Ain't It Awful

I'm at a loss looking for words, the right words, good words, meaningful words to express and assimilate the latest mass shooting.

San Bernardino, my home town for many years. Feeling the close connections. Feelings of love for the Carrillo Clan flooding me. Ain't it awful just doesn't suffice.

I lived there, drove the streets, had picnics in the parks, had holiday dinners, biked, watched children play, went to school, learned to love menudo and sweet bread, buried my family, all in the city limits. The city where I survived my own personal mass deaths.

Aint' it awful ain't enough. I read the news feeds; blame the NRA, religion, politics, Obama, open carry, a lack of mental health care services, prayer. I can't wrap my head around it. Facts don't suffice. I can't combat it, ignore it, understand it. I can't vote it, pray it, express it, or blame it. The magnitude is so devastating, so much larger than me, that I can only feel it deep, deep inside me.

I understand praying a last desperate cry. A cry into an abyss for an event so much larger than ourselves. The prayer that please it can't be so, it can't be true. The prayer for something, for anything, but a full understanding of the truth. I've uttered that prayer myself.

How can the deaths of so many in a smallish city in California be perceived as a threat to a way of life somewhere else? How can it be political? How can it not? It's not a blow to a belief system, to religion or open carry or gun control. It was a blow to those people, at that place, at that time. It was a blow beyond my understanding carried out by humans beyond my understanding.

My friend's granddaughter has a birthday Saturday. I was primping and fussing over some dolls from my doll collection that I intended to pass along to little Stella when I heard the breaking news feed. Dolls to death. How much can you weep?

Can we pray and have gun control? Does it have to be a choice for or against? One or the other?

Let me tell you a story about Christian. Christian didn't like to be read to. As a child when I was reading him a story he squirmed and wiggled and asked to be excused. Later in grade school he didn't like to read. I would pay him a buck a book to try to ignite an interest in books to no avail. I paid him to accomplish his required academic reading. Is it still twenty minutes a night? Then one day, he was about 14 years old I guess, he brought me a song he had discovered and was so excited by it that he had to share with me.

It was Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Iron Maiden. I listened to the music and asked him, "Do you want to read the original?" After his aghast disbelief that there was an original, I handed him an English Literature book turned to the epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Christian loved reading that poem. With the lit book in hand he went on to read Edgar Allan Poe and other classical works and became a life long reader. Greek, Roman, Norse mythology, philosophy, history, fantasy, fiction and non, he reads it all.

Here is the lesson he taught me. It seems all my important life lessons I learned from my children, or as Picasso said, "Don't teach children to draw, learn from them."

What Christian taught me is the world can be deeper than what presents itself on the surface. The world is deeper. It is deeper and sweeter and more profound and bigger than we as humans have the capacity to even imagine. Paying Christian a buck to read some sixth grade book didn't open his love of reading. Connecting did.

I didn't plan for or imagine Christian reading Norse history when I stopped and listened to his music. When I accepted the gift of him sharing something that I had no love for, understanding of, or appreciation of, I mean who loves Iron Maiden? What is on the surface is just the beginning to deeper understanding.

I can't present the words or pretend to understand the causes of the world's ills, horrors and sorrows. I can't blame Obama, Planned Parenthood, the NRA, or religion.

I can seek a deeper understanding.