Seen and not heard

 It’s been a month and ten years since I’ve set eyes on my son.

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I’m not counting that single, solitary post on social media – a wobbly picture of him and some friends in the purple light of an all-ages night spot, which, after a few seconds of video vibing, freezes on the top-most section of his unruly curls.

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Or at least I assume they are his. I can’t be entirely sure.

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But, I had to admit, the sighting set my mind at ease.

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Not only had I missed sneaking all the delicious desserts and snacks I stopped buying *FOR THE KIDS* once they left, but I missed his face and his voice and his quiet, midnight raids of the refrigerator.

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The people wearing branded college gear at the orientation advised us to make a plan. Agree upon how often we would communicate … and what form it would take. Would it be a weekly phone call? Semi-weekly? A few text messages strategically sent during schedule breaks when we are sure our students aren’t sleeping, or eating, or finally able to get a shower in the tiny bathroom they share with as many as 10 other students.

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I had hoped for a once-a-week call at a time of his choosing. Pictured sitting around the phone broadcasting to the kitchen as he recounts all his new experiences with boundless enthusiasm, even if I knew the kid we sent off to school would rather just say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and shrug into the microphone.

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He isn’t his sister, who will take whatever question I ask and weave it into a story she’s more willing to tell me. She seems to know innately that HOW she says things to her parents often matters more than what she tells us.

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Not that I blame him.

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Of course, I would settle for one-line replies to texts. And he would oblige four to six follow-up thought bubbles before he would just leave it on read.

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Though we want to know they are happy and thriving, making friends and feeling their formerly small worlds slowly crack open into a panoply of prismatic color, asking for that reassurance directly can be … well …  infuriating.

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No one is perfect.

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I wonder how I forget such things when I STILL experience this feeling of exasperation at the prospect of answering well-meant, ice-breaking questions like: “How was your day?” or “Did you win your 5K race?”

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It can also feel like the pain of a thousand jabs if things aren’t going as expected.

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Lately, I can understand the impulse to scream at the top of our lungs STOP ASKING ME HOW WAS MY DAY. That’s my business. Mine. I’m not even sharing a taste for you to chew on.”

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If I can manage to stave off impulse long enough to take a deep breath, maybe I could gather wits and recall, in intricate detail, the story of how I really, really wanted nothing more than to buy a devil’s food sheetcake, the kind with the vanilla frosting loops in one straight line along the center, and eat the whole dang thing.

Once around The Block

With our kids out from under our roof, and only the lowest-maintenance cats on the prowl with its walls, my husband thinks NOW is the perfect time to be together … somewhere else.

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Somewhere, our worries will have to jog to keep up with us.

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I felt it was my duty to support his cause, even as I worked all diplomatic channels to ensure we weren’t spending days in transit or dipping into non-discretionary funds.

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We had been lucky thus far. Forecasts had called for a washout, and we had yet to feel even a drop.

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This is the third “vacation” we’ve taken this year, and I am trying all the things I can think of to keep superstition and the fates at bay.

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All of it felt .. performative.

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Luck, in my mind, anyway, is always a coin toss.

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I was trying to breathe in deeply and exhale with a matching force. In a few minutes, I would go for a run; the distance wouldn’t be far. Just a little more than a mile to a place that friends had recommended would serve up THE BEST DONUTS on the Island. Then we would visit the farmer’s market, hike to the Coast Guard Beach, and experience a mudslide (the cocktail, not the calamity),

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My husband had a list. After visiting Payne’s “Killer” Donuts - which were perhaps the best donuts of all time - he wanted to try out the 25th Best Fudge in all of America at Blocks of Fudge before dinner.

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There was also the matter of renting bikes and visiting at least one of the four Lighthouses before nightfall.

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I wanted to be done with everything and be back in time to make the 8 o’clock showing of whatever the Empire Theater was screening, so I could pet the dog who lounged around the ticket booth, loosely tethered to the ticket booth with a sandbag, while the owner shot back and forth from the concessions counter.

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By the look of them, I’d never have imagined the 133-year-old seating would be comfortable until I slid into mine, and the cushioned seat part gently glided forward.

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As the lights went down and the projector started to roll, I felt like I could just sit there forever basking in the glow of … whatever dystopic adventure (that could become reality sometime soon) was playing.

