The Inexhaustible Variety of Life (or: School Choice/ School Indecision)

I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow. (E.L. Konigsburg)

In 2001 I got a tattoo.

I was not sober. My father had passed away the year before, I was bored and lonely and my best friend from college wanted to meet in Athens for the weekend. So we got a little bit drunk, and then we got tattoos.

According to the experts who study this kind of stuff, people with tattoos are 7 times more likely to die a violent death. If I had known this in 2001, after an itchy sort of week and God knows how many vodka cranberries, would I have gotten one? Would I have ever had the idea in the first place to walk through those glass doors, to turn through the pages of cartoons and roses and panthers (a surprising amount of panthers) and decide rather mindlessly upon a symbol that means something I cannot for the life of me recall?   

Of course I don’t actually see myself dying this way. I hope not, anyway. I mean, I live in the suburbs for goodness sake. But the odds are there. Apparently I am forever lumped in with the subset of the general population that enjoys living recklessly.

I don’t think of my tattoo very often. It is partially removed and usually out of sight. Every once in a while I’ll catch a glimpse of what’s left of it. Hanging on like the rumors of who I was before I met myself.

But I do think about it when I think about trajectories. The progression that becomes inevitable given the momentum we’ve gathered by the choices we’ve made. Those irreverent, yet benign, decisions that take us from point to point. Some by effort and others by oversight. A lifespan consideration of the forest and the trees.

An afternoon in 1950-something when someone asked my father if he wanted a cigarette. A choice. A path laid plain. And 40 years later he was gone. My brother walked me down the aisle.

I realize it isn’t nearly that simple. But if that is how it ended then exactly when and where it started becomes incredibly significant. And if you look at it this way, maybe every life event has an origin. A beginning. The point at which our choices will yield an outcome.

That is certainly the poster-emotion of parenthood; the feeling that no decision is unimportant, even when they are. Because when you are making decisions on behalf of someone else, it just gets kinda heavy.

Lately the confusing, confounding, head-aching decisions are relative to education.

Applications for magnet and charter schools were due a few weeks ago. The administrative offices needed paperwork that you would expect: immunization records, proof of residency, and a creative blurb about why you want to attend the school. We love our school and have had amazing teachers and a generally excellent experience so I really don’t know why I would want my children to go anywhere else. I’m not sure that I do. I think I just want to explore the options because I like lying awake at night thinking about things I can’t control.

Public schools, private schools, charter schools, magnet schools. Home school (probably not). If they must be in an environment for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 and a half months out of the year: where should it be and why?

It is thoroughly mind-racking. And I could make it about all the different offerings and opportunities: Constructivist classrooms. Field trips that require a passport. Whole-food lunch options. Coastal Environment focused curriculums. Charleston County’s Teacher of the Year! But these are just facts, rattling. Honestly, it’s about me and how scared I am to be responsible for this decision.

I am the product of 13 years of private, college-preparatory, fine arts education and I’m pretty sure I’ll have mixed feelings about it for the rest of my life. The education and the opportunities provided to us were truly remarkable but we were so far removed from the uncomfortable. Like if you only read the first fifty pages of Gatsby and believed you were prepared for the discussion.

If I could boil my primary schooling down to its (retrospectively) most significant moments, it’s basically just: a handful of great novels*, Mrs. Dukes, that crazy field trip to Jekyll where I tried to mediate a fight and ended up getting kicked in the stomach, and a million PB&Js.  I do remember loving our Audubon science project and the year after that, our Human Body project, but other than that I remember very little about what I learned.

So maybe the location of their education, at least for the time being, is not the big enormous thing I am making it into. At this point, nothing is static, nothing is absolutely immutable. There is no fixed trajectory.

There will be good years and bad years, amazing teachers and so-so teachers. Friends and frenemies. Days where nothing memorable happens and days where the world seems to shift underfoot. And I know that what I want for them most is the experience. Exposure to the ‘inexhaustible variety’.

Social-emotional challenges. Uneasiness that builds character. A shot at the gifted and talented program. A really really really good friend to sit with at lunch. A teacher they love that loves them back. The energy and wonder you feel when it all starts to click. That moment required reading ceases to be required.

I don’t just want them to observe life, I want them to participate in it, and that can happen anywhere.

