September 11th

I don't think I've ever done a September 11th entry.  Funny, that date meant nothing before 2001. Well, not to most folks, anyway.  To us?

It's our nephew's birthday.  He was 11 years old.  Good age to have a colossal act of violence forever associated with your birthday.  Good age to burn that in.

So happy birthday, Buddy.  Love you.

My memories of 9/11 are the same as many folks'.  Woke up and dashed to the TV not even knowing why--something I'd heard on the radio while sleeping, I'm sure.  I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit.

And then the wave.

You know, that wave of unreality that washed over?  That "I'm watching a Michael Bay movie" sensation?

And then I threw myself at the computer.  I had a lot of online pals who were part of the Project Greenlight gig.  A lot of pals in NYC.  Immediately, I went for the PG chat room.  Where was Serena?  Where was Doug?  Had anyone heard from Stephen?

It was a long while before we learned that one of our own had been on Flight 11.  Tom Pecorelli,

Tom was a great guy--funny, sharp, talented.  He was a lot of things, including cameraman for Fox Sports and E! Entertainment Television.  He was married to his love, and they were expecting their first child in April.  Tom had been in the Boston area for a friend's wedding and to visit his Dad.

He walked around carrying his boy-to-be's ultrasound picture.  That boy is now a handsome young man who never  had the joy of resting in his father's arms.

Three or four days after the towers fell, our boy, who was three, found a potato bug (you may know them as pill bugs or "rolly-pollies").  It seemed a harmless thing--we were doing yard work, so we admonished him to be careful with the potato bug and then went back to our task.  We lived right in the flight path of an International Airport, so the silence was something palpable,  made us edgy, uneasy.  After a few minutes of working under that pall of nothingness, our little boy approached.  He held out his hand, in which the now-dead potato bug rested, and said, "Fix it, Daddy."

Fix it.

Hubby and I crouched down, and I said, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry.  It can't be fixed."

Our boy was insistent, so earnest and sad.  "Please, Daddy--please fix it, I broke it."

Voice cracking, my husband explained that, once something is dead, it can't be fixed.  It's forever broken.  Our boy's eyes filled with tears and he said he was so, so sorry.  Poor Mr. Potato Bug.

And then the grownups lost all cohesion.  We wrapped ourselves around our boy and cried and cried.  Over a potato bug?

Of course not.  Well, maybe a little.  But mostly we cried because of all those people.  And all those other people who'd lost those people.  We cried because we realized how foolish it was to ever think that making war internationally wouldn't eventually splash back here.  We cried because the world our little boy is going to live in isn't the world of my childhood.  It's the logical consequence, I recognize that now, but the carefree assumption that terror and war only happen in other lands?

Gone.  And I grieved.  I mourned that almost as much as I mourned the amazing, varied, priceless human beings we lost on 9/11.

And before I go (and I am going--there is no room here for funny pictures or complaints about awful baby names), I want to say thank you.

To Canada.

Because in the days after 9/11, when our skies were bereft of planes and our American citizens were stranded in the air, unable to come home, Canada took them in.  Canadians opened their airports, their arms, their hearts, and their homes, provided shelter and food and care.  Because they are our friends.

So thank you, Friends.  I hope we never, ever have to return the favor.  

Cat Crap Fever

So, my boy got me flowers for Mother's Day.  Of the plantable variety (impatiens, petunias, and carnations), because I don't really like cut flowers much.  We didn't go for the set-up I'd wanted--just too expensive, and what if it didn't work?  This isn't a good year for investing in things that are just going to fall apart or die.  And that's okay--I'm a flower freak, I am.  I'm so happy to get my hands in the dirt and make things bloom.  He gave me daylilies a few years ago--just bulbs.  I planted them, and they've moved with me twice now.  Yes, I have daylilies in containers.  Why not?

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So, the other day, my boy was hanging out on some website--Failblog, maybe?  And he came across a business sign.  He laughed and said, "Major fail!"  I looked, and said, "I dunno, hon--it's not really a universal term, no doubt far more people DON'T know it than do."  

The business name?  "FAP."

He disagreed strenuously, insisted that EVERYONE knows that one.  I told him I thought he was seriously misjudging the demographics of this country.  And then I had an idea--I'd ask!

Obviously, I can't stroll through the mall or Wegmans with a clipboard, asking folks if they know the meaning of this term.  That might get me thrown out (or arrested, depending on how many DO know).  So I did the next best thing.  I hit my Facebook account and asked THERE.  Sure, it's a seriously constrained sample--one biased in HIS favor, because folks on Facebook are, by definition, on the internet.  Plus, to toot my own horn just a little, I have many culturally savvy friends.  And so I asked the following question:

Hey, folks!  A little experiment: answering ONLY "yes" or "no," tell me if you are familiar with (and know the meaning of) the term "fap."  Please, no hints, winks, or sly little references--JUST "yes" or "no." 

Of course, there were a few who just couldn't resist making cute allusions to the meaning, but I was on them and deleting within seconds.  

The outcome?  Better than 75% of respondents were not familiar with the term.  Including a couple younger, "gamer" types.  I believe that, in the general population, the number of "in the dark" folks would be even higher.  My boy was disappointed, but also seemed interested and impressed by the whole process.  I think it was a good lesson in demographics and the differences in experience and knowledge between groups.

