He is young enough to be my son

The eight-year-old boy who died. The nineteen-year-old boy who likely killed him.

Or they could have been my students, a sibling. She may have smiled that beautiful smile over my lunch. He wanted to serve and protect. He wanted us to stop hurting people. She came here to learn. 

These people, living and dead, cause me pain. So yes, I want to know them. Not to exploit, or glorify, or justify, or apologize, or excuse. No. I want to know because I want to understand. I want to know why. I want to know if something could have been done to help angry young men with hate in their hearts to see a different path. Because I have the imagination of a mother. And the rage, and the heartbreak, and the ache. They are children. They have mothers. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines she will suffer in this particular way. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines he will unleash pain and death and torment. So how does that capacity for hatred grow? Where does it begin? I tell myself — the way we do — that my boys are different. But in this way or in that way, they are the same. And I have the imagination of a mother. And the guilt, and the worry.  

If we try to understand, if we seek to know, could we identify other children on a path that could be redirected, could be supported, be SEEN and treated as human and valuable, so they could see and treat others as human and valuable? So that our children will grow — whole, and alive — and without hate in their hearts. 

And still I’m talking about a bomb and a gunfight that killed four people and maimed so many others. For hate, yes. Which is terrible. No doubt. 

But what about the bomb that killed fourteen and destroyed so much in a tiny town? That bomb that people prefer to call a factory or business. That bomb that exploded not for malice but for what? Negligence or profit? That bomb that was not set by radicalization but is so much more eminently preventable if we give it the attention it deserves. So much more readily mitigated. But strangely not causing the same level of anger. I look out at the stacks of refineries and factories within my horizon, and I imagine possibilities. 

So many questions here and there and elsewhere. I can imagine something different. I can imagine something better. But first we have to be willing to value those lives, to look at them, ALL of them, to see them, to ask questions, and at every step to be humane and just.

Ideas folding in on themselves like proteins

I am obsessed with the work of an author whose work I have never read. I’m not sure what to do with that. Part of my brain wants to keep up this years-long academic hate-crush in just the same way I’ve always carried on — by continuing to NOT read the author’s work, but to consume every story or article about that work and then think myself in circles about how much the author AND the way people talk about the work both irritate and entice me. Part of my brain thinks the other part is an idiot and should just get on with reading the ACTUAL fiction of the author in question. Does it even matter who it is? What would you do? 

And, oh, yeah, HI! Distractable summer, blah blah blah. Throw open the windows and let in some air and sunshine. Sweep out the crickets and we’ll get on with SOMEthing, shall we? xo

First Aid Kit

There’s one in the kitchen and one in the car, with band-aid, ointment, and gauze. But sometimes the hurts aren’t blood or sting. Sometimes it’s a pinch to the ego or a bruise to the feelings, an accidental bite on an old worry, or the lying crush-hug of depression. Then conventional band-aids won’t do. In those cases, I need another kind of first aid kit.

Contents:

* Comfortable clothes.

* Sunshine.

* A few sheets of paper and my favorite kind of pen.

* An inspirational poem.

* A fluffy, clean towel to rub against my face. 

* A small, safe space into which I can first crawl, then press against, then escape.

* A box in which to keep the sadness, frustration, rage, confusion, apathy, and all the other feelings that make up the weft and weave of the heavy cloak of impossibility and self-doubt. 

* A pretty, humane surprise, a demonstration of genuine love between people. A tiny daisy-in-the-fist-of-a-three-year-old of human compassion.

* A play list of music. Some songs can be angry, but not defeatist; there must be a kernel of hope. Some thumpy-asskicking-boots drum lines are helpful now and then. Clever lyrics about anything in the world would not be remiss.

Some bits expire (just like medicinal ointment), so I should check them for efficacy from time to time and make replacements as necessary.

Now, what sort of container will hold all of these things? 

Ma Bell, a Throw Me Prompt

I was reading a Throw Me Thursday post by the lovely E. Victoria Flynn last week on the occasion of her mother’s birthday. Please go read it if you like. EVF feels a disconnection, but also seems to imply a sense of forgiveness of her Ma. Reading the post, I naturally began a reflection about my own mother, on the occasion of her birthday. So, with thanks to EVF for the inspiration, here is what came out.

Ma Bell

I cannot call my mother on the telephone to wish her a happy birthday. I don’t know if I would want to if I could. I found a letter I wrote to her in 2006. Both unfinished and unsent, here with some mild editing of names.

Dear Mom,

I told my oldest child about you today. He’s 6. Beautiful, bright, and perceptive. I didn’t plan to tell him.  Didn’t plan what to say. I just suddenly had a strong feeling that he should know who and where all of his grandparents were. It was selfish in a way. An impulse motivated by me wanting him to know and understand me better.

So I held him in my lap and talked to him.

I told him that you were funny. Fun to be around. With beautiful brown hair that has a lovely white streak in it.  I called you Grandma Cindy.

I told him about dad too. That he was a police officer. Tall with dark hair and blue eyes. Also funny.  That he liked to draw.  I called him Grampa Mac, and explained why.

I told Sonar X6 that I wished he could know you. That you’d be lovely grandparents—full of good stories and good humor.

And then I told him about the hard part. About how he and his brothers won’t ever have the chance to know you that way.

