Karen Hogan

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The Day After They Were Taken from Us

IMG_0199“A police officer entered the room and put the parents’ worst fears into words: their children were gone. The wails that followed could be heard from outside.” From the New York Times 

It’s the day after, when you wake up and life reveals it wasn’t a dream — a nightmare. Life as you know it did end. What was lost is lost. What was taken away was taken away. And before you is the void you didn’t see coming — life as it now is.

There are many ways that life can end as we know it. A trusted friend betrays you. Your job gets taken away. A loved one dies. A madman looks in your five-year old’s eyes and takes her life away.

“Were they afraid, did they see something coming?” parents asked a pastor at the site.

Please, please tell me her last memory is of my love, not the gaze of the pitiless monster.

It was, it seemed, a safe place, Newtown, Connecticut. The kind of town where children were safe — safe from the pitiless monster. But it was not.

The heroes in this carnage are the teachers and staff who tried to save the children. The responders who told the children they were evacuating to hold hands and close their eyes so they wouldn’t witness the horror. The clergy who made themselves available to the parents whose children did not come home to them.

Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger thinks we should arm teachers, that if they had guns, the innocent would have been spared.

I disagree. That is not in their job description, nor should it be.

There is no doubt that this resistance to killing one’s fellow man is there and that it exists as a result of a powerful combination of instinctive, rational, environmental, hereditary, cultural, and social factors. It is there, it is strong, and it gives us cause to believe that there may just be hope for mankind after all.”

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society

In his book, Grossman says that one doesn’t learn to overcome the resistance to killing, one is conditioned to overcome it.

I’m not opposed to that conditioning. I just think that it needs to be reserved for soldiers and law enforcement — men and women who can call on their own pitiless monster when appropriate, but aren’t seduced by its power.

“Victims Identified as Connecticut Town Seeks Answers,” a headline reads.

There are no answers — or at least none that satisfy or soothe or make any sense or make the unacceptable acceptable.

But, nevertheless, we need to ask questions. The right questions. Questions that start with the knowledge that we all have a pitiless monster inside us.

We need to talk about guns and our rights regarding them. I do not think we have the right to hunt with assault weapons. I do not think we have a right to an arsenal of weapons — particularly automatic weapons — any more than we have the right to abuse our children because they are ours.

We need to keep guns — particularly automatic weapons — out of the hands of those who have been seduced by their pitiless monster. The only way we even have the chance to do that is by making them illegal for civilians to own.

I am an American. I am neither proud nor ashamed of that. It is simply a part of who I am — the country that is in my heart.

So I feel compelled to help shape its culture — to make it one whose heart beats to the rhythm of hope for mankind, rather than the paranoid fear of “them.”

I will hold the people of Newtown, Connecticut in my heart and hope that that small act will help heal the humanity that was lost when the 27 lives were taken by a man who was taken away by his pitiless monster.

Some wisdom about talking to parents who have lost children:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-emily-c-heath/dealing-with-grief-five-t_b_2303910.html

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Make a Little Trouble Out There

“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there.”

Nora Ephron

To the 1996 Wellesley graduating class

There are certain famous people who, when they die, I feel the loss personally, though I never had a personal relationship with them.

Nora Ephron is one of those people. I loved reading everything she wrote, loved seeing every movie she wrote and/or directed. Loved Love, Loss, What I Wore, the play she and her sister Delia co-authored (based on a book by Ilene Beckerman).

She made feminism fun, someone wrote. She did, because her form of feminism included romantic comedies, and saw the value of a good marriage.

Take a leap with me now, if you will.

We just came through an election (in case you didn’t notice). The choice was clear to me: the old paradigm (Traditional) versus the new paradigm (Traditional Shmraditional: Let’s Get Real About Reality).

Single women voted overwhelmingly for Obama, because, the ladies of Fox News proclaimed, they were selfish. They thought only of themselves and their birth control pills. In their worldview, married women voted for Romney because they had children and so were concerned about the future—the future of their children.

Their children, I would point out. Not children. Their children.

This of course assumes that none of those single women who voted for Obama had children.

Traditional shmraditional: Let’s Get Real about Reality.

