Apolitical no more: ramblings on the gun control conversation

     For as long as I can remember, I have tried to remain apolitical. I've come up with every excuse in the  book to try and justify this attitude: no one tells the truth anyway, there are always two sides to a story and it's just too overwhelming to begin. The truth is, I am too afraid of polarizing my family, friends and acquaintances by picking a side or a battle. I haven't had enough faith that the people who love will me will do so no matter how I feel about women's rights, the debt ceiling or gun control. But, after reading so many posts on facebook and hearing so many things from so many different groups and individuals, I feel like it's time to let my own voice be heard, scary as that may be.
    What I have to say is that I'm tired of people presenting only two sides to the issue of gun control, only two possible solutions. I'm tired of both sides' stances that if you are not for us, you're against us. According to everything I've heard, if you support any kind of a weapons ban, you are trying to take away every single gun in the United States. Conversely, If you believe hunters should be allowed to have weapons, kept unloaded and locked in a safe, you are anti-gun control. These only two sided arguments are ridiculous and one of the many reasons our political system and country has become so divided. What happened to the voices of the majority of us who are somewhere in between?
   As it turns out, my voice is one of those. I have a husband who hunts, legally and safely. And, even though I despise guns, we have guns in our home. As a responsible gun owner, my husband keeps them unloaded in a safe. I also have taught my  kids what to do should they be on a playdate and see a gun, which is to run and tell a parent as soon as possible. This kind of warning might seem ridiculous to those of you who do not have friends who hunt but where I live, I think it is almost as important as teaching them about stranger danger.
    On the other hand, I have no clue why someone, even an avid hunter, needs a weapon that can fire many rounds in quick succession. My husband has given me a quick tutorial of what "semi-automatic" and assault means and the gradations are too minute for me to detail here. Also, in truth, he lost me when he started talking about the old rifles, which were still semi-automatic, as far back as the 1800's. Anyway, my point is, law enforcement and not the public should have access to the highest firepower in our country. If they do not, they will be at a loss when they are required to enter a dangerous situation in order to save human lives. For me, it is as simple as that.
    Now, there are those who say that government is the enemy and it is from them we  need to protect ourselves. For these people, I have no answer, except that an entire aresenal of guns in your home would have no effect if our government's military, the most heavily armed in the world, decided they wanted you out of your home. They have tanks, bombs and missiles that could subdue even the largest uprising of private gun owners. So, if our governement pulls a Hitler, or a Mugabe, we are screwed. Sorry, but that's the truth.
    At long last, here is the crux of my argument. All of our conversations about gun control, no matter which side you're on, are pointless without taking on our bigger problems. Lack of education, lack of positive opportunities, mental health stigma and poverty. We cannot think what happened to those innocent victims in Newburgh will not happen again if we simply make stricter gun control laws. Guess who will still have guns: all of the people who do so illegally, which are the cause of the majority of the 9,000 gun deaths a year in our country. Although I am a proponent of a crackdown on illegal guns, much like the war on drugs, it will be largely unsuccessful. There will still be people with unregistered guns who use them for violence. There will still be people who will break in to a safe and steal a gun in order to do violence. Let's try and stop them before they get to that point.
   Create and support programs for parents of children with mental health issues, create and support after school programs that give access to the possibility of a better life for those from troubled homes, educate teachers and caregivers as to what symptoms of mental illness are, give people a chance to live their own best life, regardless of where they come from. The positive fallout from creating these kinds of programs goes well beyond gun violence to address things like suicide, crime, domestic violence and poverty levels.
   So, I say to all of us, don't stop the conversation if Congress enacts a new gun control law like the Brady Bill was in its era. Keep it going. Get to the root of the problem which began far before a young man stole his mother's guns and used them to end lives.