I told Sonar X6 that your mind was sick. That in your illness you made some bad choices. That one of them resulted in you using a gun and shooting dad with it. That you killed him. And now he’s dead and you live in a prison far away.

I told him that it’s hard to talk about. That it was hard to lose you both. That I miss you both.

He was remarkable. He comforted me. That beautiful boy.

Part of me wants to torture you with the joy and beauty of the things you’re missing. All three boys are delicious. I’ve grown so much with them. They inspire me. They make me want to be the best I can be.  And the best of me does not aspire to torture anyone, especially my own mother.

The best of me aspires to be humane to all people. To empathize with each person I meet and to treat him or her with respect and compassion.

It’s relatively easy to be compassionate toward a stranger. There’s no baggage. No heartbreak. No thundering crash as the world crumbles underneath my feet and I’m left choking on the dust and stumbling over the rubble.

With family, with my mother, who has made choices that have shaken my trust in everything I have ever known, compassion is hard to muster. The best respect I have been able to gather is silence.

I know you’ve changed, but I’m not sure I want to know how. I know you have needs, but I’m not sure how or whether they can be satisfied or reconciled or healed. I’m not sure I want to talk with you.  Most days I want my life now to remain anonymous for you. To have a barrier that guards my family from the nebulous threat you might pose to us and our understanding of the world. To keep at arm’s length the pain and struggle that connecting with you would involve. To contain the messiness, keeping it sequestered from my life.

You stung me once, in a hurt that has been miserably hard to release. You said I lived in a dream world.  I don’t even really know what you meant by it. I suppose it implied to me that I was disconnected from the reality of your life somehow.

Full disclosure: I wrote that letter for me. To help me remember. I don’t think I ever intended to send it to my mother. So if it doesn’t sound like the sort of private letter you’d actually mail to someone, that’s why.  

In 2008 I felt compelled to write again. That time the struggle came out not as a letter, but as a blog post. It was the first time I had spoken broadly and openly about my mom to anyone outside of my close confidants. You can read that one here.

When I reflect on these two things I’ve written, my writer brain sees a shift. There is a quiet tender hurt in the pride I felt in talking with the Sonar. There is a bolder desire to move forward and be strong and forceful in the second. The lingering pain seems different somehow. There is more bitterness in the second. In both I show my desire to hold on to the good, even as some form of pain lingers.

I sit here today and know that I have changed.

I clutch close to my heart the parts of my mother that were good and beautiful. I feel like I have allowed some of my long hurt to float free. I still wouldn’t call or write to her. But I can ring a bell, and think of her, and put the words out on the breeze with love.

Happy Birthday, Ma.

Of Skull-squeezing and Maturity

I ran down the street this morning trying to convince myself that I wanted to run.  I didn’t want to run, but I was doing it anyway.  I had a perfectly reasonable argument about why it would have been better to sleep an extra forty-five minutes.  On this morning, like the past several mornings of running, a song popped into my head.  “That’s How People Grow Up” by Morrissey, delivered with irony, but true nonetheless.  Maturity may represent those moments when we do things even though we don’t want to.  

That sounds more skeptical than I mean it to sound.  I was really pondering self-reliance at the moment the song came to me.  I was considering whether I could rely upon myself to take care of myself.  A blog post yesterday by Jamie Ridler inspired the rumination.  A number of different people rely upon me to do things in any given day.  My children, my partner, other family, friends, teachers, neighbors.  I think I’m fairly trustworthy.  But it has often been the case that I sacrifice my own personal goals and intentions in order to fulfill the needs of others.  This is natural for me, and to a certain extent necessary, as a fully-functioning member of a family and society, but it grates upon me sometimes.  

Another song often occurs to me in those moments of frustration with the world and myself, also Morrissey, singing “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” delivered with the charming aplomb of the chronic depressive putting on a good show.  

I’ve heard some people say, skeptically, that if you don’t take care of yourself no one will.  I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, but it is true for my personal goals and intentions.  If I don’t run, no one will run for me (and what good would that do?).  If I don’t run, no one will force me to run (and I’d resent it if they did).  I could substitute other intentions for running: writing, updating this website, thinking.  If I can’t trust myself to take care of myself physically and emotionally, that could at some point undermine other people’s trust in me. 

So when Morrissey chides me about maturity, I can take it.  Lately I’ve motivated myself with the idea that the morning run is to scrub and tighten.  I scrub out my asthmatic lungs and the fog from my brain.  I tighten up my bones and heart and will.  When I think that way, the skull-squeezing lessens, and so does fear in all of its insidious permutations (Will my work be good enough? Will someone jump out from behind that bush and harm me?)  

I’ve written before that I was inspired to return to running by Haruki Murakami’s memoir about running.  When Murakami talks about running, it is both literal running, and a metaphor for what he can accomplish in himself, and what limits him.  When I talk about running, I am staking out a space in my life for self-reliance.  I can and will take care of myself, physically and mentally.  Don’t ever doubt that running is just as much about my mental health as it is about my physical health.  When my life is frustrating, or the skull-squeezing starts, I run away.  I run away just long enough for the endorphins to kick in, and then I can run back, confident that I can handle anything that comes along because I have taken care of myself.  

When the endorphins kicked in this morning, I did enjoy myself.  Being prickled by maturity is perhaps a good thing.  It’s when I’m prickled by the skull-squeezing that I know it’s time to run.