Like pulling teeth

 The tufted leather chairs were more comfortable than they looked, though I found myself fidgeting as I sat in one of them waiting for news. I didn't know how long this would take and I didn't want to ask.

My firstborn child, who is more of a newly minted adult-ling, had been escorted by a nurse inside one of the interior rooms of the dental office in order to have all four of her wisdom teeth surgically removed.

I had been in offices like this before. Rooms, tucked between rooms that looked like a midcentury maze of medical fortitude. Find your way to check out and win a prize.

Behind a sliding glass window, the reception staff pretended not to notice as I hopped around the waiting room, pawing through periodicals without purpose and inspecting the wall hangings with an intensity I had to invent.

Could they tell I was nervous?

Probably.

I didn't feel nervous.

I had lived through the pulling of teeth ... eight to be exact. The same number my daughter would be down once this day is done.

But I was nervous. How could I not be?

I couldn't wave away the parade of potential complications surgery presents: from the dangers of anesthesia to who-knows-what-all-else could go wrong when they are trying to yank four perfectly good enamel bones out of your jaw.

"Will I have swelling?" She had asked on the drive.

Probably.

"Will there be bruising?"

Maybe. You never know.

I started to tell her about the two black-and-blue stripes that showed up unannounced a few days after my surgery and that traveled along both sides of my jaw and down my throat, but she bowed her head and held up her hand.

"That's fine. I don't need a graphic accounting ...”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at me between sharp, narrow eyelids: "Nor does my brother."

He wanted to be there. Not so much out of concern or for moral support, but to film any drug-fueled shenanigans the procedure may produce.

"People coming down from dental procedures practically fuel YouTube."

Being out of control worried her some.

She didn't want a thousand or one thumbs-up emojis stomping around her digital footprint for all eternity. 

"I was lucky. Back in the horse-and-buggy days of my youth, we didn't have videos that could haunt a person forever. The worst I suffered was waking up with the feeling that anything was possible ... even scheduling a follow-up appointment for a day that, had I been anesthesia-sober would have been terribly inconvenient. Luckily, my mom was there to reschedule more wisely."

Of course, things had changed. There would be a follow-up phone call instead of an office visit. If all was well, all would BE well.

Which is what I was hoping when a smiling nurse in scrubs opened the door to escort me back to the recovery area. "She's doing fine. She just has a lot of questions that she's not going to remember we have already answered. 

Half a world wiser

 We rarely consider how satisfying it can be to navigate our ordinary lives. With all the complex problems we face, it can be such a joy to tackle the things we do by rote, or more tedious than technical. No, we seldom celebrate the successful reading of a bus schedule or the stain that came out in the wash.

That's why travel can be such a blessing.

You get to see new things, meet new people, and imagine how our lives could be if our surroundings were entirely different.

We all kind of know that the bloom on this particular rose usually only lasts for a week or so.

The trials and tribulations of setting up a new life, no matter how temporary, in another town let alone another country, didn't particularly strike her as daunting at first. She imagined she could live in a hotel room out of two pieces of luggage just fine for a few months.

Case in point: My daughter went away to Greece for a semester abroad and was stunned by how much she didn't love it.

Her brief messages home were filled with pictures of herself and her friends visiting beautiful places we have only dreamed of seeing; The Palace of Versailles, Trevi Fountain, Big Ben, and The Acropolis. Followed by an accordioning list of complaints: "It's not walkable; the buses have an irregular schedule; there's so much creepy cat-calling; and you would not believe the price of washing and drying a single load of laundry! "Sixteen Euros?!?!?!" 

For comparison (and so I can share in her outrage), she will tell me to hang on while she takes a photo of her lunch and sends it instantaneously through the magic of technology:

“The phone pings: … and I see a sandwich that could easily feed three of her along with the all-caps expletive and explainer, summing up her frustrations: "LOOK AT THIS!!! One dryer tumble cost more than my entire meal."

So when folks asked me how she was faring out in the world, I honestly didn't know what to say. “She seems to be enjoying the food,”  

But for some reason, I still feel the need to tell friends and family the other thing … “Oh … you know the old saying, 'youth is wasted on the young'.”

