stuck

Hi. I’m here. But stuck.

Normally, I’d have done a Wordless Wednesday post today. Something with itty bitty tree buds. Or sunny daffs on my kitchen sill. Hopeful things. Signs of spring. New life. Beginning.

But I’m not there.

I’m here.

Not just stuck in sadness for the 9-year-olds who were shot and killed in Nashville on Monday. Or for their parents. And siblings. (I woke on Tuesday unable to imagine how any of them would even get out of bed that morning.) (Or the next many mornings.)

I’m stuck on the fact that school shootings–the massacre of our children, who we send out into the world each day–have become Regular.

(They have.) (I think that’s inarguable.)

Lincoln and I were driving and talking on Tuesday. He’s 15. A thinker. A questioner. (Last night, right before bed, he popped in my room and asked if I think new souls come into being — and if so, how — OR if all the same souls just cycle through forever and ever. And how would that work with population growth?) He will argue (and argue) a point. He doesn’t wear rose-colored glasses, and he loves a little devil’s advocate. And yet. We were talking, in the car, about Nashville and Denver, and he asked — just so simply — “I don’t get it. Why can’t they do something about gun control?”

I hear you, Linc. I do. How much more can we fail you?

As hopeful as I want to be, it feels hope-less. (I feel badly saying that; I recognize so many who work tirelessly for change.)

But from an honest depth, I told him I don’t ask why anymore.

In our conversation — the longest we’ve had in a while without him checking his phone — I said I wonder if, since the collective We can’t agree on gun laws, can We and the We in Washington talk more about mental health? Let’s follow the shootings back to the source; could we make any headway there? He said they’d had a mental health presentation in class that day — coincidentally. “It wasn’t great…they never really are,” he said. “But it was something.”

Could that be a crack where the light might come in?

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I know the best way to honor life, even life lost, is to live. I’m not asking anyone not to do that; we can’t all hole up or shut down every time something horrible happens. But once in a while, a particular kind of horrible happens, and I hole up. Shut down for a time. Maybe what I mean, instead of shut down, is I shift.

I get quiet(er). Angrier and gentler, simultaneously; more forgiving and less forgiving, too.

I am still awake to inspiration. Most recently by a legally blind 90-year-old woman in town who had a second corneal transplant yesterday in hopes of regaining some sight — though chances are slim.

Is that hope? Or what??

Thank you to her for that.

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When I get stuck, putting my mind to paper (or post) is one way I start to get moving again — so thanks for bearing with me. I’ll see you on Saturday, the first of the month, with My One Word Prompt. (It feels like a timely one.) ‘Til then — xo