Being a parent right now is a swirling maelstrom of anxieties on top of anxieties. You need to be concerned about all kinds of things from Covid to developmental milestones to making sure he has friends to what kind of world will be here in 10, 15, 20 years due to climate change.
But the biggest thing right now the way this country trivializes guns and violence is absurd. It is tragicomedy writ large. There are people who would have us return to the unfettered chaos of the fictional Wild West, where everyone carries and shoots first.
There are people who conflate worship of god with the worship of the gun and view both as sacrosanct. And at the same time they will stand outside medical clinics and scream at women for exercising their right to vital, necessary healthcare in the form of abortions.
I do not know how to proudly wear the mantle of "pro-life" while also worshiping at the altar of the ArmaLite AR-15 and all its variants.
I don't know how it's possible to sit in a church pew on Sunday morning and listen to the message of peace and love made human as Christ and then go on down to Frontier Justice or wherever to pick out the newest way to put face-sized holes in a child's head.
I take gun ownership seriously as an erstwhile gun owner. I haven't touched one in nearly 15 years, I don't think, and when I did it was a 20-gauge shotgun exclusively for rabbit hunting or for shooting at clay pigeons.
I play violent video games (currently going through Sniper Elite 5) on a regular basis. But I try to avoid it in front of Benji. Sometimes he catches a glimpse of Diablo 3 while I'm on the couch with my Switch. A few days ago he watched me play the new TMNT game for a bit.
Our TV, when it's on during the daytime, is usually tuned to kids' television (Nick Jr. or Disney Junior) or sports. We try to avoid anything overly objectionable.
Anyway, we've tried not to trivialize guns in our house. We don't talk about shooting people or engage in any kind of "gun" play. Hell, we try to even shut down finger guns as much as possible.
I grew up around guns and understand that they do, in fact, have a place. Hunting is a legitimate purpose. Rural police response times are another. But there are guns that have no place in the home or the streets or the grocery store.
We don’t have a gun in our home because we do not need one. I live in the suburbs. I don’t hunt. And more importantly I do not want little fingers to find the trigger.
I know people who bring a gun with them on long car trips, ostensibly for safety reasons. I know others who carry it into the grocery store despite being told not to. “Criminals won’t listen to the law,” they say as they…break the law?
Anyway, I've been thinking a lot lately about the Maggie Smith poem. You know the one. "Good Bones."
I am tired of it. I am exhausted by whispering its litany under my breath every single day while one group in this country marches onward, Christian soldiers, toward fascism.
I am bereaved at the seeming inability of the opposition to take control of this moment and stamp on the head of it like Jesus stomps on the head of the snake in Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ." A vision that is seared in my memory as a result of watching its trailer a thousand times at every single church conference I attended from 2002-2003.
I have a thousand frustrations that curdle up in my guts every single day, a constant refrain of angry thoughts about how we treat the poor and the sick and the marginalized.
I don’t know how much longer I can talk up this place’s good bones as fascists proudly take up sledgehammers to knock away the footings and the joists and the load-bearing structures that tremble a bit more with each swing of the hammer.
This place has good bones, yeah, but the thing about bones?
They can break.