Bond fired

My boy tumbled off the school bus and into the house. He closed the door with a vibrating bang, did a little dance and let loose an echoing exclamation:

"Done!"

That wasn't the only word he used.

His declaration was more of a phrase uttered with attitude, a peppering of profanity, and, I'm assuming, some degree of cultural appropriation.

But I would be merely guessing.

Truth be told, the bridge between our generational divide - especially when it comes to nomenclature - seems a little more rickety these days.

It was the last day of school. And the first day of Summer. As a result, his binders, overfilled with papers, spilled out onto the floor.

A wide-ruled river of toil and turbulence overrunning its banks.

He had already swum ashore and into a kitchen with not enough snacks.

He harrumphed with disappointment before making his way to his room with a fistful of boring old crackers.

I stood in his way, elbows on hips. The universal expression of obstruction and determination. A dam.

"You need to take care of this mess."

Apparently, he'd planned a course of action ...

"Can we have a bondfire?"

I hesitated to correct him. But only for a moment. I couldn't help myself.

"It's bonfire ... without the D. ... BON-Fire."

He cocked his head at the angle that says: "I'm not sure I agree with your assessment there, deputy," but stops short of insubordination.

To which I recited from The online Dictionary of Etymology: "Bon•fire: 1550s, from Middle English banefire (late 15c.), "a fire in which bones are burned." See bone (n.) + fire (n.). Original sense obsolete and forgotten by 18c.; as 'large open-air fire for public amusement or celebration,' from late 15c. From 17c. as 'large fire from any material'."

He rolls his eyes -- the universally understood symbol of "School-is-over. I-am-not-legally-required-to-learn -any-new-stuff-until-after-Labor-Day."

"Burning bones, duuuude. How Goth is that?"

I deserved the blank stare that followed.

"You are lucky social studies is my favorite subject," he says with a sigh.

"So CAN we burn all of my last year's homework in a BONfire?"

Might have to wait for a snap of cold weather and use the wood stove; we're not zoned for open burning.

Still ... All that carbon. All that waste.

The kid in me can understand the appeal of taking your troubles and setting them aflame. But the adult in me can't help but temper the urge. The adult in me also knows that keeping this stuff will run the risk of creating a fire hazard all its own.

The adult in me wants him to find an equal joy in recycling it into smithereens.

"Hey … Let's SHRED!

Doesn't that sound fun? A shredder is something we might readily use as we try to curtail identity theft and fraud …

“We'll need to go to the office supply place ... Hey! we can check out back-to-school stuff while we're there."

Funny how I managed to say all of that as he just stood and watched me, head cocked at the angle of disbelief, with a wide, wry smile.

"Yeah … I think I'm done here."

Recidivists

We lounged on the porch drinking coffee and watching another Sunday morning go by. It was mostly quiet save for the random car and rhythmic thumping of bare feet against the floor decking -- the drumming was more of a nervous tick than an intentional beat. 

The odd clicking sounds coming from one of the phone keyboards we each had in our hands was an unexpected bonus. And one I didn't appreciate.

The more it draws my attention, the more I wish it would stop. This article I'm reading won't read itself, seeing as how I tend to keep my phone on silent mode.

The dog sat at attention as our less virtually active neighbors crisscrossed the sidewalk at the top of the lawn. 

Some waved if they happened to notice us watching from the shadows, not that the canine showed the least bit of interest. 

We waved back. She just stared. 

The dog perked up a little as others passed by with their pets. Her tail gave a half wave, sweeping the last of the maple seeds into an elegant curve, but she remained seated and calm. Her territory is decidedly further from the main road with its early morning trickle of traffic and truck noise.

A torrent is coming.

I wasn't feeling particularly territorial, either. 

I had mowed the grass and weeded the things near the flower beds that I thought were probably weeds. 

I'm not a gardener. I can never be sure what I'm yanking out by the root isn't the globe thistle I planted two years ago that never grew as prettily orbital as it did prickly sharp.

The cat joined us. Ever-so-slowly, stalking her way to the house from a thicket of shrubbery I had yet to trim. 

From time to time, she would stop and sink low to the ground. Moving not a single whisker.

Nothing moves in my scope of vision, peripheral or central. There is neither a chipmunk nor a catbird in sight. 