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Speaking (still) of my boy, I nearly broke myself the other day, letting my mind wander too far.  He was looking at me as we spoke, and, for just a moment, I saw that sweet-faced, wide-eyed, few-toothed, excited boy he was 12 years or so ago.  And wow, it was . . . hard.  I choked up, my eyes filled.  He will never, ever again run at me, arms outstretched and only barely keeping from tumbling ass over teakettle, that smile so big.  I wish I'd held onto that somehow for just a little while longer.  How did that go?  How was there always time to do tomorrow, tomorrow, and suddenly there's no time left?

How does this:

Become this:  

In only a few minutes?  Because that's all it was.  Just a few minutes, just a blink.  My poor heart.

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I was going to blog about civet coffee--you know, the coffee made from coffee beans eaten by (and shat out by) civet cats?  Originally a rich-folk "oh, the ennui!" treat (?) for folks too cool, too bored, and too intent on impressing others and being interesting to notice they were drinking roasted cat turd coffee, it became POPULAR with that gawdawful "Bucket List" movie.  This created an incredible demand for cat-turd coffee, which, in turn, led suppliers to stop foraging for it and, instead,  start cramming civet cats into small cages, force-feeding them coffee beans in order to meet the demand.

Think about that for a moment, please.  How utterly grotesque is that?  And how awful and spoiled are we that our society gives rise to that sort of trendyism?  Ew.

Oh, look.  I blogged about it anyway.

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Nothing ugly today.  Instead, there's this.  It might be a little preachy, but it works for me.  I've always, since early teens, at least, been the smiler, the greeter, the person who, in the middle of a long, irritating wait at the DMV or the grocery store, smiles, commiserates, chooses to be kind.  I do, that's me.  It's always been me.  And it is a choice, absolutely.  And yeah, there are rare occasions when I choose NOT to engage, I choose to be irritated, but I am always aware that it is a choice.  No, I'm not bragging, I'm just . . . ruminating.  Because I've never had it laid out like this before, never really considered how I am and how I interact.  I am, above all else,  painfully empathetic, so when others are maybe angry at the woman behind the desk at the DMV, I'm imagining spending 8 hours behind that desk dealing with angry people, only to come back the next morning to do it again.  And again.  

Armus waiting to die

Ever make yourself cry?  Not on purpose, not by reverberating on sad things, but just out of the blue by saying something that rebounds, gut punches you, and suddenly you're in tears?

Did that to myself last night.

Almost 16 years ago, my sister and her then-husband ditched their dog on us.  A huge, white thing (we later figured out she was a Labrador Husky), she was one year old and had already whelped a litter.  Her name was (and still is) Armus--named after the black blob from some Star Trek Next Generation episode (no, we didn't name her).

The dumping of Armus into our world wasn't supposed to be long-term. No, it was supposed to be "just for a few months, until we find another place."  All things considered, I should have known that was bull, but what are you going to do, right?  Say no?

Armus wound up staying with us for thirteen years.  To be fair, there was a point, maybe six years in, when my sister and the ex-bother-in-law (no, that's not a typo) offered to take her back.  By that time, she was joined at the hip with our other dog, and the bother-in-law planned to leave Armus outside.

No.  Not going to break up the happy couple so you can keep her on a chain in the back yard.  Turned out that, even if we had agreed, the dog would have been back a few years later, when they divorced and she moved into a "no pets" place.  How she left her three cats with us at that time is another story.

So Armus was ours for 13 years.  JoJo, her buddy for life, died.  And then we moved--first, to a place where we couldn't have a dog (and so we went to my mom's a few days a week to take care of Armus and keep her company).  And then we moved cross-country.  Oh, we agonized over that.  But, by then, Armus was 15 1/2, and was and there was no way she could make the move with us.   No matter how you sliced it, just getting her up into the cab of a gigantic truck (it had stairs and a pull-up bar to get in) would be hell on her and us (she's quite arthritic now), and making her ride on the floor, cramped up, for 500 or so miles a day?  For the better part of five days?

I didn't think she'd survive it.

So Armus is now almost 17 years old.  Mostly deaf, has a hard time getting down those three little stairs to go outside and do her business.  My sister goes over with her kids and helps make sure Armus is being cared for.  I was telling hubby and son that Armus had fallen down in the snow and ice the other day, and my Mom, who is 78, wound up also falling in the snow and ice trying to help the dog.  Between the two of them, they managed to drag each other into the house.  I said, "I can't believe Armus is still chugging along--amazing!"  Hubby said, "I know, it's a near-miracle."  And I said, with zero forethought, "What if she's just waiting for us to come home and play with her?"

Oh, damn.

That was it, I started to laugh, but I was crying, too, and the crying took over pretty quickly.  What a crappy thing to think of.  What a devastatingly SAD thought.  What if she IS waiting for us?

And now I'm crying again.  Poor Armus.

I'm not sure what to do about my weight at this point.  I had lost six pounds, but, in a month-and-a-half, I've managed to gain back that six PLUS eleven more.  Seriously, seventeen pounds I've gained since the beginning of January.  It astounds me, how fast I can gain, it's unnatural.  If gaining weight was an Olympic sport, I'd do my country proud, you know?  But I was back on it yesterday, and I'm back on it today, and I've just got to make this work.  It's easier when I can sleep.  But waking up at five in the morning is almost a guarantee that I'm going to start grazing.  This morning, I forced myself back to sleep, and it worked.  Big pear and ice water for breakfast, I'll have my nummies for lunch (only 200 calories), and I'll have pasta for dinner (we do pasta very carefully).  Even with smoothies for dessert, I'll come in at around 1,400 calories for the day.  More than anything, I need to force myself to keep track on My Fitness Pal every day.  That's what does it for me--accountability.  Seeing what I'm taking in and admitting it.  

