March For Our Lives

I don't even know where the twelve days since I returned from Louisiana have gone but they've involved moving out of our house for a week so that our floors could be refinished, a school day, some delays, Tom being out of town for three days, Oliver's birthday and parties, moving back into our house, the kitchen being largely completed, my parents coming, and, today, participating in the huge and extraordinarily moving March For Our Lives here in DC. So please, apologies for any lack of coherence and polish in this post.

Last night, as Mom, a dear family friend from Louisiana, and I made our protest signs, Oliver eagerly joined us to help with coloring and duct tape application. Earnestly, and almost as an aside, he said, "I don't want to die." Our hearts just broke. THIS is why we marched today, because too many children die or fear dying by guns. Too many people do. Every day. Gun violence is a public health crisis, a detestable scourge in this country. We can do something, and that something is NOT arming teachers.

Mom, Dad, Susan, and I started today by attending a pre-March rally in Silver Spring hosted by Jamie Raskin, state senator from Maryland's 8th. Rep Raskin is such a fine leader, one of the many reasons I'm proud to call MD home. At the rally, we heard and were fired up by the Reverend William Barber (amazing orator and person; listen to his speech to us here), MD's wonderful Attorney General, Brian Frosh, former MD governor, Martin O'Malley, some student leaders from Montgomery County (MoCo) Students for Gun Control, and Mr. Raskin himself. It should be noted that Maryland has enacted some of the strictest gun control measures in the country!

Barber speaking against the theological malpractice of those "who say so much about what God says so little, and so little about what God says so much."

We then boarded buses to Union Station and from there walked toward the chants and cheers of an ever-growing crowd blanketing Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues from 3rd to 12th Streets (with much spilling over). 

I think each of us felt repeated waves of emotion wash over us for hours on end. Listening to young leaders like Edna Chavez, Emma Gonzalez, eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler, Matt Post (a MoCo Students for Gun Control leader), and so many inspiring others was profound. I urge you to click on each of their names and watch or read the clips I've shared. 

We appreciated others' signs, we marveled at the number of attendees (some estimates put the DC march at 800,000), and I considered how this March felt similar to and different from all the others I've attended. Most essentially, we hoped that today and what today represents marks the start of real change for a safer, saner tomorrow. 

Preach!

Check out this compilation of photos from marches around the country and world! I'm so grateful for the students leading this charge and for all who marched today.

photo by my friend, Dorothy

Louisiana, TSA and a disembodied hand, kitchen

Ok, y'all, I was gone and then I returned and now I'm sort of gone again, but I had to check in, not least to tell you a funny tale.

Last Friday morning, before the sun was up, I flew to Louisiana for a quick visit. My sister, who as you probably know lives in Italy, had been in the Dominican Republic with her Italian family for a vacation. When they returned to Florence, she and her children (my nephew, Leone, and new niece, Virginia) flew to Louisiana to see my parents. I just had to take advantage of our being in the same country to see Elia and Leone and meet Virginia. 

Virginia and Leone have the same birthday. She is four months old and he's that plus three years. I'd not seen Leone or Elia since last August, so really, being home was such a treat in so many ways. Not least because there was no snow in Louisiana nor any fumes from floors being refinished. And because crawfish season is terrific and fun. 

Naturally, because there was a new baby, we had many visitors over the weekend. One, Mom's dear friend Susan, has known my boys for years now. She is well aware that he is fairly obsessed with what some might call junk but which he calls treasure. And because she runs a museum and the warehouse next door, she has been able to indulge Oliver's treasure-hunting desire by letting him putter around inside the cavernous store. 

Susan came bearing gifts, including a few from the warehouse. One was as perfect as they come: a disembodied mannequin hand missing the top knuckle from its middle finger. Susan thought she'd found the missing piece and so into the box threw that digit. However, that turned out to be a lady's finger with a pink-painted nail, no match for the thick masculinity of the hand.

Everyone in the room about fell out, and I could not wait to bestow these gems upon Oliver. I packed them carefully in a box and nestled that inside my carry-on, sort of forgetting that the Lake Charles Regional Airport is quite possibly the most stringent, nit-picky, rule-following airport in all the world.

This morning as Mom and Elia watched me attempt to go through security, they were first surprised when I was told to step aside for a pat down because the back of my skull showed up in suspicious code-yellow on the security monitor. I wasn't even wearing a ponytail.

While I waited for a female agent to administer my head search, my carry-on bag set off the x-ray alert as it passed through the scanning tunnel.

