So I’m sure you’ve all read that open letter that has almost certainly by this point mortified the teenaged sons of the mother who wrote it (side note – as the kids get older, they’ll appear here less . . . this is the reason).  A number of folks have written their own reflections on it, and as I lay awake at 5:15 this morning waiting for my alarm to go off, my own reflections were running through my head, and since the husband is back in town and I have adult help getting the kids ready and my morning is not so pressed, I am writing them out for…

I saw the school shooting footage yesterday on Fox news, a station that plays at all times in my workplace break room.  Fox news reported that the school shooting was averted by an armed officer. It appears at this point that in actuality, the boy, who carried an AK-47, a gun bag, and various magazines and other accoutrements, was talked down over the course of a tense hour by an unarmed school clerk, who happened to be sitting at the front of the school, in a seat that wasn’t hers, covering for a receptionist’s break. I listened to her whole interview today.  She described him as a boy who was hurting.  She described talking to him…

Virginia Tech terrified me.  Aurora angered me.  But after Newtown broke my spirit, I decided that in order to survive in this uncertain world, and to continue to go to movies, work, school, and out in public, I was going to have to come up with a new way to see things.  Fred Rogers is the greatest American who ever lived, and I thought his oft-facebooked quote seemed like a good way to keep my soul from being dragged into a dark place by a small handful of people who so desperately want to push it there. So, although I kept my news exposure to a minimum yesterday, here is what…

Ya’ll, I have done not a lick of work today – besides preparing a filing that must go out, which is the only reason I’m still here and not swooping in to pick up my children this very minute.  (Yes, even though they say they hate me and I say they annoy the bloody heck out of me.  Love and annoyance coexist in every parent’s heart, I’m here to tell you, and I love their annoying little selves all the fiercer on crappy days like this.) I have said what I want to say on guns before.  But I’m having trouble processing this latest tragedy – the third since I…

I have my stories that I tell, about memories of lives I have lived in old places.  I’m not old, but I’ve been an adult for long enough now that memories of my earliest years out on my own in the world are turning from long, detail rich narratives into calcified representative stories, with rhythms I recognize, beats drummed into the sentences that I’ve spoken aloud a dozen times.  You tell a tale often enough, and it evolves.  You cease remembering it as it was, and begin to remember it as you tell it, and eventually you play the telephone game with your own self, from decade to decade, each…