So here I go again and still.  Forever.

Bad paneling?  I dunno, I'm a bit down right now.  Probably later, though.

What a Hopeless Feeling

Had a really bad night last night.  So bad that I'm afraid writing about it will just bring it all back.  

I'm not usually given to fits of deep, dark depression or self-inflicted misery--there's enough on the outside to worry about without delving deep into my own self for hurt.  Last night, though?

Dang.

I was sitting upstairs with my boy when, out of the blue, it hit me--I'm almost certainly never going to go do all those cool things in Europe and the Middle East I've always dreamed of doing.  I'm not going to see the Northern Lights in Norway.  I'm not going to ride a horse in the desert to see Petra and the Pyramids.  I'm not going to discover some amazing Viking hoard in England with my trusty metal detector.  I'm not going to climb to the top of the tower keep at Dolwyddelan.  Hell, unless I'm lucky, I'm not even going to see Niagara frozen or fireworks in fog or snow.

I'm pushing fifty, and the odds of me achieving any of my dreams are pretty slim.  I've always dreamed that someday, we'd have enough "disposable" cash to just do things like that, but you know what?  My mom thought that, too, and she's stuck on a fixed income without enough spare cash (or a reliable enough car) to even head to Wendover for a few nights of hot slot machine action.

I cried and cried.  And then I told myself that I need to suck it the heck up and work on what I can hope to achieve.  Like finding ways to make my boy happy, keep him healthy, give him fun things to do and see.  I can do that.  That's worthwhile.  And maybe, just maybe, he'll get to do those things that I'm almost certainly not going to.

Welcome to my world.  It's a pretty bleak place right now.  It's the first time I've ever felt utterly hopeless about the future.  I've never been that overwhelmed by the sense that it's too late to realistically expect dreams to come true.

Okay.  So, here's my world tour as it would go, were I ever to get that chance:

First, I want to take my boy and hubby and wander the English countryside, looking for the next big buried Viking hoard, something from Alfred's time, you know?

No, I don't want to keep it, I just want to touch it, to find it, to live that.  Then I'll be happy to hand it over to a museum.  Just like Dr. Jones, huh?

After that?  Well, maybe swing over to Ireland to see friends and research family (A big shout-out to the Wards, Collinses, and McManuses!), then back across and north to satisfy my husband's love of all things Scottish.  I can't forget Wales, though--Llywelyn Fawr captured my heart years ago, and it's a dream, visiting Dolwyddelan.

Dolwyddelan

Notice the second, ruined structure?  Funny story.  The intact structure was built by Welsh Prince Llywelyn ap Iowerth, aka Llywelyn Fawr ("Fawr" meaning "the great").  That was constructed in around 1220, when Llywelen was almost fifty years old.  It was, no doubt, just a way of keeping the English (Norman) lords at bay (and maybe to keep a few disgruntled Welsh back, too).  The second structure?  The sad, crumbling away bit?  That was built, most sources say, after 1283 by Edward I (aka "Longshanks) after he killed Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (aka Llywelyn the Last) and seized Dolwyddelan from his brother Davydd ap Gruffudd (both being the grandsons of Llywelen Fawr).  After seizing Dolwyddelan, Edward fortified it by building the second tower.  Unlike the first, the second was definitely not built to last.  

And then?  Then I want to take my guys to Paris, where I had such a mostly-miserable time of things back in 1995.  Take them to Pere Lachaise to see the amazing graves, then to Sacre Coeur via the breathtaking stairs up Montmartre.

Pere Lachaise

Atop Montmartre

And Notre Dame, and Les Invalides, and the Louvre, and the Pantheon, and just a hot croque monsieur au jambon et au fromage.

From there, definitely north in hopes of seeing the Northern Lights (and just to enjoy beautiful Norway).  Tromsø is, they say, THE place to go for the Northern Lights, and here's a picture from there:  

That's the one least likely to happen, I think.  Because the Northern Lights aren't just hanging around up there, 24/7, waiting for you.  All the best planning, even having the financial wherewithal to hop on a plane the moment reports of a probable solar flare event come in, you could still wind up seeing nothing.  I once, when I was in college, saw the sky pink in Ogden, Utah.  Vaguely pink.  My then husband insisted it was somehow light from cars reflected off moisture in the air.  That night, the news reported it had been a rare lower-latitude aurora.  It wasn't much to see, but that may be the best I ever get.  

Sometimes, I think I'd like to turn south and east from there and hit some of the old Soviet Block countries.  And sometimes I think that, even today, things are maybe not particularly safe there.

Speaking of safety, the next leg of my dream is almost certainly not going to happen in my lifetime.  Not with the way my government keeps meddling in Middle Eastern affairs.  But I sure would love to take my boy through Jordan (for Petra), through Egypt (for Abu Simbel, the pyramids at Giza, the Valley of the Kings), and through Palestine.  Petra and Egypt?  I'd like to do those sites on horseback whenever possible.  There are also sites in Saudi that are much like Petra, but the fancy dancing you've got to do to get there is tough.  And expensive.

Petra, Jordan

Abu Simbel

Valley of the Kings

Are there other places I'd like to go, things I'd like to see or do?  You bet--I'd love to take the QE-2 from the States to England.  Maybe kick off the world tour that way.  I'd love to see the catacombs under Rome. I would so love to meet a manatee.  India, various African nations (Morocco!  Tunisia!), so many places appeal, so many I've dreamed about.

