Homework: I'm so over it...

Lots of people are not going to want to hear this. But I'm going to say it anyway. (That's starting to sound like a familiar refrain with me, holy crap what a troublemaker, sorry.)

It's about my 8-year-old's homework, and here it is:

Other than supervised reading time, reviewing of math facts, and studying for a test coming up the next day, homework in elementary school, and possible even through middle school, should be eliminated. Period. 

I'll just give that a minute to sink in, parents...because I know it's the after school hour, and if you're reading this, and you have a grade-schooler, he or she might just be terrorizing you over the topic at hand. Ok, moving on.

Homework. I want it abolished. It wastes time and is crazymaking and it's got to go. Parents, dear dear parents, I know a lot of you are thinking it. And you feel like if you say anything you'll be viewed as a useless shirker and irredeemable lazy-ass pig. Lucky for you, I don't give a shit if anyone views me as a useless shirker or a lazy-ass pig, because I probably have even better and more colorful names for anyone who would dare. I might even know some card carrying public school teachers who agree with me wholeheartedly, although I would never mention their names here lest they end up on a black list, or have their laminating machines revoked, or worse. Suffice it to say, dear opposition, if you exist and are reading these words, argue with me if you want to, but I've been watching how this all plays out for almost 4 years now, and it's become more than evident to me that I'm right, you're wrong, get over it. 

And here's why.

When my daughter gets off the bus in the afternoon, she's spent. She's had it. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met, and a day of third grade makes her ready to pour herself a martini when she walks through the door. (We DON'T do that, it's an image meant to further my point, don't email me on this or I'll know that you're stupid.)  She knows when she gets home that she can have a snack, some downtime, maybe a half-hour of Sponge Bob (which is a hilarious cartoon, so go ahead and judge if you're an intolerable tool of a prig)...and then, well that's when the sad music kicks in to the soundtrack of our afternoon. Because now here comes the shrew tapping her foot, pointing to the clock, and demanding the child sit down and tackle the load in her backpack (and by the way, if she gets severe scoliosis or becomes a hunchback from having to haul that monster around on her 50 lb frame, you can guess who's being billed for any medical expenses not covered by our insurence, it's only fair).

Oh, and about that foot-tapping shrew...you may have guessed who gets that fun job. And it's a crying shame, because all the shrew really wants in her heart to do with her daughter when she gets off the bus is to have some snuggle time, or they could kick back together with a coloring book, or maybe even bust out the treasured miniature tea set to have a chat and sit a spell.  You'll just have to excuse the shrew if she'd like to sneak in as many of these moments as she can with the kid since there are pretty much just a few short nanoseconds left before she's grown up and moved out and left me...I mean the shrew. So can you cut us a break?

Answer: no.

Instead what happens is she goes over to her homework spot...I'm sorry, did I say that she goes over to her homework spot? I meant she trudges over there as if there's a root canal with her name on it waiting for her to sit down and enjoy. Then she gets to agonize over a folder full of a mishmash of worksheets, and a couple of workbooks, and what's today's agenda say to do, well that doesn't make sense, whups forgot the spelling book, what's this now, oh, refer to the 20 pound science text to answer the following questions on topics Mommy didn't need to deal with before Advanced Placement bio, but whatever. And math. Draw an array to figure out how to divide 72 by 9. Ok, but first, WTF.

Um, yeah.

So here we are and it's crystal clear that the kid is already cooked, stick a fork in her, she's done. So guess what, it doesn't take much before she's crying and moaning and standing before me with her giant wet eyes--the ones she usually whips out on these occasions are the ones that go, "I'm a 19th-century starving urchin in Merry Ole' England, crust of bread, gov'na?" Oh don't worry, I'm ready for it, she's not going to get the best of me. I gather myself up and start spouting in reasonable mommy language a bunch of horseshit when all I really want to say is Jesus H., Grace, if you'd just chill out and stick with it you'd be done in 20 minutes or less. We'd be on our 8th consecutive Sponge Bob by now and all would be right with the world. But by now the torture has been going on for well over an  hour and we flipping HATE each other. 

Oh, and by the way, if there's any after school activities the child is involved in that are, well, freeing and fun and good for blowing off steam...like maybe dancing or cheerleading or girl scouts or an awesome drawing club...well, then there's hell to pay.  So go ahead and multiply the above tale of woe times the square root of 152,000 to the nth power where "n" equals " a whole fucking lot, and there you have it (an equation which, by the way, will probably be covered in tomorrow's math homework, so yay).

Well, maybe this nonsense has got to stop. 

Teachers, I do not blame you. I truly, TRULY don't. No sarcasm. I know you're mired in a dizzying web of requirements and responsibilities, most of which bear no connection to anything resembling the teaching profession you believed you were signing up for as you worked your asses off for the pieces of paper that eventually allowed you to apply for your jobs. Requirements and responsibilities that take up so much of your time you're probably lucky if you're making minimum wage per diem, and how sick is that. Nobody can fault teachers for any of this...most school boards do not give tenure to rabblerousers.

I'm thinking more along the lines of, what if all of us who are responsible for the care and well-being of these kids took a stand to stop the madness. It would have to be all of us, or at least most. I'm going to need a lot of cooperation here. My voice in the wilderness is just a crazy nut. All our voices are...well a whole bunch of crazy nuts, which is scarier and therefore potentially more effective. Take Congress, for example (I know, am I a card or what...just wanted to make you laugh.)

