Black Lives Matter

Yesterday, after the announcement that the grand jury in the Eric Garner homicide case decided not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who killed Garner, a friend of mine shared this on Facebook:

Her daughter, a third grader with Jack, drew it.

Jack and Oliver are drawing pictures of butts and light sabers. Their big concerns are the shape of the pasta I'll cook for dinner and whose turn it is to do the advent calendar. No, I haven't told them about Ferguson or Staten Island, I've kept from them all the school shootings and other general societal shittiness, but I can choose to safeguard them from that information. I can choose to keep them a bit younger for a bit longer.

I am extremely pissed off and heartbroken that my friend's daughter has to process all this. She and her brother are growing up black in America, and this is what they're drawing on a Wednesday afternoon. What heavy burdens for young souls. To be black and write out, "Black Lives MATTER!!!" I cannot fathom what that must feel like, but I know it must hurt and pound and ache and confuse. It must enrage and sadden. It must do so many things.

My friend was stunned and saddened too and sat down with her kids to talk. They had many questions, which were "naive but perceptive" in my friend's words.

"Pres. Obama is African American. Why is he allowing this to happen?"

"Why do they need to do an investigation when there's a video tape of the whole thing?"

"Would this have happened if Eric Garner were white?

"When is it ok for a policeman to kill somebody? Does the person have to threaten the officer first?"

"Is it legal to choke a guy just because he's selling cigarettes? Even if the guy did something really bad...like steal something or do drugs...isn't there another way to punish him? Isn't that why we have jail?"

"Isn't there a way for the police man to shoot but not kill a person? Can't they shoot to scare a guy? Or shoot to stop a guy in his tracks?"

"Does protesting ever work?"

Truly, y'all, I am just speechless. I don't know what to do with this sort of injustice. The Garner case seems infinitely more clear cut to me than Ferguson. A man is choked to death ON VIDEO and there is no indictment?

What message is this sending to all of us? It doesn't suggest to me that black lives matter. Not all of them, at least. Not to certain people.

I have sought advice and think I am right in not telling my kids about these events. And part of me feels extremely let off the hook by that because not all parents get that same freedom. I would be so ashamed to tell the boys that one man killed another for no good reason at all and didn't even lose his job.

This is so bleak.

Re-entry is not nice

People, re-entry is such a bitch. The children have been beastly poo-bags since I've been home which really picks away at my Italian zen.

Oliver sobbed multiple times today for reasons that, to say the least, I found puzzling.

First, he was vexed beyond repair because our twice-monthly housekeeper, who adores and coddles him, had deigned to make his bed and arrange his four million stuffed friends in a special new way. Because the possibilities of arranging four million stuffed friends are infinite, today's staging was unfamiliar to my delicate flower. Giant, forest fire-quashing tears rolled down his face on and off for a good hour about how his arrangement this morning was SO special and could never be replicated. Puh-lease. He threw the friends on the bed and bailed.

Later, as I lugged in myriad carpet samples, he inquired about them and I informed him that I was so excited because we were finally planning to replace the grody, pee-infused, cat-scratch-ruined, oddly colored, horrid carpet in the basement. I thought he'd be thrilled, because boy does that kid like to shop and spend money.

He was not thrilled but rather sobbed for hours.

"But I LOVE that carpet. WHY? NO!!!!! Can we get the same carpet in the same color but just newer?"

What the eff? No one could love that carpet. No one does love that carpet. I lied and said it isn't made anymore, and he gnashed and wailed with abandon even more than he already was.

"I am having SUCH a bad day."

"Oliver, I can see that. However, I cannot totally understand it because you crafted during choice time and we got a lollipop at the car wash and then your favorite pita and hummus at Cava. Sounds fairly grand to me."

Ol, screaming, "You don't understand. MY FWENDS were in the WONG place on my bed. I do NOT WANT the cawpet to change. This is all SO annoying."

