Father’s Day

I’m writing this via my phone as I’m locked out of my blog everywhere else (long, exceedingly annoying story), so please forgive any typos or incoherence. 

We had a lovely Father’s Day celebrating Tom and talking to my dear father and getting good time with T’s dad at the beach last week. And yet the whole day was tinged with a decidedly black cast by the fact that the Trump administration has torn more than 2,000 kids from their parents at the Mexico-US border as they staggered across seeking asylum. They have a legal right to do so, and we have a moral obligation to offer safety, and yet, we are treating them as less than human, as burdensome garbage. 

People don’t leave their homes unless they really have to. Unless they’re terrified or being abused or endangered or are deeply desperate due to poverty or violence or the like.

Today, able to hug and love the children that made us parents, we took the boys to a protest at the White House on behalf of the #KeepFamiliesTogether movement. It was all I could think to do in the face of the rage and impotence I felt and continue to feel.

The stories coming from the border are horrible. An infant ripped from its mother’s breast while feeding, taken away, the mother not told where. Who is feeding that baby now? With what? How?

We see photographs of sobbing toddlers, kids with sheets of foil as blankets, behind chain-link walls. Cages of sorts. We are told they get one hour outside a day, that the folks who staff the detention center are not allowed to hug or comfort them.

We read reports about strangers caring for the younger kids in their cells, teaching others how to change diapers.  

We hear lies about family separation being law. It is NOT law.  

We hear that NOT ONE Republican senator has signed on to co-sponsor Senator Feinstein’s Keep Familes Together Act, and so it languishes, as do the children, the babies in detention camps in our own country.  One father killed himself last week just after being forcibly separated from his children; he couldn’t stand it. 

A tent city has been proposed. In Tornillo, TX. A TENT CITY! In America! Is no one in the disgraceful White House with a heart? Does no one wonder what traumatizing people might reap? On our souls? On our safety?

And so we made another protest sign, filled a bottle with ice and water, and parked ourselves in front of the White House. 

When will we reach bottom? When will any Republican running for re-election grow a pair and scream “ENOUGH!” At what cost does this hate and bigotry and destructive  nationalism come? I fear we don’t even know yet. 

Rise up, call your senators and congressional reps, donate to organizations helping at the border, be kind. Keeping families safe and together shouldn’t be political or partisan.

This morning, before I called my dad, I told my boys about a Father’s Day decades ago. Dad was attending an Episcopal church then, and I went with him that morning. A parishioner named John was there, bereft and lonely. Dad invited him home for lunch with us, no head’s up to Mom, and at our table there was room and plenty and love.

I hope that someday this country can actually be great. Can actually offer the promise of hope and dreams and opportunity and love. We're falling so short right now. I am ashamed and sorry and scared.

My children are safe at home tonight

One of my sons has been asleep for a couple hours now, tucked in after a fun family afternoon, a good dinner, and a warm bath. 

The other just got home from a school dance, sweaty and flushed and "so pumped up." He smelled a bit, but I couldn't help but hold him tight as he told me about the dance and the music and the ice cream. He's had a tough year, and I was so hopeful that tonight would be fun. It was. And now, he is safely in bed, here with us at home.

Worrying about your child having fun at a middle school dance is a typical, expected parental concern.

Worrying that your child will be shot to death at their school is not, should not be, cannot become an expected parental concern.

Today, again, more children were gunned down while simply trying to go to school. While most of us are counting down the few remaining days of this academic year, some parents tonight are instead planning shockingly unexpected funerals. With this, the 22nd school shooting of this year and the third just this week, "2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members."

If we as a nation are not mortified and ashamed into real action by that obvious disregard for our children (and the converse which is the obvious idolatrous obsession with firearms), then we are truly beyond repair. 

It's the guns, stupid.

And don't even get me started on the fact that the white murderer was taken into custody without a scratch. If he'd been black, he'd have been blown to smithereens in moments.

March For Our Lives

I don't even know where the twelve days since I returned from Louisiana have gone but they've involved moving out of our house for a week so that our floors could be refinished, a school day, some delays, Tom being out of town for three days, Oliver's birthday and parties, moving back into our house, the kitchen being largely completed, my parents coming, and, today, participating in the huge and extraordinarily moving March For Our Lives here in DC. So please, apologies for any lack of coherence and polish in this post.

Last night, as Mom, a dear family friend from Louisiana, and I made our protest signs, Oliver eagerly joined us to help with coloring and duct tape application. Earnestly, and almost as an aside, he said, "I don't want to die." Our hearts just broke. THIS is why we marched today, because too many children die or fear dying by guns. Too many people do. Every day. Gun violence is a public health crisis, a detestable scourge in this country. We can do something, and that something is NOT arming teachers.

Mom, Dad, Susan, and I started today by attending a pre-March rally in Silver Spring hosted by Jamie Raskin, state senator from Maryland's 8th. Rep Raskin is such a fine leader, one of the many reasons I'm proud to call MD home. At the rally, we heard and were fired up by the Reverend William Barber (amazing orator and person; listen to his speech to us here), MD's wonderful Attorney General, Brian Frosh, former MD governor, Martin O'Malley, some student leaders from Montgomery County (MoCo) Students for Gun Control, and Mr. Raskin himself. It should be noted that Maryland has enacted some of the strictest gun control measures in the country!

Barber speaking against the theological malpractice of those "who say so much about what God says so little, and so little about what God says so much."

We then boarded buses to Union Station and from there walked toward the chants and cheers of an ever-growing crowd blanketing Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues from 3rd to 12th Streets (with much spilling over). 

I think each of us felt repeated waves of emotion wash over us for hours on end. Listening to young leaders like Edna Chavez, Emma Gonzalez, eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler, Matt Post (a MoCo Students for Gun Control leader), and so many inspiring others was profound. I urge you to click on each of their names and watch or read the clips I've shared. 

We appreciated others' signs, we marveled at the number of attendees (some estimates put the DC march at 800,000), and I considered how this March felt similar to and different from all the others I've attended. Most essentially, we hoped that today and what today represents marks the start of real change for a safer, saner tomorrow. 

Preach!

Check out this compilation of photos from marches around the country and world! I'm so grateful for the students leading this charge and for all who marched today.

photo by my friend, Dorothy