Before I go, don't get me wrong, I know my daughter needs to learn to be responsible, and to be willing to tackle tasks that might not be the most immediately gratifying but worth it in the end, and to learn follow-through and feel the sense of accomplishment that goes along with it, and blah blah blah.  But something's wrong if it's like pulling teeth...out of an alligator...who has lockjaw.  Right?

Well, talk amongst yourselves and get back to me. Maybe we can start a movement.

For now, I have to go get my girl off the bus. And I'm really not in the mood for torture, so today might be all about the tea party.

Not THAT tea party, jeeze!

You guys are too funny.

Unnecessary Evil

The following is the (slightly edited for clarity) text of a public note I posted on Facebook. I'm posting it here so that people who follow my blog can see it as well, and pass it on as they see fit.

(P.S. I have no idea why blogger is doing this horrific white thing to the text, I can't get rid of it, sorry.)

Today was Calvin's CSE meeting where we meet with the committee for special education to map out his program for this summer and the following school year. And it went exactly right, just like last year. Excellent team working with Calvin in a setting that could have been designed with him in mind, providing all the services he needs. And if there are services we don't know to ask for, his teacher and therapists do. And not only do they provide all that at school, they help Mike and I learn to extend it into the rest of our lives as well. What a concept. That's what you get at the Orange/Ulster BOCES STRIVE program. And as an extra bonus, you walk out with the same number of gray hairs you walked in with, and you don't need to start popping blood pressure pills like Tic Tacs. 

I feel blessed and thankful beyond reason. 

And I really mean beyond reason, and maybe against all odds, because all of the above being said, the fact that I know so many families that are suffering and struggling and fighting tooth and nail for their kids' even most basic educational needs makes me seethe with a rage I can't describe to you without starting to cry.  I was warned, if your son needs BOCES, if he needs that restrictive environment, get him in there from the start or you're screwed. This was the warning I received from the parents who'd gone before and bought the load of crap about how appropriate the mainstream school setting would be for their child and are now suffering the consequences. I owe each and every one of these families a debt of gratitude I can never even begin to repay.

All this isn't just wrong, or sad, or tragic. It's criminal. And it quite literally breaks the law, although that doesn't seem to matter much, even for parents who try and use the courts to fight for their legal rights.  They don't win. They spend their life savings and they still don't win. An old family saying comes in handy here: IDEA law? That and a piece of toilet paper and you can wipe your ass with it.

I know that in each of their cases it's nothing but money and politics at fault. That's all. Which makes it so much worse that it makes me feel like I'm choking and can't get air. I can't breathe, and these are "other people's children." Yes, there are excellent programs. Excellent professionals. Appropriate settings. All available, all a reasonable bus ride away...all dangled in front of parents who spend their lives researching and finding these programs but who cannot get to access them. Not without selling their homes, and an internal organ or two. It feels like spite. But don't take it personally. It's just politics.

And you wanna know the best part? Here's the best part, my favorite effing part of all. As the autism epidemic soars, and nothing continues to be done about it, eventually it won't be some piddly margin of children that will need special education. It'll be almost all of them. And as for educators, instead of having to worry about losing their jobs because of standardized test scores--a reality so stupid it's hard to believe anyone coming up with it has an IQ any higher than that of a can of soup--they'll be retraining so that they can teach their students how to walk, talk, use a spoon and fork, follow one-step directions, use the toilet, and survive a medical check-up or a haircut without withstanding feelings of horror so bad that the rest of us are lucky we don't have to go through it and instead just get to look on helplessly.

Yep, maybe when we come to this inevitable state of things--with no end in sight with regard to the systematic poisoning of tiny babies' brains so that people who are already millionaires and billionaires can profit some more--maybe, just maybe, the necessary services will start being made available to all those who need them. And kids without disabilities will be so much in the minority, nobody will know what to do with them.

So yeah, that's all coming, but in the meantime, rage and grief and endless endless heartache for family after family. 

This note is public, so don't feel shy about sharing. All I know how to do is write. I don't know how to make the people who are responsible for this hideous damage stop doing what they are doing. But the more people who get pissed off about this the bigger the march on the White House Lawn will eventually be. And maybe that'll help.

Something has GOT to help.

(This is Cal with his phenomenal teacher...I'm spying from the sensory tent so as to observe oh so stealthily)

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out to Spite Your Face

I am one of those radical left-wing hippies whose outlandish liberal ideas are ruining this country, or so says Fox News, and they are fair and balanced—so while I may indeed be fair (the fairest one of all according to my talking mirror), I am certainly not balanced. Therefore definitely go with the Fox people and read no further if you think you'll be unduly offended at my fairly imbalancedness. Because if you do read on, are unduly offended, and say nasty things to me, I will ignore you. For, just like Jesus would do, the Jesus those Fox folks are so fond of, I will turn the other cheek. (That's one thing we've got in common, Fox and I, cuz Jesus is just alright with me.) And by “turn the other cheek,” what he meant of course, and I think we can all agree on this, was “Get outta my face, I don't brake for doucherockets.” To put it into the vernacular of the peasantry. Don’t believe me? Read your bible.

Anywho, I was going to wrap it up and tie it with a bow short and sweet in a Facebook status. But then I imagined how my page could possibly blow up with...um...strong opinions (canon to the right of me, cannon to the left) and I thought better of it.  Time and place and all that.