Oh, and I'd like to take Amtrak through the west in the winter, when the snow is thick and deep.  And I'd like to see Niagara falls in the winter.  Frozen, if possible, but even with just the amazing, limestone-cavern-like formations at the sides would be great.  And I think it's time for me to concentrate on those last two, because those are attainable.  Those can be achieved.  

Now, onto real life.

Found out night before last that my boy has been lying about his math work.  He's been, again and again, telling me that he's doing great, that today he did this or that, and I've been taking him at his word.

No more.

Turns out he's been lying.  He's been pretending to do his schoolwork but, instead, playing on his PS3 or the computer.  Video games.  I've been unhappy about the video games since day one (was solidly outvoted and out maneuvered on those), and now it stops.  New rule?  No video games (computer, PS3, phone, or otherwise) on weekdays.  Period.  not after school work's done, not after Dad gets home from work.  Just none on any day his father is scheduled to work.  No exceptions.  If he does as well this year as he did last year on the standardized tests, he can have the summer with loosened restrictions.  If he doesn't, school's going year-round.

I give him points for coming clean, and I give myself demerits for being foolish enough to trust a 14 year-old to work without constant parental "checking up."  Won't happen again.  And no, it's not that he can't do it, it's that he didn't want to, he'd rather play.


Heard back from the USPS about our tampered-with/stolen mail.  Their answer was so utterly unhelpful and so "butt-covering" that I can only laugh.  They're not interested in our mail being stolen, and they won't replace the lock on our mail box.  So much for "mail tampering is a huge, wowser federal crime!"  Sure, maybe it is, but the USPS doesn't seem to much care.  No wonder they're going under.

Now, here's something funny.  I've just spent a few hours looking at all these places I wish I could go and see, and instead of making me even more devastatingly sad, it's cheered me up.  How messed up is that?

Speaking of cheered up, looks like the atheist-hater's loud, cigarette-butt-flinging daughter and her stompy-stompy kids are moving out in a huff.  That works.  Good luck to you, and I mean that.  Think you could take the rats across the street with you?

Anyway, the wonderful, awful paneling so kindly offered me isn't going in today.  This is already a very picture-heavy entry, and I want it to really shine.

Don't I feel stupid?

So I wrote a big, long blog entry about my Mom today.  I'm sitting here, crying my eyes out over a blog I almost certainly will never publish.  What a mess I am.

After struggling with it all morning, I guess all I can say is this--don't let life pass you by.  My Mom has spent the past 37 years waiting for life to happen to her.  She's almost 79 years old now--she is alone, she has no friends, is bankrupt, and is unutterably sad.  And resigned.  And yet, she will take no steps to improve her situation, and no amount of prodding or encouragement inspires her.  37 years she's been like this.  37 years I have begged her to meet people, to do things, to go places, to live.  She is, by turns, angry, bitter, sad, disappointed, scared, desperate, and always, always alone.  No friends, no hobbies, no activities, no hope.

Don't do that.  Don't let it race by you, because the days may seem to crawl, but the years gallop.  And suddenly you're not 41 anymore, you're 78.  And it's too late for you because you don't know how to change, you don't dare.  You're paralyzed with fear, and you're utterly alone with a lifetime of regret for all the things you didn't do.  And your kids?

Your kids are paralyzed, too--with guilt.  With sadness.  And they grieve for you even before you die. 

I love you, Ma.  I am so sorry.

My Heart is Sick for Connecticut

So, when the news hit this morning about a school shooting in Connecticut, the reports said that three adults had been killed, including the shooter.  As awful as this is going to sound, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Only three, and all adults, and one is the shooter--wow, that could have been SO much worse.  Isn't that awful, that we've come to a place where we consider that a "good" outcome?

When I signed on later to find that the numbers had changed dramatically?  Wrenchingly?  Devastatingly? 

Well, I cried.  Bawled.  My poor son tearing up next to me, grasping my hand, unsure what to do.

What to do?

I think of holiday gifts sitting under trees that will never be gleefully torn open, bitter reminders of a future blasted from this earth.  I think of delighted cries of excitement silenced and cookies for Santa never baked.  I think of parents who kissed their beautiful darlings this morning and never imagined some kid with guns would end them.

I think of 20 little hearts not beating.  20 sweet, perfect dreams gone. 

I'm not sure I can do this.  I keep crying. 

The Onion nailed it today when they posted this (beware of many swears).

How many times?  How many times does something like this have to happen before we stop pretending that it's a fluke, it's nothing to do with US, but rather some reflection of this nut or that "evil" person?  This is everything to do with us.  With the glorification of violence, with the constant barrage of anger and hatred and rudeness, with the ready access to murderous weapons.  It's not an isolated incident, it's not just one evil person, it's US. 

It's US! 

That kid who did this wasn't some demon crawled up from some imagined pit!  He was the child of well-educated, well-off parents who loved him, for goodness' sake!  And that guy in Aurora?  He wasn't Satan's imp, he was just a guy our society produced.  Our gun-toting, violence-embracing, shoot-em-up society where mega-lobbyists tell us that any attempt to be reasonable and intelligent in our laws about WHO GETS TO WALK AROUND WITH WEAPONS CREATED TO KILL OTHER HUMAN BEINGS is an "assault on our rights as Americans."