(maybe that's what my tattoo says?)

*A Wrinkle in Time, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Anne of Green Gables, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler

Holiday Paraphernalia

This was our first year celebrating Christmas independently. And this year, more than any before, I tried to think about the traditions I loved most growing up, and how I could imitate (but not necessarily duplicate) them here, in my home. Mom reading The Littlest Angel and Daddy reading Dickens. Matching pajamas. A crackling fire. Pantyhose stockings. The Stingiest Man in Town playing on repeat. Oysters at Uncle Bill’s and Lamb with Mint Jelly at Uncle Charles’. Pastries and Ambrosia. The excitement of looking down at a Christmas party from the upstairs landing. My mother’s caviar tart and all the women wearing heels and golden jingle bells, tall men in ties clinking glasses.

But it was not to be. Our oranges were mealy and the logs were soaked wet from weeks of rain (not to mention the balmy weather that would make a fire truly ridiculous). Our children really only wanted to read The Grinch and at one point I vacuumed up a baby Jesus. Worst of all the one item our oldest daughter asked for- a calico kitten- died just two days after Christmas. And then everyone got strep throat. It was not so great. Oh and the aphids!

Our Christmas tree had an infestation of Giant Conifer Aphids this year. In almost 40 years of Christmas trees I have never heard of or seen such a thing. They fell in sheets from the limbs of our tree, tick-like creatures peppering our ornaments and gifts, leaving trails of honeydew on the felt skirt and wood floors as I swept them up daily along with the pine needles. It was at first alarming, then a nuisance, and towards the end almost morbid, their ashen exoskeletons literally everywhere.

This morning I dedicated myself to the sad task of packing up Christmas and found that the ordeal with the aphids had damaged several of the ornaments beyond repair. A few were from the house on Stanislaus. Most notably an old yarn doll. She rested on boughs deep in those magnificent 15 foot firs and surely saw the lights of a hundred trees before making her way to me in a floral cardboard box marked: “Little Betty Sweet- Christmas”. Her poor fate. Handled so gently for so many years but today, she was so thoroughly covered in sap I had no choice but to let her go.

It brought to mind something that I have discussed with my family on several occasions as we have gone through boxes and boxes of handed-down holiday paraphernalia: How can I make room for what is new and mine when everything old and theirs is so important?

And some of it really is:

Grace and Baby’s Christmas balls. I have exactly 13 of them. Each made with purpose and precision by their dainty hands. Styrofoam, velvet, sequins and pins. Plastic beads of all shapes and sizes. The one with the blue flowers: it hung from the brass chandelier for 12 years before it was wrapped in tissue and a Radar’s box and given to me on my 13^th birthday.

The “Merry Christmas” signs my mom and dad hand made in 1987. They must have spent half the year in the garage. I can still hear his band saw, see the pile of injured letters. My mother so carefully painted the good ones. I have the one they gave to my grandparents and it is arguably my most prized possession.

And of course just about every decoration my children have made in preschool and Kindergarten. Most involving handprints. 

And all the other stuff? Well, somewhere between the insects and the kitten and a general feeling of falling short, I came to this conclusion: there are the things that matter most, and those we hang a little higher and pack with more precaution. The rest of it is where you make the room. 

Sometimes there is family and champagne and singing (and dancing and lights and music and joy) but sometimes it’s just fog and empty roads. Sometimes it’s just you. And maybe an army of dead aphids. We are incessantly urged to press meaning into the minutes of our lives. But this Christmas I found more than a little relief realizing that it is okay to let some moments (and things) go. That not every second of life needs to be memorable, worthy of a soundtrack and a story. It’s okay to be a little mindless now and then, to get lost in the white noise of each day. To dry my hair and make-up beds and empty the trash  (even on Christmas Day) and then look up from these perfectly droll routines and get back to the business of a life less ordinary. 

To find peace in these plateaus and enjoy the in-between where there are no opposites…because it is in this exquisitely neutral pause that the new and ours finds its way in.

And just like that, the loveliest things that happened to us this Christmas were the things we hadn’t planned at all.