To which everyone automatically murmurs and nods in agreement. Harkening back to our Salad Days that none of us seemed to enjoy.

Truly, though, I don't believe what I say as I try to limit myself to small talk. I can't seem to exchange normal pleasantries without getting into the tangled weeds of my otherwise untended thoughts.

Youth isn't wasted on the young. It just may take a little more experience to understand what you witnessed, accomplished, or were perhaps “blessed with” back in the day.

I think it's the rarest of people who don't need time and distance to bring their experiences into better focus.

As a mother, when she walks through the arrivals gate, of course, I can't give her much distance. I'm all flappy arms, long hugs, and a zillion questions. And after a few sleeps she will start to tell me her stories. She will tell me about the people, and the places and the ways they were different but how the joys and the problems seemed the same. And her voice will become more and more energized and her words will start to glow as she relays her memories.

She's already half a world wiser, and in no time at all she will realize how well her youth has already invested in her coming of age.

“I really can't wait to go home and do my laundry … for free.”

We should howl

 When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade last June I was heartbroken. My daughter was graduating high school and the rage I felt had to hide under a smile. As the day and the formalities went on the silence felt suffocating.

Not a word was mentioned at the commencement that a ruling had been announced that had the potential to upend the lives of more than half of the graduating class.

We all knew it was coming, but the fight was more like a surrender. And though I'd believed Governor Hochul when she campaigned on a commitment to securing the rights of women, her immediate choice of a conservative jurist for the state's chief justice was an unfathomable shock.

So recently when as a theocratic ideologue, appointed to the federal bench in Texas by a twice impeached former President now under criminal indictment, unilaterally announced he would rescind the FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug in a two-part protocol for early non-surgical abortion, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that the game plan coming out of the Governor's office is once again painfully insufficient.

After all, The Justice Department maintains that the FDA's approval of the drug was proper and the pill has proven safe for two decades. And a near-simultaneous decision by a U.S. District Judge barred authorities from restricting access to mifepristone in the 17 states where Democrats had sued to protect its availability, New York was evidently not among them.

Specifically, the governor's announcement that the state would stockpile misoprostol instead of the drug being threatened, mifepristone, sends a dangerous message to all who believed New York meant its promise, that it would ALWAYS protect a woman's right to healthcare choice.

For those who don't know: Mifepristone is a drug that blocks progestin and the further development of a fetus, and when used in combination with misoprostol, reduces the pain and bleeding associated with evacuating tissue from the uterus thereby reducing the likelihood of surgical intervention.

In short, the two-drug protocol is the safest and least invasive treatment available to women in early pregnancy. 

Accepting this incendiary decision as even potentially legitimate does real harm, especially when legal uncertainty continues to erode not only choice but also their access to the most appropriate treatment.

The miso-only method is more painful, and less effective and could increase the likelihood that physicians will be overwhelmed.

With this plan, New York, which has promised to do everything possible to protect all women who need abortion care regardless of which state they reside, is instead legitimizing the GOP's bad-faith argument that the drug isn't safe while simultaneously ensuring the healthcare for New York's women is substandard. 

But what did it do when Walgreens announced it wouldn't dispense abortion medication at its stores, even in states where abortion was still legal?

And what will it do when theocratic lawmakers come, as predicted for Plan B, Contraception, and IVF treatments? My guess is it will tell us they will always fight … as long as we pledge another three dollars.

Because despite what anyone says, what this ultimately shows is that we will always throw women to the wolves.

Pack rats

 Spirit week. 

That glorious, zany week of harmless chaos manufactured by school administrators right before long breaks for the express purpose of proving to the dwindling percentage of the student body that participates that schools aren't just dress codes and drudgery all the time. Sometimes they are corny, too. 

Or at least that is how my eye-rolling children have always explained why they would not be indulging in Crazy Hair Friday or Dress Like A Twin Tuesday thank-you-very-much. 

This is why I was fully expecting my Socratic sophomore to "ghost" the festivities or declare the antics "bravado and buffoonery" and dust his hand of the entire week. 