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The thought occurred to me that I might even be able to relax here.

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The sun rose over the marina, just east of where I could see from the window of our hotel room.

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Its light wrapped around, bathing my view in a gentle wash of pink, just enough to make me worry about what the weather would bring.

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I’m happily surprised that instead of a storm, the pretty skies brought out a local man into our new favorite coffee shop. He wanted to show off how pretty his chickens’ eggs were. We could all use some more kind words.

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I was glad we came to this island, a place neither of us had ever been during our combined century of family trips to New England. It is so beautiful. The landscape sprawls out, inviting us to leave our car behind and walk and bike farther than our eyes can see. Where we zoom past historic houses zhuzhed up with just a few new cedar shakes and a fresh coat of paint.

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Time isn’t exactly still here, but it just feels more steady.

Harm's way

When President Donald Trump, atop his bully pulpit on Monday, stumbled over the pronunciation of acetaminophen while making his entirely unfounded claim to American women, and, by extension the world, that his administration had absolutely decided without any evidence whatsoever that the drug, when taken during pregnancy, was linked to autism, further instructing that pregnant women should “tough it out” without pain relief or fever reduction, the headlines kept the story aloft as if batting an air-filled balloon between warring toddlers.

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Is it safe?

Presented with this bald-faced lie, the media dug in with all the myriad facts it could muster. These include the known warnings that all drugs can have unwanted effects and that those effects have to be considered against the potential harm of the thing the drug is treating or trying to prevent.

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What can pregnant women do for pain or fever?

They should ask their DOCTOR, not a word salad-spewing former game-show host and his snake-oil selling pals, none of whom seem at all concerned with actual public health.

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The man tweets something out, and entire industries make his words law overnight.

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There is no waiting … except for, maybe, a doctor’s office visit to obtain a prescription for a seasonal vaccine to protect you and your loved ones from preventable illnesses that the government, for no reason other than spite, might now require.

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With all the lather, rinse, and repetition … you’d think our hands would be cleaner.

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But no. It’s all about gumming up the works.

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Where women have legitimate fears and concerns about their healthcare, we now have charlatans in charge … people without a pedigree that should never have been elevated to committee chairs. Instead of due diligence, they are selling raw milk, and treating infections with remedies from farm supply stores. They are acting as if all the answers reside in originalists' remedies.

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Which makes me truly fearful for our kids … who have lived into adulthood because of vaccines and safer remedies for fever reduction – like Tylenol – that studies proved were not linked to Reye's syndrome.

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Like the president just said, pregnant women can prevent autism if they just suffer a little more.

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Maybe one day they will make Leeches and Blood Letting relevant again.

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I worry that the state will turn the endurance of suffering from a matter of faith into a punishable offense if they even suspect suffering had been avoided.​

I hope not.

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But hope, set aside from reason, is something that has a harder time floating lately.

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It shouldn’t be a surprise in a country awash in guns and that is sliding towards authoritarianism, that hope has a lead lining. Why else would our government elevate one political killing over all others? Weaponize it and call for revenge on his enemies?

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In answer to this, more than 50 Democratic representatives signed onto legislation honoring a right-wing activist whose life’s work professed free speech for conservatives to repeat racist, misogynistic tropes, and creating a watch-list for liberal professors to be targeted for harassment.

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It’s not enough to condemn the violence. Of course, it could be if we also got rid of the guns.

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Strong-armed people are not free. And debate isn’t a remedy for a healthy democracy. Although the people doing the strong-arming might be thinking that democracy is the illness they most wish to eradicate.

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Why else would we stay so quiet when they are screaming the ugliest things out loud?

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Maybe it’s because we have debated ourselves into harm’s way.

The Scoop Wars

“I see you got the Whisker 4000 SX,” my neighbor nodded.

It probably wasn’t an exact quote, but it’s what I thought I heard as I tilted my head and stared blankly at her over the fence.

I understood the words individually, but when strung together, they lacked meaning.

“I must have missed an important context. What now?”

“Evidently, you missed the package the delivery truck dropped on your front porch this morning … it looks like you guys got a kitty litter robot.”

“Not guys,” I think sourly. One. Guy.

