I Can't Write

The white of a blank page is something I revel in and look forward to, like plunging my face into a cool pool on a hot day, feeling the water swirl around me, silky and luscious. I can swim in a blank page for hours without once realizing the time has passed or that my fingers have long-since pruned. Even when I know I don't care. I love a blank page.

But this blank page is so hard and cold.

Because FBI Director Comey seems to me like a pretty honorable guy. His grasp of the situation seems so right and so righteous to me. He's like the real-deal American, right? The distance between me and people who view him as a pariah for his unwillingness to BRAVO TV his job frightens me.

I had a screaming match with my daughter last night - screaming, both of us at full volume, for the first time ever  - over my wanting her to come home instead of sleep at a friend's house. I don't ever want to do that again and fear that for my fear we may. That frightens me, too.

I am at once gripped and repelled by the news of the last three days, each day worse than the one prior, herald for the collapse of our framework, our absolutes. The war is not over there, friends. The war is right here, right here where we are.

As it turns out, my words fail me when the real thing is happening, when what matters is action and not words. I'm not trained or talented in that arena, and for my worry over my impotence I am rendered more so.

I keep looking for the comfort, the 'helpers' as Mr. Rogers would say. I see them but they don't bring me peace. They look weary, too.

I appreciate that God is there and that I can call out to Him, as I'm sure countless others do every day in every way known to man. But what does God have to do with it all, exactly? Nothing, I think, except to show us how far we are from Him and to compel us to do the little work.

I do that work, but fear I am deeply, drastically, irrevocably outnumbered, outmanned, and quite literally, outgunned.

I'm Not Ashamed At All

My husband and I attended a concert for our children several years ago when a woman came over to us and blurted, "You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

'Wha?'

This was a woman who we'd known only casually from the neighborhood; her daughter attended our kids' school, she lived a block or so away, and we knew her face and her name but not much else.

At the time, my husband and I were both elected officials on our Local School Council.  The school was dealing with a principal who was struggling, and we on the Council were struggling to manage the situation. We were working through a bureaucracy of rules and regulations, mindful that the children needed their school to function at its very best, teachers needed an appropriate environment in which to work, and the principal, however unfit for this particular job, deserved fair treatment and consideration for his career and his livelihood.

There were forms to complete and a process to follow that was lengthy and onerous. There were those who were vehemently for and others passionately against just about every effort we made. And while all this swirled about there was a bit more. Unknown to many in the school at the time, the principal's wife was very ill. They had no children, no help as far as we could tell, so he was working extremely hard to take good care of her while holding a position of considerable pressure and responsibility. All this while under the intense scrutiny of a committee-based performance review. It was not an easy situation.

Ultimately, he didn't wait out the process and found himself another job. By all accounts he's doing just fine there, and our old school is also doing fine, with an excellent group of people on the local school council, and an outstanding principal.

The woman who came over to us at the concert was clearly agitated, having convinced herself that whatever the problems were, our magic wands were not being put to good use. She felt comfortable berating us in front of our parents and friends, along with everyone within earshot - quite a few people - as if our positions somehow provided carte blanche for this exercise. She insisted we were letting down the community, we should be ashamed - she threw that in a few times - and then, having had her say and not much interested in our replies, she sauntered off, smoothly telling us over her shoulder how relieved she was that her daughter was graduating and wouldn't be around to be deeply affected by our failures.

Gee, thanks for stopping by.

I've never spoken about this publicly, but I share it with you now here because I want you to know there's a difference between sitting at home, hearing what you think is the truth, and knowing the truth, and working to do something about it.

I won't say that many elected officials aren't corrupt. I'm sure many are. I won't say that sometimes the 'looks like a duck, quacks like a duck' rule of thumb isn't the most true. But I will say that sometimes it isn't what it seems and if you don't know, you shouldn't act - or speak - like you do.

Scenes From an American Experience

The Declaration of Independence concludes with these words:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

 Two things there stand out to me.

First, in the eyes of our forefathers the declaration needed both their support and a reliance on divinity. They understood the declaration was meaningless if the men and woman represented by it did not fully stand by it, did not act upon its intent, and did not hold the purpose of the declaration above self-interest. Further, our forefathers were sure enough to put it in writing that some power greater than the human power would need to be employed to make sure the declaration's ambitious objectives could be met.

It was bold stuff, to be sure, and not to be undertaken without some careful prayer and consideration.