I wonder if she's losing her touch?

The mighty hunter, always on the prowl, finally growing long in the tooth.

It would be a bittersweet change. I certainly wouldn't miss rescuing rabbits or clearing the tiny corpses of mice from the feline's mortuary under the carport, where I also happen to keep my handful of barely used gardening tools.

But she's not alone out there in the grass.

A shadow of almost equal size wobbles out from under the forsythia and toward us on the porch. 

It's not a cat. I can tell by the white stripe along its back. 

For a moment I wonder if this juvenile

Le Pew has mistaken our Penelope Pussycat for its mother.

As she inches closer to our stinky new friend, I imagine something far worse. 

The dog.

My husband flies off the porch to scoop up the cat and save her from her questionable intuition while I grab the dog's collar and tow her into the house.

Of course, it will be the dog, in the backyard, two Sundays later in the middle of the night, who will inevitably meet the skunk face to bum.

That's how it works around here.

Repetition

I turned 50. I'm going to say it one more time and then never again: I. Turned. FIFTY. 

Now, this particular milestone happened some time last year. I'd tell you exactly when, but it's really none of your business and beside the point.

Of course, I didn't want to talk about it even though it occupied my every waking moment.

Didn't want to admit I'd reached the youth of old age. Especially not when I had spent the bulk of my middle years cheekily telling folks I was 27.

I want to think some of them believed me. Especially since my ploy – having continued to dress as if I were still attending high school (REM t-shirt and jeans, not lace tights and black nail polish) – is still in effect however dubious it may seem.

Instagram filters and lucky lighting have helped in this deception by allowing me to selectively curate my likeness to within twenty years of my actual age.

Also having the state-sanctioned ability to carry a license featuring an image of the second-year college me helps cement the illusion.

Having successfully avoided looking directly at any mirrors, or squinting protectively so as not to see the clarity of any details distorted though they may be by any reflective surface, I have even managed to trick myself into believing I haven't aged.

Of course, I have. But if I avoid those thoughts … or let them float away within the protective bubble of contemplative meditation … I don't  have to think about fitting into anyone's idea of me, especially my own.

But lately, I've been caught off guard by this person creeping around the house inside of the mirrors.

Eeeeegad! Whoisthat?

This person, upon closer inspection, is most certainly not a teenager. Or a college student. Maybe not even late 30s?

She has crows' feet and eye bags, and those strange little spots that old people have, and hair of an indiscriminate color at its roots.

Nothing about her looks rested. In a younger person, this could be shrugged off as burning the candle at both ends. In an older person, it becomes the early signs of dottery-old-ladydom.

Is this why women start shopping at Chico's? Is this why billowy, colorful clothes exist? So we can still look ridiculous but in an age-acceptable way?

Of course, it's not all about looks; she says as she pulls the skin back from her cheeks and up into her hairline. She is inspecting the chicken skin of her throat.

Oh, Third person! You have finally arrived to allow me the space I need to get to know the new me.

"Siri: Put. Moisturizer. On. The. Shopping. List."

"OK: Put most FBI Don the shoo-in lost."

The inevitability of the erosion of my abilities – especially as a person capable of harnessing modern technology -- is already showing wear at its raggedy edges.

The fact that my eCalendar has multiple entries for all national holidays (and I can't figure out how to delete them) might be Exhibit A in this Elder Self decline. However, the youthful me is still capable of arguing the fact that I use my smart phone's calendar AT ALL is totally and completely exonerating.

So what if I repeat myself?

Solid ground

I have struggled for most of my pregnancy-capable life, trying to reckon what I believe in the abortion debate. Though never anti-abortion, I couldn’t make myself align with any of the familiar slogans. Even the word “choice” left me feeling off-kilter.

In my way of thinking, “choice” is a word for selecting shampoos or cuts of meat ... not for deciding the best medical procedure to ensure a patient endures the least harm.

What should have occurred to me sooner was obvious: abortion is part of basic medical care for women. 

Truly. There was so much I didn’t know about myself or my body. Or that other bodies could be so different than mine. There was so much I didn’t (and still don’t) understand about medicine, or how difficult it can be to get adequate care even in the best of circumstances, let alone the most trying.