I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving at a retreat. Many of the participants were gay men who were in their early to mid thirties. They were born, I realized, about the time (late 1980) I began volunteering with the Hospice program at San Francisco General Hospital. Earlier that year, a small article, published deep in the first section of the San Francisco Chronicle, noted that a number of gay men had been diagnosed with a type of cancer that had previously been seen primarily in elderly Italian and Jewish men. It was Karposi’s sarcoma.

Soon after that came the articles about a mysterious gay cancer, then gay-related immune deficiency syndrome (GRID), and speculation about reasons for this phenomenon. Poppers? Drugs?

Soon after that, San Francisco General Hospital was inundated with what became the AIDS epidemic, and young gay men began showing up as hospice patients. In 1983, an AIDS ward was established at SFGH, not to isolate AIDS patients, but rather to ensure that the emotional as well as physical needs of patients were met.

It broke the model of hospital wards: the rooms that were normally reserved for staff (one for nurses, the other for physicians) became a community room where patients and staff socialized. Staff was encouraged to engage with patients, to not distance themselves, to shed tears with them, hold them when they cried, laugh with them when it was time to laugh. Staff supported each other. They were encouraged to take care of themselves, to acknowledge the toll it took on them, and take a break when needed.

This was at a time when terminally ill patients, regardless of the illness, tended to be isolated—treated as failures by the medical model that put physicians at the top of the delivery system.

I wrote an article for the hospice newsletter about the ward. Over a three-hour period I sat in the community room, listening to patients talk about their experience on the ward—friends decorated their rooms, patients became active in their care.

The AIDS epidemic raised bigger health issues, the clinical coordinator who developed the ward believed. He believed that the AIDS ward could serve as a model for how health care can be delivered.

It’s funny how memory works. I had forgotten about my visit to the AIDS ward until the retreat. The experience of this generation of gay men was far different from what was happening to their age group thirty years ago.

I was single during that time. I had no children. I don’t know whether not having children freed me to get as involved as I did with hospice. I also worked with the Gray Panthers, advocating for nursing home reform, advocating for changing the way the medical community delivered geriatric health care, standing up against age discrimination. I also worked at a center for independence of the disabled, where I became involved in advocating for removing impediments that banished people with disabilities to the backrooms of our society.

I did all of this because I was concerned about the future—mine and those who came after me.

I have stepchildren now. Our Thanksgiving was one of the smallest it has been in a number of years. Two of my stepdaughters were there, my step grandsons, my husband, and the son of a friend who now lives in Texas. Normally, I relish a large crowd, but this year, the intimacy of it comforted me. The people seated at the table loved and cared about each other. They wanted to be there.

I care about their future. Their future includes good health care, security in age, a world in which women have control over their reproductive health.

Being concerned about one’s children is natural. But to think that all one has to be concerned about is one’s own children is to doom oneself to a La Brea tar pit.

Women, real women, care about the world, as well as their families. They know that they are interdependent.

The ladies of Fox News don’t understand that. They chose to be a lady, to accept the status quo, to possess love of family, and definition of family, as a value that they and they alone possess.

Gay marriage was barely a dream thirty years ago. Gay adoption hardly on the horizon.

With this election, I think we chose shmradition over tradition. A black family lives in the White House. Gay marriage will soon, I think, be a nonissue. There will just be marriage—a commitment between two people who love and are committed to each other. Some married couples will want to raise a family, others will choose to remain childless.

The people who have taught me the most over my life are the ones who made a little trouble out there—the ones who threw tradition aside, who risked disapproval so that the human heart could experience the breadth of humans being human.

Put on your hats and gloves, straighten the seam in your hose, and go make a little trouble out there. The world is ready for the heart of a woman to forge her path in life.

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The Celtic Warrior is Strong in Me

By the time I arrived in Iowa City and settled into the Iowa House early in the morning of July 20th, a crazy, loaded-to-the teeth gunman was already in the news. I had changed planes in Denver. Chaos was still a few hours away as I waited for my connecting flight.

I wondered what it felt like at the Denver airport now.

I tried to write a reasoned, contained blog about this. But reasoned words failed me.

On Monday, I started my Monologue class. An assignment: take an article from the New York Times and respond to it.

And thus was unleashed my Celtic Warrior. He appeared earlier in my blog career. I have decided I should pull him out whenever reasoned worlds fail me – fail me because there is no reason to what happened.