If I have one piece of advice for new moms, it is this. Write everything down: every cute word your little one says, every hilarious poop episode, every time you cry with joy at something that they have said or done. Because, although it might not seem like it in the moment, you will forget. After all, when they are so little, they are your world and every moment seems like one you'll never let go of. But forget you will as more memories are made and the moments come faster and faster.
 If you do write things down, there will come a day when you  need those memories so badly, it hurts. That one day was yesterday in our house. My children had all been ill at different times and the same times for the last 9 days. I felt like we were living in a bacteria filled bubble, the walls closing in on us, a cough echoing from every room. Humidifiers were at critical shortage levels and nasal spray was being passed around like candy. My husband was at work and we had just sat through another dinner with a tissue box close at hand. Then, my oldest son asked me to bring out the "dailies."
 When my oldest was four months old, I started a journal of our lives together. Some of the entires were funny, some were sad and some were just milestones I wanted to remember. As more children came, the "dailies" became weeklies but meant just as much as the originals had. Luckily, before our last computer crashed,  I had printed out most of what I had. And last night, we needed them.
  As I sorted through papers, my oldest was awash in advice and excitement, "Tell the one about me potty training, tell the one about her in the tub..." These stories were legend in our house and probably would never be forgotten. But as I went through the mostly one line entries, the ones that stuck out were not accepted family history. I did that weird laugh-cry that always scares my kids when I read about my oldest calling the hummingbirds "humee-nins" as we watched them on our feeder. I read about trying to keep a straight face when my younger son, for a time, pronounced "freckle, frog and truck" unmistakably as the f-bomb, and trying to come up with a way to explain death when we saw a dead squirrel in the park and was asked repeatedly when it was going to walk. Or one of my favorites, which took place on a hike through the woods.

Son: "What happened to that black dog?"
Me: "What black dog?"
Son: "The one we saw the other day."
Me: "The one with the cone?"
Son: "Yes."
Me: "You tell me."
Son: "He had a boo-boo on his eye so he had to wear a cone so he wouldn't scratch it."
Me: "good job remembering."

Two minutes later...

Me: "Please stop stepping in front of me."
Son: "Why?"
Me: "Because I'm afraid I'm going to step on your foot and you'll sprain your ankle."
Son: "And I'll have to get a cone?"

Even writing it now, I'm doing that weird laugh-cry thing and my husband is looking worriedly over at me.
  Many of the entries are not funny but a way to vent, as in "You are giving me a run for my money right now, little miss." Some are overflowing with love that I just needed to get down on paper: "When you laugh, it is with your whole heart and soul, from deep in your belly." Some are records of specific events: :"We went on a hike with Santa today" and say nothing more than that.     The entries are many and I am grateful to have every one. They are the moments of our lives that we think we'll never forget, yet somehow they are replaced with more memories, more moments that we will think are unforgettable as well.
 So, if you have children, take my advice and write things down. These moments that they will be unable to access with their own memories will have to come from yours. And there might come a day when you need to remember what it feels like to laugh with them, remember what it feels like to be small,  remember what the world felt like when you and your child seemed like the only inhabitants of it.

Different worlds

Lately, I have been so irritated with money. How we make it, how we spend it, what a constant topic of conversation it seems to be. "How can we adjust the grocery budget again?" "What will we do with our tax refund?" "How much can we realistically spend on a house and still buy organic dairy products and meat but pesticide-full vegetables."
 When you don't have it, you talk about it all the time. When you do have it, well, I don't remember what you do when you do have it! How do people afford this; I ask myself as I look at our local Homebuyers guide. There are pages of beautiful million dollar properties on beautifully landscaped acres of land. It truly feels like a different world in which those potential inhabitants must live.
 When you live on a tight budget, which so many of us do, money becomes something frustrating, elusive, something to examine and dissect. I actually despise talking about money and somehow feel all things that help us learn and grow as people should be free. (I.E. education, medical care, music lessons and sports team fees.) And while I worry about money, my kids are in ski lessons,  on swim teams and visiting museums, as well as having more clothes (cute ones!!) than they will ever need.
     On the other hand, I wear my sister in law's slightly too long jeans because I refuse to spend money for new ones, clip coupons like a maniac, use a children's consignment sale for Christmas presents and buy my poor dog (gasp!) dog food with chicken byproduct meal somewhere in the ingredients. I think most parents, especially in this intense parenting age, do put their kids needs and wants in front of their own; that's no surprise. What is fascinating to me is the ways in which we choose to spend the rest of it; our spending priorities. What value do we place on the things we consume and the things in which we participate?.
     I've often heard suggested, as an exercise in time management to write down everything you do in a day and put the results in a pie chart to see if your priorites match up with reality. Would this work for finances as well? If we were to chart where our money goes, what would the biggest blocks be? How much would go towards necessities (residence, food, water, heat) and how much would be spent honoring our individual value system and whatever that entails (possibly education, charity work, retirement savings, vacations, gifts). Obviously, money has become, of late, a source of endless frustration and pondering on my part.
     As usually happens in this amazing place we like to call the universe, God had a serious reality check in store for me after all this pathetic focus on money. While sitting on the couch in my 80 degree living room (thank you woodstove) on an eleven degree day, I picked up the latest book my husband brought home from his green library. It's called Love in the Driest Season and it chronicles, within a family memoir, the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic in Zimbabwe during the 90's. The focus is on the abandoned children that are in the care of orphanages that have been given 30 cents a day per child for food, clothing and medicine. That's right; thirty cents. Needless to say, many of the children die in a very short time.
     So, in the very recent past and (I'm sure) somewhere in the world in the present, there are children who breathe their last breath in a hospital room waiting for anitibiotics that will never come, while I decide between the (clean, safe) organic almond milk or the (clean, safe) regular almond milk awash in stress over money.

