Fire escape

It is old. The black paint, once shiny and flawless like poreless skin, has chipped away after years in the blistering sun. Rust spots make the decay that much more obvious: measles on that clear expanse.

Was it ever used? Did it ever help someone reach the ground safely? Or did it serve only as a sneaky deck for smokers, a perch for birds and their shit, a rendezvous point for lusty, twenty-something lovers?

It almost looks quaint now: a lumbering iron relic of a bygone age. It's morphed into the architecture of the place, showing signs of life only in rainstorms when it catches droplets of water before quickly letting them go.

Even then it's just passively alive, bound as if fixed in a straitjacket. Things only happen to it, an irony in a way since it represents freedom.

And what of the similar escapes we forge in our minds and hearts? Do they rust when we become complacent? Do their joints cry out for oil and a good turn after years of waiting patiently for notice and use? 

And is use or abandonment best, keeping in mind what each really means?

*A freewrite from Jena Schwartz's prompt, "Tell me about the fire escape."

In defense of Mondays. Momdays too.

Y'all might remember that for my 2014 birthday, Tom and the boys gave me a fabulous chaise lounge for the back yard. I love it so much, and it was made even more luxurious this year by the gift of a lumbar pillow for Mother's Day. 

Right now, I'm spread out on it, legs in the sunshine, head conveniently in line with a dogwood branch that's blocking the rays aimed directly at my eyes. I'm writing. Or at least, I mean to be writing. I'm distracted, happily, by the various concerts being performed around me.

The birds are chirping and chattering and singing and bullying. A blue jay the size of a chicken is in the bird feeder, while a scarlet cardinal sits below and catches all the jay drops from his greedy beak. Robins, sparrows and so many other types of birds I can't identify swoop around, waiting for a moment of entry.

 When the jay takes leave -why does he?- the smaller birds hurry in to eat before the playground bully comes barreling back. All the while they sing their musical tunes. Surely they are enjoying this day as much as I am. And the "Supreme Mix" bird seed I splurge on to keep them coming. 

A squirrel is sneaking carefully down the sugar maple's trunk. One eye is fixed on me, and I'm pretty sure the other is focused on the jay. He finally makes his way to the ground and casually camouflages himself by a planter to eat seeds the cardinal's not found. 

It's Wild Kingdom over there. With music.

The kids had a wonderful day at camp and are now having a ball with a beloved babysitter, K, who is now more family than anything. She's making them pasta and drawing with color pastels and building Pokedexes out of old Amazon boxes. And I am out here, guilt free, on a beautiful Monday afternoon.

It took a while to get to the guilt-free part. To the "yes, it's quite OK to have a little afternoon help even after a day of camp" part. It took the advice of counselors, the support of friends, the hearty encouragement of my husband. It took an acceptance of the energy and needs my spirited boys truly have as well as the needs and limitations I have as an at-home mom who recharges in quiet solitude. The latter are no less important than the former. Believing that took a while too.

Many dread Mondays. Workers have job-reentry anxiety, children may wish for the relaxed, no-homework weekends to linger a day more. But since my kids were old enough to be in school, I have come to love and rely on Monday. Momday.

Many are busy. I always exercise and often run more than a few errands. But they are productive, I listen to NPR without interruption, I eat an unhurried lunch, and I settle. I relish not being on. K has come on Mondays for years now, a tradition that helps the rejuvenation I've just started gathering back to stick and stay. So after I pick the kids up and hand out snacks and look at art and hear all about their full days, I pass the torch to K for a bit. I am lucky to be able to do this, and I am even luckier that she and the kids are as delighted as I am to take the baton from me.

Sometimes, when she's tucked them in, and I've tucked them in, we'll sit on the deck and have a glass of wine and talk. K is only ten years younger than me and so it's easy to be friends despite the maternal'ish love I feel for her too. She's a teacher, a really good one, and I have learned from her and the way she relates to and guides children. 

As the evening starts to consider heading home for the night, we hug, I'll thank her and we'll say goodbye until next week. I'll turn to my fridge and my pots and my stove, I'll think about when Tom might arrive home and what he might enjoy eating. I'll appreciate the Momday I just enjoyed and all that made its quiet serenity that much more special.

#charleston

Early this morning, I posted this message to my Facebook page: 

If anyone continues to feel that we need more relaxed gun laws in this country, I say to you that you are crazy. Slaughter and murder are happening all around. Let's get our collective head out of our collective, fraidy-cat ass, and make some change. Holding ‪#‎charleston‬ in the light.

Twelve hours later, I concur.

I just don't know what it's going to take for our country to move on the issue of gun regulation, nor do I understand why we appear to be marching backwards in time towards an ugly past. Racism and guns are a combustible mix. They aren't causal but the connections are clearly there.

Black Americans are "killed at twelve times the rate of people in other developed countries." (Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, 18 June 2015) If you want to see how we compare, read this piece from FiveThirtyEight that was published today. A sad comparison within is this: the homicide rate per 100,00 people for black Americans is 19.4; for white Americans it's 2.5.

I am so angry and demoralized about the lack of government leadership on gun control. Columbine happened in 1999. Since, there have been more than 40 more school shootings, including that at Sandy Hook which killed more than 25 and seemed so horrific that I thought change might actually come.

In the meantime, there was the Aurora, CO, theater massacre, the Fort Hood disaster, Oakland, Santa Monica, as well as all the many individuals shot dead. 

Last year alone, there were "283 separate incidents in which four or more people were shot." (Gary Younge, The Guardian, 18 June 2015)

Gun-regulation rhetoric grows louder but nothing happens. Citizens and government leaders who have no real idea what the Second Amendment was written to protect scream like feral beasts about their rights to bear arms. Instead of restricting where those arms can be brought, we expand their reach by allowing them in bars, churches, airports and college campuses. We enact bullshit legislation like Stand Your Ground and we elect racist assholes like Sheriff Joe Arpaio. 

All of this serves as a hideous veil behind which killers hide and then get away. They are police officers who murder unarmed citizens and are then acquitted. They are bigoted punks who promote themselves to neighborhood guardians and shoot and/or report suspicious -read: "of color"- others in their midst. Some are mentally ill, but not all; some are just hateful and mean. They are racist and ignorant. They shouldn't have guns in the first place.

More guns does not a civilized society make.

We watch again and again and again as the tears of mothers, fathers, children and friends are prayed for and then forgotten. We wring our hands in sympathy and outrage but when the dirt covers the coffins, our attention shifts. 

This is shameful. It is not leadership, and it is not compassion. It is immoral and cowardly and weak, and all who do not vociferously insist on change are culpable in the continuation of such unnecessary tragedy and inexcusable disregard. 

If we cannot simply say "NO MORE" after children are slaughtered and families are ripped apart and welcoming church congregations are shot up during a prayer group, then we are a pitifully impotent country. 

Not a day after Dylann Roof murdered nine black people (including three older than 70) at the Emanual A.M.E. church in Charleston, right wing pundits ignored the racial dimension and asserted that his rampage was an attack on faith. They asked whether pastors should be armed. And the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol building continued to fly high. 

I don't understand how these images don't haunt change into our leaders. I am outraged and heartbroken and ashamed. 

courtesy of the NY Daily News