Monday, December 17, 2012

Shutting Down

It is hard to move. The end of the semester. The beginning of snow. I sit here at the kitchen table on my normal Monday morning mode without any urgency to move. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is there any point in moving?
Oh, there is. Max is here. He can't find his hammer. He would like some juice. A smoothie. Some pistachios. I will get up and get him those things, look for his hammer, find another Curious George. Trey to stop crying although it doesn't concern him too much. The computer always makes his mama cry.
I should leave the computer. I should go sit and watch Curious George and drink a smoothie and stop looking at news that only makes me feel like no matter what I do, it will end in collapse. The mother. It's always the mother's fault. She's the one who kept the guns. She's the one who coddled him. Should I make Max find his own hammer? She's the one who didn't coddle him enough? Should I run out to the store to get a new hammer now that we can't find the yellow and orange one. And then there's the Huff Post article going around called "I am Adam Lanza's mother" written by a mother who feels threatened by the violence of her child. And then the internet finds her blog and tells her to read this particular book. They find her blog and say she's always threatening her kids with jail time. Either way, it doesn't diminish her call for better mental health care. Even if she's a terrible mother, there is still so little help for terrible mothers with sometimes terrible children. Who knows how terrible a child can be? Only a terrible mother would ask that question. Just love them. As if. Is love finding their hammer or making them find their own? Max is almost three. Maybe he should make his own smoothie. Maybe I should not let him watch George except George is the one who makes him want a smoothie, which is better for him than the Skittles I shouldn't have let him eat but did or the Spiderman I shouldn't have let him watch but did.
I told Zoe straight up about the shooting. Not to scare her. She should be scared but not to scare her. I let her listen to the voicemail from the superindendent of the school district so she knows how serious this is. And how common. It happens every day. Today, three new, separate shootings. The Sandy Hook massacre eclipsed the mall shooting at Clackamas Town Center last week. Zoe is now clued into the news the way we are clued into the news. It washes over like a Facebook scroll until you stop crying. Who looks at the pictures of those Kindergartners? People who cry in front of computers and do nothing to find the hammers of their children who may well need them to build something. Maybe they'll figure out to build something new. Because this is getting old. Older than the news. Older than guns. Older than mothers. Older than not knowing what to do.

7 comments:

Lisa B. said...

Wish I could sit with you and talk about this and cry a little. Just: I wish I could.

Sarah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah said...

Thanks for writing it out. I'm not up to writing it out myself. Too sad.

Nik said...

Me too, Lisa B. Crying at the computer seems like such a waste. Miss you my friend! At least, via your blog, I get a good approximation of you.

Nik said...

Thanks Sarah. At least the computer is good for bringing you to me!

Ben McClendon said...

I'm still in shock, too. Your party was the only time I've been able to really let it go lately, and I think it had something to do with all of the children laughing and how gracious a host you are. So thank you.

Now I'm back to crying at the computer screen, too. It's a grief I don't feel I have a solid claim to, but there it is anyway. I've been thinking a lot about how the way we've been handling mental health, guns, how we think of each other in this society, etc. just isn't good enough any more. How the same old arguments in response to what happened at Sandy Hook are no longer digestible. I have lost patience with rationalizations. It is time to build something new, but I don't know what it looks like yet. So David gets some extra affection when he stumbles upon me crying at the computer, trying to express these things because I don't know what else to do with them. Thank you for posting; I've felt like the only one who struggles to handle this.

Nik said...

Ben, I followed your posts on Facebook on Friday. They were helpful. And true. The Onion piece on "just fuck it all to hell," was the closest to hitting the nail on the head. I just hope that here it is Monday and people are still talking about it. Maybe that's new. Maybe that will make us remember. Or, even do something.