In our box: Everything that didn’t have sap on it plus or minus a thousand aphid carcasses. 2 out of 5 snow globes (6 if I count the one the baby threw on the floor at the Dollar Tree). A voucher from Pet Helpers for a free kitten adoption. Kind invitations and foie gras with neighbors. The hand cut notes on all the packages, written hastily at midnight, but not without humor and approximate rhyme. The decorations I glued back together as best I could; tokens of our mishap. The clear memory of our walk down a foggy pier on a warm winter night, the sweet and sour taste of a good wheat beer and that little red ladybug on the moulding just behind the tree, who seemed singly and simply content. Whatever her story may be. 

About the Poconos...

Thoughtfulness. A gift, a note, a gesture; it is my purest pleasure to notice and act upon an opportunity to make someone happy. And so of course I treasure reciprocity in this endeavor, the unexpected considerations of others. I believe this is called a love language.

That said, I know I can be quite a frustration, as I find that I am frequently apologizing for the little inconveniences that I present to other people in this world simply by being here and being me. Being late or being way too early. Needing your help with my children. Again. Asking too many questions. Eating all the pecans out of the ice cream. I can be unintentionally inconsiderate and absent-minded, and I feel my best line of defense is to ingratiate myself to the people in my life with the sincerest statement I can make about my tendency to operate in a vacuum which is to say “I’m sorry”.

Arguably one of the most important phrases in our language. And just knowing this won’t do you any good. You have to learn how to say it. There is a right time, a right voice and a right way of placing it into that space between two people so that it matters.

And it does matter: knowing when and how, it could be one of your most defining attributes, your greatest flaw. This phrase, its palpable truth, admitting imperfection and a desire to be better, to empathize more deeply, it washes over humanity like water over river rocks. Turning them and shaping them into marbled, edgeless stones, beautifully rounded by the purpose and force of the current.

For transgressions great and small, I give this phrase to ensure that we are rounded and not cut by one another.

But there have been times when I kept the words to myself, not wanting to concede that I, who take such great pride in being thoughtful, could be so careless.

I made a dear friend my sophomore year in college. When we went out, she made sure we got home safely. When I needed her guidance, she listened intently. Her sense of humor sparkled and her grace in times of need was invaluable. When my father died, she was at the funeral. When I moved to Charleston, she visited. When I was married she was in the wedding, and when I had a baby, she flew down to see my belly and gave me the gift of her undivided affection.

She left Virginia and moved to New York in 2008. She seemed so far away, I imagined her walking the sidewalks of that strict city, bold and single. Drinking dirty martinis in pencil skirts and talking to handsome strangers about important things like Syria and Climate Change. She was only available during the oddest of hours and remained uninterested in social media. Keeping up with her was a challenge. We left a great deal of voicemail messages, which grew shorter and further apart as time went by. I made the foolish assumption that she did not want to hear about suburban life, marriage, children, and spreadsheets.

About 3 years ago she married a man whose name I had trouble remembering. They were wed in a small ceremony at the justice of the peace with the intention of having a larger celebration when the time was right. The following Fall a group of her friends organized an after-the-wedding weekend in the Poconos. I was supposed to go but the expense of the trip coupled with my fear of flying plus a nursing newborn kept me at home. Or at least that is how I explained it in my email.

Needful children and crashing planes, while real and true, were selfish excuses for missing out on something that was important to her. It is so easy to convince yourself that your time and the demands upon your life are so unrelenting that sacrificing something of value to someone else is reasonable. That you aren’t behaving dangerously. And surely I did not ruin her celebration, but I was most assuredly not there. Not in any way. Not in any form or function. I was decidedly absent.

No gift. No note. No gesture.

We did not speak for some time until she sent me a message late this summer letting me know they had rented a house on Canon Street and would be visiting the following weekend.

We met twice for drinks, longer and less awkwardly the second time. Her husband was wonderful (I've learned his name now). We explored the city at night and basked in each other’s company. I called to tell the sitter we would be late. After midnight, we stopped for dim sum and gin cocktails at a little place off an alley, and laughed and laughed and I knew she had forgiven me, though I never formally asked her to.

And I realized something: one of the greatest and most overlooked aspects of friendship is that to be a really good friend, you have to be aware of how important you are within the friendship. You have to appreciate how much you do matter. How much you can hurt someone with the things you do and do not do. You have to be responsible, accountable.