I had no idea about all the medical situations that could necessitate an abortion later in pregnancy. Or how sudden these tragedies could present. I just assumed as a vast majority do, that late-term-abortion was a thing that should be rightly restricted.

But I was wrong. Late-term abortion isn’t even a medical term; but Triploidy, with a transverse lie, at 37 weeks gestation, is most certainly a medical event that induction can’t solve. Abortion would be the least harmful to the patient, but a doctor must do a c-section because of oppressive laws that the medically uninformed make.

Woman are living, breathing people who are entitled to the best possible care and the ability to decide just what that means for themselves.

In terms of statistics, I could count myself solidly among the three-fourths of women who went through her reproductive life with no need for abortion services. But I knew many who didn’t enjoy the same luck.

And then I had a daughter.

Having to imagine a life with fewer available interventions for her needs makes me furious.

For her, and for the person, I was at her age.

Why should any of us have to endure any shame or burden to prevent pregnancy, which can be as life-changing as any other serious medical condition we encounter.

Is it because an undue burden has always been on the person with the uterus - the patient? Why have the religious beliefs of the provider - even about the prescribing of birth control medication and devices - consistently outweighed the human rights of the patient? 

Pregnancy and birth are dangerous. Having had two c-sections and long-lasting complications from that surgery, I know the downside. But a cesarean is a medical procedure for a difficult birth. Imagine if we decided to take that off the table?

Abortion is a medical procedure women need for many, many reasons, none of which require the judgment of a priest or a politician. Nor should women be forced to walk through a gauntlet of hateful speech makers, or witness their doctors get murdered, as they navigate the complicated practice of reproductive healthcare.

And now as I watch states pass laws that will kill women and endanger health, as I watch us devolve, I feel the full weight and sorrow of having stood on the sidelines, thinking women’s rights were ever on solid ground.

Bloody Hell

That's what I might have titled the press release I was reading. "Bloody Hell."

Though, I imagine that's not what the writer had intended.

Our schools, it explained, would be getting medical kits and specialized training to stop a hemorrhage, thanks in part to seized drug money and rampant gun violence.

Not that it strung any of those words together in that order, either.

That's just how I read between the lines as the missive came through the ether into my morning news alerts.

It was a few days late, but it turns out May 23rd was second annual National Stop The Bleed Day, one of many toss-spaghetti-against-the-wall marketing techniques used by businesses and organizations to bring awareness to superfluous and serious causes alike.

You know ... such as the increasingly likely possibility that our children will bleed to death from a sucking chest wound at school (or witness someone bleed to death) because we, as a society, won't do anything about guns.

But since we can't just do nothing, we'll spend a small amount of resources to get out schools peripherally prepared for carnage.

My husband tried to calm me as I highlighted the bullet points of this "grassroots effort" by various government agencies to stop an unnecessary killer in our community: bleeding out.

The news report didn't specifically mention the type of bleeding this particular initiative was meant to alleviate, although four out of five random Google searches pointed to maternal hemorrhage and gunshot wounds in the medical tally sheet of the leading causes of preventable blood loss deaths.

"Now, honey .... when you write about this, try to stick to the preparedness part," said my husband as he watched my eyes flash while I tried to stammer out a framework of thoughts.

"You and I may think it's a dumb idea born out of an unholy marriage between Department of Defense overstock and the very stable marketing genius behind Homeland Security, but other people will say 'there's no harm in being prepared.'

"Also ... we talking about a budget of what? Six hundred bucks?"

He looks over my shoulder at the catalog I downloaded.

"I mean ... look it says right here that a group of surgeons and EMT organizations are supporting this initiative.

"Maybe make a case for more access to Narcan training, or expanding drug education in that same preparedness lecture -- strike that, I mean essay -- you've got churning around in your head."

He makes valid points: Basic first-aid experience is something everyone should have. From Heimlich maneuver posters to portable defibrillators, the average citizen becomes a citizen savior.  The same could be true of this, especially since we don't exactly know how many Las Vegas-style mass shootings or Boston Marathon-type bombings will be in our future.

Now that we've accepted the protection of gun, we must train everyone else to deal with their traumatic aftermath. 

And who knows, in a few years -- when we've made healthcare inaccessible (or illegal) I might feel better about this grassroots effort preparing our kids to heal themselves.