Category: Stuff in the News

. . . I cannot resist adding my two cents.

Sad

Last night, I watched the Barbara Walters interview with Terri Irwin, the widow of Steve Irwin, the “Crocodile Hunter.”  I cried.  Then I cried again.  Then I cried some more.  I went to bed at 11 p.m. with red-rimmed eyes and a stuffy nose.

When I watched 8-year old Bindi speak at her 44-year old father’s memorial service, I wept.  At least I had my father for 24 years.  To have your father–especially that particular larger-than-life father–for only 8 years is so wrong.

My husband is 45-years old.  I cannot imagine losing him.  I cannot imagine my children losing him.  I know that happens–my own father left me fatherless–but it’s still unimaginable to me.

All of this–the interview, the anniversary of my own father’s death, the child’s voice speaking about her father–perhaps even the sliver of moon in the sky and the impending change of seasons–has left me undone with a tight place in my throat that will not unclench.

This world is so breathtaking, so heart-wrenching, so beautiful and with such potential for loss and pain.  When I glimpse the sunset pink on Mt. Rainier, I wonder if I might ever see that sight again.  Will I see the moon grow full and round?  Someday, will I watch my daughter become a mother herself?

This feeling will wash away in the tide of mundane life.  I know it will, but for the moment, I’m sad. 

I Remember Thomas Kuveikis

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 I am participating in the 2,996 Project, for which 2,996 bloggers volunteered to write a memorial for one person who perished in the attacks on 9/11.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States, I remember Thomas Kuveikis.

Thomas Kuveikis was known to his family and friends as Tommy.  He grew up in Brooklyn, attending Blessed Sacrament Elementary School.  He later graduated from Wheatley High School in 1971 after his family moved to East Williston.

Tommy studied architecture at both SUNY Farmingdale and the Pratt Institute, but her never completed a degree.  He dabbled in carpentry, a skill learned from his father.  He joined the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in August of 1977 when he was twenty-four years old. 

Within a year, Tommy made a name for himself as an aggressive, brave and tough firefighter.  His younger brother, Tim,  once said, “If I could be half the fireman he was, I’ll have a really good career.”  (Newsday.com)   He loved the action of firefighting in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood.  (His father was a legendary firefighter who died in November 2001.) 

But Tommy wasn’t just a tough guy.  He came up with an idea to help a poor family at Christmas.  Starting in 1987, members of his squad visited a priest at St. Barbara’s Roman Catholic Church and ask for the name of the poorest family in the parish.  Then they would contact the family, set up a Christmas tree and provide presents. 

Tommy was married twice and was about to be engaged to Jennifer Auerhahn, who described him as “sweet, funny, kind gentle and unselfish.”  His brother Jimmy wrote about him on September11victims.com website saying,

“It was really tough to lose Tommy as he became such a king, considerate guy over time.  He was not always this way, especially in his twenties, but ‘life’s difficulties’ made him become a great human being.  He was a vegetarian, he gave money and time to Putnam County Land Trust to preserve ‘special’ land . . . he loved animals, kids and good people.  Tommy was already a tremendous fireman, working in a poor area of Brooklyn, where he could experience many more fires than the average fireman, just like his father did.”

Kathy Gelman said her brother, Tommy, was “honorable, honest, humorous, humble, humane, and hero.”

In his spare time, Tommy worked as a carpenter.  In fact, he built a steam room in Squad 252’s firehouse.  He had a reputation for not charging enough for his carpentry work.  One day a year, he would donate a day of carpentry to the Putnam County Land Trust.

Tommy had one daughter, Kristen.  He had five siblings, sisters Christine, Karen and Kathleen and brothers, James and Timothy. 

Tommy had been a firefighter for twenty-four years and a member of Squad 252 (“In Squad We Trust” was their motto) for five years when his squad answered the fifth alarm at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, at 9:00 a.m.  He was forty-eight years old that day.  CNN footage shows his squad pulling up to the east side of the Trade Center around 9:28 a.m.  The six members of the squad entered the north tower, rescued a man from an elevator.

Two of the firefighters’ bodies were found in the C stairwell 18 days later.  The other four men of Squad 252, including Tommy, were never found. 

Today, I remember Thomas Kuveikis.  Thomas Kuveikis is one of the 343 FDNY firefighters who died on September 11, 2001.  He is a hero.  We will never forget. kuveikis_1.jpg

Almost Coherent

Well, apparently God loves me after all, because I managed to fill the vital leadership roles for Vacation Bible School. 

