Like every mother in America, probably the world, I am grieving deeply this week.
I absolutely cannot believe Heather and Jon Armstrong are getting a divorce.
What kind of a world do we live in where Rihanna and Chris Brown get back together, but Dooce and Mr. Dooce can’t reconcile their differences? It makes me want to get out my Michael Lohan vag-kicking boots and go to nuts. Alas, I am a pacifist at heart.
I’ve needed to be cheered up almost constantly this week. Repeatedly rewatching former child star and current house”wife” Kim on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills toss her homemade chicken salad can only help so much. A few minutes of Miss Universe contestants parading across the stage in those absurd shoes didn’t hurt. Some of them looked like newborn foals trying to walk in rainboots or cats with peanut butter between their toes.
The world is a horrible, sad place. This week, it feels that way to everyone, not just those of us who suffer from clinical depression. I listen to the news when I don’t have kids in the car, but I can’t watch anymore. Whether it’s my PPD or just being a mom, I have to stop myself from obsessively pouring over details of the Connecticut school shooting. I think that reading about it will help me process my grief somehow, but then I learn a new heartbreaking detail and I’m back in the black hole of despair again. I become panicky and desperate, wanting something to take it away. Lucky me. For the families of the murder victims, nothing will ever take it away.
My grief and guilt are irrelevant. It isn’t about me.
I’m fully experiencing what’s been called the Newtown Effect. I can’t get enough of my children. I am suddenly full of patience and affection for them. Even though Pringles is at that stage of toddlerhood where her ability to communicate lags behind her ability to get frustrated and so her piercing scream is like to bust your eardrums apart, nothing she does irritates me. Viva is three-and-a-half. Everything is high drama. I am grateful for every second. We have abandoned all efforts to put the children in their own beds. Instead, we share our California King family-style, cherishing the luxury of having them close us.
I belong to a couple of “mommy groups” on Facebook, and one thing I’m used to is how we all dissect tragedies and accidents involving children so that we can tell ourselves and each other how that could never happen to us. We describe and discuss all of the precautions we take against falls, burns, drownings, poisonings, and abuse. I think that’s why the news media on behalf of the nation is so obsessed with the motive. With the “why”.
This situation devastates us because we cannot say “That would never happen to me.” It could happen to any of us. If anything, what the Sandy Hook Shooting brought into stark awareness is that none of us is safe from this kind of tragedy. We could all lose a child in a school shooting. It can happen anywhere. As a teacher, a small part of my brain is always preoccupied by the fear that an angry boy will show up at my door with a gun. Every time my classroom door opens, that is one possibility that flashes through my mind. Whenever I discipline a male student, I worry. Does he have access to firearms? Will he come back here and take out his anger and resentment on us?
Statistically, our children are in more danger in our cars on the way to school than they are once they get there. The risk of an automobile accident is something we all accept as the price of convenience. The risk of death by murder at school is not something we can, or should, accept.
I have to think about something else.
How could Heather and Jon do this to us? Who the fuck do they think they are? I was counting on them! I needed them to make it. If their love experiment can fail, what the hell hope do the rest of us have?
The risk of becoming invested in love is terrifying. But the cost benefit analysis is proving to be worth it for the most part. I can’t wait to spend two weeks on winter break, bonding with my family. We’re about to work our way through the third or fourth family virus of the season, but that’s just what you get the first year of day care. January will mean a new semester and a much needed fresh start.
Sorry I’m all over the place. The few moments I get to peck out a few thoughts here on my blog lately don’t lend themselves well to editing and revisions. My New Year’s Resolution is to have a writing plan and publish regularly. I hope that’s good news!
Have a wonderful Christmas, if that’s your thing. I’d like to remind you as you see everyone’s “Elf on the Shelf” shenanigans all over the ‘net, I did that LAST year with Farkle the Elf. So, ahem.
I wish you good food, intoxicating drink, and love this holiday. Blessings.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Trigger Warning
I have several friends who are in their early twenties. They used to be my students, and they absolutely love calling me by my first name. They all manage to slip my first name into every Facebook post we exchange. Usually several times. For me, the number one quality in a friend is a great sense of humor. Number two is money.
My young friends keep me somewhat aware of the world outside of motherhood and “The Walking Dead.” Not to be redundant.
One of my young friends has introduced me to a new internet craze called the “trigger warning.” In a nutshell, it’s a way to warn people with anxiety and/or PTSD that something in a post may trigger or set off those feelings and the person can choose not to read on.
For me, though, a trigger warning is in itself a trigger. “Warning, this story contains graphic details of child suffering and/or murder.” Well, GREAT. Now I have to read it. Now I am compelled. Whereas before, I might have passed over that particular headline, presently I am driven by forces beyond my control to read every word of this horrible story. Probably many times.
I’m fortunate I don’t suffer from anxiety the way some people do. Unfortunately, I don’t have the kind LeAnn Rimes described to Giuliana Rancid (typo, but it works for me) on her E! special “LeAnn Rimes, I am the victim here”(subtitle mine). I wish I could catch the kind of anxiety that makes you unable to absorb the fat in your ice cream. Not the kind that makes your eyes bug out, which Giuliana clearly has.
I have the intrusive thoughts kind of anxiety. I would describe it, but it’s too painful. I have no shortage of examples of the terrible thoughts that pop into my head in relation to my children’s health and safety. Suffice it to say, they’re awful. My antidepressant isn’t as effective as it was in the early months, and I’m under more stress now that I’m working.
Not today, though. After a full week of nursing first one and then the other child through a terrible flu, I myself have succumbed.
Sure, I’m troubled by the likelihood that my students will learn nothing today and the reality that I’m burning through my sub days for the whole year before first semester even ends. Shit happens. It’s high school English. It isn’t cancer surgery.
If trigger warnings leave the internet and become a thing, I would expect to see one before the commercial for “Les Miserables.” Trigger warning: you are about to hear a song sung by a woman who has to prostitute herself to feed and clothe her three year-old who is being physically and mentally abused by her caretakers. The song will get stuck in your head for days and bore into your soul as you imagine your own children being beaten and starved and you powerless to help them, your only choices being to sell your hair and your body. And now, for your consideration…
I dreamed a dream in days gone by/when smirks were wry/and fucks worth giving…
I want the quick fix. I want the pill that makes it all go away. The fact that I have to learn to tolerate the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and fear doesn’t sit well with me. I am, like most people, accustomed to an instant solution. So much so, it’s more of an entitlement than an expectation. Like Taylor Greer in “The Bean Trees,” I have to live through the paralysis of awakening. We, none of us, can protect our children from the world. It is something every one of us will eventually fail to do. We give them the protective magic bubble of childhood to the best of our power.
And just like magic comes at a cost, so does Xanax.
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