Snow

It's snowing. Big thick splats of it. We were supposed to go out to Jay's farm to cut down the tree, but Nick got nervous.
"I don't think we should go out in this." he said. "I have a bad feeling about this."
So, I'm all about honoring caution, and we stayed put. I tried to drive downtown to go to yoga, but after nearly losing control of the car twice, turned around and came home. It was Nick's first time driving in the snow, and I think it made him really nervous. Good.
I was really pushing to go--I thought it would be a fun family thing to do and I want to involve Jay in more of our family stuff, but as I was watching Lilly put her boots on, suddenly the image of the girl we lost on the unit popped in my mind and seemed to me I could see Lilly in her place, her limbs bloated and pale, face expressionless as we worked hopelessly over her. I had to sit down.
I saw the picture of Hawkins, the teenager who murdered all the people in Omaha yesterday, and he looked so much like Nick, or any of Nick's friends. Bespectacled and pimply, hair too long. How do we lose people? How do they fall out of our hands? There were people around him who loved him and who tried for him--Sometimes I think there is this undercurrent of hopelessness in America and it geisers forth in violence in some of our weaker members. We seem to take everything so lightly--all the obsession with celebrities, all the reality shows. My grandmother used to say "you can sell your family once, but then you can't sell them twice." Everything's for sale, these days. Our privacy, our souls, our children. We're slathering to let the cameras in--it's like you don't exist until you get press. And our attention is so scattered that we don't come together as a people to address the things that need solving. We split into factions--Red and Blue. I know the blues will blame the lack of gun control ('If guns were outlawed that kid could never have done that much damage') and the reds will probably blame liberal values or whatever, but the fact remains that, over and over again this year, we have had members of our society who were so disenfranchised they took weapons and turned them upon others and then finally upon themselves, as if the blood would make it real. What are we looking for?
I became a nurse because I felt my life wasn't real. I felt that I was just gliding along in a dream, insulated from the realities of the world. Are we all too insulated, maybe? Have we lost our fellow feeling? Do we not teach our children empathy these days? Are there too many of us, maybe? I don't know.
Then I turned the page and read about Guantanamo and how there have been prisoners there who have waited 6 years for a hearing. 6 years! I know they're not citizens, but they're humans. "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."that doesn't specify citizens, right? It says all men. That's the line of thought the constitution sprang from, right? It was a rethinking of humanity. So what's up? Why can't those guys have a hearing? Why are we torturing them?
I don't know, folks. I'm a feminist, but I think everybody's acting like they don't have mothers, and someone has to get back into the home and stop chasing the next big thing and just focus on the babies. I realize I'm rambling, but it all seems connected to me.
Okay, think about this: everyone says, you can't save the whole world. Well, why on earth can't you? I mean, humans aren't so complicated, right? I'm one, you're one. Babies all need the same thing--shelter, food, love. Then you can move on to things like equal opportunities and justice. There's a finite number of beings on the planet--it's not like it's an infinite amount. Surely we can find a way to get everyone what they need somehow.
I think we should all stop what we're doing and just work on that. Get that taken care of. Then worry about the rest.
Well, that's my 1/2 hour. Regina Spector's on the stereo singing her version of John Lennon's Real Love. Hope everyone reading this finds it, and gives it, if they can't find it. Be Brave!