You have to ask yourself: Does it matter to them? Would it matter to me? And if it does and it would: Go. Do. Be. Embrace your significance. And if you can’t, for whatever frightful reason, search until you find the phrase. Polish it. Wrap it in gold and gossamer. Place it tenderly before them. Be unapologetically apologetic.

My friend is leaving New York soon, and they aren’t likely to move any closer. I don’t have plans to visit them yet but I will. I might need a prescription, but I will. I need to. We still don’t talk much, but I’m not sure that matters, we are where we were or at least in that place where you can be with special people.

And if I reach down into our riverbed, the water is in motion and the stones are smooth and unscathed.

Green Eggs and Blue Berries

I’ve sat down to so many ideas in the last couple of months. I’ve written about the curious habit of running, about the blueberry bush our daughters found hidden in our backyard. I’ve written about the good fortune of kind neighbors and a little cabin on a river in the middle of nowhere. But try as I might I can’t focus my thoughts enough to finish any of these because none of them are what I really want to write about. Because what I really want to write about, most of the time (pretty much all of the time), is Autism.

I perseverate about Autism.

Perseverate is a word I learned fairly recently. It is a word of criticism. A word with harsh connotations, suggesting that a person continues to repeat something far beyond a desired point. Insistent, redundant, without purpose or direction.

But we all perseverate. We all talk about the same things, again and again: dating, football, fitness, babies, gluten, that one friend that cannot get it together, a new tardy policy at the office, what to watch on Netflix, campaign politics, whatever. Green Eggs and Ham. We all have our collections of subject matter, like playing cards, which we are desperate to fold into any conversation, at any given time. 

And this is my hand. So I do, I perseverate. I perseverate for answers, for attention, for sympathy and ideas. But mostly, I think, I perseverate for comfort, for understanding. Because even though the verbiage of our predicament may have it seem dismal and despairing, it isn’t that way at all so much as it is heavy, complicated and ubiquitous. It is rich soil filled with rocks, deep, dark, still water and a sunset that could break your heart. It isn’t good or bad it’s just geography. Our life’s landscape. How will anyone ever see it for what it is if I don’t speak the words, in spite of their connotations?

Try them, try them and you may…try them and you may I say.

This is why we tell our stories, this is why we perseverate: initially seeking comfort and later, when the right words are finally found, to give light.

I yelled at her once because she wouldn’t answer me. Because it is, sometimes, so difficult to pull her out of herself, to compel her to hear me, to look up. I said her name over and over and over and she wouldn’t answer. So then I yelled ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME! and I was crying and yelling and she finally looked up. She walked over to me and put her hand on my face and said “I’m sorry. I just don’t know you are there sometimes. But you can do it. You can calm down. I know you can.” And her words fell over me like hope, like light dappling our world.

Someday soon I’ll tell you the story about the pie we made with the small round fruit the children found in our backyard. They told us again and again it was there and we did not believe them until we finally, begrudgingly, went to see it for ourselves.

I’ll tell you about pace and pentameter, the summer I ran the hills of Charlottesville, what I learned crossing those streets again and again, how comfortable I became with distance and prose. How much I miss these things in a life which doesn’t have as much time for them to become what they need to be: the forty minute mark, lines and language making sense, the heart swell, the feeling that you must, you can, you will keep going.

I’ll tell you about the time we left the cabin and drove and drove down that long gravel road toward the races, how it seemed to take forever, but we finally arrived, and walked the path to stand barefoot in the current, the cool water rushing over our legs. We must have caught twenty fish that day.

I’ll tell you about the man who lives next door and his teenager who loves to take pictures of elevators, about how I wanted and wished and waited to talk to him, about the time he stood in my driveway and told me not to be afraid.

I’ll tell you about all of it.

But know this: my perseverations, whatever they may be, will always be the undercurrent, the instruments, the music in the background, the sound that shapes my thoughts and urges me to choose words of a fragile variety. Words that bear unfair connotations, nuances beyond their control. And I’ll carry them carefully into the light of an honest paragraph about how much this child means to me, how much she has changed me, how much better I am for loving someone who is everything I was most afraid of. And it might seem like a story about blueberries but it's really, always, about the uncertainty of the walk, guided by their small stained hands, and what it meant to them to be right. For so many remarkable discoveries of this earth are disregarded, denied, approached with reluctance and doubt, and yet: perseverantly defended by the ones who saw them first.