But let me say, it fascinates me no end how the slaughter of 20 children and 6 educators in a sleepytown public elementary school has triggered such heretofore unimaginable trauma…for our poor gun enthusiasts, I mean.  In case you haven’t noticed, many of these people are pooping their everloving pants.

And if there's anything I hate, it's to see people suffering, so gun people, hear my voice, gently, soothingly in your ear, like a lullabye:

You need to CHILL THE FUCK OUT.

First of all, let me tell you that I get it. I may be a pinko hippie liberal America-ruining 47 percenter, but I honestly do get it. And to show you how and why I get it, I will tell you a little story. (Because you love my little stories, do you not?)  It all began on a rifle range in my senior year of college back in the early 1990s. You see, in order to gain favor with my affection withholding, emotionally abusive, soul-sucking long-distance boyfriend (who also had a tiny penis), I satisfied my college PE requirement by taking riflery.

The gun I got to shoot was a single shot .22 caliber Winchester rifle. At first I couldn't get anywhere near the paper target and had nary a prayer at making a hole in it. It was like "Lucy Goes to Gun School." Oh that crazy redhead.

But within a few weeks, something completely unexpected happened. I became a veritable lethal weapon.  Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I did get way damn better at it with every single practice.  I learned the proper way to breathe and how to squeeze the trigger just right and I fell into an almost magically focused and calm place I didn’t normally have access to (as a self-loathing bulimic with a really mean boyfriend). Besides which, before long I was hitting the sumbitchin’ BULLSEYE. Or right up against it.  More than half the time. That's the head of a pencil eraser at 50 yards, folks, and if you know anything about my history of dexterity, agility, athleticism, and basic eye-hand coordination (ok, lack thereof), you'll appreciate what kind of accomplishment we're talking about here.

And you know what else? I’m not gonna lie. It felt fucking great. And exhilarating. And stimulating.  So much so that I had fantasies (that I can neither confirm nor deny acting out in real life) of throwing that big-armed, military-cut hulk of a gun instructor down right there on the range after class and having my wicked Annie Oakley way with him. Turns out that maybe my affection withholding, emotionally abusive, soul-sucking  long-distance boyfriend (the one with the tiny penis) wasn't the only one who was impressed with my newfound talent.  Or maybe not, because I repeat that the record should show that any extra-curricular activities between me and my (hot) gun instructor are a totally hypothetical tale for another totally hypothetical day.

The point is that I’m not completely talking out my ass here in that I may have the vaguest idea of why a maniacally radical right-wing fanatic with a radio show has gained national attention for wanting to have Piers Morgan deported.  Ok, no I don’t, I don’t have the vaguest idea why that is, specifically…but even so, I might understand your…passion, the littlest, tiniest bit.

But let’s come on back to a world where 26 priceless souls were gunned down in an instant by a psychopath who stole this extremely effective weaponry out of his soccer mom’s arsenal. In other words, let’s talk priorities.  Let’s talk about this fascinating outcry I’m hearing about how our power-mongering president is taking our guns away and creating a fascist state...just like Hitler did, and Stalin did, and Chavez did, and let me say this.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Come back to us, you nutbags. Please please come back to us, because you have gone off into the deep end of the crazy pool.  But let’s say you’re right.  Let’s pretend I’ve drunk whatever wackadoo Kool-aide you’re in on and I totally agree with you and we should make our stockpiles and hole ourselves up and wait for the day when we’re taken over by…um…our own government.  I might want to remind you that we live in a world where some overzealous yahoo somewhere can push the wrong button and an entire land mass can go up in mushroom smoke with an earth-shattering kaboom. So whatchya got, oh my dear Billy the Kid, that isn’t a pea-shooter by comparison? And how're you fixed for shooting missiles out of the sky, Wild Bill? Or maybe you’re ready to scramble your drones? Got that kind of fire power? If you do, don't tell anybody, because I'm pretty sure that's not covered under your belovedly revered and perversely fetishized sacred text known as the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution (by the way, there’s so much more in there than just your favorite part, you should read it sometime).

Oh but wait, I forgot. It's not just about the guns, per se…it’s about protecting your families. It's about defending yerself and yer kin aginst not only the pending rise of the EOE (Evil Obama Empire), but then there’s the bad guys who are taking over our streets and lurking at our windows in the darkest hours of the night and in our schoolyards in the bright light of day. And when President Barack Hussein Hitler Stalin Chavez Mao Tse Tung Obama comes for those guns, he’ll have to nuke them out of your cold dead vaporized fingers. That's what it's all about.

Or is it.

I will offer my humble opinion on the matter, like it or not. I’ve hung around your type enough to know the truth, and you know it too.

Three simple words.

You. Love Guns.

Can we just cut the crap and agree on something so obvious it's practically a cartoon? Like Harley riders love hundreds of pounds of steel vibrating between their thighs. Like nerds love Star Wars collectibles. Like I love my DVR.  (And double A batteries. And the coffee bean.) Can you PLEASE just admit it? In fact, I'd invite you to do more than that. What you ought to do is EMBRACE it. Fling open your windows and scream it to the masses. I LOVE MY GUNS!!!!

