The onslaught of stress that is senior year continues unabated. The overload of difficult classes on the new schedule, the lack of sleep, the too-many practices, and deadlines just go on and on.
There have been some milestones met. He got in the music application for first-choice school a good 24 hours before the deadline. (He is not particularly happy with his recording, but it will have to do). This weekend is the annual band-choir holiday concert, a school tradition, and a wonderful, beautiful event. I had hoped to have a post on that, as it is one event that I will miss terribly next year.
But of course, current events have rendered all personal stresses moot and irrelevant. I will not link to other posts on this atrocity nor recount any details; everyone who might be reading this knows what I am talking about. If by chance you have stumbled on this blog in some cyberspace archive in the future, just look up Connecticut 12-14-12 and you will understand.
I do have things to say, however. First of all this comes against a weird backdrop of local events. On Thursday, everyone got recorded phone messages from the school district. After some strange ramblings about the last day of school, the winter solstice, and the Mayan calendar on December 21st, the message finally got to the point that rumors were running rampant in all the schools about violence on that day. A call that was probably meant to reassure parents they were on top of things ended up being rattling because of poor execution. Talked with another parent about it that night at the dress rehearsal and she was rattled too. December 14th was also apparently part of the rumor mill. And so then the next day, this happened. (And the China thing too, in case you missed it. The difference being those 22 kids were only wounded, the weapon of choice being a knife).
In my time as a mother, I have witnessed numerous of these horrific events. My youngest, this senior I write about now, was exactly six months old at the time of the Oklahoma City bombings. Remember that photo carrying the body of the bloody, dead toddler from the day care center? We were on kid-centric family vacation to Washington D.C. to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Air & Space Museum the day of the Jonesboro, Arkansas shooting (remember those two - they themselves were just kids). I have a college friend whose first child was born the day of the Columbine shootings only a suburb or two away from Littleton. And there was 9/11 - the first month for all of us in the new neighborhood to go to a brand new school, all the moms walking their kids to the bus stop. We had heard the first inklings about it that morning and talked a little about what we had heard, but still all seemed okay. When we went to meet the bus that afternoon, we just stood in stunned silence. I first heard about Virginia Tech while teaching a college class, and while I don't like to out my location on this blog, we are just down the road from the site of another major university shooting. And on and on.
I realize 9/11 is fundamentally different from all these other atrocities, in terms of both scale and intent. But really, isn't the effect the same? An act of terrorism that makes us fearful of living our everyday lives? What did we do after 9/11, after memorial services and the shock was over? We followed our president into two wars, we watched while major legislation was passed to enhance national security despite the very legitimate civil liberties concerns it raised. We tolerate all sorts of inconvenience now so those "others" won't get us.
Where is this kind of action about these shootings? Why are we not demanding a no-holds barred, everything on the table conversation by ourselves, our politicians, our news media, our communities? Why are we not angry? I already see on my Facebook feed the familiar pattern. Everyone will post a "what is the world coming to" status. A "our hearts and prayers go out the families" status. Several "Remember" photo memes are going around. We are being told to hug our kids, be grateful, be appreciative, pray. Total strangers will send cards and leave teddy bears and flowers and light candles. And then . . . we will feel we have done what we can. After all, what can we do? We will not act. We will allow ourselves to be helpless.
We need to turn our grief and shock into anger. Not the kind of internalized anger that led to this. But anger that fuels action, that demands change, that won't back down from asking the hard questions. We owe it to our children. We owe it to those children. We owe it to those parents. This is not a tragedy. This is an atrocity. What are you going to do?
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