Swear to g that's what he said. Then he asked for his lollipop even though he'd eaten but one pita AND had earlier told me that despite the fabulous lunches the kids are given at school, he today chose to eat: french fries, chocolate milk, and a ketchup sandwich.

Excuse me while I throw up in my own mouth AND veto the lollipop idea.

It all went to hell even more after that.

Meanwhile, Jack is arguing about stupid shit to beat sixty. You should have seen the hateful- and hairy-eyeball look he gave me this morning when I told him he could not wear his pajamas to school. He's like a tiny psychotic. He says and does absurd, mean things and then says, "Mom, I'm sorry, you're the best mom in the WORLD. I love you so much."

Three second pause, and then...

"Mom, WHAT?! All my friends get to wear their pajamas to school... Gawd, mom, that IS a complete sentence... " etc.

"No they don't and/or I don't care, they aren't my kids," and "No, that is most definitely not a complete sentence."

It's almost enough to make me wish I were back on that horrid Lufthansa flight with horrid Thai curry shoved into a calzone purporting to be dinner. Re-vol-ting.

I keep being reminded/told that the kids are subconsciously punishing me because I went away. They aren't purposefully being a-holes, you see, it's just that their tiny little Ids and Egos and lunatic Oedipal tendencies can't take absence-from-Mom so they're getting back at me. Really, the source of all this poo is love.

I really do not care. If that is true, jesus h. Have we evolved not at all? And if we have and that shit has come along with us, then mothers continue to get the short end of the stick.

If it's false, what buggers.

The result is the same which is that I feel a bit deflated and peevish. "A bit" is a lie. I feel maxed-out grr!

Home, and getting here

Oh my god, y'all. It's December! And inexplicably, it's in the mid-60s out there. But I'm not complaining because super-cold is just not my bag. I was thrilled to miss the snow last week. Whew! Yesterday's flight from Munich to Dulles was one of the most interminable, uncomfortable ever. I was assigned a crappy, interior seat in the middle row and next to a mid-twenties, extremely rude, loud woman who was co-leading a youth group abroad; you know, they all wore matching fleeces. The seat felt like an ell-shaped punishment rendered in metal, while the gal, and many in her crew, was the sort who gives Americans a bad name.

I was mystified as to why she felt it becoming to slap my arm THREE times to ask me questions, despite the fact that I had my earphones in and was clearly watching a film. I was puzzled as to why she found it appropriate to talk to her friend three seats down -across me and another girl- with a volume that suggested we were in a hoppin' bar. I found it deplorable that she and her co-leader, two rows up, took it upon themselves to stand in the aisle and judge, audibly, whose carry-ons were too large and should be forcibly removed from the plane. I found it despicable when she pretended to be asleep (yes, I could tell) when I gently nudged her to ask if I could go to the restroom.

Lufthansa, in addition to giving passengers a bit more in the way of seat support, please also remove the vegetarian Thai Curry Calzone from your menu. What a grotesque abomination of a meal idea!!

When we landed, I had a pounding headache and an intense, primal urge to flee from this horrid gal. Fortunately, doing the latter didn't take long.

On a more positive note, it was a tremendous, whirlwind of a trip, and I had a fabulous time. Florence is always a treat, and being an aunt is really the cat's meow, especially when you have access to the baby who's made you an aunt so early in the game. People, I could while away my entire life snuggling newborns. Mon dieu, they are so soft and dear. I find it fascinating to watch them as they take in the world with their eyes and bodies. The little bleating lamb sounds, irregular limb thrusts, instinctual nursing movements made with tiny, puckered mouths...I can't get enough of watching and responding to all of that. Leone provided everything in spades (I nicknamed him Lamby, from Lamb Chop).

And while I adored all of that with my own boys, there's something extremely liberating about experiencing it with a nephew or niece. I could love that baby til the cows came home, but at the end of each day, I could hand him back to his parents and go get a good night's sleep, free of responsibility except loving him.

You can see just how much I cottoned to all this, yes?