Next up?  Telephone calls to beg people to be crew leaders.

After that?  I’m going to turn refrigerator boxes into a Mexican village.  Ha! 

Not only am I distracted by VBS, but I have also fallen headfirst into a novel by John Irving and I spend all my supposed free time reading.  I’m nearly done with it, though, so then I can focus my attention on the things that need my concentration.  Like the disgusting kitchen floor.  And the ironing.  And reading all the neglected blogs on my Bloglines account. 

I am being buried one detail at a time.  If you emailed me recently, please note that I intend to answer my emails tomorrow, too.  Right after I solve the problem of world hunger.  (Can I just say that I think Warren Buffet and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation rock?  Wow!)

One final note.  My daughter, who is almost 4, occasionally says, “Mom, I am so boring!”  She practically rolls her eyes from the fatigue of being just exactly that “boring.”  She means, of course, “bored,” but I find her error charming and more exact than she could ever know.  Aren’t those who claim to be bored just excruciatingly boring people at heart?  (Have I just inadvertently offended someone?  If so, let me hasten to add . . .except for you.)

Linda R. Hirshman Strikes Again

Linda R. Hirshman’s op-ed piece in the June 18, 2006, Washington Post, “Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms,” says this: 

Time and again, when I could identify the sources of the most rabid criticism and Google them, male and female, they had fundamentalist religious stuff on their Web sites or in the involuntary biographies that Google makes possible.

You should know that my previous comments in response to her “American Prospect” piece are number one when you Google “Linda R. Hirshman.”  I couldn’t figure out why so many people were suddenly visiting my blog, but that explains it.

Now I wonder this.  Does my religious affiliation negate my viewpoint?  I believe that for Linda R. Hirshman it does.  Or perhaps it’s my status as a long-time stay-at-home (now working-at-home) mother that makes my viewpoint irrelevant in her eyes.

I still want to know who, exactly, Linda R. Hirshman expects will take care of the children while all the mothers are at the office.  Perhaps she is in favor of illegal immigration and expects immigrants to take over the distasteful task.  Who?  I just want to know. 

(Anyway, hello, Linda R. Hirshman.  I figure you’re reading this since I retain the number on Google spot on your name.  And really, I don’t feel hostility toward you, but sincere confusion.  Did you really mean all that stuff or are you just trying to get a little more publicity for your book?  And I must declare that I thought your idea of using the New York Times brides as research subjects was very clever.)

Making a Happy List versus Keeping Your Vows

Do you remember when I wrote about Lance Armstrong’s divorce?  Way back when he was in the news for winning the Tour de France for the seventh time, I announced my dismay at his inability to keep his marriage together.  (And I was taken to task by some of my more judgmental readers about my judgmentalism.  Ha.  Good times.  I loved the irony.)

And now, his ex-wife speaks out.  Kristin Armstrong has written about what she wishes she’d known about marriage before she tied the knot.  (Go ahead and read that article published in “Glamour” magazine.  I’ll wait.)  

She explains, “Here is the truth as I see it: Marriage has the potential to erode the very fiber of your identity.”

(I wish I could stop rolling my eyes long enough to respond.  Let’s just move on to the next excerpt.)  

She says: 

“If I were to do things over again, I wouldn’t have thrown myself so irrevocably into my new life. I would have guarded the things that made me feel like me —the places, the friends —and above all I would have spoken up about my needs. Instead, I will leave you with a lesson about how a woman can hold on to the bright, hard flame of who she is.

If your husband asks what you think, tell him. If you have a preference, voice it. If you have a question, ask it. If you want to cry, bawl. If you need help, raise your hand and jump up and down. I spent five years juggling kids, travel, cooking, smoothing. I never once said that I couldn’t do it on my own, or that I was just plain tired. I became a prisoner to my own inability to say uncle when life squeezed me too hard. The warden was pride, and I remained in maximum security.”

When she appeared on “Oprah,” Oprah intoned solemnly that this was the exact reason she never married.  She didn’t want to lose any part of herself.  I was shaking my head.   

While I can understand this struggle to maintain the vestiges of a former life and the grief over loss (loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of car, loss of dog, as Kristin explains), I cannot understand the wholesale disposal of a family in the personal quest to “hold onto the bright, hard flame of who she is.”