The H.U.S.B.A.N.D.

He’d be The Guy.

The next realization caused me to erupt into flames.

I know we discussed this ….

We talked about the potential of investing in an automated poop raking machine not only to improve my life (as the chief pooper scooper), but also the lives of our kind and generous neighbors with whom we’ve traded pet care for years. It might also improve the air quality, especially during the summer months when the stifling, odoriferous air tends to stagnate in that part of the house, making the prospect of receiving guests mortifyingly unpleasant.

But aside from the smelly cats, and the man’s guilt reflex being even more reactive than his gag reflex, I had reservations.

The $600 price tag was a big one.

I thought changing cat litter and resolving to scoop at least once a day would be sufficient.

I mean … Even if we didn't have college and car payments and a faltering economy to worry about, I feel like I said quite clearly that I didn’t want to purchase another electrified gadget that measured and analyzed a formerly analog chore that had historically fallen on me to perform.

But the neighbor was right. There it was. On the porch. Blocking the door.

Where would it even fit? The way I saw it, we would have to reconfigure the cats’ powder room (a hallway utility closet) to accommodate its size, which is comparable to a standard washing machine.

I didn't want its smirking, smart technology showing off OR sending reports into the cloud that I would now be required to follow and obsess about.

I certainly didn’t want to be the one to troubleshoot the equipment or re-train the cats.

RE-Train the cats?

I didn’t even have that on my radar until finding a urine-soaked pet bed three days after he’d set up the machine, sans directions.

“One of our fearsome felines is not happy about your new amusement poop ride,” I groused, depositing the sodden textile into a trash bag.

He scratches his head.

“Maybe … it’s the height,” I suggest. The cat is getting older, maybe it's harder for her to make that higher leap? Or maybe the problem is the channeled step, designed to separate the litter from the little paws. Like a grate, the sensation may be something she’d like to avoid?” Perhaps we’ll have to cover it with something so she’ll use it to make the step up?”

With a satirical wink and nod to his mastery over the situation, he was adamant that I should not worry-my-pretty-little-head-about-it.

Which I naturally assured him, I would not.

“You know … I’ve had a think and feel as if I overreacted before. I should have told you how fantastic I think it is that you are taking over the cat poop duties.”

Untended Consequences

 I felt the dryness of the tendrilling vine as I grasped the offending weed and gave it a hard tug. It was only afterward - its withered remains sprawled out in a wheelbarrow – that I recognized the sting of a thousand tiny thorns the “volunteer” had used to try and defend itself from my attempts to tear it, stem and root, from its hiding place beneath my admittedly inglorious hydrangea.

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I assume the blame.

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Last year, the blooms were so large and plentiful they obscured their own leafy greens. I didn’t take credit for them, though, since the entire neighborhood was brimming with stunning floral poms.

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My gardening skills, I will tell you, are, almost in their entirety, knowing the difference between the things I’ve planted and the things that came in on the wind. What I think sets me apart from other black thumbs is how I might decide long after the season ebbs which of the weedy plants I will try to nurture next year.

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It’s not pretty, but the planter box is littered with evening primrose, juniper, and any number of seedlings I didn’t plant.

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“This is just one of a thousand reasons gardening is just NOT my thing,” I tell myself as I tend to the burning in my hand more closely.

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The “burrs” looked innocuous enough. Flat, brown little flakes - like loose tobacco - sticking to the meat of my palm. I tried to brush them off, but only managed to transfer them and their burning sensation to my other hand.

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This could be the ghost of a thistle I planted several years ago for its purulent purple flowers. I had the cheeky thoughts back when I’d reluctantly become a gardener that I would only plant risquély named or appearing flora.

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I imagined nonchalantly telling anyone who asked after the identity of the pretty pink flowers dipping their clustered blooms over a shrub of leafy green at the edge of the driveway, “Oh, that’s Hot Lips Turtlehead.”

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No one ever asked.

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I can’t help but think that was the direct result of my directionless care. For instance, I have no idea what pH number my plants would prefer any more than I know how to make the soil measure up. I also never planned for height or color or lighting needs. Which means each season brings a new surprise.

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Some are remarkable, but most of the surprises are unbecoming to a garden.

