Trying to Breathe

I'm trying to breathe, which ain't easy as it's hot as Hades here in New York, and will be for days, and there's no way to escape the oppression and the heaviness of this heat, nor the feelings of injustice that make the air seem toxic.

I'm trying to breathe. Trying to understand how, in this country, we have lawmakers who enact laws that pretend that we are all equal, when in fact being white and having a gun makes you more equal than anyone else; trying to understand how it is that Trayvon Martin was the one who was sentenced, while his killer was set free.

I'm trying to breathe. Trying to know why George Zimmerman was permitted to silence the boy forever, preventing him from telling his side of the story, so it doesn't matter if he felt scared, or if he felt threatened, or if he wanted to stand his own ground when approached by a guy who was obviously out to get him. The boy is dead, so he doesn't have a say. His killer chose not to take the stand, and yet the kid didn't have a choice--he couldn't say a word, so it was he, the victim, who was convicted of the crime--of scaring an older man, who was in the safety of his own car, until he chose to get out of it. The circumstances are so confounding, one can hardly understand how it occurred, nor how it took six weeks for the murderer to be arrested. Though I may try to find them, there are no words.

I'm trying to breathe. Trying to refrain from blaming the jury, as they did not write the laws that protect gun owners and shooters, and that governed the admissible evidence and limited parameters of the trial. But like those jury members, I am a white woman, and so, like them, I can't possibly understand what it is to be the mother of a boy who is born vulnerable. Had I any sons, I would not be obliged to have "the talk", in which black parents teach their sons to be obsequious to law enforcement in all encounters, as a matter of protection.

I'm trying to breathe. Trying to take all this restless, pessimistic energy and not lose sight of hope. If you have to have "the talk" with your sons, I wish you and your boys strength and courage. If you don't, here's what I wish for you: I wish you also would have "the talk" with your kids. Talk to them about the fiction of a post-racial society. Make them consider what it would be like to be Trayvon Martin. The only thing that will ever fix the seemingly intractable problem of prejudice is love, empathy and understanding. Call me a hippie if you like, but this I do believe.

I'm just trying to breathe.

When It Rains, It Pours

When it rains, it pours. Which is another way of saying that on the day when you find the lost iPad under a child's bed and discover that the screen is cracked, you will cut your finger on a shard of broken screen glass; and then you will reach into a closet to find the clear tape to cover the shattered screen, only to catch a different finger between the closet doors, rendering your right pointing (and typing) finger on fire with pain, and then numb and black, making you dance and holler and cry while holding your flattened finger (the cut one seems fine, now) under the cold tap, while your toddler is rendered speechless by the antics of her own mother; and all this before 9am.

When it rains, it pours. Which is another way of saying that later that same day, you will find yourself spending more than four hours in a walk-in orthopedics clinic to have your daughter's arm x-rayed to make sure that it isn't broken, because she fell doing a cartwheel a week ago and you said, "You're fine, buck up," but a week later she is not fine, and she complains non-stop, and her father says, "when are you going to take her to see someone about that arm?", so finally you agree to do what any good mother would have done days earlier: that is, believe her child when she says she is truly injured, and take her to the doctor, and when you get there there's a kid with bleeding, mangled fingers waiting before you, so you sit in an exam room being completely ignored because, let's be honest, your kid is basically fine, and that kid is having his finger nail extracted, until finally the doctor comes to tell you that it's just a sprain; i.e. you were right.

When it rains, it pours. Which is another way of saying that when you're in the middle of figuring out the brain-splitting details of moving your family an entire 5.5 miles away within the same city, and your home is half in boxes, and you're trying to figure out how to pack and not lose sight of your kids' camp gear which they will need in less than a month, and you're dealing with the sad fact that after some twenty years since you started college, it's time to part with your Lit Hum and CC books, because your new place won't have room for them, you will suddenly be offered your first well-paid writing gig in who-knows-how-long, and it will of course have a deadline that coincides perfectly with the dates of your move, which is to say that it all must be done at the same time.

When it rains it pours. Which is another way of saying that while you're worrying about your move and your stuff and your job, and your kid's minor injury, and your own minor injury; on that same day, halfway across the country in a place you've never been, something terrible will happen: a tornado that will leave in its wake damage out of a sci-fi movie, and will take the lives of children at school; a terrible nightmare that you've never had, but now probably will; and it hurts you so much to know that this can happen in this world, to feel the pain of yet another disaster, after Sandy, Sandy Hook, and Boston, so recent, that you can't describe it in any other way than with a cliche: your heart aches.

When it rains, it pours.