Overwhelmed

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been having a hard time getting my shit together this past week. To be more precise, I embarked on my current funk about 10 days ago when the news started coming out of New Orleans—too many pictures of mothers and babies separated, reunited, dejected, and forgotten. So much has been written about the tragedy there and the reasons behind it, that I won't make an attempt since I couldn't do it justice, but I will say that I was fully cognizant of watching, reading, and hearing the reports out of the Gulf with motherhood-colored glasses. And I am angry. Angry that this happened, angry at Bush, angry at FEMA, angry at a system which does not value all of its citizens equally, angry at people that are so surprised that this is their America, and most of all angry that Harrison will learn about all of this someday. And when I say "all of this", I don't mean just the government's disgraceful response to Katrina, but the whole thing. Katrina revitalized the feelings of sadness and dejectedness I've been quietly carrying around since November.

On Labor Day weekend in 2000, before the days of Harrison and mortgage payments, I took Doug to New Orleans as a belated birthday present. We wandered the Garden District and the Quarter, had beignets and coffee at Café Du Monde, and listened to the jazz at Preservation Hall. We read in our Lonely Planet about how New Orleans was one of the most segregated and violent cities in the US, and we were a little afraid when we visited Saint Louis I Cemetery, because LP warned that its location on the Quarter/ghetto border made it dangerous for tourists.

Five years later, this Saturday morning (like most) we went to the Rochester Public Market—our favorite place in the city. I've written about it before. Like Saint Louis I, the market is located in one of Rochester's poor, primarily black neighborhoods, but not far from the thriving, urban, primarily white East, Park, and University areas. Yuppies, immigrants, neighborhood people, elderly couples all rub elbows there. The produce vendor at the end of the first set of stalls yelled,"BONANAS!" like he does every week. He called out "Three red peppers for a dollar! One dollar! One dollar! One dollar! One dollar!" and on and on until he'd run out of breath and everyone clapped and cheered. Everytime I'm there, it reminds me of the open-air markets in Vietnam, in Italy. It makes me think of places I've never been, Elizabethan markets, markets in Baghdad, or ancient Alexandria. It makes me feel connected with the diverse people that are there and all those that have come before. It is bustling with commerce in its purest and most innocent form, bursting with harvest and life, and it is invigorating.

When we returned, while Harrison napped, I learned that my coworker Linda's 19-year-old son Lee had been killed in a motorcycle accident on Friday. This family had also lost a 17-year old son seven years ago to cancer. That so much tragedy could befall one family, one wonderful mother, is impossible to fathom, and I cried thinking about Linda and her husband and the mere whisper of the possibility of ever losing Harrison, or two Harrisons.

That afternoon, we went on to a family reunion at Lime Lake and things were good, surrounded by Doug's sister, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and my three beautiful nieces and nephew. Harrison and Zoe played together on the beach and in the water.

Tuesday, after spending three straight days with him, I missed Harrison terribly, and all I could think about was that he was in his first day in the Toddler room. Things were chaotic there when I picked him up, and they had run out of daily reports, so I didn't have a good sense of his day, when he'd napped, how he'd eaten, whether or not he had pooped. There were 7 hours of his day that I didn't know about, that I couldn’t get back, which was hard, especially this week when all I wanted was to have him close. Once again I felt a crushing guilt that I had abandoned him with strangers and was a bad mother.

Then there were the idiotic and telling comments from the government, from Chertoff and then from the Bush family. On Tuesday, the California legislature passed the bill legalizing marriage between "two persons", but yesterday the Governator said he would veto it.

How is it possible that in such a short time so much has happened, to me, to friends, to strangers? That one thousand religious pilgrims died in a stampede in Baghdad? That my lovely friend Terra gave birth to the beautiful baby Beatriz Grace? That so many people in the South lost their homes, their jobs, and everything they knew? That Harrison has learned to run? That on Saturday I held him in the water and he experimented with weightlessness, pulling his feet up from the bottom and giggling, looking up at me and the sky with glee while he floated and I swished him around by his arms. That Wednesday after Lee's funeral, Linda and her family had to go home without him, but on that same night before I put Harrison down to bed he reached up and touched my lips and laughed when I smiled.

Life is terrible and full and beautiful all at once.