So please: perseverate. Tell me again and again about your mother, the pieces you lose of her every day. Tell me about your marriage, the things you can’t undo. Tell me about the day you met your baby and they all asked: don’t you just love him so much already? And you didn’t, not yet. Tell me about the time you went to Leon’s and sat outside. There were glasses of wine and empty plates. It might have been your birthday. You looked across the table and asked him Do you think she is going to be okay? And he took your hands and said I don’t know…but she has us.

Tell me again, tell me about all of it. It is so good, so good, you see.

To You, with your Big Heart...

It is 2015 and we are seeing some pretty staggering statistics with regards to Autism Spectrum Disorders: 1 in 68. I don’t know the reason and I certainly don’t have the answers, but I do know that with numbers like these, the odds are also going up that your child might be in a class or a camp or an after school program (or the Chic-Fil-A play area) with the 1. The 1 of the 68. And for every one of them there are a few of us: their family.

Sometimes you’ll see us and never wonder or think a thing. But maybe we had a talk outside the classroom. Maybe we are both room moms or volunteering at gymnastics or bringing coolers to the soccer game. Maybe you’ve gotten to know us more than you thought you would, you’ve seen my face at school functions, the look in my eyes when things aren’t going the way I hoped and planned… and you want to know: Is there anything you can do to help?

Yes, you with your big heart, yes there are most definitely a few things you can do:

1.  Ask me those uncomfortable questions. Go ahead, ask them! When was she diagnosed? How did we know? Strengths? Weaknesses? Does she show affection? Can he solve complex math problems in his head? Memorize the phone book? Have we tried a gluten-free diet? We so often keep ourselves removed from the experiences of others by not asking the questions circling in our minds. Don’t do that. Get to know us. We won’t be offended. In fact, you will be immediately endeared to us because you cared enough to ask any question at all.

2. Ask us over for playdates! Invite us to your birthdays and end-of-the-year pool parties. Please. PLEASE! These kids need balloons and cupcakes and an occasional paper invitation sent home in their backpack and time: time with your kids. Because the more time these kids spend with neurotypical people, the more comfortable they become with them, and the more comfortable they become the more balanced they are able to be in mainstream settings. So many ASD kids can play just like anyone else (and want to play just like anyone else), but it takes time spent around your naturally charismatic, socially adept children to help us get to that.

3. Keep trying. You’re going to say hi and she is going to walk right past you. You’re going to ask him a question and he’s going to not answer. You’re going to call her to do something and she’ll stay right where she is, reading or drawing or playing by herself. Sometimes you have to say it twice, three times, maybe even more than that. But please, keep trying. Touch his arm. Get right up in her face. Force the eye contact. Keep trying, and eventually you will get a response.

4. Cut them some slack. They look like any other kid so sometimes it is hard to tell. But having ASD is like living on another planet where no one speaks your language and no one gets your jokes. You are constantly being bombarded with distractions and no one else seems to notice them. So if they start jumping up and down for no reason or curl up in a ball or become devastated by the simplest of directions, be as patient as you can be, give them a break, and see #3.

5. When you teach your kid about diversity, don’t stop after race, religion and gender. Teach them about disabilities. Teach them about mental illness. Teach them about wheelchairs and head injuries and amputations and rare diseases. Teach them respect and patience for all things outside the norm. Teach them that all people are worth the time it takes to get to know them. Teach them that a friendship with a special person makes you a more special person because your heart and your mind will grow a little bit bigger. Trust me. I know. I’m friends with one of them.

Sincerely,

Mom of one of the 1's.

xo

Bearing Life

My first child was breech so all of our children have come into this world via physician-advised scheduled cesarean deliveries. It has been mostly uneventful with the exception of the third who was ready a few days early. A tentative call to a sleepy doctor at 4 AM, the measured panic with which we packed and parked. He was our only surprise, and while I had suspected him to be a him for most of the pregnancy it was still thrilling to hear the words, to meet him with all his peculiar parts, his funny little scrunched up face. 

Our baby boy.

And there on the operating table as they were putting me back together again:

        “This is your last right”?

        “Huh?”

        “Your last baby. Are you done?”

        “Umm…Yes?

        “Okay good. Your uterus is looking pretty scarred.”