When you have a husband, your life is no longer all about you.  And when you have children?  And you describe how you gave up your dog?  And your car?  And about how hard it was to live in France with your superstar husband?  I’m not feeling the sympathy.  I mean, if she sat here in my living room on my old tattered couch, I might nod and murmur sympathetic noises, but I’d be wondering how you just break apart a family like a loaf of bread.  A big piece for me, a little piece for you.   

No one is to blame for Kristin’s five-year agony of losing herself in servanthood, but Kristin.  (Come to think of it, isn’t serving one another a large part of being a follower of Christ?  Aren’t we called to serve our spouses and our families?)  But I have to ask . . . five years?  She gave it a shot for five years?  That’s it?  That’s only a year longer than high school, hardly a drop in the bucket when you consider the scheme of things. 

I have no idea what really happened in the Armstrong marriage.  But I still find it disappointing that two intelligent, accomplished, attractive, people who are old enough to know better couldn’t manage to keep their marriage intact.  Their kids will forever pay the price for that failure, as all children of divorce pay for their parents’ mistakes in one way or another.

I hear the protests now:  “That’s not fair!  My sister/ aunt/ friend/ acquaintance divorced and her kids are doing grrrreat!”  Or, “I’m so glad my parents divorced!  Life was horrible while they argued!”  And, “My ex-husband and I are better parents now that we’re no longer married.”  And all that may well be true.

So, you throw a child from the roof and the child survives with only a scratch.  Another child ends up paralyzed.  Many break their bones.  Occasionally, one dies.  Most develop a fear of heights and refuse to even climb a set of stairs.

Divorce isn’t much different.  Sure, some kids survive unscathed.  Most only have scars.  Some bear life-long injury and paralysis.  A lot develop fears, fear of abandonment, fear of commitment, fear of love itself.  Why take a chance? 

Clearly, I have a bias, one shaped by my own parents’ divorce, by my Christian worldview.  I am unapologetic for that.  Some would say that I’m not “over” my parents’ divorce.  That’s the point, isn’t it?  Divorce is the “gift” that keeps on giving long after the pain has faded.  I’m high-functioning, successful, happy, and yet, I was damaged by divorce.  

I believe marriages are not meant to be crumpled up and tossed away so you can start over, especially when you’ve brought children into the world.  (Sometimes, certainly, divorce is the only reasonable choice, but fifty percent of the time?)

Marriage has the potential to shape you into the person you were meant to be, if you stop complaining long enough about injustice of your life and let it.  But servanthood, truly putting other people before ourselves, is more outdated then my twenty-year old stone-washed denim “skinny” jeans.  It’s completely unfashionable to choose to be last, to be least, to serve.

More than once, I’ve heard women exclaim, “I wash the laundry and I fold it.  He can put it away!  I will not!” as if their servanthood has legal limitations and conditions.  No one wants to serve.  No one wants to be last.  No one wants to lose themselves.  We all think we deserve fifteen minutes of fame and a winning Lotto ticket and a flattering hairstyle, besides.  We all want to be Happy all the time.

I think being faithful matters a lot more.   

So, Kristin can rattle off her list of “Things That Make Me Happy.”  That’s got to be some consolation to her children who are now growing up in a broken home.  (Can you not figure out what makes you happy even while you are married?  That’s all I’m saying.  Well, that and five years?)

On Not Getting Naked in High School

The Tacoma News Tribune ran a story in the paper recently chronicling the poor hygiene of student athletes. Apparently, kids these days prefer not to shower in the locker room where God and everybody can stare and point at their private bits while they lather, rinse and repeat.

Imagine!

I still cannot shake the horror of sixth grade and the required showers we had to take after physical education (P.E.) class. I was already mortified by the changes hormones had wrought. I disguised my womanly curves in a large blue down coat during classes.

But in P.E., after stripping off our required uniforms of white shorts, white t-shirts and white tube socks, we were all expected to disrobe, scurry into the showers, make sure that the teacher saw us unclothed, dab ourselves dry with skimpy towels, pull on our clothing and run off to class.

(This was very problematic for my hairstyle–the feathered bangs went awry after contact with my sweaty forehead. How is a girl supposed to look cute when her hair is wonky? Thus is the root of my social inadequacies in sixth grade.)

I might have died of embarrassment, if embarrassment could kill. A perceptive girl quoted in the article points out that the lack of showering by student athletes “might be self-consciousness.”

“I’ve never seen girls shower in the locker room,” said Kylie Marshall, a volleyball standout at Emerald Ridge High. “It might be self-consciousness. If I were to even think about it, I’d wear a bathing suit. In society, we’re not taught to be comfortable being naked in the public showers.”

