The Burrow

It's tough, being a grandparent. You have to go to the park and climb on the slide and slide down the slide. There was lots of wandering around and crawling under  while wondering where her minions might be hiding.  There was looking for Grandpa through the bars, and following the parade behind her. You have to watch her devour a grilled cheese sandwich while flirting with the worker bees,  and then go to music class where she becomes the queen bee. And then, after singing and dancing and making music with every kind of percussion instrument ever invented, you must go to another park, where tan bark makes the littlest human in the party extremely happy. There were dinosaurs to sit upon and cars to drive before it was time to go home. As I warned you yesterday, there's not a lot of pithy thought this week. There's just lots and lots of love.

I've had senseless tragedies on my mind today, as the Aurora shooter asserts an affirmative defense, thus requiring a trial. His sanity will be examined, the details will be hashed and rehashed and diced and sliced and it will last for a very long time.   Eighty-two theater-goers were shot that night.  Eighty-two stories are waiting to be heard. The judge said that the trial will center on the testimony of mental health experts weighing in on the shooter's mental state at the time of the rampage, and not on that of the victims. Victims....oh, I don't like that word at all.  It's accurate and it's necessary and it has legal ramifications but I still don't like it. The number of people who have a vested interest in the case comes close to 700, as the judge considers those in the adjoining theaters to have been at risk, too. All those people may not testify, but they'll have a chance to see every bit of the legal proceedings.  It's their right. It...

The list just keeps getting longer.  The faces all look the same. There's a haunted look peering out beneath turbans. It's all too familiar to me.  I see it in the mirror. Someone took issue with something and decided to solve his problems with weaponry. Regular people went about doing regular things and met bullets.  It's just not right. I was doing better and better, figuring out where to put the Aurora feelings and then I got off the plane and read the headlines. That little box in the corner of my self, the one that holds most of the hurt, the one I could keep mostly closed most of the time, that box isn't as little any more.  And the lid is harder and harder to keep down. TBG reminded me later in the afternoon that, in fact, he'd tried to tell me that someone had leaked something to the LA Times about the shooter and a plea deal and the death penalty but that I'd begged him to change the subject before I went to sleep and so we talked about the ...

Dear Aurora, Tucson sends you its love. The media reports specific numbers of killed and wounded, but we here in Tucson know that's only a part of the story. This happened to all of you, each and every one of you. We get it. Really, we do. Everybody has a story, or is one degree of separation from a story, that puts a loved one on the way to or passing by when or right across the parking lot . That is true here in our small-town-metropolis of just over 1 million; it must be even more true in yours, one third our size. Does it seem as if all the faces in town have the same glazed and dazed expression? Do you feel as if you are walking through a movie or a bad dream or any of the other banal explanations thrown your way? There's more than a little difficulty involved in realizing that this really did happen right there in your town.... where you shop and stroll and send your kids to the mall. It's just a regular town in a beautiful part of the country. We get it. Real...

I have to write about it. I've tried avoiding it.  I've tried minimizing it.  I've tried ignoring it.  I've tried tuning it out.  I've skipped headlines and entire sections of the newspaper.  It's not working. Eighteen months ago I was one of those people... those regular, everyday people, those I just went to the movies people.... those people in the all-too-familiar hospital gowns with the silly ties that won't stay together.  I understand why they have those goofy grins on their faces; they've lived to tell the tale.  There is sorrow all around them, but they are here to lend an ear... or to be leant an ear themselves.  ***** Thirty minutes after the bullets stopped flying, I was sedated. I stayed that way until Mr. and Mrs. Obama came into my room and went right back down the rabbit hole again as soon as they left.  It wasn't until Thursday morning that I was fully awake. I think that is why it has taken me so long to tune i...

Thanks for the love and concern you've been sending my way as the sorrow in Aurora unfolds.  I was heavily sedated immediately after January 8, 2011, so this part brings back no personal memories for me. The loss, the devastation, only exacerbates what's always so close to my heart.  Time passes, and the wounds become less raw, less omnipresent, but never less painful.  I hope that those Coloradans are as enveloped in love as my family and I were; that's what got us through the darkness. ***** There's an interesting discussion on BlogHer  about purple backpacks and long division and the Lands End back to school catalog.  People are all over the map in their responses, but the tone of it all is civil and intelligent while "agreeing to disagree" through gritted teeth.  It's just what on-line conversations should be all about. **** While I'm on that subject, I tried raising gender neutral children and, except around the edges, I ...