If you have any children at all chances are you’ve been asked this question (hopefully not 30 seconds after delivery). And the more children you have, the more you’ll be asked it until…I don’t know…you start looking really old and tired and like your uterus couldn’t handle it (unless you’re Frieda Birnbaum, of course).

It’s a funny question, especially for a mother I think, because you have a physical response to it. A palpitation, a pang. A soft ringing in your ears. And your answer feels more like an explanation than a simple yes or no. But maybe that’s just me.

This is not a question that I am trying to answer because I feel that anyone cares or is owed an answer or that there really even is an answer. It's the same with anyone thinking about children, about a first child, about another child, about fertility and age and clocks and maternal instincts. It is personal and private. A decision that is yours and yours alone. 

Still it is curious to me how similarly divided we are by the question, and by how often (and how freely) the question is asked.

I have no short answer but if I did I suppose it would be no. And my even shorter (but slightly longer) answer would be yes. We are and we aren't. We are in a weird limbo place where we don't really want to be done. I smile and say yes and it bubbles out of my mouth like the half-truth that it is. We hold on to our towel aware that it is probably time to throw it to whomever we are supposed to throw it to and accept that we don't need or really even want a future in which we will be wearing a Bjorn and carrying that (expletive) (expletive) infant car seat. But the question gets asked again, and the farther time removes us from the memory of his first fretful year, the more plausible another child becomes, and I wonder if we have it in us to bear another life. 

To bear life is perhaps the most self-injurious thing any of us could do. It changes your body. It wrecks your back and tires your arms. It scars your insides. It bites and shoves and pinches and pulls. It keeps you awake and abuses your mind. You cry about everything now. Because everything is emotional. Everything feels big and scary. But to say that you are done with it can feel equally frightening. An admission of what you cannot do, of limitations, acknowledgment of the great divide between how young we look and feel and how young we actually are.

Bearing life is an engineering term as well (I didn’t know that until just now when I googled it to make sure I was spelling it right). There is even an equation for it, so you can calculate how long something (in this case a bearing) can endure. Considering the question within this context, bearing life, it would seem, is not limited to the event of birth, but the sustaining experience, the lifetime given, the provision of time.

So: with the three that we have, with all the fears and complications, the big emotions and the small decisions; with the constancy of their presence; their breath on our necks and their hands in our hair. Through the years we live in the secret squares of their faces and the years they don't want us anywhere near them. So loud and then so quiet. Through praises and punishments and immeasurable joy, the honor of knowing them (as horrible as they sometimes can be) and the gentle, daily pains of letting them go: we bear life.

Today, the day after his second birthday, without a babe in my arms or on the way, without the hope or expectation of one to be on the way. Without any kind of maternal anticipation; I see the answer to our human equation: life endures as long as we are blessed with it, privileged to bear it, regardless of order or accident. We are never done.

Our Common Home

I am not going to tell you anything you don’t already know. But maybe I’ll remind you of something you forgot...

It is significant to me that all this happened during a time when I was already trying to write something about Charleston anyway. About how much being a part of her means to me. To live here, to raise our children here. It matters.

I moved home after college. Not because I wanted to, but because it never occurred to me to move anywhere else. It was not so bad. I met a boy and some friends and chewed on the sweet story of settling down in my hometown. But the boy was going nowhere and the friends went everywhere and eventually it was just me and my mom in my little lonely apartment, drinking wine and ebaying, enjoying our tipsy evenings and avoiding what was coming: a change.

I think for a long time I had been thinking I was a person that I wasn’t. Not really in a bad way, more like I resigned myself to an incorrect answer. Living an ill-fitting life because of the careless oversight of forgetting that I was still young enough to go anywhere I wanted to.

I reached out to my relocated friends and tried several places on for size: Jacksonville was cumbersome. Atlanta was bottlenecked. Nashville was lovely, but moved like a revolving door with no entry. Charlotte was simply too perfect: too tailored and tucked in. And then I came here…

It was not the most ideal time, and I think the fact that I chose this city in her worst month, maybe says a lot about the both of us. It was a late July weekend that fed into August, and I rented a hotel room with two friends and the notion that we might be coming here to stay. A couple of nights spent walking the thoroughfares and leaning into new scenery. It felt right. The balmy air of a city near the beach. An abundance of flip flops. Everyone’s hair and clothes slightly out of place, like a second thought to other things that matter more. The elements. Life. Happiness.