Because your refusal to openly admit this simple and utterly transparent fact, along with your insistence on pretending that you're all just a bunch of freedom-fighting Constitutional purists, is quite frankly constipating the whole works. You go on creating and perpetuating all these ludicrous tall tales of looming fascism, hoping against hope to scare the bejeezus out of all us dullards who don't share your enthusiasm for those greasy oily things that go bang. And don’t get me wrong, you’re hilarious, it makes for excellent comedy. But the trouble is that there are all these freaking lawmakers who care how you vote. And that translates into disaster, because no matter how much compassion and lovingkindness there is (and there TRULY is) in the real world that we (relatively) non-insane people live in, with millions of souls—left, right, and center—who would do anything humanly possible to prevent the slaughter of even one more innocent, the noise you make threads us into a continuous loop of idiocy that strips any of us of adequate power to make even the smallest constructive step forward. A constructive step that might make it so that I don’t have to turn on my TV one morning and have to spend the next several weeks in the fetal position in a corner of the couch sobbing in unrelenting empathy over immeasurable tragedy that the craziest amongst you are doing your best NOT to prevent.  I mean seriously, whose side are you on?

Can I tell you how much all this pisses me off? 

So let’s all get real.  The second amendment, that old friend, that eternal safeguard against tyranny, it ain't goin nowhere. No matter that the well-organized militia called for in the 1770s is a complete anachronism in today's world of assault rifles, air to ground missiles, nuclear warheads, the Death Star, and whatever else they got percolating out there in the Arizona desert--you still have nothing to fear. How can I be so cocky about this? Be reasonable. If we pinko commie hippies can't even get an equal rights amendment passed, and if the most stellar female is not allowed to make as much money as the stupidest ass of a male, and if we still have gays and lesbians that aren’t allowed to get married in the land of the free and the home of the brave, do you REALLY think we can budge ole number 2?  Mark my words, it's in stone, you can unclench your bowels. I’m even pretty sure that if you read really close you’ll find it nuanced into that one that repeals prohibition, just for good measure.  Because what goes better with the reinstatement of liquor than a happy reminder of your right to shoot rounds into the air while you hoot and holler like an overcaffeinated Yosemite Sam.

So how about you all cool your jets. I’ll repeat it, when we pry it from your cold, dead, fingers, yes, absolutely, you got it--so go clean it and take it apart and put it back together again and oil it up and wipe it down and stroke it and love it and rub your lips up against it all you want (you do so, don’t lie). It’s yours til death do you part.

But about that...is there really nothing...NOTHING we can do to help those cold dead fingers not be the ones belonging to a bunch of kindergartners and moviegoers and mall shoppers? Do you really believe there is NO need to do anything different when it comes to…all this gun crap? Is it really a bad thing to make it harder to get weapons like the Columbine and Aurora and Newtown psychos got hold of?  Is there really no call for any changes to be made? Should a garden variety mental patient be able to walk into a gun show and stroll away with a firearm that can spray enough bullets per second to wipe out his entire family before he can say "Wendy I'm home"?  

How come it’s easier to get a gun out of Walmart than an over-the-counter decongestant?  It’s true, take it from me. Uh oh, look out for the crazy-eyed broad with the stuffy nose, that box of Sudafed she just signed out from behind the counter  might be the last remaining ingredient she needs to blow up the meth lab bubbling away in her filthy kitchen.

Columbine and Aurora and Newtown and all the others have been tragedies where a few people who were mentally ill or demonically possessed or a combination thereof did horrible things with guns that they should not have been able to get their hands on in a million years. And instead of the appropriate unilateral rallying of an entire nation dedicated to one common goal—that it NEVER EVER EVER happen again—instead what we’ve got is a bunch of maniacs screaming and yelling that the Nazis are coming and Obama is Hitler reincarnate and we’re all gonna die we’re all gonna die cuz they’re coming to get our guns.

Have the lunatics completely taken over the asylum or does anybody else see anything effed up about this?

Seriously, while the number of bad people with guns in their hands may be infinitesimal compared to the number of you law abiding citizens who wouldn't harm a soul (at least not on purpose, because I'm sure at least a few of you are useless klutzes with shrapnel lodged in at least one foot…or maybe in your elderly hunting buddy’s face…whatever), isn't any single person who is gunned down by a lunatic one too many?  Isn't it? Or does that apply only if that person happens to be someone you know and love?  What if it’s your sweet old Grampy that’s got a face fulla buckshot because he picked the wrong sociopathic Vice President of the United States as a hunting buddy? What’s your answer then?  Does it have to happen to you before you give a shit?  Seems that way.  And that is this girl’s definition of an abomination.

A few years back my husband and I were in our local mall.  We were 8 or so months pregnant with our first baby, and we were there for the sole purpose of finding some snazzy pjs to take to the hospital when the big day finally came. When we’d finished up at Preggos R Us and stepped outside the building, there was police tape everywhere and it was a while before we were allowed to walk to our car. Because in the particular section of the lot where we were parked, someone had just shot and killed an Old Navy employee. 

Yep, turns out the 40-year-old shooter thought his girlfriend might be in a relationship with her boss, a 22-year-old store manager…so he did what every unstable nutbag with a rifle might do. He killed him.  A few minutes before I, my husband, our unborn child, and countless others strolled on out there into the line of fire.  

