Reeling
Dear Blog,
So we’ve been having what passes for a crummy week when you forget to be grateful that none of you has been shot. LittleJ got sick first, then LittleK, then me, which is the order it usually goes in. After breakfast on Friday, I mopped the snot off their faces, ran around looking for matching socks and mittens and boots, wrapped us all up in our coats and winter wear, hauled the rarely-used double stroller out of the trunk of the car and put them in it, and pushed my two bundled sick boys to the market up the street for hot chocolate. It was a beautiful day. They shared a cookie and each had a bit of hot chocolate and we said hello to all the dogs passing by (and their owners) and we were all starting to feel better by then. It was one of those perfect blue-skied winter days that I love on the East Coast, crisp and clear and everybody out looking happy because how could you not be happy on such a glorious day? And so off we went to the park, while 28 miles away a bunch of little kids were being gunned down at school by yet another heavily armed lunatic.
And of course, we are never really safe. From guns or cars or fires or floods, from lethal viruses, from our own failing bodies, from shifting tectonic plates or raging storms, from accidents, psychopaths, the wrong street corner, the wrong boyfriend, the wrong time and place in history, and so on. We all know that. But mostly, around here anyway, we set out bravely into the world every day, assuming it will be a good day or at least a day we’ll all survive, because that’s the usual thing. That’s why we drop our kids at school, kiss them goodbye and carry on. We’ll see them again, in just a few hours, we’ll have supper together, we’ll tuck them into their beds. It’s a relatively safe assumption.
Like everyone, I am sick with grief for those parents whose kids didn’t come out of that school, cannot imagine how or if they were able to sleep that night and if they did, how it felt to wake up. Cannot imagine what they are doing today, or what they’ll do tomorrow, or on Christmas, or how it will be for the rest of their lives, she would have been ten this year, he would have been twenty, what do you think she would be like now, would he have done this, or that? And all these little kids, who would have grown up, and now they won’t. Just a few years in the world to be themselves, and then this brutal, bloody ending. It leaves us all helpless and reeling, just reading about it.
LittleJ asks me about death almost every day, because it’s something he’s trying to figure out, I guess. “Why does nothing last forever?” he asks, over and over, and over and over, I say, “That’s just how it goes,” because fuck, I don’t know.
That Guy and I are just trying to act normal, not talk about it when the kids are around. LittleJ, the older boy, is not quite three and a half – much too little for a conversation about what happened at Sandy Hook elementary school. He doesn’t know what a gun is, though he knows how to play at shooting, somehow they all learn to do that. And he says, almost every day, “I don’t want to die,” and I say, “Me neither, but we don’t have to worry about that for a long, long time.” And then he says, “When will we die?” and I say, “I don’t know, but not for a long time, not until we’re very old,” and he says, “I think you’ll die before me,” and I say, “I sure hope so,” and he says “Why?” and I say, “Which dinosaurs are we bringing to the playground today?” and he says, “The T-Rexes, because they like to eat sand.”
So I’m lying, I guess, because what am I going to say? That I can’t keep him safe, not completely, not really? That I could die today, tomorrow, in a year or two, and he’d barely remember me? That every day is a gift, and that’s not just a cliché, it’s the truth? That I’m not just blowing my nose in the bathroom all the time, I’m crying, because a bunch of kids not much older than him got shot, at school, because that’s something that can happen? So the president is crying on television and angry people are typing angry comments at each other all over the internet, and that part, the same angry people on their same angry sides, that part feels so devastatingly business-as-usual, hell, it feels like election season.
I should know better than to look at comments on the internet because it makes me lose hope for our sorry species, it really does. (And of course, I don’t mean that “the gun discussion” doesn’t need to happen, because it does – only that the comments sections of internet articles are so rage-filled, so contemptuous, so rigid and vicious and vacuous, that “discussion” isn’t really the word for what is happening there at all).
We went to the corner market to get falafel and hummus on Saturday and the owner waved the newspaper at me, “did you see this?” I nod, I did. He gestures at his kid playing a game on his iphone in the corner, and at my kids. “What are we supposed to do?” he says. LittleJ points a stick at the guy and pretends to shoot him, pow pow, with his most charming three-year-old grin.
I’ve been up all hours the last couple of nights with LittleK, who is suffering with awful congestion and a chesty cough. Every time I drag myself out of bed, I think, this sucks, and then I get to his bedside, where he is snotty and sweaty and calling for me, and I wipe his face and rub his back, and I remember that we are OK, and this is life, and we are, for lack of a better word, blessed. What are we supposed to do? In the morning we’ll get up for another lucky day in the beautiful world, the terrible world.
And if you’ve read all this then you know by now I’ve got nothing to say about it, but this is a space where I write something on Monday, and I’ve got nothing to say about anything else right now either. This is just me reeling.