"Ma'am, we need to search your bag."
"No problem," I replied, thinking that the hand probably looked a little weird on the scanner.
"Do you have anything fragile or sharp in here?"
"Well, I do have a St. Patrick's Day-themed Garden Gnome for my son who both happens to love gnomes and trolls and was born on St. Patrick's Day. His hat is sharp, and he's breakable." It also happens that the leprechaun gnome is puking a rainbow into a pot of gold which is obviously one of the reasons I bought it for Oliver.

"Anything else?"
"I also have, and this is going to sound weird, a hand in a box and a loose finger too. It's from a mannequin. My son likes weird things."

THANK GOD this occurred in Louisiana, y'all, because had I been, say, in Iowa, I am just not sure this all would have gone over as well.

Comments from the TSA agents (who, by the way, had felt my head and declared me safe) during the good ten minutes all this took:
"Well, I'll be. Look at this hand."
"If you need a hand, you don't need to look far."
"Can I give you a hand?"
"Give yourselves a hand for finding this!"

Meanwhile, Mom and Elia are on the other side of the glass, and we are all texting back and forth furiously and trying not to literally fall on the floor or be too obvious about the hysterics we were in. 

"Ma'am, I'm going to let you pack these items back up," one agent said, and as I found out later, before I approached the examination bench to repackage the barfing gnome, severed hand, and dissonantly delicate but also severed finger, Mom snapped this photo.

I was, not surprisingly, the last to board the plane. And we have all been laughing all day. Oliver, needless to say, is thrilled with his treasures. I'm just glad they all made it home safely.

***

We are finally in the homestretch with the renovation. Due to my ordering knobs but only finding out they are backordered UNTIL JUNE when I called to ask why they'd not yet shipped (the customer service rep said, "Would you like me to check our stores for you to see if they can fulfill your order?" Um, YES! Then she said, "I'm so glad you checked." And I am still thinking "Wasn't it your job to let me know of said backorder?" but whatever), I only have twelve of the fifteen I need but should be made whole soon. 

All the painting is done, the backsplash is nearly complete, all but one light is in, the appliances work, and the floors are looking great. 

The kids and I moved into a friend's house tonight (T home in our basement with Nutmeg) as we cannot access our bedrooms this week because of the refinishing and will move home on Saturday, just in time for Oliver's birthday. 

For now I'm off to bed. Sleep well, friends. 

Movies and a book and kitchens

Even fun and exciting things sometimes grow old, and such is the case with our renovation. Since the plumbing debacle, I have tried north of 30 paint colors and just received word that one of our countertop slabs broke during fabrication. This throws a bit of a wrench in our schedule, the goal of which has always been to be done and back into our house for Oliver's birthday on March 17. And we still have floor refinishing to endure. And I am racing to and from Louisiana later this week to see my sister and nephew and meet my new niece, and Tom is leaving town for three days next week, and then my parents are coming for Ol's birthday, and really, when will it get warm outside?

I am trying to be zen, but I am so tired. And Jack is having a tough year and there is only so much I can do, you know? It feels like nothing ever slows or eases, not for terribly long anyway. And the Evil Yam Turd and his crew are just so sick and awful and destructive.  

It is all going to be so beautiful though (and infinitely more functional). I mean, how charming is my window treatment fabric?! Blackberries for Nanny, flowers and figs, and those darling grasshoppers. And in the meantime, escapism. 

T and I have been watching movies in anticipation of the Academy Awards tonight, and I have to say that although we've not been able to see a few of the contenders (Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, and Phantom Thread), our favorites are Darkest Hour and Get Out. If Gary Oldman doesn't win best actor, it will be an abomination. God, he was transcendent.

I know Lady Bird has been all the rage, but for the most part, it just left me sad. I didn't feel a connection with most of the characters, and I couldn't imagine letting my child head to college with such a gulf between us. Of course, you just never know others' relationships, but still. I had a similar reaction to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: great expectations followed by a sense of letdown. Frances McDormand, an amazing actress and one of my all-time favorites, seemed a touch one-dimensional. I don't know. I just wasn't enthralled. Sam Rockwell seemed almost a caricature, and Woody Harrelson (another of my absolute favorites) seemed to turn so quickly. I much prefer him as Haymitch. 

I've told y'all how much I applaud Get Out, and last night we watched Darkest Hour. Boy oh boy, was I transported. I am endlessly fascinated by Churchill and the world during WWII, by the evil and courage and strength and never-ending hope and determination. History is both humbling and so instructive, offering lessons and beacons of light as we make, and remake, our ways through travails and humanity. Here's hoping we survive the horrific confluence of Rat Poison Turdface + the internet.

In the meantime, if you're done with films, please read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I'm not done but am fully entranced and hate to put it down when I must. Ok, the children call.