re like me, you’re neither surprised to find that this story was NOT given much attention by seemingly anyone in law enforcement until the video was released nor that the McMichael clan looks like this.

The video was released just last week, and two days later, the McMichaels were arrested. Yesterday would have been Arbery’s 26th birthday, and tomorrow his mother will have to endure Mother’s Day without her child. It is my most ardent hope that the deplorable, racist McMichael monsters spend the rest of their pitiful lives festering in cold, isolated cells.

Meanwhile, I guess black Americans can add exercising to the list of things they can be killed for doing, like walking with a bag of Skittles, selling cigarettes, or playing with a toy gun in a park. Not convinced running outside was already fraught for way too many? Read this.

But white Michiganders can show up at their state capitol like this?

Can you even imagine if a black man carried a weapon this size into ANY store? This was today in Raleigh, NC.

at a “liberation” event.

White men can swing axes at policemen and their guns remain holstered?

Riddle me this.

New York and Sri Lanka

It is Sunday morning, and Mom, Dad, Jack, Ol, and I are on our way to the 9/11 museum and memorial. I lived in NY on 9/11 but have not visited the site since I moved two years later.

We are still in Brooklyn, it’s a beautiful morning, we are all happy and have had such a fun weekend. I sit with the horrific news from Sri Lanka, and suddenly it really sinks in. I have friends living there, a mother and son the boys and I know from school. She is Sri Lankan and they took a leave of absence to move to the country for two years to be with extended family, to travel, to let the boy, now a fifth grader, study in and experience a new place and school.

I message the mom: Just checking in. Are you and your family ok?

What are the odds, I think, and I turn my attention back to my family and the museum.

The incredibly thoughtful designers and curators of the tribute to 9/11 couldn’t have done a finer job. It is a weighty, moving place of course, my eyes prick with tears many times, but I never feel destroyed or frantic to leave. To an individual, the staff and volunteers are thoroughly trained, passionate, and kind. Please, if you feel overwhelmed, there are tissue kiosks and seats all around. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if we can help.

The boys take it all in, brave and respectful. And we talk about terrorism and hate but also the antidotes of love and tolerance. We talk about the lives that were horrifically taken and also the beautiful way New York came together afterwards. We talk about community and tending the ones we are part of. We talk about condemning hate and hateful actions but also about the importance of not judging groups by the behavior of the extremists within them.

After, I note that I’ve not heard back from my friend. This is odd. But it’s Easter, and I put the niggling aside to laugh with my boys and parents, to pack us up, to say goodbye.

We board the bus home and three hours in I hear the news: the boy has been killed in Colombo. The mother and grandmother are in the hospital but will be ok. They had been at breakfast together.

I gasp, and without thinking turn to the boys and tell them the horrific news. What?!

We cannot make sense of this. Jack had played chess with this boy and borrowed his hiking pants. He was a radiant, kind child of such intelligence. He was to return to DC in just weeks.

Our community is wrecked for the loss this mother has sustained. For the loss we feel, too.

Yesterday, as I drove Jack home from school, he, in uncharacteristic emotionality, said, “Mom, I don’t understand this evil. The world is shit right now.” He looked so distraught and baffled. I couldn’t disagree, but I am 43 and he is 12, and I desperately wish the world was a better place to grow up in because death and a deep awareness of the world’s ugliness and many failures is a lot to hold when you’re not even a teenager.

Please be the good. Be generous and kind and tolerant. Please offer to lend a hand, to give a hug. Please value fact and truth and honesty and character. Please fight fanaticism in every way you can, including the very real white conservative extremism, so often religiously-rooted, that harms us here in the States. Please honor this dear boy and all the others whose lives end entirely too soon. Please keep his mother in your heart and your thoughts. She needs a deep bench of love and support right now and for a long time to come. Many do.

"It's coming this way"

The kids are watching Looney Tunes during their quiet time. We adults have snuck away to various bedrooms and porches, much more in need of rest and silence than the children are. Like the best children's books (the Frances books and pretty much all of William Steig's works), rest time strikes me as a brilliant example of parents creating things as much for our benefit as our babies'. 

I am sitting on a rocking bench on the covered balcony off our room, feet propped on a side table. Across the street, just beyond the few homes over there, the inland bay starts. It's a lovely body of water, always calmer than the ocean on the flip side of our home. There, the waves slap the beach, minute after minute, during high tide and low. It's wonderful in a more tumultuous way.

This inlet though is largely waveless. Its movement is uni-planar, first sliding one way and then back from whence it came.

The sky over our house is blue and dotted with puffy white clouds. But they are hurrying away from something, and when I look across the little bay, I see a quickly-advancing wall of ominous gray. I can literally see it moving towards me, the wisps of black seeming to rush more quickly than the heavier charcoal shroud behind them. 

Zig-zags of lightning sizzle through the sky, slicing it cleanly before dissipating. The thunder is ear-splitting. I wait for it eagerly, but jump a little in my seat each time it erupts. My heart jumps a little too. 

The black wisps are circling now. They suggest a tornado, or for Harry Potter fans, dementors.  Gulls glide lazily atop the whimsical air currents, seemingly unconcerned about the storm that is definitely coming.

There is no rain yet, not even a drop.  I glance at the bay and see tiny whitecaps racing toward the shore. The lightning is striking as wide as my periphery will allow- one zig, three!

The boy on the porch across the street yells, "The storm is comin'! It's comin' this way!" The neighbors next door are on their porch too, chatting and laughing and periodically saying, "Ooh, look at that one." One of the women there has the craziest fake-red hair and is always ringing her arms with hula hoops. Is she exercising? Is she a performer? She's heading down the stairs in an orange bikini and a purple, crushed velour jumper. It's backless and teensy. Wher e is she going now??

The winds are gusting with wild abandon, and the temperature must have dropped ten degrees. My hair is blowing across my face and into my eyes; I either need to pin it back or give up. 

The flag next door has wrapped itself tightly around its pole. Is it readying itself for what we all know is coming? One last gull flies away, and now I see no more birds. It is downright cold now, and still, no rain. The trees are blowing this way and that, beach towels hung out to dry are whipping the posts and rockers on which they perch. 

The clouds are still though, and it's eerie. How can my hair by flying back like I'm a supermodel on a shoot but the clouds are still?

Here it comes. The rain is spattering my legs, the can of selzter I had on the ground next to me is rolling away. Everyone is out watching. And waiting. Our anticipation is as palpable and electric as the lightning. 

I love thunderstorms. This promises to be a good one.