Sandy Hook

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What if there was a list?
Of things no one wanted
The emptiness in a room
Blood memory
An unrelenting ache
my baby/my baby/my baby
Cannot be…

Worse than death
Stalking us at every turn
will we be
Safe?

No.
Not this time the children’s story
Man with a song leading us into the mountain
because our parents will not

What?
What is it we have not done?
Have not paid
To the coroner
To the cops
To the teeth of the dog
Who guards this hell we have

become
a houseful of memory
Of a Christmas most like the very first, second and third

When armed men broke through doors to wrest
Babes from nursing

Women who retain with their inmost thoughts each scrap of life
This child
This child
Don’t turn away.

A History of Violence

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Yesterday an entire community woke up feeling safe and went to bed knowing the truth–no one is safe.

When we examine mass killings in America the list is chilling without the quotidian descriptions of domestic murders. When I read these articles on our history of violence what struck me was how incomplete the lists were.

I found several articles but none mentioned the tragedy at the Amish schoolhouse several years ago. The story of a methodical murder of children at school? Worth remembering.

And now we have Sandy Hook. I hate these stories. Most of us do. But what I find almost as disturbing is how quickly we go back to our Christmas parties and meme gathering.

Sometimes it does seem as though we are more pro-active about spreading urban legends than the truth.

I understand our desire to play the numbers–immediately after the tragedy I heard and read several reporters say–these events are rare.

I seem to have missed the bend in history when the NRA needed more public advocacy than school children.

We have a big problem. A deadly,escalating association between power and slaughter, the desire to exact a terrible revenge on children and the need for fame?

Can it be that our culture of entertainment violence has collided with real violence and a quest for celebrity? Do any of us dare face the possibility that this is the monster we have created? Nurtured? Then allowed to roam our schools, malls, concerts and cinemas while we idly click our remotes looking for something to distract us from a gathering darkness?

Wakeboard Challenge

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Mom,

my young son says,

it is easy. Hold your feet like this, hold your rope like this and go!

.

He is right. His form looks good and he is instructing me mildly not because he knows how to wakeboard but because he has watched me face-plant dozens of times.

I can do the small pond ok, but I have a developing fear of the big cable.

The process goes like this:
Strap into your boots
Sit on bench
Grab rope/handle
Watch as a cable hitch traveling at 20 miles an hour zipping toward the rope you have in your hands

The advice is good:
Flex on 3
Watch the rope not your legs
Pretend you are jumping off a bar stool (going 20 miles per hour)
Keep your legs slightly bent, also flexed
Arms and handle at your hip
Hold on tight.

I have gotten off the dock a half a dozen times or so.
When I do if is wonderful–scary, not in my control. Wonderful.

But my fear of the launch process is getting to me. I have to do it enough that I am as comfortable hurtling forward at 20 miles per hour as I am brushing my teeth or riding a bike.

The process requires humility and commitment. And the consistent intellectual decision not to quit. I have to fear failure more than getting pulled across water at 20 miles an hour.

Forgive me if it all reminds me of Jesus.

Christmas Card

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I once gave someone I loved a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.

I am not sure she read it, but I know she did not appreciate it because she told me–

you sent me a book when you should have sent a card!

I am not a card gal. I wrote Fierce Angels as a Christmas card, Just Words was a wedding gift and Just was a PSA.

I used to tell friends I did not do Christmas cards because ours would be crazy weird. Really depressing.

But then I believe as humans our lives are all marred by grief and pain. It is this very reason we need the wee child in the manger.

He came to save us from ourselves.

Today I got a Christmas card from a precious friend. We know each other only because both of us have lost daughters and grieve for them.

Her friendship is treasure to me. The gift of Magi.

Telephone Call

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Um, so you are pregnant?

Yes.

We are worried about you-about the baby.

Why?

Well, no job, no church, your boyfriend does not want to marry you?
We need money!!! Mom should get dad to send money. They are so judgmental. If they wanted to help they would send us money.

Mom is worried you will do something stupid…to the baby.

What?!

You know, like putting your cat in the fridge?