Spare me that.  Spare us all that.  Finally, please, just spare us.  We can have sane, reasonable, intelligent gun laws that still allow sane, reasonable, intelligent Americans to own guns.  And please, please don't throw out that "Oh, the Constitution!" crap.  We don't use 220+ year-old architectural guides to build modern bridges, we don't use 220+ year-old medical texts to guide modern surgeons, and we don't use 220+ year-old science books to guide our modern researchers.  So why on earth do we persist in pretending that the Second Amendment in any way relates meaningfully to our modern firearm issues?  In Revolutionary times, a particularly skilled shooter might be able to whip off FOUR ROUNDS PER MINUTE.

Four. 

At four rounds per minute, Mr. Adam Lanza might have managed to shoot one person.  Perhaps even one child.

That's 19 children who would have come home tonight.  19 children who would have been here to open presents and bake cookies for Santa.  19 children in their parents' warm embrace instead of cold coffins.

Stop pointing at our many "evil" gunmen and crying about how that has nothing to do with the gun laws argument.  It IS the argument.  Stop throwing your hands in the air and screaming about "THEM" as if they're somehow apart from US. 

Start looking around and realizing it IS us.  Our country, our laws, our culture of violence, our embracing of rudeness, our disdain for reason, our disregard for each other that makes this possible. 

Twenty perfect angels died today (and a slew of amazing, brave adults who tried to save them are also lost).  Twenty sparkling, wide-open futures ended.  Twenty bright, curious, seeking, joyous miracles of the universe stopped. 

And if that isn't enough to inspire us to turn this crazy-assed bus around and find a saner path, I don't know what is.

Oh, and before anyone says anything stupid like "this isn't the time to discuss gun control," tell me, when would be a BETTER time?  When bridges collapse, do we cry, "Not now, now isn't the time to discuss infrastructure!"  When buildings fall down in earthquakes, do we shake our heads and shout, "No, we can't talk about construction guidelines now!"  When children drown because of a downed fence around a pond, do we all scream, "NO!  Now isn't the time to talk about getting that fence fixed!"   Every time there is yet ANOTHER horrendous tragedy like today, certain factions scream that no, no, we can't talk about that now!   Now isn't the time!

And I sort of agree.  The time was at least 13 years ago.  But we dropped that ball, so NOW is the closest thing to a "good" time we have. 

I'm going to end this with a hope.  A hope that healing and comfort and some sense of peace somehow envelope those poor parents.   That they manage to find something here to hold on to.  That their families and community wrap them in love and kindness and understanding.  That we, as a nation, as a society, as a culture, somehow manage to make a difference so that no other parents have to suffer this unimaginable hurt.

My Poor Boy

So, the saga continues.  Our boy has no friends, and the prospect of sending him out alone to try to find some?  Terrifying.  Yet that is exactly what he wants to do.  He wants to wander the neighborhood beyond our street to try finding new friends.  Just wander around the streets hoping to meet someone.  Oh, damn, my heart breaks for him.  My poor boy.  He's smart, he's funny, he's handsome, he's got a good heart and loves to have fun, and he is alone.  And me?

I'm afraid to let him wander this neighborhood alone with those scary kids here.  We've got four registered sex offenders with child victims living within easy walking distance.  I've wracked my brain, trying to think of anyplace where teens that don't include the awful kids on our block congregate, and there's not one place.  This isn't a "kid-heavy" area, there aren't older kids out playing or hanging out.  I checked Boys Club, but for his age group this time of year, there are only volleyball and basketball tryouts, and those are skill-based determinations AND he doesn't play either sport.  There is an atheist homeschool group, but the only folks with kids his age aren't open weekends (AND are interested in doing things we don't have the cash for right now).  No, atheism isn't a requirement, but not caring about our atheism is.

Next summer, there's Camp Quest.  Next spring there's the flying club.  Next year is volunteering, maybe at the ASPCA or a like thing.  We thought Smithsonian, but it turns out he has to be 16 or older.  But right now?  Hapkido three nights a week is the extent of his time with other kids, and he wants more. 

I feel responsible for this.  Only I would pick the one place in the state where these particular kids with their animal killing and scary violence hang out.  I wish I could make this better for him.  He's a happy kid, but this is a hole in his life that we thought was filled when he started hanging with the kids in the neighborhood.  But that fell apart, and now that emptiness is there again. 

My poor boy.

It Ain't All Fairy Tales

I was just blundering through the Huffington Post, reading this and that while I wait for my husband to be done with a tele-meeting so we can drive out to Clifton for my latest round of x-rays (thoracic spine this time). While blundering, I came across a story about rekindled love. A sweet tale of a couple who fell in love as kids, drifted apart, only to be reunited 40 years later. Nice, huh?

Made me want to scream.

You see, my Mom found herself in a like situation. After being divorced for 36 years (and alone that whole time), she was contacted by an old flame. An old flame I didn't even know was an old flame. I had known Ned all my life, he'd been the father of playmates, the husband of Ellen (a wonderful lady who was never anything but kind to me). It turns out there was so much more to it than that.

Where to start? Many years ago (in 1950, to be precise), my Mother and Ned began dating. She was 16, he was 15, and one of them was desperately in love. It wasn't her. After months of playing couple, my mother stepped out with another guy. Ned was devastated. When that didn't work out, Ned pursued her again, and again, they were a couple. And again, she stepped out him. This time?

She got pregnant. Or at least that's how the story goes--she's changed that story repeatedly, and refuses to give anything solid enough for us to track down this mythic sibling she claims was adopted (sometimes by family members, sometimes by strangers, sometimes in Pennsylvania, sometimes in Florida). After the alleged birth of my alleged half-brother, she once again wound up with Ned, who was desperate to marry her. She took his ring, headed to Philadelphia for nursing school, and promptly married my dad. Who is not Ned.

