I didn’t cry.
When I first heard about the tragedy in Florida, intellectually, I knew that this an event of immense sadness, but it didn’t resonate in my heart. As I read the news, the horror of the texting conversation between two sisters during the shooting and other commentaries about this event, it still didn’t get to me. I got angry, and frustrated at the response of those who enable the NRA, and people who claim to be leaders, but the sadness, didn’t come as I expected.
One theory that I’ve heard is that men have delayed emotional responses, while women feel things more immediately. I’m not sure if this holds true, but I know this has happened to me. I try to be an emotionally responsive and expressive person, but I can’t make the feelings come when they don’t. Sometimes my heart waits for my head, and other times, there needs to be something to bring it closer to me, like a song.
Today I was at Whole Foods with Ollie. He was sitting in the shopping cart happily drinking a smoothie, called “Mom, I want that one.” While I contemplated the implied gender roles in the name of the smoothie, I heard the distinctive opening notes of “One Headlight,” by the Wallflowers over the grocery store speakers.
As the throbbing beat and bass guitar groove, slowly got washed over by the organ’s chords. I felt myself as a high schooler, listening to one of my favorite songs. I felt more confident, cooler, somehow less tired, but then all of it got mixed up in the present. When the first verse moved into the second stanza, with the words “. . . funeral at dawn,” it started to come to me. I stopped the cart in the aisle, and looked down at my son, coughing as the he drank the cold smoothie and giggling at a feeling approaching a brain freeze. As Jakob Dylan, roared, “Hey!” The wave of emotion came over me. Every line out of the chorus pulled out all the sadness and fear, I hadn’t let myself felt.
“Hey, come on try a little,” was my desperate plea to those who would do nothing to save our children. When I heard, “Nothing is forever,” I hugged Ollie tight, being reminded how finite everything was, even my son’s mortality and how much I couldn’t comprehend having this ripped away from me. “There's got to be something better than in the middle,” was my argument against the status quo.”
Ollie felt it strange as I hugged him, as he sat in the grocery cart. He tried to push me away, but I held tight for a minute, as I let the shudder of emotion, and tears pass. Ollie’s giggle brought me back. He noticed I was in a different place, so Ollie picked up my hand and blew a raspberry in it to get me to smile. t worked. I wiped my hand off on his jacket and he protested “Don’t wipe the fart on my jacket.” I smiled, and kissed him. I immediately pulled out my phone and texted Diana to see how Ethan was doing. She texted back that he was sleeping and was good. I let out a cleansing breath and slowly pushed the cart the aisle, placing my hand on top Ollie's.
As a teacher, I’ve used my imagination to figure out what I’d do if a shooting every happened at my school. As a parent, I can’t put myself in the place of parents who have lost children in a shooting. I don’t think I could bear that. Right now, I’m not brave enough to go to that place. I had a glimpse of that place today, and it was painful, dark, and beyond sad.
While I checked out of the store and looked around, I thought, “y’know, if I really wanted to, I could convince myself that this shooting didn’t happen, in this utopia of organic food.” That would be a lie. In many ways, for so many of us, including myself, have lived a lie for far too long. Yes, the truth hurts, it’s scary and painful, but only by facing it, never forgetting what we can hardly bear, can we change the truth, our reality, for ourselves, and most importantly our children.
“We can drive it home..." We can find a better way, go to a better place, even though we are incomplete, and broken as a nation, with only “one headlight.”
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