A Little Orange Rain Jacket
Watching the news these days is a dreadful experience. I’d even say offensive. Wrought with tension and yelling matches, disputes between hosts and guests, and filled with stories of terror and tragedy. It’s hard to watch. Then somehow it gets weirder because it magically switches from all the dread, to bits on the weather and feel good stories. All presented by plastic anchors in full makeup and fake smiles. To sum it up, the news no longer feels like something I need to watch, or my body can handle. Which is why I don’t really watch the news, so much as gather it online in tiny morsels. I do this hoping that it will be less of an affront to my anxiety about the days we are living in. I hope that when dolled out in small doses I can somehow pretend it’s no so damn bleak.
It never works. I still see the madness unfold, as if in my front yard. I see the sadness, and feel it in my bones. And sometimes I cry, because it’s too much.
Just this week I felt sick to my stomach as I watched a sweet boy discuss his thoughts and fears about the shooting at his school. At his school. It was a CNN blip circling Facebook. A child stood there, all of 60 inches tall, stoically upright next to his adoring, abundantly grateful, father. He stood there and told of how he held on to a metal baseball bat. Why? Because if he was gonna go down, he was gonna go down fighting. The anchor was visibly shaken, the father was smiling, and I was rendered motionless. I assume his father was smiling because he was marveling that his son was actually alive. I assume the anchor was near tears because it was unreal to imagine a child in this situation, again. And I was motionless because that sweet child was wearing a coat that looked eerily similar to my 7 year olds orange rain jacket.
When asked how old he was that boy on TV replied, in a child’s voice, “12.” He almost added “and a half,” but he stopped at 12. He’s at the stage in life where half’s matter when in correlation to age. And even though 12, to me he sounded 7, because all I saw was my son. I looked at him there, in his orange raincoat, and cried. I cried for him and the horrible memories he will carry with him his entire life. I cried for his classmates. I cried for his parents. I cried for his community. I cried for the children who were shot. And I even cried for the “grown” children who brought those guns to school, and shot at classmates. I cried for all of us. It was gut wrenching.
Looking at that rain jacket I immediately imagined my son and his crooked smile. I saw my child’s messy hair, and his orange rain coat on the news. It broke me. How can we all not see our children in these photos? Those children with their arms up? Those children in tears? Those children visibly shaken to the core? Those are our children. Our children are dying. Our children are being traumatized by the drills and the real events. Our children are victims of both the shooters, and a government that allows this to go on, and on, and on...
Seeing that orange coat on a child, worn on a rainy day to protect him from getting wet, shook me. As parents we pack our kids backpacks and lunches, so they have school supplies and food to eat. We beg them to wear coats appropriate for the weather, so they can stay warm and dry. We make sure they have snow pants when it‘s cold, tennis shoes on a gym day, and boots when it snows. We do this so their legs will be dry and their feet will be protected .We do our best to send them off to school prepared for their day.
We scramble each morning to gather them up with all that gear, and give them kisses goodbye. Then we put them on yellow school buses, our in our own backseats, heading off to school. We do this because as parents we know school is a vital part of growing up. We know that learning to read and to understand numbers is essential for academic growth, and that the friendships they make at school are important to emotional development.
But these days, I’m filled with dread knowing my kids are not always safe ... at school. I can‘t really protect my kids, regardless of the shoes and boots and backpacks. These school shootings are a pox on our society. Watching adults discuss this in any way other than absolute horror, total outrage, and with pure desire to protect our children via common sense gun legislation, is egregious.
To the gun enthusiasts who think I want your gun taken away, you are wrong. I want “their” guns taken away. But since we never know who “they” are—until they take aim at our children, our friends, our spouses, or even themselves—I want common sense gun legislation.
To the elected officials put in office by votes, I want transparency. I want you to listen to the constituents who elected you, not the well funded lobbyists hired by corporations continually enriched by violence. If you listen you will see most Americans are in support of change.
To the hunters and collectors, I understand why you think this will affect you. But if you are like an elderly friend of mine who owns upwards of 60 guns (60, not a typo), and you have your weapons in a locked safe, and your ammunition in another locked safe, I am not afraid of you. I think it’s weird, but am not afraid. If you learned at a young age to treat a gun as if it were loaded, even when you know it isn’t, I am not afraid of you. If you were taught how to shoot by a trusted relative who also taught your to respect the weapon, and to keep others safe as well—I am not afraid of you, either.
See, what we are actually afraid of is the careless gun owner. The causal gun owner who hasn’t taken the time to learn how to use their weapon, to secure it properly, or to ensure the safety of those in their own home, let alone the rest of us in society. We are afraid of the nonchalance of gun culture, and the idea that guns will save us from theft or peril, when in reality we are more likely to die by our own gun, than that of a home invader. We are afraid of violent video games filled with misogyny and themes of grandiosity when in possession of a big gun. We are afraid the message has been distorted at the expense of our children.
We are afraid because we should be. Children are dying, families are being torn apart, and society seems on the brink of what feels like collapse. Until something is done to prevent needless suffering we will raise our voices, vote our consciousness, and demand to be heard.
We don’t want your guns. We want our children to be safe.
On this Mother’s Day, the best gift you could give a mother is the peace that comes with knowing her children are safe. Perhaps we could all be open to the conversation, agree to sit across from someone who thinks differently than us, and do our best to see that we are all in this together. It’s not going to be an easy conversation—but the stakes are high. It might even feel awkward. But my guess it won’t be as awkward as a picking out a little casket, writing an eulogy for young child or teenager, setting up a food chain for a grieving neighbor, or looking a parent in the eye who has lost a child to an act of violence so grim we all assume it could never happen to anyone we know. Yet it does. It keeps happening.
Children, parents, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grand parents, neighbors, coworkers, clients and everyone we interact with in our daily lives deserves to feel safe. To be heard. We legislate and regulate cars, the building of homes, the companies we buy from, the corner gas station, the apartments we rent, the medicines we consume, the food we eat, the water we drink... We can certainly survive a few more restrictions on the vast number of weapons in this country, and how they are bought and sold. At a very minimum we need to be honest, open to the dialogue, and heard by the people who supposedly run our government. And if you consider yourself Pro-Life, I sure hope you agree—because all these lives being lost are pretty damn important to the families who are left to bury them.