The killer used a Marlin .22-caliber bolt-action rifle. Probably a lot like the one I used in my college class. And incidentally, although I'm sure you already know this, you don't need a permit to purchase or carry one of these in New York State. You don't need to register it. You don't need any kind of a license to own or operate one. (Google it if you don’t believe me.) And it just so happens that right down the street from this murder, the one we almost walked into, is a store called Gander Mountain, a handy place where you can have your pick of a gun like this and walk right out the door with it. How insanely convenient.  I do not know where he got his gun, the news reports did not say. But it’s not a far stretch to believe that he walked in and out of the store, drove a minute or two up the street to the mall, and then all that was left for this guy (who had a history of violent behavior and suicide threats) was to park his car, wait for his target to get off work, and shoot him point blank in the chest with a gun that was easier for him to purchase than it is for me to fill my ritalin prescription.

Too bad.

Good thing this kind of thing so seldom happens, right NRA? Well guess what. Once isn't seldom enough. Not for that 22-year-old. Not for his family. Not for any of us.

You may not be willing to admit that something's loose.  But the rest of us know.

Make it stop, or at least get out of the way of those who want to try. 

It’s already too heartbreakingly late.

Dear You...

If you're reading this, it no doubt means you've had something to do with helping me care for and teach the two biggest miracles possible in my life. For me, those miracles are named are Grace Rosemary and Calvin Michael Stroh-Simon (the Magnificents). But you can think of anyone's miracles, yours and everyone's, along with mine as you read my note to you.

All week long I've meant to drop you a line and send this cyber hug and feel you hug me in return.  I'm having a hard time handling this week, and I know I'm not alone.  But I've been feeling FIERCE love and appreciation for the people into whose loving hands I place my miracles when my hands don't have enough hands.  I hope you're feeling that love on an enormous scale, and I hope it somehow makes such a painful and frightening time to be on this planet maybe a little less painful and frightening.

I found myself getting a little...let's call it "vehement" on Facebook right after "the incident."  I kept seeing and hearing over and over about how the problem is that we don't let God into our schools, and I guess by extension into our lives, and that's why we're in the mess we're in. And I suddenly knew that I had to get something off my chest before I lost my mind. Not to hurt anybody's feelings, or to be mean spirited about anybody's belief. I hope no one took it that way. It just felt necessary for my sanity, such as it is.  I'll share it here, it might resonate for you:

I don't want to do this. I really don't want to do this. But I'm going to do it. I'm going to come out and say that if I hear one more suggestion that this tragedy is the result of a banishment of God from our schools I will scream. God is not absent from schools. My children are not led through any so-called prayers in school, but they are surrounded by love and kindness every day that they are there, and THAT is God, folks. So let's stop using this horrific event to piss and moan over some imagined attack on organized religion running rampant in our world. Some of the most saintly people you will ever meet don't know the words to any commonly sanctioned prayers and have never set foot into any houses of worship. This horrific event was the result of a person losing complete touch with who he was, losing complete touch with reality, losing complete touch with Love. Let's just get it straight, shall we, and get to the business of creating a world where we take care of each other on a consistent basis because we're all freaking HUMANS no matter where our parents decided to take us on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays while we were growing up. (Steps down from soapbox a little sheepishly but couldn't keep her mouth shut.)

Some of my friends have asked if they could share this post because it matches how they are feeling, and I am completely comfortable with that. It's not as if words are adequate, or that there's any sense to be made of what's happened. Sometimes I even feel guilty about the level of devastation I'm feeling.  After all, what right do I have to walk around shellshocked and agonized? "My" people weren't there.

But if I'm feeling this way, and if you are too...somewhere deep down we must know something that we don't know we know about who "our people" actually are. So if you're wondering why you're waking up in the mornings like you slept the night through with a few tons of bricks on your chest, this pesky inner knowing might have something to do with it.

Maybe it feels familiar, something like how you starting feeling back in September 2001 and haven't really been able to shake since.

Or after seeing those people, lives that numbered into the 6-digits, washed out into the Indian Ocean while we were still unwrapping Christmas presents back in 2004.

Or what about August 2005--were you like me, were you watching, right on your own TV screens, thousand upon thousands of abandoned souls waiting on their roofs for help that never came right here in the United States of America? Feeling vaguely sorry if, like me, you'd never made it to New Orleans, because so far as you could tell, it might be gone forever?

How were you doing while we were all looking in on Japan last year as it drowned in the Pacific Ocean, and had to keep reminding ourselves that it wasn't a movie we were watching, that the participants were not actors?

How about the year before while we all watched Port-au-Prince crumble? Did you seriously consider adopting a Haitian child, and maybe actually do so?

Have you been in a movie theater since July 20th just this past summer? Maybe to take your kids to the latest 3d extravaganza? Did it feel different than ever before like it did for me?  I didn't want to have to mentally plan an executable escape route while watching the previews before Hotel Transylvania, I love the previews, but I did what I had to do.

And what about back in October when you heard there was a woman out in Staten Island whose preschoolers were ripped out of her arms and washed away forever, while her first-responder husband was elsewhere saving the lives of other children, and all because someone wouldn't open his door and let them in. We're told that the man in the house turned his back to his sliding glass door to make it easier on himself as she pounded and screamed and begged for help. I wonder if that worked for him. I wonder if he's had a moment's peace since. I wonder if I can ever be good enough to wrap my head around the compassion I need to feel for that man, maybe above all others, or else accept that I'm a total hypocrite.

Do you remember where you were when you saw the first pictures out of Columbine?  I do too. Cancun. My first and only Caribbean vacation. I was hoping I wasn't understanding right, but unfortunately my Spanish is good and I couldn't unhear what I'd heard.

