An american Landscape
Note to readers: This essay reflects my personal need to see, feel and confront tragic events in our communities in order to understand and act in a positive way. The images described are representative of real events but are not meant to exploit or compound the suffering of places where these events have actually occurred or any reader who has suffered trauma from an act of violence. There are resources listed for help at the end of the piece.
Small children, wide-eyed and screaming. Nine or ten years old. I’ve always thought that must be the best age ever..whimsical, full of curiosity, a foundation of skills and interests taking shape, and before the self consciousness and stereotypes and the push to accomplish goals set by those who came befor
Then there is silence. They sprawl on the floor and on top of each other and behind desks if they had gotten a chance to run that far in their sneakers or sandals. Some were shielded by the bodies of their teachers. No shield, no love, no courage is enough to spare their lives against an AK-15.
There are gaping holes in their dinosaur t-shirts, ruffled blouses, cargo pants with blood that forms tributaries, lakes, geysers. And underneath there are caverns in tender flesh. The scene has become a permanent part of our American landscape and psyches.
I have tried for two days to avoid letting myself see, imagine and feel fully these pictures, avoided reading any details from news alerts and videos. Instead I cling to the perimeter and read about how survivors, children and teachers huddled in a nearby funeral home still wrapped about each other, still screaming. These are the lucky ones.
But I force myself to look at images that have formed in my mind and bubbled to the surface, catching me while I take a walk or wash the dishes. A decade of a steady stream of these scenes have created neural pathways that cannot be erased. Now the steady erosion snaking through my brain and heart feels like the grand canyon. Just last week it was the elderly Black grandmothers massacred by the hand and gun of another disturbed young man while shopping at their neighborhood grocery.
Just hours before the Texas tragedy I was literally driving past the highway exit to Sandy Hook. I wondered then if there was a permanent monument or memorial in the town. I thought I should go see it on my return trip. I think of the photo of little Daniel Barden, smiling with a missing tooth. His father co-founded Sandy Hook Promise ten years ago to fight for gun control and a way to stop gun violence. Daniel was murdered at the age of 6. He had the same bright look and the same age as my oldest grandson is now.
I force myself to see the enormity of these tragedies and the feelings of despair and grief that must inevitably follow. As a mother, a grandmother and a citizen I must do this. To do less is to abandon my responsibilities as a human being. To do less is to numb myself to our common suffering and humanity. To do less is to close myself to healing and action.
I read Heather Cox Richardson’s enlightening history of American gun legislation. I read my daughter’s text urging me to apply for Irish citizenship so she may follow as a descendant. I read her own newsletter where she states that she cannot wear her contacts because she has cried so much. She is done. The mother of 3 little boys, she writes:
“There have been many times in the last 2+ years that I could find a silver lining or dig deep to grasp shreds of optimism. Or at least see a horizon where things might get better. Today I have nothing. American society is a financial, emotional, physical and reproductive abuser of families. Our social contract offers us literally nothing. Our government is held hostage by a political minority with insatiable drive to control and terrorize people over what happens in their uteruses while men terrorize the vulnerable with guns. For our citizenship we get mountains of debt, a deeply racist and sexist society and a safety net made out of wet tissue paper.
……Today at my oldest’s elementary school, it was a pre-planned “superhero” themed day, with kids parading into school dressed to use superhuman strength to defeat villains. It feels a little too on the nose on this Wednesday, in a society where adults do nothing meaningful to protect them. And no, I didn’t talk to my six year old about what happened. I’m going to wait to see if he asks because the only choice is to lie and tell him that I’ll be sure something horrible like this won’t happen to him”
And so by not turning away, by holding all the images, the despair, the fear, I am marking my place in a particularly horrific time in my country. I wonder what is next, what I will do, waiting for a moment of clarity, equanimity, trust, a path forward. I don’t know when that will come. I trust that it will.
This evening I FaceTime with my twenty-seven month old twin grandsons who recite their usual litany of requests: a chat with PopPop and sightings of Wally, our dog. This time I show them the enormous stuffed elephant that their big brother has played with since he was their age. I show them the blue sky and distant ocean, the path they took to the beach last summer, the baby swing hanging from an ancient oak that seems to have a face peering from its broad trunk, a guardian spirit perhaps. A thousand miles away, I keep thinking of things to keep the boys with me on the screen. I don’t want to let them out of my sight.
References, Resources, Learn more….
“Letters from an American” by Heather Cox Richardson, https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
See posts dated, May 27, May26, May 26, May 27, 2022 for the historical and political path that has brought our country to this time of gun violence.
Choose Love Movement, http://www.chooselovemovement.org, was founded by Scarlet Lewis, the mother of Jesse Lewis who was murdered at Sandy Hook. The foundation is a practical and healing resource for the emotional and traumatic roots of violence at all levels of our society.
https://www.sandyhookpromise.org, co-founded by Mark Barden, another parent who lost his son, Daniel at Sandy Hook.
“I Can’t Dig Deeper Right Now,” newsletter, Katherine Goldstein, journalist and founder of The Doubleshift, whose work centers on issues of equality, support and understanding the needs of families, especially mothers. https://www.thedoubleshift.com.
“We know what the Problem Is” https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add1854#.YpC03LctToo.mailto. Recent scientific data regarding gun violence.