The Visit

 My friends, Curt and Allen, came to visit last weekend. It had been over seven years since I had last seen Curt. He had left the memorial gathering held for my husband after we shared a tearful hug, and had flown home to Orlando, Florida.

We met Curt when he came to work for us while he was completing his undergraduate degree at Pepperdine University. And through Curt, we met Todd, and through Todd we met Christopher. Friends at first and now family.

Joel made enchiladas for our reunion, and I made shrimp ceviche and baked a cake. We served Mexican beer, but Curt brought his beloved Bud Light. Go figure. There was also tequila, mezcal, and a newly discovered jet fuel, Sotol. Food was good, company was stellar, and Curt regaled us all with tales told in his characteristically great storytelling style.

We also talked about Pulse and Borderline. Curt and Allen had been to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. They had gone there in the past before the shooting that took the lives of 49 people. It was a gay bar and nightclub, and on June 12, 2016 was at that time, the scene of the second worst mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Is it odd to know someone connected to something so unimaginable? Read on.

My friend, Max, lives in Hamden, Connecticut. In December of 2012, as a supportive friend of the parents, he attended the funeral of a five year-old child who was murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. He wrote to me about the size of the casket, and that it was the hardest thing he had ever experienced.

A few years ago, my friend, Joyce, invited me to join her and her daughter, Sarah, for a season of theater in Hollywood. Sarah had been in attendance at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, where on October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire from a hotel adjacent to the festival site, killing sixty people and making it the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in U.S. history.

Joel and I met at Borderline, a country-Western bar which for many years was utilized every Tuesday night as a salsa dance club. We hadn't been there for awhile as salsa nights had ended a few years before 2018 when, on November 7th, a gunman opened fire killing twelve people around and on the dance floor we knew so well. The motive was said to be that the shooter, a Marine Corps veteran, hated "entitled, liberal civilians and especially college students" whom it was said he considered disrespectful of the military. Thousand Oaks, California, where this mass shooting occurred, is considered to be one of the safest communities in the U.S.

My father passed away in 1998, less than a year before the Columbine High School shooting, where twelve students and a teacher were murdered in what was, at the time, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. Twenty-three years later nearly 300,000 students have been on campus during a school shooting. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, firearms-related injuries are now the number one cause of death of children, adolescents, and young adults between the ages of 1 and 24 years in the U.S. I often think back to my father when pondering changes in our lives since he passed away. What would he have thought about 9/11? What would he have said about the four years of Trump? How horrified would he be of the gun violence epidemic in this country? The United States leads in mass shootings when compared to peer countries whose governments have been quick to pass gun reform in the wake of tragedies. After the Port Arthur massacre in Australia, the Prime Minister stated "We do not want the American disease imported into Australia." Australia established a national gun registry, requires permits for gun purchases and banned all semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. Gun violence decreased, and Australia has had only one mass shooting in the twenty-two years since these reforms.

In the United States, the firearm death rate in 2016 was nearly four times that of Switzerland, five times that of Canada, ten times that of Australia and thirty-five times that of the United Kingdom. This according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medicine Association. And, guess what, mental illness in the U.K. is not proportionally different than in the U.S.

I am attending a rally today which is sponsored by Moms Demand Action Caucus which is the nation's largest grassroots volunteer network working to end gun violence. MDAC is a part of Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown and Giffords advocate gun control. There is no question that the founding fathers did not intend the second amendment to be interpreted in such a way to allow eighteen-year olds to purchase AK-15 rifles without background checks, and use them to slaughter children. Nor did it intend that our lives would be disrupted by mass shootings at Pulse, Borderline, music festivals, churches, theaters, markets, malls, and more. My husband's family insisted that he take his father's guns which were "historic and collectible." My mother-in-law admonished me "Those guns will never be fired. You don't have to worry about that." And everyone who knows me, knows how that turned out.

Through May 31st, Mike Bloomberg will triple match your gift to Everytown For Gun Safety. You can contribute by using this link: Everytown For Gun Safety . The other organization I support is Giffords . Gabby Giffords is the former congresswoman who was shot in the head in Arizona in January, 2012 during an assassination attempt. She is married to former Space Shuttle Commander and current senator, Mark Kelly. These people are working hard to stop the madness. Please join in this fight. Do it for Curt. And for me. And for those 300,000 school kids. And for the future victims who will tragically end up in the firing line of these people with their guns. Join us in saying that enough is enough.

Sideways

Los Angeles, California

I made it all the way into my forties believing that if I lived a life of honesty, ethics and fairness I could ensure that I would feel good about myself and, as a good person, I would in some magical way be protected from the darkness I saw visited on others. I was transparent in my marriage, generous with friends and family, didn't even cheat on my taxes. At the same time, I was always attracted to stories in films and novels where good people face a situation of moral ambiguity, and make the wrong choice at that crossroads. While trying to be upstanding, I wasn't trying to be stupid. I knew that good and even intelligent people sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes big ones. And I fully acknowledge my membership in that group.