  Thank you, God, for making it so clear how rich my life is and also the ways in which we can enrich others' lives.

Bigger

  Tonight, as I was watching my three youngest children play in the tub, I realized that for the next month I will have a 1 yr old, a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old. My youngest daughter turned one today, all beginning words, zombie straight leg walking and beautiful big eyes. She, lately, has been keeping up with her older siblings, letting her voice be heard, blending in with our big family. Five kids in a three bedroom, one and a quarter bath house. I realize, as I write this , that we are so lucky to have someplace warm to call home, so lucky to have a roof over our heads, a safe place to dream, play, learn, laugh and cry together.  But while I realize that, I am waiting for the bathroom to open up and  tripping over the dogs bed while sidestepping around our table, which needed to be moved into the living room in order that we can all fit around it. Needless to say, we are currently in the market for a bigger house.        

     Today, I walked through a huge, beautiful, potential house,  full of visions of my oldest daughter being able to play with her dollhouse, even during naptime, my oldest son being able to play Legos without having them knocked over and possibly eaten by his younger siblings. Better yet, my husband and I having a conversation with minimal interruptions, minimal finger raising and stern looks trying to make impatient children wait their turn.  When I got home from looking at the house, I was already visualizing what would go where, what we would do with the seemingly extra rooms.  The cavernous house had quickly become my dream house; I was immune to the dry rot around the windows, the water damage on one of the ceilings. All I could picture was enjoying the great room together, with enough space for each person to play and learn to the best of his or her ability.

                This evening, in the living room of our actual small, but loved house, my husband and I tried to have a conversation about whether the potential new house was a possibility, as my oldest daughter twirled in the middle of us in her fancy dress, my oldest son lay by my side, laughing hysterically while my youngest son tried (unsuccessfully) to pull of his long soccer socks, and my two youngest daughters took turns drumming each other and sometimes the real drum too. As these games usually do, the sock removal progressed to a noise level that was unacceptable to my level of patience, so I banished everyone to the bathroom to brush teeth. It became relatively quiet and my husband and I had an uninhibited line of sight to each other, the conversation continued for a record five minutes with zero interruptions. The relative quiet was a welcome change to our loud, loving chaotic typical night. More space was sounding better and better.

   But as I watched my children in the tub, I wondered if bigger would really be better, or just bigger. The (five!!) bathrooms in the potential house would go mostly unused for now; our children are young enough to be immune to issues of privacy. They would still choose to bathe together,  fighting and laughing from one minute to the next as only siblings can. The bedrooms (one for each!) would probably mostly sit empty, our children gravitating within a ten foot radius of where we are.  This crazy, tactile togetherness is a fleeting time. How much longer will my eight year old let me rest my chin on his head while we each read our books? How much longer will the kids want us so intimately involved with every detail of their lives that they have to wait their turns to fill us in? How much longer will we all dance in our tiny living room together, twirling around and stepping on each others’ toes?

     While we continue to look for a bigger space to make our family’s home, I am going to try to appreciate every second of this squished together, overflowing house and remember how lucky we are that our kids want to be with us, want to share their lives, want to be close. No matter where we end up,  I hope the feeling that when we are close together, we are home, will remain.