Interestingly, though, our forefathers did not name the divine entity whose providence would be relied upon for the support of the Declaration, I find it possible that for the Buddhist, Buddha is the understood presence, where for the Christian it is his God, and for the Muslim his, and so on, where in all cases each is bound by his reliance on the providence of his trusted divinity, without ever there being a cause to retreat from the purpose of the Declaration.

I find that so comforting, and true.

The second thing that stands out for me is that the authors of the Declaration felt it was important to articulate what they were willing to put into the pot, so to speak, so as to back up their announcement. They should give up their lives.

They should give up their fortunes. They should give up their honor. What would we do today? For whom would you give your life? A family member? A close friend? How about a neighbor or complete stranger? Would your member of Congress give up his life for your sake? How about his fortune? Would any of the candidates for president do so?

The last of these sacrifices is the one that most impales me, however, the one that most devastates me. We don't talk about honor enough, and especially not in the context of our politics or governance.

We have come to accept not only dishonor but the scorn of it as norm, and we've diluted our expectations so much so that we, ourselves, are not even shadows of the honorable men and women we should be in our support of this Declaration of Independence. We refuse our higher selves, and really most often it seems to me, for laze, not for ignorance, although I'll cede a bit of the latter, myself.

I attended an event a couple of weeks ago at an outdoor venue in Chicago, where a series of Mariachi students and professional performers put on a rousing summer concert for a crowd filled with bright color and food and sweetness. The event opened with the Mexican national anthem and while I'm not Mexican-American myself, I stood with everyone in the crowd and smiled as so many - young, old, in between - belted out with great emotion words that felt familiar even though they weren't to me.

The song ended with whoops and applause, great cheers, and I had the fleeting thought scurry across my mind that these folks ought to be singing an American song; we're in America, and singing the national anthem of Mexico seemed a little provocative for some reason. I couldn't hold the thought in my head for long because just then the arena filled with music again.

Oh-oh say can you see...

I stood there, heart racing, feeling terrible for my ignorance, and listened. A grandmother to my right, feeble and crinkled, held fast to her grandson's hand, singing reedy, proudly. A young woman in front of me wearing every bit of that jumpsuit just right held her hand over her heart, sincere and lost for the music. A group of men, still wearing rainbow beads from an earlier stint at the Pride Parade no doubt, sang full-throated, broad smiles, arm-in-arm.

I thought for those few moments of that song I might just sink into the earth for shame. Here these families who no doubt know that one of the candidates for presidency of this country has called them rapists and criminals, who no doubt know that across the street and wide into the city and across this country there are those who would wall them off, those who would presume them false in their Americanism, those who would turn their noses at their social advances even as they'd thank them and call them 'amigo' for care of their lawns or their hotel rooms, these families who continue to be treated like the nation's whipping boy for all things wrong in the economy, in the security of our nation, these beautiful, bright, warm, amazing Americans were mutually pledging their honor to our country in song.

That music was beautiful, that moment - for me - unforgettable, and that triumph of the truly American spirit will stay with me forever and a day. We are these colors, these scenes, and we can only hope to be this honorable.

Keep Talking. At Your Own Risk.

How do I do it? Magic mom, right? Nope. Regular mom. Magic kids! Nope. Regular kids.

Set aside for a minute that my kids work damn hard for every bit of their success. They practice, read, write, blow off their friends to work, and keep their eyes on the prize. Nobody here is a genius, but we do have some darn hard workers and I'm prouder of that than anything. But no matter how hard they work, and how much we support, none of that goes anywhere with out one thing.

Public school. Public school does it. Same as the other 34 kids who were at UC with Lucy. Same as all the kids on the math team circuit who are headed to some of the best schools in the country. Same as the other two children from our neighborhood - not magnet, not selective enrollment, neighborhood - elementary school who received full-tuition scholarships for university this year alone (and those are only the three I know about). My kids are friends with children whose parents come from all over the world, who have all kinds of income levels and no income levels, who have extraordinary abilities and disabilities, who sing, paint, write, compute, design, dream.

Who do you think is going to public schools? Some of the most wonderful, interesting, ambitious, hard-working kids ever go to Chicago Public Schools.

My kids, like all the city's kids, deserve and are eager to take advantage of outstanding public education. When children are given the opportunity, and teachers are supported in their efforts to teach children, the possibilities are endless. To borrow a phrase,  public education is what makes America great.

So when my public school is threatened, I am threatened, my children are threatened, all our children are in danger. Word to the wise on this issue? It's a dangerous thing to threaten a person's children. That's the kind of thing a fella might think twice about before he keeps talking.

Replace the Word

All you have to do is replace the word, or words, to test whether or not it sounds ok.