Marshall, who also plays on a select volleyball team, said that she and her teammates come to those practices in their gear. Sweats come off before practice and go back on after practice before heading home to shower.

“I think guys are more open and don’t really care,” Marshall said. “With girls, it goes back to the olden days where were brought up to be more conservative.”

Um, the “olden days”? Were the “olden days” back in 1992? Where are these modest conservative girls of which she speaks?

Everywhere I go, I see girls’ bellybuttons, cleavage, tight t-shirts and jeans (or mini-skirts) outlining their bodies.

We see mostly naked people on network television these days and pixilated naked people on basic cable channels. Not a whole lot is left to the imagination . . . and yet, kids these days are too modest to shower?

We’re told that more than half of American teenagers engage in oral s*x, and they are shy about their bodies? They aren’t comfortable “being naked in the public showers”?

We hear all about MySpace, where teenagers post suggestive photographs of themselves. And yet–they refuse to shower at school?

What an odd collision of facts. Fashions have become less and less modest, leaving nothing to the imagination, really, and yet, kids refuse to shower because someone might see them?

I wonder if teenagers are just more self-conscious, aware that their bodies don’t measure up to the image of perfection bombarding us in the media. I suspect that’s closer to the truth–it’s not about modesty, it’s about their own perceived imperfections.

Whatever the reason they abstain from school showers, who can blame them? I only wish I’d been able to do the same.

Six People Danced All Night and Then Died In the Morning

Actually, I have been thinking, so I take that back. I’ve been thinking about this rave after-party in Seattle at which party-goers were shot and killed by Kyle Huff. My sister (not the one who stole my birth pictures and hasn’t spoken to me since, but the other sister who is seven years younger than me) used to go to raves in Seattle in her wild and crazy days. She’d be gone all night. Once I arrived at my mom’s duplex on a Saturday morning just as one of my sister’s friends was leaving. The friend’s black clothing contrasted with her painted white face and stark red lips. She looked more dead than alive. My sister knew this girl only from the raves and after the dancing to thumping electronic music, they’d made their way back from Seattle on the bus and slept a little in the wee hours of the morning.

(And if they thought we didn’t notice that they were behaving strangely and dangerously and using crystal meth, they were sadly mistaken. Because rave = drug use no matter what you say.)

So the reason I keep thinking about Kyle Huff shooting all those ravers after he was invited to their after-party to hang out is that he could have shot my sister. She used to go home with people she didn’t know and share needles with people she didn’t know and drink alcohol with people she didn’t know and then lie about it. I used to toss and turn at night, praying, worrying, wondering how she’d live through the choices she was making. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t be stopped.

Two of the girls (ages 14 and 15) who were shot dead by Kyle Huff were much younger than the men who were shot. If news reports are to be believed, their parents knew they were going to a rave. They didn’t know one of the girls would lose her friends and go home with strangers. That girl’s dad didn’t know she was missing until the next morning. But the parents knew what their kids were doing, staying out all night, partying. (I can’t understand this. I know we are overprotective in many ways, but I believe strongly in boundaries for kids.)

This news story about the murders of six people plays in my head like a catchy tune stuck on repeat. Over and over and over again, shooting and dead bodies and the devastation in the rave community. (Did you know there was a rave community? I didn’t.)

My sister, during those run-away days of Greyhound buses and needle tracks hidden by long sleeves, said to me once, “I just wish I was still grounded, at home in the living room.” For only a short time before, she’d said to my dad, “I hate you! I wish you were dead!” And then he died when she was sixteen and she tasted the frightening freedom for which she’d yearned. And when the highs faded and the hangovers lasted longer than the fun, she changed her mind.

The consequences of the choices she made back in those days continue today, of course, even almost twenty years later. But at least she stopped before she was dead. Not all kids living more in the night-time than in the day are so lucky.

That’s why I can’t stop thinking about Kyle Huff and the six dead people (two of them only kids) and shots ringing out at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Husband on Strike?

This husband is on strike. My only question is, “And how would that be different from not being on strike?” I bet his wife is happy he’s on the roof. If I were her, I’d put the ladder away in the garage. One less person to pick up after.

(This is no way reflects on my husband, who happens to be a great husband and father. I offer this proof of his superiority to all other men: he plays Pooh-Bear Candyland every night with my daughter so I don’t have to.) Sure, he wants me to iron his pants (*gasp* OH THE HORRORS OF THE PATRIARCHY!!) but honestly, everyone has to make some sacrifices and that’s mine.