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I know it doesn’t take as much effort as I think it will. A few weed plucks here, a few pruning clips there, will give the garden enough shape to look landscaped.

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For all the years my children needed tending at the bus stop, the garden looked unlike nature had always intended.

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Those days are long gone. And while I miss them, I have found ways to move on.

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As I clear away the prior year’s leaf litter —- again — I toy with the idea of scrubbing it all. Scorching the earth…. mowing it all down … maybe even paving it over so the fruits of past labor can’t revisit.

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But I won’t.

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I’ll just plan my time better and always wear gloves.

Call, Waiting

We stood on the street corner, full from a late lunch, just looking at each other silently.

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It had been a long day.

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We had driven two and a half hours with a carload of our son’s favorite possessions, and spent another three hours taking them up to his new dorm room in four trips. The last, inadvisable, one was after I talked the boy into eschewing the line at the elevators and opting to carry the last few items up fifteen flights of stairs instead.

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Essentially, what I had done was condemn us to climbing in circles up a dimly lit, non-air-conditioned stairwell. My armload of feather-light things had me feeling like Sisyphus.

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I made it to the eighth floor before I realized I would have to sit down and rest.

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The boy sprinted onward with his much heavier boxes and returned a few minutes later to find me at the 9th floor, making slower and steadier progress.

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“Boys are different,” I tell myself on a loop. Nearly everything we unpacked was a thing he argued he didn’t need.

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The afternoon was turning to evening, and we had done what we set out to do.

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In his new room on the fifteenth floor of a building that also houses a burger chain restaurant and a bank, his bed was made, his bags unpacked, and his computer was set up and working on his new desk.

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I had hidden the cleaning products he didn’t want to bring in the back of the wardrobe he insisted wasn’t included, behind the three-tiered shoe rack (that he also thought was unnecessary but his father had dutifully assembled at my insistence).  

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I want to say this is not my first rodeo – and that in time my son will come to rely on the surprising comfort of a few unnecessary things, like his sister – but I’m not sure it’s true.

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Once we’d finished, I took a last look around. His first-year room looked sparse in comparison to hers. He looked happy.

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His father pressed the hex key that came with the shoe rack into the boy’s hand, and, in a hushed voice, instructed him to tuck it away despite the likelihood that he would never need it again. Our son smiled and closed his hand around the tool.

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It was time to say our goodbyes.

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There was no sadness. No tears.

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He accepted his dad’s bear hug with a quick release and double shoulder taps. He agreed to call or write with news of his first few days, lest we worry. He didn’t need to be reminded that his parents would miss his presence … even though I kept saying it … like a skip in a record.

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He hugged me last. Holding on a little longer than I know he is comfortable. All for me.

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Maybe he knew I would spend the next few days immersed in his childhood, cleaning his room and finding a small lifetime of treasures and literal trash … not to mention seven water bottles, a mostly uneaten Easter Basket he received in 2021, and MY long-lost backpack under his bed.

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Maybe he didn’t know that’s how I would have to get through the first few days of call waiting.

HIgher Powers

When we moved into our house, with its Main Road energy and deep backyard pool, the children were five and two years old. Neither my husband nor I had ever had much experience with either.

As most parents may admit, close proximity to such childhood hazards tend to haunt us. We made all kinds of plans and rules that the children mostly followed. They learned to cross streets under our watchful eye and, above and beyond the dual-locking fence gate, promised to never swim without an adult present.

We promised ourselves we would minimize any and all distractions when we were on swim or traffic duty. Which I know I faithfully executed.

But I can admit, it certainly felt like I was holding my breath for three months each summer – once my husband happily and fearlessly peeled back the pool cover – until he stretched it back over the gaping waterhole.

Finally, I could exhale.

Of course, the inverse held true for the state of my respirations at the start of each school year, and the summer months always provided a respite from news of mass shootings inside places of education. Only the fear seemed so much more daunting because in my mind there was little more I could do to prevent tragedy from visiting our family than deciding not to own a gun that could be turned against me or someone else.

So, without any other form of control, the only thing left to do is push it as far from the front of your thoughts as possible. Let it live in the shadowy gray hope of Things Like This Don’t Happen Here. Despite knowing well enough that they do.