The cat is fine. The cat wanted to be in the refrigerator.

Promise me you will not put the baby in the fridge. Or the washing machine or dryer. No appliances. babies do not belong in appliances.

Seeing Ghosts

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The hotel is the same
The furniture is different
The name has changed
But the steps

In the pool where the babygirl
Hurt her foot
Are the same.

I remember

The way the road snakes around
Hills/river oaks
I once ran up and down
But don’t remember
How old her little sister was or
The specific children
Who trailed violence in their wake

We have all gotten
Old since then.

Hi, I am the Narrator…

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Hi, I am the narrator. Elea was annoyed with me for napping on the clock so she is giving me extra assignments. Typical.

She wants me to discuss nature versus nurture.. Claims the subject is too close to home for her. Says I am the professional and she is the amateur so, yeah, show her how it’s done…

Team Nature argues for the biological expediency of our genetic code. Nature says, basically we are all just a sequence of predetermined impulses and urges and we are what we are–Darwinian productions, all water and code.

Team Nurture says, no! Humans are more than a sum of our chemical parts. Love matters. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, all that…

Why the flippy intro?

Well, H and C have rather wantonly stirred their genetic material in the petri dish of human determinism and Elea says I have to give you–sparse and gentle readers, a crash course on the odds.

Or whatever…

The Narrator Naps

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Hey. Wake up. You know you came highly recommended and you need to do your job (bozo).

N (sleepily). Huh? Did you just call me Bozo?!

Yes. I did (albeit sotto voce). You have decent hearing.

N. Light sleeper.

Whatever, you are on the clock sista. Where did those two knuckleheads go?

Last I saw them, they were headed for Miss Havisham’s.

Miss Havisham’s? I did not write a character named Havisham. That was Dickens. You know, Great Expectations?

N. yeah, I know. That is my nickname for the extenuated older female relative that they are traveling to scam cash from.

Um, how exactly?

Well a basic combo–Honey Bunch will shop her impending delivery of a child, Cowboy will back her up with some well-played humility and yes ma’ams and both will suggest that if Miss H can’t spare the ducats they could sleep on the futon.

She has a futon?

Oh, yeah, it is buried under 20 years of laundry and a bag of high-end dog food.

How can you sleep through all of that trudging/scheming/prevaricating?

N shrugs. I am a professional. Seen it all.

The Narrator Ruminates

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There is nothing more monotonous than watching someone think. Well. One more thing–reading about a person thinking.

As in–the narrator thought. She chewed on her dilemma. She explored scenarios in her head. She plotted, schemed, planned. Ultimately she just sat and thought, just like The Thinker only more clothes, less abs.

She thought about maternity wards. They have a hushed holiness about them. She thought about the nurses who kept such careful watch over the wee babes. Everything feels safe in a maternity ward, except perhaps for mom. Mom can be stressed. Heck, mom can even fear for her life, her child’s life.

As a professionally trained, bonded, and insured narrator she had performed the necessary internships in nursing homes, elementary schools, courts of law and fast food joints, but it was her elective stint in OB that had stuck in her craw.

The babies are so perfect, so new. It is as though their nurses are their angels–washing, swaddling, protecting their little patients. In a world of chaos and violence that frequently spills out over the heads of children, most were given a day, maybe two of safety.

After that all bets were off…

Priorities

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Ten years ago I heard a distractingly handsome doctor give a motivational speech. Ok, he was my husband.

He told a group of squirrelly teens that they needed to prioritize. Well, showed them.

He showed them how to fill a large jar. First he put in rocks, then pebbles, then sand, then water. The jar was not full until the water had been poured in. His point? Put the big things in first.

This morning I was up early contemplating a long list of chores–messy house, yard work, bills, medical appointments and school.

Got my blood pressure up just thinking about all that stuff to do, plan, clean.

Ugh.

I have to put the rocks in first. And for me the central stone is Jesus. I have to be still and know Him. Next is love, I need to minister to the hearts of my family.

After that may the mud fall where it may in the messy metaphorical jar of life.

Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. [25] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. [26] But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. [27] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”