Then comes the twisted, sad part. Or part of it, anyway. My Mom and Dad split up in 1976, after 17 years of marriage. I was 11. After that, my Mother and I spent every summer back on the east coast--renting a car, driving up as far as Maine or Nova Scotia, then spending a couple of weeks in our hometown--also Ned's hometown. I knew Ned--he was the husband of sweet Ellen, the dad of the kids I loved to play with. We would go over to their house and Ellen would feed us and so sincerely inquire about everything in our lives.

And she must have been terrified.

You see, Ned, years later, confessed that he married Ellen because he couldn't have what he wanted. He "settled," and always carried a torch for my mother. The really sad thing? He got the better woman with Ellen--by far! He got a woman true and loving, a woman able to really embrace and adore without a price. I don't mean to diss my Mom, because I do love her, but she is powerfully flawed. She is given to pettiness, meanness, and rank, inherent dishonesty. She's immature and wants so much for people to see her as impressive or noteworthy. Poor Ellen would smile and welcome us, feed us, care for us, and all the while she had to have known that he'd have left her in an instant, had my Mother said the word.

Poor Ellen. I had no idea. I never would have been party to that, had I known. My heart breaks for her still, and she's been dead for years now.

So, anyway, that's the past. Fast-forward 30 years. Ellen is dead, and Ned sends a Christmas card (as Ellen did every year). My Mom, on a whim, calls him. And it's ON! They start calling once, then twice, then four or more times a week. They exchange pictures of the kids and grandkids, he starts sending sad little gifts. My Mom starts ending phone calls with, "Love you, babe--can't wait to talk to you again!" Isn't that sweet? Isn't love grand?

No. No, it's not, because she didn't mean it. Any of it. She didn't love him, she wasn't hauling about some torch for him after nearly sixty years. No, she was just playing. Sadly, he wasn't.

After a few months of this, he started making "let's get together" noises. See, I think my Mom thought this game was safe because he was over 2,000 miles away. But Ned makes a good living, he can afford airfare. And, in fact, did. Now the phone calls were ending with, "Love you, babe--can't wait to see you!" Except, of course, she could wait. Forever. She was horrified that he was coming, and increasingly angry about it. He gave her months warning, and yet she never once said, "Ned, I don't feel good about this." No, she just strung him along.

A few weeks before he came out, she hung up with the customary, "Love you, Baby--so excited!" She then looked at me and said, "This is a terrible idea." I cried, "Are you kidding me? What are you doing? Cancel!" She started to blame Ned, but I cut her off, said, "Whoa, no way--you're giving him every reinforcing thing, you're telling him you want to see him, that you love him, that you're so excited you've wet yourself, and now you're mad at HIM because he can't tell YOU'RE a liar?" In a rare show of honesty, she admitted that she'd led him on because it was thrilling to be desired, to be adored. It was the last flash of honesty on the subject--after that, all of it, everything, was (according to her) Ned's fault.

By the time Ned arrived, my Mom was in an utter tizzy. I'd had a good friend do her hair for her, really gotten on her to bathe (which has been a problem for years), and even arranged a small trip for them--up to Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, a rodeo, etc. Just to give them something to do, something other than sitting together in her house and staring uncomfortably. Also to give her the opportunity to sort of play western tour guide to his eastern boy, since she so likes to show off and seem knowledgeable. I still can't believe I bothered.

From the moment my sister and Mom picked Ned up at the airport, she was sullen and silent. My sister had to carry the conversation all the way home. Ned was jovial and boisterous, my mother withdrawn and near-surly. The mini-vacation? An utter flop. She wouldn't talk, so he, sensing her discomfort, talked more loudly, more boisterously, and more intimately. You know, reaching back 60 years for "inside" jokes and the like. He didn't want to travel--he just wanted to be with her, mapping out their life together.

Oh, what a mess!

When they came back, she shuffled him off to stay with my sister. That poor man. She would come over for dinner ONLY because we insisted--she was not going to leave him sitting at my sister's for a week without seeing him! What did he do? He tried to be helpful around my sister's place, he cried a lot, though he tried to hide it, and he was amazingly kind to me, my husband and son, and my sister and her kids. That poor man.

Within moments of his boarding his plane, my Mom did exactly what I knew she would--she piled every ounce of blame for everything onto him. How did I know? Because it's what she's done all her life. Within a day, he was no longer Ned, he was "that prick." He tried to call, and she refused to pick up the phone. The one time she did, she was so distant and nasty that he never called back. Eventually, he wrote her a heartfelt (and barely legible) letter, saying, in effect, that he wasn't sure what had happened, but that she was just not at all what he thought she would be, she didn't even seem to be the same person he remembered or the woman who had been so affectionate on the phone. He said that he was sorry if something he had said or done had caused her to behave that way.

She exploded. That bastard! That asshole!

And me? I exploded right back. I chewed her to a nub, I told her that I would never, ever tolerate listening to her tear him down again. Period.

