Call Me Mama WorryWort

So, John Travolta's son just died. CNN's IReport asked for personal stories and words of hope for the Travoltas and oh my lordy, can you say tears at work?!

Car accidents, drowning, suicide, murder; no matter the method, the pain was there.

Parenting is such a daunting task already in the fact that if you fuck up, you ruin a life. Gee, no pressure. Add into the mix that you're not just aiming to raise said child into adulthood, but guide them into becoming well-rounded, wonderful members of society. Add into that there are events over which you have NO control which will affect said child, possibly doing them harm and my little control freak brain nearly explodes...

This means I am currently worried about any or all of the following: Seizures, violent allergic reactions, car accidents, the pool gate left open, rabid beasts, zombies, nice old neighbors who turn out to be pedophiles, escalators, drive-by shootings, ax-wielding maniacs, heavy machinary, house fires, cancer, dehydration, rampaging tigers etc.

Jeez, no wonder I'm so tired by the end of the day.

That said, I don't let these worries paralyze me and I'm certainly not an overprotective mother (eating dirt won't hurt her, she'll find out soon enough it doesn't taste good...) but it's scary all the same. The feeling of helplessness in the face of so many things that could go wrong for a person I've been put on this earth to raise and protect, simply not fair.

And THEN I think about all the stupid shit I've done, like natural diasters such as tornadoes and zombies don't endanger us enough.

7 years ago... "Snorting pain killers while rolling isn't that bad, is it?" (For the record folks, bad idea.)

Take your pick of years ago... "Wellll, I don't have a condom, do you?"

5 years ago... "Let's eat these mushrooms, grab the Jack and go swimming!"

8 years ago..."We gonna play chicken, bitch."

I find it likely that at some point in Lo's life, there will be a moment in which her life hangs in the balance. I think all of us have been in a situation like this, the blessing is that we don't always know it.

EXAMPLE: A classmate was once involved in a really bad car accident. The car flipped, smashed into a tree, caught fire, the works. Everybody walked away relatively ok and when the fire dept. arrived, the classmate was told that if he hadn't have just filled up his gas tank, the car would've exploded rather than burned.

That small, everyday decision of filling up his tank may have saved his life.

As Lo gets older, I know I'll worry more and more. The curse of parenthood. My sympathies to the Travoltas.

We Remember

In my small elementary school, we always had some sort of Thanksgiving celebration. Instead of bagged lunches or Marriott Food Service mush, the school would put together a potluck lunch with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce. The festive decorations included turkeys shaped by little handprints and stuck to the gym walls with double sided tape, streamers, and little cartoon pilgrims and indians made of cardboard that you can probably order from a magazine sent specifically to teachers for specifically this purpose. We also got to wear either a handmade pilgrim's hat or a band of construction paper with feathers in the back to represent the members of the original feast, I was an Indian if you were wondering.

Now, I'm a picky eater and it was even worse as a child because I was trapped in my pickiness by lack of autonomy, which sucked. I didn't care for pressed turkey, salty gravy and watery-from-a-pouch mashed potatoes and maybe this disdain for our "feast" food made this cold pit form. It's the clearest damn memory but one particular year I just couldn't eat, I felt out of place and slightly queasy and uncomfortable with the whole celebration. I couldn't wait to escape the gym/cafeteria but I didn't have a real reason to leave if I was stopped by a lunch monitor so I stayed.

I remember talking about Girl Scouts and waving to Miss Krystoviac and realizing that other people were actually enjoying this celebration, with it's lax rules of changing tables (normally prohibited) and the presence of teachers normally teaching during this period who came to nip up some turkey and have a quick gossip.

This is the most uncomfortable moment I can ever remember having. I was an outsider during an event designed to mimic a feast of togetherness.

Now, after enduring a class which focused on the plight of the Native Americans after the relations turned sour with the Europeans, maybe I was right to be uncomfortable. I was 19 by the time I was educated on the atrocities committed against our land's native people. Call me naive, call me ignorant but I just didn't know.

I learned all about the systematic, purposeful slaughter of the Native Americans mostly through surviving first-hand letters and diaries of monks and these monks didn't pull any punches or leave out any details. It hurt to read this stuff, I felt betrayed by my lack of knowledge and the thing that horrified me the most was my age. How, after all the Thanksgiving celebrations I'd gone through, had nobody mentioned this. As a kid we were fed a story line that went something like this: The pilgrims and Indians sit down and have a nice feast, which is good, because otherwise those pilgrims would've starved. Trading with those nice Indians brought them knowledge of this New World, how to survive. Now we live here, the end.

So, starting this Thanksgiving, I'm going to start remembering and sharing more of the story. When we go around the table and tell what we are thankful for, I'm going to tell my family an anecdote about how blankets infected with smallpox were sent to Native Americans as a gift, and I'm thankful for knowing this happened so that I can remember it.

A simple remembrance in one person being passed on to seven more. An acknowledgment of the horrors our Natives endured and a thankfulness that they are still here today.

It's not Thanksgiving but...

And some days I think I have it bad. This is humbling, hopeful, heartbreaking and uplifting all at the same time. Not to mention really fucking scary. Flesh-eating bacteria in Boston?

Happy Friday everyone! Happy Friday to ME! Lo and I only have 1.5 hours left at work and then we are going to go see Daddy! I think we're both excited.
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That's Lola bianary for "Have a great weekend!"