 The Rant of the Celtic Warrior

The residents of Krymsk, Russia are angry and three of its officials are in trouble. They did not warn the citizens of Krymsk that a 20-foot wall of water would sweep through their town in three hours.

No on was evacuated. One hundred seventy-one of them died.

The officials are charged with negligence. They could face jail time. The swiftness and seriousness of the charges against the officials reflect, according to the NY Times, the Kremlin’s anxiety about the popular anger.

Two things.

One: My anger has created anxiety.

Two: It has never made me popular.

So popular anger intrigues me.

If I were a Krymskian would I be angry?

Fuck yes.

Especially after the governor called me dear and asked — what would you have done, left your house?

Fuck yes. Or at least fuck maybe.

If I knew and didn’t leave, then fuck me. But, since you knew and didn’t warn me, fuck you.

I am on occasion very zen-like. But my Celtic warrior, painted blue with the head of an enemy dangling from my horse overrides that quite easily.

Nice girls aren’t like that.

I had to work on that. Feeling okay about not being a nice girl. Whenever that niggling voice arises, “Now, that’s not nice—it upsets people,” I think of the end of Psycho, where Norman Bates, as a fly crawls across his face, says, in the voice of his mother, “I’ll, show them. I’ll show them I’m so nice, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

That would be nice old serial-killer-stab-them-‘til-they’re-screaming-while-their-life-blood-flows-down-the-drain Mrs. Bates talking.

Look, it’s not as if I’m looking for a fight. They’re just there—disguised as polite rudeness. Or polite condescension.

“What would you do Dear, leave your house if a 20-foot wall of water was coming your way?”

Fuck, yes! And don’t call me dear unless you want your head dangling from my horse.

You know, when 70 people get shot at a midnight movie, twelve of them die, and one of them is a six year old, and it happens in three minutes, and the NfuckingRA claims the Constitution as its own because our forefathers guaranteed the right to bear nine-pound, five-foot long, one-shot, Flintlock, muskets that you have to load with gun powder after each shot, and numbnut commentators claim we shouldn’t talk about gun control out of respect for the 70 people—including the twelve who died, one of whom was a six year old, whose lives—not to mention the lives of anyone who loved them—changed forever within the space of three minutes while they were watching a movie — a fucking movie for god’s sake —

I get pissed.

I get Celtic warrior, painted blue with the head of my enemy dangling from my horse pissed.

Look, I don’t even have a horse, I don’t know how to ride a horse. And even if I did, I don’t have the heads of enemies lying around my house, waiting for me to dangle them from my horse.

But if that image scares the polite rudeness out of someone, so be it. That’s their problem, not mine.

It is the absolutely right thing to do when you come fact to face with that sweet old Mrs. Bates-in-her-lace-collar-and-grandmother-dress politeness. She has an enormous butcher’s knife behind her back. And she’s ready to use it. On the six-year old girl over there. She just doesn’t want you to notice it because then she can’t stab her.

Pointing out that something or someone is psychotic — is not psychotic.

You know, they talk about manning up.

Well, I think it’s time to woman up. When you see that knife behind her back, point it out. Say, “Hey! That sweet little old lady has a knife behind her back and she wants to stab that little girl.”

Or, “Hey! You know a sign that someone is about to have a psychotic break? When they buy four automatic weapons and 6000 rounds of ammunition. They’re not going out to hunt deer. And even if they are, don’t let them. It’s not fair to the deer. And, it’s psychotic. And, it means that shooting humans isn’t too far down the road. It’s a 20-foot wall of water barreling down on our humanity.”

And, don’t call me dear. Unless you want your head dangling from my horse.

There.

I ranted.

I tried not to.

But the Celtic Warrior is too strong in me.

I feel better now.

I think I’ll go shower and wash away the blue.

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Thanks for the Mammaries

“Thanks for the mammaries.”

That was on the inside of a card I gave to my mother for Mother’s Day. On the outside was a drawing of a blissful mother nursing her baby.

My mother hadn’t breast fed me. I was born in 1949 when it was out of fashion, and she had taken some kind of drug that had dried up the breast milk. She had taken it for an infection, she said.

I am not upset that my mother didn’t breast feed me. It just sort of fit with who she was. Not cold and indifferent – just not sentimental about being a mother. Thus, she enjoyed the card I gave her.

