Ordinary Life: Remembering the Virginia Tech Massacre

A few days after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, I wrote about appreciating ordinary life with my kids as I felt the weight of that awful day during a quiet, uneventful evening at home. April 16 is the fourth anniversary of the murders; I wish peace and comfort to all who were affected by the tragedy.

--

4/19/07

Tonight, after dinner, I find myself in a fairly typical moment. My eight year-old son begins the long opening argument of why he should have more dessert. He points at his empty dinner plate. He suggests options. Just a bit of sherbet. One square of dark chocolate. That last cookie. He is walking around the kitchen, looking in the pantry, examining the shelves in the freezer, and ignoring my offer of a banana or yogurt. 

The other children chat about their school days. My first grade daughter loved the hot lunch that was served at school. She lists everything she ate. A blue Popsicle. A big salad with croutons. A blueberry muffin. A bag of carrots. Her velvety tone sounds like a waitress listing the specials at a five star restaurant. “And chocolate milk,” she says with a sigh. Her little sister is consigned to her chair until she finishes her milk. My oldest, who turns 11 in a few weeks, goes down to the basement to a bin of cleats, baseball socks, and pants. Tomorrow night he has his first game.

When he was a very small boy, he insisted on wearing a Cubs shirt every day of the week. Intermittently, every day whether it was winter or summer, he would soberly announce:  “I got a game tonight.” He’d toddle out to the backyard or the playroom and use his little plastic tee with the enormous white ball and stubby little bat. “I got a game tonight.”

He emerges from the basement with a few pairs of baseball pants. I ask him if they are the right size. “They’re fine,” he says. “I wore them last year, all the time.”

He’s gained something like 15 pounds since last summer. He’s a few inches taller than the last time I marked his height on the wall by the back door.

“Let’s try them on,” I say.

He shrugs and disappears around the corner.

My younger son continues his negotiations.  He notes that there is only one cookie left in the package. Maybe, he wonders aloud, it would be a good idea to split it with his brother. Finish it up, you know, and recycle the package?

My littlest still hasn’t drunk her milk. She picks up her glass and raises it, but before she takes a sip, she again tells us about the newborn baby goats she saw that morning at Cosley Zoo. “They were born last Wednesday. In the evening,” she says with authority.

“Drink your milk,” I say.

My oldest returns, wearing a pair of the baseball pants. They are uncomfortably tight and barely reach to his knees.

“I’ll get you new ones tomorrow,” I say.

He nods and then comes in close, putting his index finger on an eyebrow. He notes that his brows are growing thicker. “See, here?” he says.

“People get hairier as they grow older,” I say. That little boy with the Cubs shirts is disappearing before my very eyes.

“You’re getting hairier because you are turning into a monkey,” my littlest explains, glass of milk in hand. We all break into laughter, but she nods to herself matter-of-factly, glad to have clarified the situation. And, as a youngest child, she is rather pleased to have made everyone laugh.

I look at each of them, my heart aching with love. I wish I could grab hold of the evening, freeze it in time. The repeated requests for more dessert, the outgrown pants, the milk dribbling down my daughter’s chin, the dirty dishes still on the table, the upside-down bottle of Ranch dressing, the dog wandering in and out of the room, checking under the table for fallen bits of food. It's beautiful to me and I'm aware of how precious it all is. But I can’t keep this moment.

Usually when time is frozen, it’s because something very sad has happened. A tragedy, a loss. Otherwise life moves on in its ordinary way. Gray hairs appear at the temples where they hadn’t been before. Kids grow taller between the times we stand them against the wall and mark their heights. The bulbs we planted last fall send shoots up overnight and, when we aren’t looking, they bloom. The tragedy at Virginia Tech freezes that terrible morning always in time. Earlier in the day, I've looked through the snapshots posted online of the people who died. They are all children, someone's child, and precious and loved like my own. Children whose parents limited the number of cookies they could have for dessert, made them finish their milk, kept them in clothes that fit, and experienced countless moments of ordinary life with each one of them.

My sons erupt into laughter, yanking me from my thoughts. They repeat their little sister’s pronouncement over and over:  “That’s because you’re turning into a monkey!”

My littlest smiles and finishes her milk. 

True Family

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. - Richard Bach

Harriet the Spy, the Cops Report and the Power of Words

Years ago, when my editor sheepishly mumbled something about budget cuts and asked me to write the police blotter in addition to my column at the newspaper, I was intrigued. Titillated even. Get clearance to the hidden recesses of the police station every week? Have access to the gritty details of my suburban underworld?  Um...let me think for half a second...You bet!

It took me back to my nine year-old self who loved the novel Harriet the Spy. After Harriet, I created my own spy route. From the bushes beside my house, I’d slip my binoculars out of their brittle leather case and scan the block, my composition book tucked under my elbow. 