I admit, it wasn't just about Ned (though that was most of it). It was also about the possibility of getting her into a situation where she's loved, taken care of, and financially secure. She was teetering on the brink when Ned came out. My husband and I were paying half her property taxes and buying all her groceries, and yet she was still faltering. She was so deep in debt, it was unbailable. She had cashed out her retirement (they forced her to retire at 75 because, as a nurse, her skills were slipping along with her hygiene, which made her dangerous), paid down most of her credit cards, and then proceeded to max them all again within a year. Her pension isn't great, but between that and her Social Security, she's got around $2,500 a month. Not bad for a woman whose mortgage is only $500 a month. But she craves entertainment, and, for her, that means taking my sister and her kids out to eat restaurant meals three or more times a week. There goes almost six hundred bucks a month. This went on for years as she collapsed into financial ruin, and no amount of pleading with her or with my sister would put a stop to it. She wouldn't stop because she's old and spoiled and doesn't really "get" things, and my sister wouldn't stop because--well, because why stop a good thing? Life with Ned would have solved it all. She could have sold that rattrap house, paid off her bills (or at least most of them), moved in with Ned in her hometown, and lived the life she wants. See, Ned goes out for breakfast most mornings, likes to have a nice dinner out a few nights a week, and a few times a year he heads down to Atlantic City for a nice gambling weekend. He spends his days doing puzzles and watching MASH and taking long drives. In other words, he's the man of her dreams.

Not long after the heartbreaking Ned fiasco, my mother filed for bankruptcy. Any dream she may have had of living out her last years comfortably is gone. Any dream she may have had about moving back to her hometown is gone. She is broke, in a falling-to-bits house, with a car that is disintegrating. She is sad, bitter, and knows that she blew her last hope. Yes, she knows it, she's not stupid. She's may be unreasonable, and she's definitely petty and immature, but she's not stupid. And my heart?

Oh, it breaks for her. I cried and cried when we moved away. That was a year ago, and I still cry. I call her three or four times a week, have my boy call her twice a week, and my sister does see her pretty much every day, takes her shopping (and out for those damnable meals she still can't afford), but fact is, at the end of the day, she is alone. She didn't have to be, but she is. She's going to die that way. So is Ned, for that matter.

It's really not all fairy tales. If it were, the happy endings wouldn't be worthy of Huff Po human interest pieces, huh?

Sadness Ensues

So, there I was, standing on the front lawn under my stinky pear tree, shooting the breeze with the nosy but nice enough neighbor, when it happened.

We were discussing universal health care-type schemes, and I related the story of Harvey, a college acquaintance and staunch Republican who had once told me, in the heat of debate, that poor people who cannot afford health care "deserve to die." Of course, Harvey's employer provided his health care. Harvey's parents scraped to pay his tuition. Unlike little ol' me, who was working two jobs and never had so much as a dime of parental tuition assistance. I also didn't have insurance. A year or so later, I saw Harvey again. His circumstances had changed just a bit--you see, he'd lost his job, lost his insurance, and was thinking of heading down to the local low-income clinic to treat his nasty case of bronchitis. At this point in the story, my neighbor nodded vigorously and said, "Yep, it's just like those damned dirty atheists! They're such cowards, think they can live life like it's a party, denying GAWD'S law, and then cry for forgiveness on their death beds! NO FORGIVENESS! NO! It's too damned late! Shoulda thought of that BEFORE, now shouldn't you have?"

That was my moment, you know? That was the moment when I could have said--I SHOULD have said--"Sonya, I'm an atheist. So is my husband, so is my son." But I didn't. I saw the hardness in her eyes, the angry, hateful curl of her lip, and I kept my mouth shut.

I'm not proud. Good thing I'm not Christian or Muslim, 'cause I'd have failed at that whole "martyrdom" thing. In that split second, I decided that keeping the peace with an otherwise friendly neighbor was more important than standing up for myself and those like me. It's not the first time I've backed down, or, more accurately, I've failed to rise up. Sadly, it likely won't be the last. You see, only fat folks and atheists are still fair game--it's perfectly okay to hate us. Fat I can't hide, but atheism I can. Often I don't. But sometimes I do. I feel helpless to do anything else.

Religious folks don't think atheists understand persecution. They don't think we "get" what it's like to be punished for an ideology. Which is hilarious, really, because they're the ones doing it, all the while crying that any attempt to keep them from legislating their faith or forcing it into the schools willy-nilly is "discrimination." Gimme a break, you don't know the meaning of the word. You haven't had a President of the United States of America say that he doesn't think YOU can really be an American (thank you George Herbert Walker Bush). You haven't been held in contempt of court for refusing to swear on a holy book you don't embrace (and before you snot off about "stop whining and just do it," ask yourself if you'd put your Christian hand on a Q'uran or your Muslim hand on a Torah to swear an oath). No, our courts aren't SUPPOSED to smack atheists for refusing to swear on Bibles, but it doesn't keep some judges from doing exactly that.

Back when I was in college, I took a Child and Family course from a woman named Brenda. She's dead now, so I could use her entire name, but why? One day, Brenda brought up her very favorite developmental theory: Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. For those not familiar, the gist is that there is a hierarchy of moral levels, progressing from self-driven, urge-satisfying processes through morality as a result of fear of punishment/promise of reward, and finally on to moral behaviors borne of a true desire to better the world and serve mankind. That's just a rough summation. Brenda announced to the class that atheists cannot reach the higher "post-conventional/developed conscience/ethical universality" stages because a belief in an all-powerful deity is required.

I was 26 years old, and it was the first time I ever "outed" myself. The funny part? At the time, I didn't "self-identify" as an atheist. I still thought of myself as something of a believer. But her assertion was crap, and I knew it for what it was the moment she spat it out there. My hand shot up and I said, "But Doctor S., if we assume that Kohlberg is correct, then what is religion, if not a lower level of morality, one driven by fear of punishment and promise of reward? I mean, doesn't religion represent the very pinnacle of looking to an ultimate authority for guidance and obeying laws based upon fear of punishment and hope for reward?"