My mistake? Like the surviving brother in Ordinary People, I held on.

I married for a lifetime but had chosen too quickly a partner who was kind and infinitely generous. He was also severely troubled by unaddressed ADHD rendering him as someone who was susceptible to his own impulses and compulsions. He harbored an inability to manage his own emotions. After he got into trouble, I told him that I saw him as someone who operated out of the third box. The first box was about things that were ok to do; the second about things that were not ok to do. And the third box, the one my husband apparently checked while living his life, was things that are not ok to do but you can do them anyway if no one finds out. I never realized until my marriage was over and I was in a different, healthier relationship, that I had been living in a marriage without trust for thirty-five years. Sometimes you don't realize what you don't have, until you find yourself blessed by it and learn that you can't live without it.

Now, many years later, and after five years under the worst and most childish President our country has ever known, and two-plus years living through a deadly pandemic, I look about me and realize that the situations in those stories I used to read about dark, personal disasters are similarly happening in the families and lives of people I know. And, while not in all, in many of these cases completely out of the control of those victimized. I talk to my closest friends about this. Maybe this is a dark part of PTSD. We live in families or communities operating out of some sense that rules do not apply; that we should do whatever we want or take whatever we need, regardless of how it affects those around us -- family members, friends, communities, fellow drivers. This is not a happy world. It's plain ugly out there.

I am no longer that blameless idealist. And I don't want to be. I am judgmental about a lot of things. I cannot abide cheapness. Or shabbiness. If you are someone who would rather live with an elephant in your room while pretending it's not there, I am the person who will say to you: You wait here. I'll be right back, like, never. While it is important to observe those two boxes outlined above, it's not ok to pretend that everything is fine when everything is not fine. Be one of those people if you like, just not around me.

I am now confrontive (a word not legitimized in the OED, by the way). I never was while growing up, but higher education (aka therapy) brought me to a place where I have no problem speaking up about an issue or problem which I deem is not going away. The relationships in my life that are real, those where a friend or family member and I have moved through issues between us, are the strongest and most valued. We have a bond. The ones that could not sustain discussion and resolution blew away like a feather.

I shared lunch and a movie with girlfriends this week. One of them, my friend Bev, is struggling with a friend who has terminal cancer. Bev is one of the last friends this woman has retained through the years as she has always been, according to Bev, very difficult. She has a family who doesn't seem capable of stepping up to help (welcome to my mundo), rather they have an attitude of Can't Bev do it? Bev's ailing but difficult friend has no problem asking her to do things that are truly outside her pay grade. But Bev has a problem with saying no. She was practicing her no responses with us at lunch. No, because... We shook our heads. Just say no. Or say: Sorry, but I can't. Bev responded that her friend would demand to know why she couldn't. What do I say then? Bev asked. Say: Why are you asking? And whatever the response to that, repeat by rephrasing: I'm sorry, but I have to say no. When no is your answer, just say no.

After the film, Bev thanked me for my input. You're so good at saying things to people. I'm just not. I assured her that I am not good at it. It can take me years to address an imbalance in a relationship. But I am more practiced at it than I used to be. I want to live in a better, more fair world. And that means being aware of our own needs and boundaries, as well as those of the people around us. And being cognizant of what we all need, or don't need. It's also about casting off social obtuseness. It's about dealing directly with life and with the people in it who create problems. And, maybe sometimes we are those people. But the better amongst us will realize that and autocorrect. And not to be redundant, but it is also about keeping open the lines of communication, regardless of how challenging and at times painful that can be.

Life as we knew it, has turned sideways. The election of Trump was the rotten cherry on top. The rise of social media, with people blindly allowing themselves to be swallowed by it, helped a lot. The pandemic just about turned us all on our heads. We are clearly, currently all shellshocked wanderers. But, as my late husband's shrink pointed out to him, life, broken down, is about choices. One choice after another. We can make better choices and be better and braver people. One shouldn't look under the bed for trouble. But one also shouldn't hide under the bed when trouble presents itself.

I am no longer the idealistic wife who thought that being good would translate to a good life. I was shockingly disabused of that belief. But I still believe that we can be the change we want to see in the world. By being real and brave and thoughtful. Not thoughtful in the sense of being considerate, while that is certainly a virtue. But being thought-ful; thinking about, and really processing, how what we do impacts those around us. Sondheim wrote in Into the Woods: You move just a finger; say the slightest word. Something's bound to linger; be heard. It's about how even the subtlest things have impact. But, subtlety aside, if I have to shout to be heard. I shall shout. Maybe that is what Sandra would have done had she lived to this day. But she didn't. So, while I still often think of what she would do, my self-actualized mantra is now: What would Bronte do? And with that, I have a pretty good idea of the right path to take, honestly, openly, directly, while striding straight ahead. There  isn't a circuitous way to be. Sideways is no longer an option.