The man who lived across the street from us was a magician. I’d watch him rehearse tricks in his garage while his mourning doves filled the neighborhood with their plaintive song.

PEOPLE THINK MAGICIANS ARE DIFFERENT THAN ORDINARY PEOPLE. BUT THEY AREN'T. THEY JUST STAND IN THEIR GARAGES IN OLD SHIRTS AND PRACTICE PUSHING BIRDS UP THEIR SLEEVES OR INTO THE FAKE BOTTOMS OF THEIR TOP HATS. (THE BIRDS HATE IT.)

...

EVERYONE SAYS MRS. WEDNESDAY IS A WITCH. I THINK SHE IS ONE OF THE NICEST PEOPLE I’VE EVER MET. I WALK AS SLOWLY AS I CAN WHEN I PASS BY HER HOUSE. TODAY SHE GAVE ME A DOLL WITH A CHINA FACE THAT’S AS CRACKED AND FRAGILE AS HERS.

...

THESE GIRLS READING TIGER BEAT THINK IF THEY MET SHAUN CASSIDY IT WOULD BE LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, BUT IF THEY EVER DID, HE WOULD TRY TO GET AWAY FROM THEM AS FAST AS HE COULD. ESPECIALLY THAT ONE WHO KEEPS PULLING THE GUM AWAY FROM HER MOUTH LIKE A STRETCHED OUT RUBBER BAND. 

I forgot about how closely I identified with Harriet until I started to cover the “cops report.” For several months, I signed in at the front desk of the police station, was given access to the elevator, and then sat across the hall from the police chief and read through incident reports. Sometimes I was moved to offices down the hall and heard police officers talking about cases. Needless to say, the Harriet in me was fascinated.

Of the 50 or more reports I read every week, I had to choose about a dozen to summarize and submit to the paper. I read about stolen bikes. DUIs. There was usually some kind of retail theft -- someone stole two dozen donuts from Dunkin Donuts once. Someone else took vintage baseball cards from a game shop. More and more often, people were wheeling carts of food out of grocery stores. The undernourished economy was affecting the whole community.

As time went on, I felt twinges of guilt about my job. These were most acute when I saw the way people responded when they found out I wrote the blotter. There was a kind of crass delight in the way they spoke to me. "The blotter? You write the blotter? It’s the first thing I read in the paper every week," they’d say.

Sometimes they’d sing a few bars from one of my "greatest hits." (To amuse myself, I did try to include at least one item that contained a peculiar or comic detail every week.) 

"I loved the story of that guy who was driving drunk and hit that woman’s mailbox and pretended he was delivering the mail when she came out of the house at two in the morning. Classic!"

"Those stolen garden gnomes that later appeared on people’s roofs. Hilarious!"

As the months passed, I began to wonder about the person who stole that cart of groceries or was arrested for public drunkenness. To whom was this person connected?  What sort of desperation was flowing through the veins of his or her life? And then one week, I submitted the details of an incident involving someone in my neighborhood. It wasn’t intentional: I hadn’t recognized the name and knew of the family only remotely. A few days later, standing on the playground waiting for school to be let out, a woman who had identified herself some weeks earlier as my “number one fan” approached me. She wore a grave expression. "Why did you have to put that in?  That whole thing was incredibly painful to the family," she said.

I asked her which incident she was referring to and she believed me when I told her I didn't know the family. She said the arrest and then the publicity had "absolutely wrecked reading the blotter for her." Reading about someone she knew "took all the fun out of it. I mean, when you see how embarrassing, how awful it is for people," she said.

Not long afterward, I bowed out of the job, relieved not to have that weight on my shoulders, newly impressed - again - by the power of words. 

Dr. Susan Smalley writes about words being "alive":

I never thought about a word being 'alive' but then I thought of words spoken 3,000 years ago, written down and passed through many generations, and they seem quite alive when read or spoken today, having lived 3,000 years. As I ponder the power of the word to incite and divide, to calm and connect, or to create and effect change, I am ever more cautious in what I say and how I listen to the words around me.

(Me, too.)

What Greater Thing?

What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories. 

- George Eliot

Lenten Discipline: Looking Beyond the (Charlie) Sheen

During Lent we might commit to a kind of fast. Maybe, as we approach Easter, we can get up out of our seats, exit the circus tent, leave the spectacle behind us.

It is Lent, after all, and the right time to look at the broken and crumbling places inside our own hearts and minds. For aren’t we, just as truly as Charlie Sheen and his “goddesses,” in need of redemption? 

We can approach God in the quiet, unlit season and look for real healing and connection with a God who offers sustenance much more satisfying than watching a person’s life unravel or even than fixating on the next “fairy tale” come to life. 

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer)

(To read my entire post on Charlie Sheen, celebrity worship, and Lent -- on Christianity Today's blog for women -- click here.)