In Year 6, She found TV and it was good

In addition to ranting, venting and general outlay of personal philosophies, I am now going to add guilt assuagement to my blog repertoire. (Don't look "assuagement" up; it is not a real word but I firmly believe it should be.)
So, that little voice in my head (i.e. my mom) recently told me that I should stop limiting "screen time" so severely with my kids. Over the Christmas vacation, I decided to give it a whirl. At first, I would hang out near them watching Dora or TUFF Puppy, asking thoughtful questions about the characters' motivations. Occasionally, I would throw in the Spanish word equivalent to try to add a bilingual aspect to Arthur. After the less than enthusiastic reaction to my discussion questions, I would slink off to the quiet kitchen to make dinner, feeling horribly guilty about the tv watching going on.
This went on for the first week or so. Then, all of a sudden, in my guilt ridden state, I realized I had actually gotten through making turkey meatballs without washing my hands fifty million times to remove something from someone's mouth or stop someone from poking someone else with a chopstick. It was really nice; I'll be honest with you. I started thinking this tv thing might have some real perks.
On Saturday of the first week, I turned on Penguins of Madagascar for my oldest son while the younger ones napped. I decided to workout in the room he was watching to see what kind of horrible debauchery was going on in the show. You know what I found out? That cartoon is freaking hilarious. I rarely laugh out loud during movies, and I think I laughed three times in the half hour segment. It was seriously funny. There is a ring tailed lemur character with an Indian accent who could do stand up on the Comedy Channel. I couldn't believe it. The show I had put on to entertain my 6 year old was actually entertaining me!
Needless to say, I learned a few things during my sojourn into tv land. I'm not saying we're going to have a screen time free for all in the house from now on, but I will say that I like an hour of peace and quiet in my day and that there is inherent value in laughter. And, if I'm having a rough day, I might just sit down with my kids and laugh next to them at the silliness on the screen. Thanks Mom.

Wake up, wake up, wake up...it's the first of the month.

Sorry, a little rap reference in the title. I couldn't help myself.

I was thinking about relationships today and how we behave in them. Why is it that so many of us save our best selves for the cashier at Dunkin Donuts and then come home and act grumpy to our spouses? Is it some kind of safety mechanism? Maybe we save the stresses we all carry and take them out on the people who we know will love us no matter what.
I would like to put forth the theory that this is neither good nor helpful. It seems to me that we should be doing our best work with the people whose judgments really matter; our family, our close friends. These are the people whose lives we have a vested interest in and to whom we should feel an allegiance. Shouldn't we want to make them smile, to feel good? Shouldn't we use please and thank you with them just as much as we would a waiter?
I'm not saying you should start being that curmudgeony patron that makes his or her serviceperson cringe. That would be hypocritical, considering I have what one friend calls a "civility dysfunction." (I.E. When someone bumps into me, I say "sorry, excuse me.") No, what I am proposing is continuing to treat everyone you meet with kindness, but making sure you have some saved up for the end of the day when you get home too. Home is where the best, most positive aspects of your personality have a place to shine. After all, your family and friends already think you're pretty great. Just imagine if you give them all the same simple kindnesses you hand out on a daily basis to those you don't know. It could be pretty amazing.
Clearly, this is one of my resolutions in the "general" category. I'll let you know how it goes. But for now, I have to go yell at my husband for failing to remove his coffee filter from the pot this morning... :)

Resolve, resolve, resolve...

Here it is: December 31st and I am doing the same thing thousands upon thousands of other people are doing right now...
No, I'm not freezing my $%^@ off in Times Square, I'm writing a list of resolutions for the coming year. Not just any list of resolutions, mind you. I am an all-or-nothing person and my lists match this personality trait, for better or worse. My resolutions are multi-faceted, covering all aspects of being: mental, physical, emotional, house* as well as the general category of "other." Most of my resolutions are pretty standard (get back in touch with a friend, book a dermatology appointment, lose 10 lbs) but some are purely creative, spur of the moment inspirations. For instance, in July, under the "mental" category, I wrote "paint something outside." Why? Because I believe painting can be therapeutic. It shouldn't stop me that nobody on earth will recognize the painting I do of the glorious view out our front window (and that includes my family that looks at it everyday). Among my other planned feats for the year: Find a one day workshop that interests me, complete a crossword book, write a note to 10 people for whom I'm grateful, journal more, etc, etc.
There's a reason so many people pick January 1st to make positive changes/steps in their lives, it's the proverbial "clean slate" date. It's fresh; out with the old, in with the new. So, I will join in and see how I fare with my goals.
By blogging my progress, I will be killing two resolutions with one stone. (Yes, February's goal is to blog regularly.) So, here I go. I'm off to a good start. Now, I better go finish that leftover Egg Nog before the year starts...

*Doesn't everybody include "house" as a resolution category?No? Hmmm...they can come help me with mine, then.