Maybe you're like me and one of your dearest friends is from Syria...and while you can call your mother, or email her, or drive a piddly 60 miles to have her hold you, your friend is lucky if she can somehow get word that her mom and her dad and her sisters and her brothers and untold numbers of family members that are lodged in her heart are living safely in a home that is still standing.

I could go on. By now you're probably begging me to stop.

Minute by minute in these times we're living in, times when we can see human suffering on the other side of the world in HD so vivid it's hardly discernible from what you can touch in the room you're sitting in, I'm feeling the need to get the word out, in any way I can, that not only are we here for each other, but that being here for each other has become mandatory. Not some nicey nice sounding Hallmark platitude. Nope. Inarguably and permanently mandatory. And guess what,  we no longer have the luxury of being shy about it. You don't get to feel self-conscious or tentative about it anymore, not if you want the world to survive another winter. Sorry, but those days are gone. You can't even hate people who cut you off in traffic and do stupid, STUPID crap on the roads, not anymore, not if you know what's good for you. You have to unlearn the lie that they're just idiots in other cars that you'll never see and don't mean anything to you. This may be the hardest thing you ever teach yourself. And by "you" I of course mean "me." But I think you're catching my drift.

I'm not talking Nobel peace prize winning behavior either, that's for sure. I don't know about you, but I can't do that.  But I can smile at a bank teller before I  take the money and run. If you're funny, make a harried retail worker at a check-out counter laugh by making a goofy joke.  And for the love-a Mike,  for goshsakes, how about some eye contact while we're at it.  We have become so comfortable not doing this...comfortable with saving our kindness for "our people," like greedy grasping misers who only have so much good will to spare, so better to save it for the people we have to live and work with or we'll run out.  We've become so unused to connecting with people this way that we're almost embarrassed when we do it. But I have a theory that you can't make eye contact with people and not remember that they are "your" people  -- maybe at levels so deep that you don't notice that you know this,  but that's ok, it still works. It's become as vital as clean air and drinkable water that we get this straight, hasn't it?  And so many of us know this already. You know even if you don't know you know. I don't know anything you don't know, I just happen to be more verbose than most. I should be baking right now, I have 6 batches of from-scratch unbaked cookie dough waiting in my 'frige. But instead I'm sitting here running off at the mouth to you. Because for me, written words help get me there. For you, it could be anything that gets you there.  So song as you get there.

If you want to pass these thoughts along, if it feels comfortable to you, go ahead.  Whether it's to someone who works in school and doesn't know how they're making it through the day, or someone who knows and loves people who work in school and don't know how they're making it through the day...well, that doesn't leave anybody out, does it? I guess that's my point.

All my love and support and appreciation and hugs and even kisses (restraining orders be damned),

Your friend,

Tracy

p.s. If you're sick of everything being so heavy and you can't take it anymore and need a break, read the post right before this one about how and why I fell on my ass in my shower the other day, you will laugh at me and it will help.
http://everlovingmess.blogspot.com/2012/12/from-tracys-little-book-of-perils-of.html

From Tracy's Little Book of the Perils of Autism...

Peril number 52,052 as follows:

Ahem.

I'll keep this short and sweet, because I'm on a few different painkillers and just a little bit of cough syrup (and I don't have a cough, just wanted a nice li'l chaser).

If you have an  autistic child who likes to play with gooey textured things, and SO many do, there may come a day when he or she will sneak away for a few seconds and fill your bathtub with invisible hair conditioner.

Or what I now like to call the gooey textured version of carbon monoxide.

So, rule number one: Enough already with the dye-free, fragrance-free, safe for your body and the environment crap. What are you, a fucking hippie? Ok, fine, be that way. If you want to end up a confused, wet, naked, slippery, rageful, hot, horizontal mess in your bathtub, just go ahead and BE THAT WAY, you have my blessing, I've warned you, go with God, yer gonna need er.

Now I know how alluring this sounds to you. So go ahead, picture it, get it out of your systems, perverts. I'll give you a minute to slobber over yourselves or I'll never get your attention back.

[A minute.]

Good, all done, so onward.

I don't know why he's trying to kill me. I seriously do not get it. He doesn't know how to unlock the refrigerator yet, so I truly do not understand.

The best part of the plot is that less than 24 hours previous to the great conditioner caper, he'd done it with shampoo. Unlike the conditioner, the shampoo had color. And fragrance. STRONG fragrance. (Yeah, this one was NON-non-toxic, there's only so much I can afford, what do I look like, Rockefeller? Shut the fuck up.)

So when the whole upstairs began to reek like a French whorehouse, I got suspicious. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but a thick layer of glistening blue Smurf-jizz coating my bathtub.

(Oh don't cringe, grow up, Smurfs do it too, it's just natural...and once Smurfette wised up and moved to Provincetown, well, that's a whole nuther story for a whole nuther day...luckily most of the boy Smurfs are gay, and don't act all shocked like you didn't know this already, or as if there's anything wrong with it, it's 2012 for Smurf's sake.)

Anywho, get this, I CLEANED it. Immediately. Don't think I haven't forgotten the incident...that fateful afternoon in our adorable little Pelham apartment, 8 short weeks before my wedding when I almost died or at least almost became a quadraplegic because I stood on one leg to shave the other one (still have flashbacks, I sit down for that now). I mean, you all know me well enough at this point, I'm not one for wasting time cleaning up messes that ain't goin nowheres, but I got on this one, tout suite, Smurf-jizz abated, all clear.