Oh, gosh. See, sometimes college isn't really college when you live in Utah. Sometimes it's more church.

I was immediately called to the carpet, dressed down in front of my classmates, and told just how "disappointing" my PROFESSOR found me. Imagine, if you will, a CHRISTIAN being treated the same way in a class. How many minutes do you think would pass before the first attorney called the school? Not me, though. When Brenda suggested that perhaps the class and I were a "poor fit," I took the cue and dropped the course. I managed to fulfill my minor without any more courses from her, but understand that, until that sad day, she'd been one of my favorite professors, and I had been one of her "pet" students. I'd had half a dozen courses from her before, and always aced them.

I was going to say that my atheism ruined all that, but that's neither fair nor true. My atheism didn't ruin anything. Instead, her nasty, prejudicial ideas about my atheism ruined everything. I wonder, did she grade other non-Christian/non-Mormons unfairly, too? Or was she okay with any deity, so long as there was one?

Anyway, back to my neighbor. I let the moment pass--moments, actually, since she went on and on about those dirty, cowardly atheists. I kept thinking that surely she must see the look on my face, see the shock and the sadness, but I don't think she did. I think she was so caught up in her righteous little whirlwind of hate that she completely missed how hurt I was. The funny thing? I had outed us just the night before to one of my son's friends. The boy (who had seemed a nice kid--more on that later) was trying to describe someone in very negative terms, and one of those was, "and he's an atheist." Without even thinking, I said, "So are we." Of course, now I'm worried about that. What if I've screwed my boy up with his friends? Sure, he needs to learn that people who won't tolerate difference or diversity don't make good friends, but at 14 years old, that's a really painful lesson, and it's one I don't want him to learn the hardest of ways.

Believers often say that atheists are lazy. We're "taking the easy way out." That, without the Bible (or Q'uran, or Torah, or what have you), we can't possibly know right from wrong. But this isn't the easy way out. No, not by a long shot. This is, in fact, the hard way, because we don't have some promised afterlife to make up for the crap that happens here. We don't have some invisible authority to grant us forgiveness when we screw up or do wrong. We don't have that comforting fairy-tale of a life ever-after. No, this is it. This is what we have, and we have only this time to make good or bad of it. We treat people kindly because it's what's good for all the world, not because we're afraid we'll be punished. We do charity work and donate to worthy causes because we want to help humanity, not because we think someone up above might be keeping score.

And Sonya? She will probably never know that I'm an atheist. Maybe I should step up and use myself as a educational tool, but you didn't see her eyes. You didn't hear the disgust in her voice. Maybe I should lay myself out there on the altar of teaching, but I probably won't. I'll likely just keep to myself, and Sonya will, perhaps, wonder why the friendly woman next door suddenly became a bit distant--nice, polite, but no longer looking like a potential close friend. And maybe that means I am, in fact, a coward, though of a different variety. I don't know.

The World Eats Children

I was reading the local paper yesterday morning (the online version to save the trees, of course). As per usual, I hit the obits second (front page comes first). I’ve always been drawn to the obituaries, just as I’ve always felt myself attracted to cemeteries. The last, usually loving tributes to folks who aren’t anymore. It’s beautiful, but beyond that, it often brings with it a wave of “what ifs.” You know—“what if I died, what would Tom put in my obit?” and “What if that was my mother, what would I say about her?”

Yesterday, it was “What if my 12 year old child who loved playing guitar and dreamed of traveling had committed suicide?”

Oh, damn. What if? What if it was my beautiful child, my heart, his life tapped out in a few dozen lines on an obit page? What if the world chewed up my boy and spat him out broken?

I look back on all the things my parents didn’t discuss with me. Suicide, drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, bullying, peer pressure, devastating depression—all of which were a big part of my growing up. I shambled through my childhood, completely lost. I was lucky in that most of my friends were good ones. Maybe not moral compasses, but certainly not wells of depravity, either. I was lucky that, with one notable exception, they all cared about my welfare, even if the stick they used to measure good from bad wasn’t quite in keeping with society’s norms. Or “nerms,” as we used to say.

They say the world is what we make it. If that’s true, we’re breathtakingly broken. I sit down and I talk about suicide, meth, and teen pregnancy with my 12 year old and my brain screams, “WHY? Why does he have to know this stuff at 12 years old? What is WRONG with us, that we’ve created a world where 12 year olds are getting other 12 year olds pregnant and 13 year olds are bullying their classmates to DEATH?”

Why do I have to explain to my child that poking at people who are different, whether it be skin color or sexual orientation, is a bad thing? Shouldn’t we, as a society, already know that? Shouldn’t that be a given? It’s 2010—how can racism or bigotry still be an issue? Aren’t we smarter than that?

And am I part of the problem because I’m making my child aware? I told him about auto-erotic asphyxiation and “huffing” when he was NINE, because other NINE year olds were doing it—and DYING. How jacked up is that? How terrible?

And if you think all THAT'S bad, imagine being a child in Gaza? Haiti? Thailand?

I don’t have a point here. I’m railing against a messed up world that eats people. That eats children. And my heart is thrumming and mind is buzzing with fear because maybe our love and our lectures and our watchful eyes just aren’t enough. That child in yesterday’s paper? Her parents loved her, too. She was their heart. They watched and guided and adored.

And the world got her anyway.