Hello, hello, we're all back: camp and a protest

Y'all, driving to and from Maine (from MD) in six days in a rented van in order to pick up your children and their extensive baggage from and say goodbye to sleepaway camp after six weeks is not for the feint of heart. It is not a trip I will replicate anytime soon.

That said, J and O were blissfully happy at camp and cannot wait to return. J cried and cried during the closing ceremony, and my heart was full of gratitude for the joyous, adventurous summer he and Ol had. Neither missed screens or electricity. 

The celebration of boys and their development, of nature and living intimately and compassionately in it, of simplicity and togetherness, of tradition and of emotion and connection was palpable in every memory shared, joke recounted, and bit of growth noticed. Plus, Jack gained 8 pounds. This camp is a very special place, and we all look forward to returning next June.

Once gone, we found a live spider in Ol's trunk, some of their clothes seemed shellacked into grotesquely dirty homages to day spent in dirt, some of their possessions are flat-out gone, J jubilantly showed me how his Nalgene bottle had survived being run over by a truck, and Ol matter-of-factly informed me that his record for wearing the same pair of underpants topped 11 days. I'm ill. Don't even get me started on dealing with their finger- and toe-nails. Vomitous! And y'all, I am not a germaphobe or clean-freak. 

Long story short, camp scored 100% but we will return home in different fashion next year. 

Shortly after completing eleven loads of laundry and settling back in, the one-year anniversary of the heinous white supremacist affair in Charlottesville arrived. I am telling you, life never stops. This year, the "fine" supremacist folks planned to march not only in C'ville but also in DC. Hell no. Yesterday (Sunday) morning, I donned seersucker shorts and pearl earrings (tee hee) and headed downtown to march with a dear friend against the bigots. 

We counter protesters were many, an energetic, compassionate, fed-up motley crew who simply are not interested in tolerating racism, fascism, trump, or any shitty, backwards shit here. In addition, the police presence was huge. I admit that my stomach hurt a bit as we approached Lafayette Square where the Right's rally was officially located. But we saw not a one, and at last count, I heard that no more than two-dozen racists showed themselves. 

racists encircled in yellow

All in a day, or a week as it were. 

Father’s Day

I’m writing this via my phone as I’m locked out of my blog everywhere else (long, exceedingly annoying story), so please forgive any typos or incoherence. 

We had a lovely Father’s Day celebrating Tom and talking to my dear father and getting good time with T’s dad at the beach last week. And yet the whole day was tinged with a decidedly black cast by the fact that the Trump administration has torn more than 2,000 kids from their parents at the Mexico-US border as they staggered across seeking asylum. They have a legal right to do so, and we have a moral obligation to offer safety, and yet, we are treating them as less than human, as burdensome garbage. 

People don’t leave their homes unless they really have to. Unless they’re terrified or being abused or endangered or are deeply desperate due to poverty or violence or the like.

Today, able to hug and love the children that made us parents, we took the boys to a protest at the White House on behalf of the #KeepFamiliesTogether movement. It was all I could think to do in the face of the rage and impotence I felt and continue to feel.

The stories coming from the border are horrible. An infant ripped from its mother’s breast while feeding, taken away, the mother not told where. Who is feeding that baby now? With what? How?

We see photographs of sobbing toddlers, kids with sheets of foil as blankets, behind chain-link walls. Cages of sorts. We are told they get one hour outside a day, that the folks who staff the detention center are not allowed to hug or comfort them.

We read reports about strangers caring for the younger kids in their cells, teaching others how to change diapers.  

We hear lies about family separation being law. It is NOT law.  

We hear that NOT ONE Republican senator has signed on to co-sponsor Senator Feinstein’s Keep Familes Together Act, and so it languishes, as do the children, the babies in detention camps in our own country.  One father killed himself last week just after being forcibly separated from his children; he couldn’t stand it. 

A tent city has been proposed. In Tornillo, TX. A TENT CITY! In America! Is no one in the disgraceful White House with a heart? Does no one wonder what traumatizing people might reap? On our souls? On our safety?

And so we made another protest sign, filled a bottle with ice and water, and parked ourselves in front of the White House. 

When will we reach bottom? When will any Republican running for re-election grow a pair and scream “ENOUGH!” At what cost does this hate and bigotry and destructive  nationalism come? I fear we don’t even know yet. 

Rise up, call your senators and congressional reps, donate to organizations helping at the border, be kind. Keeping families safe and together shouldn’t be political or partisan.

This morning, before I called my dad, I told my boys about a Father’s Day decades ago. Dad was attending an Episcopal church then, and I went with him that morning. A parishioner named John was there, bereft and lonely. Dad invited him home for lunch with us, no head’s up to Mom, and at our table there was room and plenty and love.

I hope that someday this country can actually be great. Can actually offer the promise of hope and dreams and opportunity and love. We're falling so short right now. I am ashamed and sorry and scared.

My children are safe at home tonight

One of my sons has been asleep for a couple hours now, tucked in after a fun family afternoon, a good dinner, and a warm bath. 

The other just got home from a school dance, sweaty and flushed and "so pumped up." He smelled a bit, but I couldn't help but hold him tight as he told me about the dance and the music and the ice cream. He's had a tough year, and I was so hopeful that tonight would be fun. It was. And now, he is safely in bed, here with us at home.

Worrying about your child having fun at a middle school dance is a typical, expected parental concern.

Worrying that your child will be shot to death at their school is not, should not be, cannot become an expected parental concern.

Today, again, more children were gunned down while simply trying to go to school. While most of us are counting down the few remaining days of this academic year, some parents tonight are instead planning shockingly unexpected funerals. With this, the 22nd school shooting of this year and the third just this week, "2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members."

If we as a nation are not mortified and ashamed into real action by that obvious disregard for our children (and the converse which is the obvious idolatrous obsession with firearms), then we are truly beyond repair. 

It's the guns, stupid.

And don't even get me started on the fact that the white murderer was taken into custody without a scratch. If he'd been black, he'd have been blown to smithereens in moments.