Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
After Wednesday
You can tolerate a terrible situation for years. Have your heart broken, wake up frightened in the middle of the night, lose your voice from constant pleading, and then one day something happens and you slam the door on all of that.
I slammed the door Wednesday. I slammed the door so hard, parts of the door jamb pulled away from the wall and the glass in the little window, the pane with the old sticker that said “War is not healthy for children and other living things” shook so hard I thought it might crack.
I’d just gotten home from a long day at the Wisconsin State Capitol where I’d gone with a friend to speak against a bad piece of legislation. “I bet you didn’t hear about the shooting,” my husband said, gesturing toward the television where the CNN symbol lit the dark at the end of the day living room. CNN lives with us now, moved in over a year ago, its commentators like family members who come to dinner and never stop talking. We tune them out until some terrible piece of news snags us.
I listened but only barely. A witness to the shooting was talking into the camera. I turned my back on him and went into the kitchen. I didn’t need to hear anymore. Nothing that would be said would make any difference.
I slammed the door on heartbreak, fear, and pleading.
It wasn’t something I decided. It was visceral. Like an abused woman deciding that this morning’s black eye would be her last black eye.
The next night I went to my first Moms Demand Action meeting. Several volunteers in matching red t-shirts ushered us into a room where twenty chairs were arranged in a circle. Brochures and a poster-board display took up one table; on another, there was a stack of clipboards which we would later learn were for signing up for various tasks: attending lobby day, writing letters to the editor, welcoming new members, teaching people about gun safety.
Soon every chair was filled but people kept coming. A woman fed pieces of banana to her baby while her toddler ran up and down the hallway outside. A little girl in a dress was sprawled on the floor, a box of crayons emptied out next to her. She never looked up from her coloring book. Latecomers sat on the floor, the back of one so close to me that I had to tuck my feet under my chair. Many women were young, their arms decorated with tattoos; it made me feel like I was with some tough customers. The time was right for that, being with tough customers. It was what I had decided to be.
A tiny woman in a red Moms Demand Action t-shirt sat next to me. She seemed to be in charge. With shaking hands she told us about the Moms Demand Action agenda and as she talked I realized she wasn’t nervous, she was intense. Her intensity about gun violence was making her hands shake. I knew then I was in the right place.
I signed up for lobby day at the State Capitol. I want to do things where I will be physically present, where I will be a human being that a policymaker has to talk to, recognize, acknowledge. I want to be unavoidable. I want to be in their way. So I am going to buy a red Moms Demand Action t-shirt and I’m going to go with these people I don’t know and hope we are all in the way of people who wouldn’t care about gun control unless we were there to confront them. I bet that my hands will shake.
I left the meeting early. Some people were staying to write postcards to legislators. I wanted to be in my car with the new me, the one who’d finally slammed the door. I felt like I’d crossed over from a place where people were wringing their hands to one where their hands were shaking because of their anger and resolve. That is where I belong.
______________
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
21 Comments on “After Wednesday”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I DEMAND that you people STOP blaming LAW ABIDING gun owners for CRIMINAL ACTS committed by CRIMINALS!
You don’t really get to demand anything from free thinking people, especially not on my site.
How many law abiding citizens need assault guns to conduct their law abiding activities? Let’s all request reasonable solutions for the protection of all, especially the children.
No one in Congress has gotten more than $9900 from the NRA every election. Whereas Big Pharma contributes (buys) Congressmen in the TENS-of-THOUSANDS, $50,000+ to INDIVIDUAL members of Congress! Do your research!! https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/toporgs.php?cycle=2016&view=fc
Go write your own blog.
Thank you, Jan! We are all being abused by lawmakers kissing up to the NRA, and this is indeed our last “black eye”! I joined Moms Demand Action too.
Good for you! I would do exactly the same if I lived in America, so do it for you and for the millions of us not in America who are astonished, angry, sad and tearful at the loss of innocent young members of our human race.
Here’s the Moms Demand Action websit to join https://momsdemandaction.org
Thank you!
A Rabid pack of anti-gun zealots.
Bye dear. That’s enough.
I am so so so so happy for you, Jan. I am finding that it is possible for me to become a new me that is stronger and more effective at working for what is right, even though I am 73.
You have so much experience, knowledge, fearlessness – that’s what you bring at 73. Your ‘new me’ is a powerhouse of a different sort than when you were 53 but hugely needed right now.
I think I needed to hear that, Jan. Thanks.
Please read my Blog here on Word Press, “We Are To Blame for School Shootings” gunfighter32908.com
I live in Florida, but far from Coral Springs. My little great nephew in Texas made his granny call to make sure we were okay and that we knew what to do if a shooter came to our school. He knows. He’s six.
Terrible that kids even have to think about such things. That’s what we’ve done here — made this part of little kids’ lives. It’s awful.
An entire generation is being altered by the reality and the threat of gun violence.
Good for you. Every one of our founding fathers who was in favor of the right to bear arms would agree, I’m sure, that assault rifles were not what they were envisioning!!!!
Great post! I live right outside Milwaukee. Thank you for your contribution.
GO JAN!