But then...

Ha, said all the evil sprites and pixies that revel in my embarrassing naked mishappery. Ha ha ha ha HA, they all said.

So, in closing, quick note to my mother, who will probably read this at some point. I know what you will say, excellent mother. That there is absolutely NOTHING funny about this story. That I could have been killed, brained on the soap holder as it crashed against my unwitting skull. And without even having shaved my wintertime monkey legs, that's how they'd've found me, the unkindest cut of all. All true.

However, since my brain, or what's left of it, has somehow, against all odds, managed to remain on the inside of said skull, you'd better all be giggling your asses off by now, or the chain of misadventures I like to call my life will not have fulfilled its holy purpose.

As for now, I'm off to find a nice safe place to sit and shave my legs.

[Oh, and Mommy...I'm really sorry I said Smurf-jizz to the whole world-wide-world...love ya, me.]

Today I Hate Myself Because...

...ah, what a long and exhaustive list, but just one item for now.

I can't help my son.

When he's hurt, I usually don't know where he's hurting or why or how it happened. I have to Sherlock Holmes my way through and hope for the best.

And when he wants or needs something he can't get or do for himself, which is just about everything, more than half the time I have no everloving idea what it is.

He tries to tell me these things, tries and tries and tries. The longer I don't know what to do or how to help, the more desperate he gets so that soon he just starts scrolling through his words, pulls out all he's got in there...milk, juice, downstairs, cookie, potty, socks, pizza, popcicle, bed (or bread, never sure), cheese, movie (or mommy, hard to tell, and if it's movie, which one, there are hundreds), jump, pretzel, open (and I go "open what?" to which he replies, pleadingly, "open what?").

And the real bitch of it is that maybe he doesn't want or need any of these things, he rejects them one by one as I try to make it right for him, to fix whatever's wrong, whateverthehell it is. He wants something, he needs something, something that only I can get for him, and if he just starts rattling off all the words he has maybe his idiot brain dead mother will finally hit on it, like the old story of the monkey left alone with the typewriter long enough to plunk out War and Peace.

Sometimes he drags me over to the couch, stands on it so we're the same height, and tries to make me lift him up and hold him like a baby, rock him back and forth, swing him around. He weighs seventy-two pounds, seventy-two very dense, very static pounds. Sometimes I oblige him, but once isn't enough and sooner or later I have to stop. This is met with great dissatisfaction. I try to explain that if I end up in the hospital in traction, then we'll really be screwed. He clearly believes I'm bluffing.

Sometimes it's like tonight, where he screams and cries and bellows and keens until I want to ram my head into a concrete block as hard as I can so I can't hear it anymore. Tonight Grace has just about had it too, stick a fork in her, she's done, so she's yelling on top of it, trying to yell over him. Oh the cacophony. I hear myself muttering things like "Jesus have mercy" and meaning it, lapsed Catholic or not, like the atheist in the foxhole that is suddenly more devout than the Pope.  I tell her that her screaming is making it worse but she doesn't care, she's been a good sport for as long as she could and enough already so could he just put a sock in it so she can watch Spongebob in peace.

I feel the anger, the scary kind, rising up like a giant wave, and I want to explode at the both of them, but mostly at him, to scream at him to shut the goddamn fuck up. Takes everything I have not to let it rip and shake the house. Every time I take the big breath in to let out my own earthshattering kaboom, I breathe out instead, as many times as I can.

Finally got to the point where I'd exhausted the amount of times I could breathe it out and the kaboom was coming, ready or not.  Everybody'd better hold on to something.

But then I looked into his face, which I suddenly realized I'd been avoiding.

Sadness. Not bratty tantrummy squalling. Just a deep ocean of sadness.

So that weird sound you heard a little while ago that you couldn't identify? That was mostly likely my heart cracking in half.

His mouth was doing that thing it does when he's trying so unbelievably hard to sort it out himself, to soldier through, to find an answer on his own, because clearly help's not coming. With eyes grown so huge and earthen and wet they could drown me like quicksand. No wonder I didn't want to look.

My child has worked harder in his almost seven years than most people do in a lifetime. Just to manage being here, in this world, with all its inescapable assaults and insults, its intolerable mayhem. One goddamn imposition after another, as my grandfather liked to say.

Guess what, though. We just got back from the bathroom. He took a crap the size of a groundhog,  And in this very moment, I have never seen a happier child. Dancing feet, laughing eyes, singing his wordless singsongy songs. Suddenly putting his face right up to mine, eye to eye, impish and elfin and free, smiling like the sun.

Oh my Cal.

If You Can Do Nothing Else...

People of the world, I have two words for you. Then I'll have a whole lot more, of course, because I do tend to go on.  But first just two, and here they are:

Be kind.

As I watch the media coverage (yes, I have power, don't hate me, I feel guilty enough I promise), I find myself walking around the house and muttering those two words, like a mantra, like a prayer.  Be kind.  Be kind.  Be kind.

I'm afraid of a lot of things. Not losing power on Monday meant I heard and saw, in real time, the things I was the most afraid of at that moment. Trees crushing people, a father in Rockland County, two little boys in Upper Westchester, right in their homes, gone in a second. A mother and her two babies in the rushing waters in Staten Island...I can't go on with that one, I don't need to, you've all heard it, we've all heard it and can't unhear it, can't unsee it through eyes open or closed.

