“Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.”
~Joan Didion
With a very big sigh of relief, I count another mother’s day over. My feelings about the holiday remain the same as they were four years ago and I am still not proud of them. Of course, I am not proud. The feelings are still all about self-pity. Which is ugly and such a damm nuisance.
When I first read Joan Didion’s “The year of magical thinking,” I did not understand those first lines quoted above. I rather shamefacedly admit that I didn’t understand them for a very long time. What was so bad about some very well deserved self-pity? Continue reading
It is spring!
Has no one else noticed?
This is a picture of Julia walking to class.
It seems like a long time ago now that we, make that I, reclaimed Christmas. I don’t expect that the winter holidays will always be perfectly smooth but our last Christmas and then New Years cruise seemed to reset my holiday clock better than anything else. Distinct differences and concrete plans worked miracles. Prior to last year, I was not only missing our pre-death holiday ‘routine’ but also missing the friends with whom we shared many thanksgivings and a few Christmases—people and plans I thought would never change. Then there was change. Ah, embracing those Noble Truths.
Yesterday, on the month anniversary of the massacre by a 19-year old using a semi-automatic style weapon at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead and 14 injured, students all over the United States walked out of class to protest gun violence and to demand action by their lawmakers. These clear, young eyes see the NRA’s emasculation of the GOP, the party which controls all three branches of our federal government and 33 state houses across the USA. They see that the best the GOP president can do is host a roundtable discussion about violent video games after the NRA made him walk back his gun control comments. I’ve heard and read “grown-ups” criticizing students for meddling in issues they do not understand and insinuating that the protesters only wanted to get out of classes, but possibly those “grown-ups” know a very different kind of student than I know. I applaud the students who organized demonstrations of all sorts yesterday and who intend to demand more from the rest of us to end gun violence with gun control. 
Chasing Joy 