I certainly did not have on my proverbial BINGO card the gangly teen showing up in the kitchen on the eve of "Anything But A Backpack" Wednesday, with sooty hands and all of his academic possessions tucked into the hollow of a full-sized winter snow tire asking matter-of-factly:

"Can you drive me to school tomorrow?"

"Can I ... " I hesitated, worried the rising question-mark lilt in my voice would betray excitement and tank the invitation. 

He knew it was risky. 

We would be traveling this holiday break, and this small chore could provide me with so many embarrassing ideas on how to pack for the epic trip our family had planned: Part homecoming, part holiday, part family reunion, we will come thousands of miles to finally be together for a vernal retreat. 

The plan is to go to the edge of the country by car, meet up with our globe-trotting college student at an airport, effectively sleep on the tarmac and then fly to the central south by plane the next day, where we intend to commune with more family and see all the sights we can by trolley (and possibly airboat) until we have to reverse engineer the whole thing and make our way back home.

My head was spinning. Omg. The drop-off line on Anything But A Backpack day would be epic. I can't believe he's allowing me to witness the madcap antics. 

It would only give me ideas I shouldn't consider. 

Kids toting everything from drinks coolers, mop buckets, waste bins on wheels; toy wagons, and trucks with storage under the seat to a literal kitchen sink. 

"Hey, who's the kid with the ottoman?"

My kid didn't answer. He had already "yoinked" the spare out of the back seat and "hulked"' it into the building. I barely got more than three blurry photos of the entire spectacle. 

Honestly, who wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall, buzzing around the school on a day like today?

If only to watch the kid who was scratching his head in the parking lot, and who likely hadn't fully planned the logistics of getting his books from class to class using his baby sister's Tiny Tikes Trike, find an elegant solution to his packing problems.

Which, of course, did.

"That kid was the GOAT, he just carried that purple three-wheel around all day like a psychopath..." laughed my son as he toted his tire toward the trunk.

Gun shy

Three more children are dead by gunfire.

And by the time you read this, you may be uncertain of which shooting I am referencing. 

Because as I angrily type, the number of deaths attributed to guns this year alone ticks up past 10,000 according to the Gun Violence Archive. Four-hundred-and-fifteen of those killed thus far were children and teens.

In the last two decades, the U.S. has seen a forty-two percent increase in the rate of child firearm deaths while all comparably large and wealthy countries have seen child firearm deaths fall since 2000. And it's not just mass shootings. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the firearm suicide rate among children and teens has increased by 66 percent over the last ten years.

That is an unconscionable number.

And while the number of deaths keeps growing by the day, what won't change in that time is how this nation reacts. There will be thoughts and prayers offered by our civic leaders. There will be calls for gun reform that will be met with admonitions for it somehow being too soon. 

There will be expansive media coverage with photos and graphics and the unspoken hope that this time something will give.

But no one will give an inch. 

Instead, those who find themselves at the business end of a microphone will befoul the air with all the reasons we can't have safety and security without amassing personal arsenals and encasing ourselves inside windowless walls. 

I can't help but shake my head listening to news reporter after news reporter after news reporter follows up by asking school psychologists for a minute's worth of advice on how we can talk to our kids.

How can we talk to our kids? 

"You think they're wrong," my husband asks.

"I don't think anything they have to say will matter if we aren't willing to acknowledge that guns are the problem we can solve," I responded.

"I think we should be asking our elected representatives why they have more prayers than constructive thoughts about this dilemma, and why we keep collecting the same soundbites from the traumatized."

Their answer - more police, more fortification of schools, and, inevitably, more guns - is free of credible evidence that it works. 

If it did, the number-one cause of death in American children and adolescents surely wouldn't be guns. 

Mental health professionals can only do so much. But our leaders are in the citizen-powered position to do much more. 

Why aren't all the microphones pointing to them? Why aren't we demanding to know what they plan to do to ensure that all guns remain accounted for and in safe hands? 

There's much we can do to affect substantive change: Background checks, licensing and license renewals, annual inspections, mandated liability insurance, and continuing safety training are just a few common sense requirements we could impose.

We could make accessing a gun as onerous as accessing abortion. 

We could value life more than we value live ammo.

We could demand our living, breathing, laughing, loving children get to live their lives in peace.

How can we face our kids if we don't?