So every time the house shook and groaned that night, I felt my body do that thing like a cat must do right before it pounces. Because it knew, my body that is, that it had to be ready to throw itself on top of those two small ones, those two little beings that own my heart...and it had to be ready to do it with or without my conscious participation.

As I said, I'm afraid of a lot of things.  But right now, the thing I'm most afraid of is people forgetting who they are. Forgetting that we are all made of exactly the same stuff, all on different roads that are all leading to exactly the same place, and that whether we've met or not, we're...

How to do this without being nauseously trite, cliche, churchy, Pollyana-ish, irritating. I don't want to annoy people, things are bad enough.  Let's try it this way:

One day, probably well more than a decade ago, I was having lunch with my parents at a McDonalds. I'm pretty sure it was the one in Mamaroneck, NY (much of which may still be underwater right now). I have no idea why we were doing this that day, it's not something we did much of once I'd grown up and moved out, we must have been at some event or something together and stopped for a bite.

A young couple with a baby sat at a nearby table. The baby was maybe a year or so, maybe a year and a half, old enough to eat some fries in her high chair, and one of those fries must have gone down the wrong way. Didn't seem like much at first, but after a few seconds of patting her back the baby's sounds started to change, and the mom and dad started looking like you never want to see any mom or dad look.

Before I knew what was happening, my mother, a registered nurse and unregistered supermom, had gotten out of her seat.  In what I remember as one swift, graceful movement, she took the baby from that other mother, held her with one arm so the baby's head was angled downward diagonally, thumped her tiny upper back between her shoulder blades while holding her that way, and then we finally heard what we were all begging God for, the outraged cries of one pissed-off baby.

At that, my mother handed the child back to the grateful parents, who were falling over themselves as they tearfully tried to express their thanks in their broken English.  And then it was over. Kind of.

I sat in that spot where I'd been frozen those few seconds it took for this world-shaking event to occur as I watched my mom come back to her seat. Then, for lack of anything else to do, and at a loss for words, we all started eating again. Silently. As if nothing had just happened. Kind of.

But as I sneaked looks at my mother between bites of my Quarter Pounder with Cheese, I saw her face do that thing--that thing when it's fighting itself not to cry, which to this day hurts my solar plexus like some giant brute just gave it a good sharp elbow. She and my dad were looking at each other, and I saw that his face was doing it too.  And then it hit me.  They were remembering.

They'd been here before. It was Zwieback toast instead of french fries. (BTW, don't give Zwieback toast to your babies, eat it yourself, it's great dunked in coffee.)

And instead of that stranger baby with the blocked windpipe, it was me.

Yep, I'm here today to babble endless stream-of-consciousness at you because of one simple fact: After trying everything you're supposed to try to save a choking baby, methods my mother could do in her sleep, my father finally did that last-resort thing you're not ever supposed to do because you risk lodging the blockage further. But my face was blue-black at this point, and it was time for the Hail Mary play.  He reached down my throat with his finger and scooped that chunk of baby-death-cookie right out of my windpipe.

I'll bet that back then, a thousand years or so before, I sounded just as pissed as that other baby.

But the point is this: At that moment in McDonalds, there was no "other" baby, was there?. What my mother did without even thinking was demonstrate what we ALL know in the deepest parts of us.

There are no "other" babies. There are no "others" period.

As we drive around right now, it's going to be easy to hate each other. Believe me, I get it. This one will try to cut you in line to get to the pump faster.  That other one will look at you funny.  Some other one will shoot her big mouth off because she's been idling in line for 4.37 hours and the driver in front of her just got the last drop of fuel available for miles. He's selfish, she's inconsiderate, he's texting and not paying attention, move up already, moron!!!!

And guess what else.  The news media will show you these moments.  Moments like this are nice and loud, they draw the camera's attention. They tell a story. We're all going to hell in a handbasket, sleep in your car or your gas'll get siphoned, folks are snapping left and right, punching each other out on Main Street, every man for himself, people suck. Not a pretty picture.

But is it the real picture? Because what about the moment where one guy notices the harried woman pulling her hair out in the minivan with the seven screaming kids, and he decides to let her in ahead of him in line?  You're never going to hear about that guy. But he's going to do it, and it's going to make her feel like she'll be able to make it through the day without ending up in a padded room drooling into a cup. And he's not the only guy who's going to do it, thousands will do this kind of thing. You won't hear about it. It's not loud.

Then there's that  woman who sees the ancient looking man with Jersey plates who doesn't have a clue about how to pump gas because it's against the law to do that in his state and the last time he did it he had hair. Where's the lever? What's with these buttons? Swipe what?  Instead of being outraged that he's making an interminable wait even more interminable, this woman will go up to him and gently help him cope. She'll show him how to run his card, what buttons to push. He'll be so relieved that he knows he'll never forget her.  PS, this will happen over and over again too. You won't see it on the news nearly as much as you'll see the angry mobs who think they're in a Mad Max movie. But KNOW this, friends. It is happening. More than the rage and flying fists. People are helping each other. Even if it's just that wry smile from one to another that says, "Man, this sucks."  Lives are saved because of acts this simple, acts that ripple and ripple beyond your wildest dreams.

Most people will remember who they are in these times.  Please be one with most people.

Be kind.