Catherine
So we’ve been having what passes for a crummy week when you forget to be grateful that none of you has been shot. LittleJ got sick first, then LittleK, then me, which is the order it usually goes in. After breakfast on Friday, I mopped the snot off their faces, ran around looking for matching socks and mittens and boots, wrapped us all up in our coats and winter wear, hauled the rarely-used double stroller out of the trunk of the car and put them in it, and pushed my two bundled sick boys to the market up the street for hot chocolate. It was a beautiful day. They shared a cookie and each had a bit of hot chocolate and we said hello to all the dogs passing by (and their owners) and we were all starting to feel better by then. It was one of those perfect blue-skied winter days that I love on the East Coast, crisp and clear and everybody out looking happy because how could you not be happy on such a glorious day? And so off we went to the park, while 28 miles away a bunch of little kids were being gunned down at school by yet another heavily armed lunatic.
And of course, we are never really safe. From guns or cars or fires or floods, from lethal viruses, from our own failing bodies, from shifting tectonic plates or raging storms, from accidents, psychopaths, the wrong street corner, the wrong boyfriend, the wrong time and place in history, and so on. We all know that. But mostly, around here anyway, we set out bravely into the world every day, assuming it will be a good day or at least a day we’ll all survive, because that’s the usual thing. That’s why we drop our kids at school, kiss them goodbye and carry on. We’ll see them again, in just a few hours, we’ll have supper together, we’ll tuck them into their beds. It’s a relatively safe assumption.
Like everyone, I am sick with grief for those parents whose kids didn’t come out of that school, cannot imagine how or if they were able to sleep that night and if they did, how it felt to wake up. Cannot imagine what they are doing today, or what they’ll do tomorrow, or on Christmas, or how it will be for the rest of their lives, she would have been ten this year, he would have been twenty, what do you think she would be like now, would he have done this, or that? And all these little kids, who would have grown up, and now they won’t. Just a few years in the world to be themselves, and then this brutal, bloody ending. It leaves us all helpless and reeling, just reading about it.
LittleJ asks me about death almost every day, because it’s something he’s trying to figure out, I guess. “Why does nothing last forever?” he asks, over and over, and over and over, I say, “That’s just how it goes,” because fuck, I don’t know.
That Guy and I are just trying to act normal, not talk about it when the kids are around. LittleJ, the older boy, is not quite three and a half – much too little for a conversation about what happened at Sandy Hook elementary school. He doesn’t know what a gun is, though he knows how to play at shooting, somehow they all learn to do that. And he says, almost every day, “I don’t want to die,” and I say, “Me neither, but we don’t have to worry about that for a long, long time.” And then he says, “When will we die?” and I say, “I don’t know, but not for a long time, not until we’re very old,” and he says, “I think you’ll die before me,” and I say, “I sure hope so,” and he says “Why?” and I say, “Which dinosaurs are we bringing to the playground today?” and he says, “The T-Rexes, because they like to eat sand.”
So I’m lying, I guess, because what am I going to say? That I can’t keep him safe, not completely, not really? That I could die today, tomorrow, in a year or two, and he’d barely remember me? That every day is a gift, and that’s not just a cliché, it’s the truth? That I’m not just blowing my nose in the bathroom all the time, I’m crying, because a bunch of kids not much older than him got shot, at school, because that’s something that can happen? So the president is crying on television and angry people are typing angry comments at each other all over the internet, and that part, the same angry people on their same angry sides, that part feels so devastatingly business-as-usual, hell, it feels like election season.
I should know better than to look at comments on the internet because it makes me lose hope for our sorry species, it really does. (And of course, I don’t mean that “the gun discussion” doesn’t need to happen, because it does – only that the comments sections of internet articles are so rage-filled, so contemptuous, so rigid and vicious and vacuous, that “discussion” isn’t really the word for what is happening there at all).
We went to the corner market to get falafel and hummus on Saturday and the owner waved the newspaper at me, “did you see this?” I nod, I did. He gestures at his kid playing a game on his iphone in the corner, and at my kids. “What are we supposed to do?” he says. LittleJ points a stick at the guy and pretends to shoot him, pow pow, with his most charming three-year-old grin.
I’ve been up all hours the last couple of nights with LittleK, who is suffering with awful congestion and a chesty cough. Every time I drag myself out of bed, I think, this sucks, and then I get to his bedside, where he is snotty and sweaty and calling for me, and I wipe his face and rub his back, and I remember that we are OK, and this is life, and we are, for lack of a better word, blessed. What are we supposed to do? In the morning we’ll get up for another lucky day in the beautiful world, the terrible world.
And if you’ve read all this then you know by now I’ve got nothing to say about it, but this is a space where I write something on Monday, and I’ve got nothing to say about anything else right now either. This is just me reeling.
Catherine
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