Month: August 2019

Late summer thistle

This isn’t the first summer in which grief has tried to wrap her arms around me. Sometimes she shows up just after the solstice. Other times she waits until the Fourth. She generally lets me be on family vacation, but no doubt has her claws out come time to buy school supplies. She visits in response to the shifting sun, the abridging days and the upcoming autumnal new year— kids each a grade higher, me a year closer to elder hood. Grief reminds me of the poignancy of life, digging up regrets and I-wish-I-would-haves that go dormant in other seasons. This is the anxious anticipation of returning my people to society, duty and academic formation. I feel an ancient sacrificial ache. 

This August I’m grieving a bit differently. I’m crying openly at the pool, while chauffeuring the kids and as I lie curled up on the couch on a beautiful day. I’m admitting to people who ask how it’s going that I’m sad. This summer I’m not shrugging grief off. I’m letting her have her way with me. I’m saving my fighting energy for something more productive. I’m succumbing to the sweetness and the requisite flip-side of being in love. 

Columbine

My family and I recently returned from Colorado, where we hiked, horsebacked and lolly-gagged our way through the mountains. On one of our adventures we came upon a field of these lovely beings, named with the Latin word for dove, Columba.

Neither this image nor the nearly universal symbol of peace comes to mind when I hear “Columbine”. Like most Americans of my generation, instead of a mountain flower, I think of a mass school shooting. Over twenty years ago, on April 20, 1999, our nation was rocked with the first bloody outcry of it’s kind, of a young white population begging for connection and belonging, begging to be truly seen. Two decades later the isolation and separation felt by those two Columbine youth is as rampant as ever, as are mass shootings.

Absolutely we need to address gun control, divisive language and the roots of white supremacy. We need to dialogue, call our representatives and march in the streets. But just as importantly, we also need to sit quietly and examine our personal responsibility in creating and participating in the current culture of our nation.

How are we, as individuals in the greater web, creating spaces of inclusion?

How are we using language of connection?

Where may we unwittingly be using language of separation and difference?

How are we inviting others to eat at our table?

How are we unconsciously telling others to keep out?

How are we cajoling our sons and daughters to speak to what hurts and desires to be seen?

How are we cajoling ourselves?

How are we supporting ourselves, both alone and in community ?

Where and how are we creating feelings of belonging?

Are our feelings of connection created with acts of inclusion or exclusion?

What are the rippling effects?

My dream is that sooner than later the Columbine flower be a national symbol of peace, belonging and the coming together of our nation to address the undercurrent of desperation felt by so many.