And three months later I was here, with my rent paid and my spoons in the sink. And it was alright.

Until this…

Friday June 19^th, 8AM:

It isn’t true, what they are saying on the news. I mean: it’s true, but not the way they are saying it. There has been tragedy, but we are not a tragic city. There has been loss, but we are not a lost city. There has been devastation, but we are not devastated. We have not been consumed by this monster. He was not ours. He drove down here in his dark car and tried to take something from those beautiful people, our beautiful city, but anger and fear and hate leave no room for anything good to be carried. And so he surrendered the following morning, sad and empty-handed.

My husband and I were pulled downtown, compelled to be part of it all. The air was pensive and paused, there were empathetic tourists and locals with purpose in their steps. We made a few stops and worked our way up to the church. It was midnight but the crowd remained, and you could feel the collective mourning, the wish that it had not happened, that it could somehow be undone. Everything was quiet and soft, save for the national news people in their big vans holding hard and heavy microphones. Can I speak to you? What do you have to say about this?

We cried as we walked back to our car.

Sunday, June 21, 7PM

The voices of our leaders have fortified us. We have heard pastors and mayors, governors and the reflective sigh of the crowd outside Emanuel AME, some loud and some soft, some zealous and some weary, but all imbued with the sentiment of hope. Hope for change, hope for our people and our nation, hope that maybe this was the last time.

Someone had an idea and she saw it through. And 72 hours later here we are, standing under the bridge, listening to the footsteps of thousands, cheering horns and happy sirens, our people singing a common refrain.

I don’t mean to be romantic, we are not without scandal and topics that divide us. We have high crime areas and streets you stay away from at night. We are not always holding hands in prayer circles and we are not always unified by incident. But our climate sets a pace for cooperation and tolerance, slows us down so that we can do something more powerful and meaningful than simply ‘react’.

Wednesday, June 24^th 12pm

It is a magnificent coincidence that all this happened as Pope Francis delivered his message on the environment, urging us to consider ‘our common home’, to ‘strengthen our conviction that we are one single human family’,  ‘that we have a shared responsibility for others and for the world, and that being good and decent are worth it’.

There are at least a hundred sparkling sentences in his encyclical, but they all speak to our real and urgent problem: consideration. For the environment, for humanity, for property and ideas, for health and hunger, for earth and water, for life and freedom.

We say that it takes a village to raise a child. I think about this sick young man, how his village failed him, how I am a part of that village in some small way and therefore failed those nine people, their good and prayer-filled hearts. This monster is ours, he is all of ours. And he sat at his computer feeding on hate for God knows how long because that hate is protected by our laws.

It is easy to think this is about gun control or a flag or a history of staggered disappointments, and it is. It is about these things. But perhaps moreover, it is about our broken village. The village we cultivate and then leave behind when it becomes less convenient, when we get so busy, so entrenched in the minutia of our personal and private routines that we forget the importance of community. When we get tired of standing up and speaking out.

We do not all have to believe the same things, but every belief that we have must consider our common home.

…

This week has reminded me why I moved here: because this place is a village, or as close to one as I could hope to find and still be within driving distance of my family. But it has also reminded me that while Charleston may have been more impressive than others by how we handled ourselves, we never should have been given this test in the first place.  No one should.

We talk about the mark we want to leave, about being on the right or the wrong side of history, which is just another way of saying that, in hindsight, there was a right choice and wrong choice. A way to be and a way not to be. Which means that gut feeling, that visceral rumor, that queasy uneasiness: it is telling us to consider our steps, ‘to think deeply and love generously’ and choose the right path.

It is about guns. It is about a flag. It is about pornography and recycling and the cost of medicine. It is about the amount of litter on a street in a village ten thousand miles away, the people and parks I will never see and a kid named Dylann Roof who lost his way and no one was there to help him find the way back.

‘Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.’

I pray that we can do this. I pray that we can rebuild our village. I pray that we can see the significance of the small choices in the light of greater good. I pray that we can take down the things that should never have been put up and replace them with the signs to lead all our lost children back home. I pray that we can find the courage to speak the words that will incite the change we so desperately need, and that we are encouraged by truths we already know.