Greater Good

I have decided that reading the daily news voraciously is not good for my health. I don’t understand why almost all news coverage has morphed into a ‘reader’s theatre’ open-mic affair, with one small bit of news being thrown out like a hunk of raw meat while crazed lions from the left and the right pounce in and tear it to pieces. The few facts that were presented at the start are so quickly mauled into a bloody mess that there’s no way to even identify ‘fact’ from fiction.

Indeed, nowadays it’s not even necessary to use actual, provable facts when speaking, even if you are a member of the United States Congress.   Which leaves me browsing the internet instead, where I can scan headlines quickly before any facts are slaughtered in front of my eyes.

This last week most of the headlines have been unbelievably upsetting. Congress acting atrociously. A psychopath shooting scores of teens to death. Government buildings exploding. One ‘expert’ after another sounding off on religious tolerance; fundamentalist ‘rights’; drug and alcohol addiction; government response times.

But the article that resonated the most for me was this one by Dennis Henigan called, ‘Actually, Guns Do Kill People’ on the Brady campaign website.  The most startling statistic he presented is that in Norway 76 people were killed in one day of astounding violence. In America, more people than that are killed by gun violence every single day of the year!  Of course Norway’s population is a fraction of that of the U.S., but per capita, there are 1.1 deaths by gun per 1 million Norwegians vs. 1 per 33,000 Americans each year.

I don’t believe in carrying a gun. I don’t think anyone should, unless it is an integral part of your job. Because for every pro-gun argument, it seems obvious to me that individuals carrying guns for ‘self-protection’ never serves the greater good. Rather, by carrying a gun, I increase the chance of that gun going off and wounding or killing someone. Even if some psychopath were to attack me or my children, what are the odds that I would have my gun at the ready, and be in such a state of mind to use it effectively, only injuring the attacker? The odds are not high, and the risks are just too great. Therefore, for the greater good, I will not carry a gun. Or keep one in my house, where my children, or visiting children, might pick it up.  

It seems to me that one aspect of American life that is becoming exacerbated is that there is no sense of ‘the greater good’ among us. If I have health insurance, why should I care if  ‘poor’ people; or ‘mentally ill’ folks; or someone else’s ‘children’ have it, too? If my job pays me an abundance of money and I am able to work as my own boss with my own set of rules, why do I care if other people have little or no job security or adequate wages? I’m doing fine, thanks, now leave me and my money alone!

As a mother, it is impossible to put yourself in this mind frame of ‘me, me, me’ and physically mind your children without a daily heap of the ‘greater good’. You must slow down on walks so that the littlest among you is not left behind. You must drive out of your way and spend money you’d set aside for other things on eye glasses and inhalers and lactose-free infant formula. You navigate the day by taking into account all the needs of everyone in the family, and then prioritizing based on the ‘greater good’. Parents who don’t do this are labeled ‘unfit’ and oftentimes have their children removed from their home. You just can’t ‘mother’ without making accommodations for the weakest link among you.

Society cannot function well without doing this, either. We all suffer if the weakest among us are not immunized. We all are in danger if we refuse to pay an equal share of our income to maintaining roads and bridges, schools and hospitals. We all must slow down and obey the rules of the road when driving, or disaster ensues. We all must lay down our guns if we want a society in which eighty people a day are not being shot to death.

The greater good is a mother’s mental road map. The U.S. seems to be heading in a different direction all together.

Hello, Cupcake! Hello, Spider! Hello, Seattle!

We’re here. In Seattle. Where the skies are still cloudy while the rest of the country bakes and burns. We’re in our new, old home – built circa 1928. It is a cozy craftsman-style house with a city view overlooking the neighborhood of Ballard. It is quite small compared to the Mouse House, but we have found things to love about this new, nameless abode – the coved ceilings; a built-in floor length spice cupboard; the matching, beveled tulip-windows on each side of the fireplace. The most troubling bit about our new house is that my cherry-red, energy-efficient, front-loading washer and dryer don’t fit. Anywhere. Boo hoo hoo. Instead, in the upstairs bathroom, sits an old, stackable one-person washer/dryer combo. A single load can withstand approximately eight items of clothes. So – I will be living mostly in the upstairs bathroom. Thankfully, this is the view out the windows:

Right next door, in the master bedroom, we’ve shoved all the bookshelves that used to line our living room walls. Each morning as I wake my eyes focus a foot away at the various title’s lining these shelves: So Many Steps to Death; Pure Drivel; Heart of Darkness; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Wicked. None of these titles inspire confidence or cheer. I now must rearrange my books so that only optimistic, inspiring titles greet my eyes first thing in the morning. So far I have one cookbook called ‘Hello, Cupcake!’ lined up right in my field of vision. This is a cheerful greeting to read each morning first thing as I rise and shine. I quite like saying it to myself – “Hello, Cupcake!” along with “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” which sits next door.

The best part about the new house is not so much the house, with all its fancy bits and foibles, but the neighborhood. It is walkable! And whimsical! There are houses with lime-green front doors and steeply pitched roofs and best of all, across the street from us lies a P-Patch. This is a community garden where neighbors rent wooden plots to grow their own produce. Our P-patch happens to scramble up an enormous hill, and at the tippy top lies a great view all the way out over the Sound clear to the Olympic Mountains. So far the girls and I have scaled the P-Patch thrice, each time met at the top by an all-black, melancholic cat named Spider. He sprawls out on the sidewalk with his tummy thrust towards the heavens, meowing ferociously until someone stops huffing and puffing and bends down to pet him. He wanders all over the neighborhood, meeting us on our return from the Seattle Zoo and Woodland Park, his little name tag flapping under his chin as if he’s the local security guard, out to escort us home. The girls rush over to rub his tummy again as we all gush, “Hello Spider!”

It is great to have a home. Even a new, old home that doesn’t quite feel like ‘us’ yet. But we are starting to settle in. The boxes are slowly folding flat. And the town outside our windows is starting to make sense. Hello, Cupcake! Hello, Spider! Hello, Seattle!