I focused instead on making sure the kids’ were prepared for school, right down to ensuring their vaccinations were up to date.

The hardest part of it all is knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way.

We have never been without power to make our lives and our experiences better. Just like the fence that encircles our pool … or the seatbelts that brought three-point restraint to all occupants of a car (regardless of which seat one inhabited or how old the passenger is who is sitting there.

We know these small changes save lives. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, seatbelts have saved more than 375,000 lives since laws mandating their use was implemented in 1975.

And as for water safety? Center for Disease Control  injury prevention experts, in one of their last studies before their jobs were eliminated this year, found that hundreds of lives could be saved with wider use of fencing and life jackets. The CDC’s modeling found that out of 4,509 drowning deaths reported in 2022, fifty-one could have been prevented by better pool fencing and 297 could have been prevented by wearing a life vest while boating.

There was a time when the leaders of the nation would think 51 deaths from a preventable cause was worth pursuing meaningful change. That is no longer the case. Especially not when the case is about deaths by firearms.

Multiple research organizations across many platforms, from healthcare to academia to those born by tragedy in our communities nationwide, agree that tens of thousands of deaths could be prevented by strengthening laws that include safe storage laws, bans on assault weapons, purchase waiting periods, and red flag confiscations. State-by-state comparisons show the correlation between restrictions and a lower death toll from guns.

So much more to worry about now, it’s hard to focus. 

As our children go back to school … be it a neighborhood primary school or a sprawling university campus .. let’s take a time to catch our breath and remember: We are not powerless.

Were all stuck holding the bag

 Why are we always so willing to hold the bag?

It’s 2:11 … a.m. 

Nothing is happening. No emergency that is new, or fresh, or pressing. There is just me, wide awake, trying to block out the sounds of my husband snoring beside me and the thoughts in my head.

After I’d tried tossing and turning for a few hours, I gave up and decided to catch up on the previous day’s events. When that became horrifying, I swerved abruptly into puzzling through Wordle, and Strands and Pips until I got pulled into the dark corner of mainstream media where we are saved from all our doom-scrolling by credulous solutions to our tinnitus and skin tags, or where we can finally find The Perfect BagTM.

I know such a product doesn’t really exist. 

But in just a few page rolls, I have a contender: a sleek, white satchel that reminds me of a gym bag I owned in grammar school. Only this one, I assume, because of its listed specifications and sharp-focus photograph, is an upgrade from the plastic-handled grip bag of memory, with its chipboard bottom attached by rivets to a blue outer shell of some indiscernible material that zips up the center. Could be canvas ... Could be cardboard. Back then, I was unconcerned by not knowing.

Nevertheless, I am intractably swayed by jaunty marketing campaigns designed help me place myself in the whimsical, carefree picture long enough to make me fish out a credit card and transfer the maximum amount of digits I am willing to transfer to someone else’s bank account for what I know in my bones to be a relatively short moment in time where I will be holding The Bag.

But my thoughts keep churning through the ever-accumulating detritus that has become the news cycle. 

The normalization of misdeeds by a cotton-haired ogre who uses his SCOTUS-granted perch above what is lawful to strip the country of its valuable parts – its diversity and its democracy –  to enrich himself and take potshots at rivals. 

What will remain in the end will be a brittle frame with nothing of substance inside.

I wonder how the paper of record can just echo Trump’s “accusation” of fiscal fraud when Trump and his cohorts use blatant authoritarian threats to target his opposition, when they also print stories like this one and this. The administration continues its policy of saying the quiet parts aloud, and the Times keeps repeating them as if the facts are unknowable. It's like they're all just trolling us ... they even give the people doing the dirty work the most sinister job titles.

It’s all been happening in plain sight. 

The Texas Legislature wrestled power away from its people to help this deeply unpopular president game the midterm elections, where he will learn how successful they were at creating a political system that answers only to MAGA.

They are spiking their followers’ cocktails with rhetoric of strong-armed security while “watering down” our nation’s safety with poison.

Just read any comment section of any OpEd anywhere when a proud Republican gets a taste of their party’s bitter pills, yet still manages to swallow them. They won’t be convinced the pain they feel is anything more than a pesky side effect that was meant for others … not themselves.

They are numbing themselves, too.

But we will all be holding the bag.