The people responsible for certain crimes are part of radical 'Christianity'.

We need to employ a temporary ban on visitors from countries with a proven record of having 'men' engage in acts of terrorism against us or our allies.

'Men' are the only ones who have engaged in these acts of terror, so it stands to reason they have a problem with America.

It's important that we look more critically at people from the 'U.S.' who wish to impose their way of life on others.


Does this make sense to you? It does not to me. Still, to be fair, I continue to question whether I'm making a grave mistake.

If I am, this American daughter and granddaughter of immigrants goes down believing that the country that allowed me my great fortune and set the stage for the bright futures of my own children, did so on the risk that those who came before me were different, but not inherently bad.  My country was right. And that's what made America great.

Last night, I sat for my daughter's graduation from a city public school and listened to names called - Ashley, Emily, Haydon, Abbey - and Roshandeep, Muhammed, Pablo, Roble - there were roars and cheers for names like Marhuq and Bidemi and Chris. These are the names that make America great. These faiths, languages, colors. These are the instruments of greatness in our country and they only work when they are together.

What we're doing now? Makes America _________. You replace the word.

Wonder First.

Before we go too far let's remember that Dillinger was not Muslim, and for his crimes we did not persecute all Christian men.

Let's remember that Capone did not speak for all Italians, although he's been the poster for too many.

Timothy McVeigh. Is he your ambassador?

Did the Uni-bomber speak your thoughts?

Hitler was white; for his crimes should we all be called to account?

We would do well to remember that most of the men and women responsible for the recent, and prior, economic collapses of this country did not come from overseas. We birthed them here, at home.

Our guns are manufactured by white men, in factories owned by white men, in supposed service to a second amendment written by white men.

Is it any wonder we are so furious with all brown Muslim men for the few who commit crimes?

We might do well to wonder about just that before we speak our words of hate.

Sorry I Tricked You, Ma

I tricked my mom into going to Gospel Fest last night. We’d been planning a night out and I wanted to set up an evening picnic at Pritzker, a lingering affair under the twinkle of my favorite city, is what I had in mind.

But ma was not having it. She was convinced it was going to pour rain, and insisted she could not picnic at her age, couldn’t sit on grass, couldn’t be so far from a bathroom - a litany of ‘nos’. I protested, but you know how that goes. So I tricked her.

I arranged an early dinner at the Park Grill, a restaurant tucked under ‘The Bean’ at Millennium Park, just a few steps from the pavilion. As we were leaving, she heard a rumble and said, “You see? It’s going to rain.”

I looked up at the cloudless sky and smiled.

“That’s not thunder, ma.”

We led her around the ramp just south of the restaurant and while she toddled along, cane in one hand, my hand in the other she kept looking up, trying to find the source of the bass.

“That’s music!” she discovered.

“Yes.”

“From over there!” she looked back at Michigan Avenue.

“No, ma. From over here,” and I pointed toward the picnic area just south of the Pritzker stage.

Slowly we made our way closer, and as we did, a sway of  people drew us in. Arms outstretched, eyes closed, all ages, a poster for the case against all divides, compelled by the man on stage exhorting everyone to ‘BE GRATEFUL!’

We couldn’t help but sing along.

At one point, we were all encouraged to turn to a person near us and say, “I have a reason to be grateful to God.”

We did. Everyone did.

A few moments later we sat on a ledge nearer to the stage to rest, but ma stayed on her feet, dancing, electrified.

A tall, handsome older man approached her and smiled, saying something I couldn’t hear. She answered and they both laughed.

He came over to where I was and asked, “This is your mother?”

“Yes,” I smiled.

“I’m having a very hard day,” he intimated. “But your mother’s spirit. I could see it. It’s so bright. I just had to come over. She’s beautiful. Her spirit.”

“Yes, I know,” I thanked him.

We chatted for a bit. He is Sioux-American, and had spent the day attending a funeral service for a young friend. He’d come downtown for a walk to clear his thoughts and had been drawn into the park by the music, and drawn to my mother by her glow. He was warm, and kind, and taught my children a few words in his language, among them the term for ‘until I see you again’ before he left. There is no word for ‘goodbye’ in his tongue.

As the music ended, the song that carried us out reminded us that God makes all things better, better, better. Indeed.

We made our way to the car accompanied by a parade of concert goers in bright colors, laughing, chatting. 

My mom beamed, “I danced under the shadow of the Bean!”

“I know,” I squeezed her hand.

“That was grand,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

I suppose she’ll forgive me for tricking her this time.