I liked that about my mother.

Mother’s Day wasn’t terribly important to her, so it was always pretty low key. Since I did not have children, it wasn’t particularly on my radar.

And then I became a stepmother.

I think the word “blended” family is misleading. It is often more like a Cuisinart family, in which a wide variety of volatile emotions get churned by the sharp blade of confusion about who loves who, who can love who, and whose love counts. That the human heart is both fragile and muscular is evident in the delicate navigation through the whitewaters of relationships in a stepfamily. Children are hardwired to want their parents’ love. A stepparent has to earn it.

The hidden rocks and whirlpools in my journey through this experience comprised my not having children of my own – yet wanting them – and the very challenging dysfunction of my stepdaughters’ mother. I sometimes referred to her as my step wife.

I helped my stepdaughters make presents for their mother my first Mother’s Day as a stepmother. They left and a hole the size of the Grand Canyon opened up in my heart as I realized I would not be acknowledged for the love I was investing in this relationship.

So much for Mother’s Day not being particularly important. It was a bit of a humbling experience.

Because of their mother’s dysfunction, I became something of a covert mother for them, but always taking the back seat when it came to being recognized as the mother. It was a rollercoaster of pain, followed by acceptance, followed by pain when it happened again.

I never blamed by stepdaughters. It was just the way it was. Their need for their mother’s love was primal, and so loyalty went to her.

I remember the first Mother’s Day I received a card from one of my stepdaughters. She was in college. I don’t know how to describe what I felt. The only word that comes to mind is grace.

That I did not have children has always been a bit baffling to me. I always wanted them, thought I would have them. We tend to get along well, children and me.

There are two “reasons” that make “sense” to me.

First, there was a history of abuse in my family. I wanted to make sure I resolved that so I didn’t pass it on. My one conception was the result of an abusive relationship. After careful feeling, I decided to terminate the pregnancy – I just didn’t feel that I had it in me to overcome the abusive shadow that hung over it. I have no regrets about that decision.

Second, I wanted to avoid the wrath of the women in my family. They were chained to the belief that women had to make a choice between being a person, or being a wife and mother. If I chose both, it would have ripped open their wound caused by their perceived lack of choice. They were somewhat justified in believing they had no choice – it was the time they lived in. Their message of wrath was unspoken, but deafening in its delivery nevertheless.

Over the past year or so, my oldest stepdaughter and I have become particularly close. She was eighteen by the time I came into the picture, so I was never her covert mother. She was eight years older than my middle stepdaughter and had her own experience being her sisters’ covert mother. Our journey to connection was not an easy one. And yet we arrived.

She has seven-year old triplet sons who she has no problem with my referring to as my grandsons. They call me GrandKaren. I suggested that early on as there were two grandmothers in the picture, and it seems appropriate given that she and her sisters call me Karen.

Over the last couple of months, I stayed with them when she had to travel, then stepped in for daily duty when a bout of the flu put her down for the count for several days. My theory got proved: the day-to-day care of children opens your heart like nothing else can. What I didn’t know was that it opened theirs to me as well.

Because of the peculiar legacy of women as the “sacrificers” that the family I grew up in held, they did not seem to understand that my actions were out of love – they thought it was simply me performing my duty. If one cannot see the heart behind actions, one cannot cherish the heart that delivers them. I have written about this before in the Writing Shed. It ripped my heart out, but I finally had to let that family go. It was a source of constant pain.

This Mother’s Day, I picked up my grandsons early. They greeted me with cards (including one from my stepdaughter) and a dozen pink roses. We shopped for flowers and ingredients for the breakfast they wanted to make for their mother, and then collectively made the breakfast, set the table, and presented her the flowers they had picked out earlier that morning.

That afternoon, they all came to my house for a Mother’s Day bar-b-que.  With great enthusiasm they took part in every step of the meal preparation, including setting and adding a leaf to the table, and helping Tom start the bar-b-que and me make home-made tortilla chips.

As I scooped the last batch of chips out of the cast iron skillet I understood. This was what I had always longed for – a family that understood my heart.

I started the Writing Shed three years ago on the day before Mother’s Day. I started it so I could change my story. That story that I started from, the one that I had learned to live, was about not trusting the light that was in my heart.

My story has changed.