Monsters in Swaddling Clothes

               

      The blackness of Hell was all about me. The sorrows of the world encompassed me. I was like one gone down into a pit. Hope had forsaken me. I was that mother whose child had been slain. I was the mother who had borne the monster who had done it. I was even that monster, feeling in my own heart every abomination.

Dorothy Day, on her time spent in prison

The word "monster" derives from the Latin monstrum, an aberrant occurrence, usually biological, that was taken as a sign that something was wrong within the natural order.  Wikipedia

     Last night I had a conversation with 2 of my older children and my husband. If Adam Lanza had not killed himself, what would we do with him? They said he should die. One said he should be shot, as he shot others. None of them felt it was fair for him to live. I argued that he had to be mentally ill, and therefore we needed to know what moved him to his acts of inconceivable violence. We cannot help others with these issues until we know more about them. Adam was after all, someone's baby. He himself had been an innocent kindergartner at one time. Even so, they said, he was not a baby anymore. Maybe lethal injection was more appropriate. But he should not live in prison. We shouldn't have to pay for him to eat and have a bed.

      I kept thinking, right now there are other little boys out there, little boys who need help. They are victims too. Victims of a brain that does not function appropriately. Victims of emotions that flood and control them. Our world casts them aside and leaves them with few people who understand them. And fewer who genuinely love them. Things will not change until more of us work to ease their agonies and those of their families. Prison is not the place for them, but sometimes neither is the home they share with their families. I sat last night and cried. But I cried for the little boy who grew to be called a monster. I cried for him as much as for those children he killed. In saving him, all would have been saved.

    I once had a conversation with a friend about Ted Bundy. I said I wondered what had made him the way he was. Thinking to myself something must have damaged his psyche, perhaps he'd suffered trauma or his brain lacked development in a critical area. She looked at me seriously and said, "He was demon possessed. That is the only thing that makes sense." It was incomprehensible to her that he should be sick for any scientific reason. As long as we have the attitude that these people are evil and there is no hope, we will never do the work it takes to truly understand them and make changes to cure them or at least make life the best it can be. But every mother who has had to deal with a mentally disturbed child needs us to help her. Right now there are little baby boys everywhere in this world with mothers who love them. Mothers who wrap them warmly and cradle them to their breast. Not one of those mothers thinks her son could ever grow up and be a monster like the one they are hearing about on the news. But some of them are going to be wrong. 

We work to change things for all kinds of handicaps and challenges people face. Is not the malfunctioning psyche as important to research and treat as any other illness of childhood? We must try to see ourselves as Adam Lanza's mother, as Michael Long's mother. Or father for that matter. We say so easily "No one in their right mind could do such a thing." But then we judge them as if they were in their right mind.  I think that must be how they are treated their whole lives and I cannot imagine how outcast and alone they feel. Surely that leads to anger, sadness, misery. The never ending torture of the soul, by definition, is Hell. We hope the monsters burn in Hell, never realizing they are already intimately acquainted with its hospitality.

Please read Michael Long's (not his real name) mother's story here.

That's Mine and That's Mine and That's Not Yours Either

     One of the few monogrammed things I've ever owned I got as a teenager. It was an overnight bag my grandma got selling Avon. It was orange pleather and I thought it was great. I used it a long time, even after marriage, which made liars out of my initials. Despite all those years of close contact, I was immune to the disease known as Monogram Fever. Monogram Fever is rampant in the south. So much so one could believe it's carried by mosquitoes. Like Malaria in Africa. Southern women are bonkers for labeling EVERYTHING with their initials. Or their kid's initials. Or a combination of their initials and their husband's. Aside from the one comfy chair he needs to roost in for football season, most southern husband's have no opinion on decor. This frees the Mrs. to put her mark on everything they own. And she does this like a nervous Cocker Spaniel with a bladder infection. Nothing is safe. Clothes, bags, shoes, sheets, towels, chairs, lampshades, headboards, dog collars, notebooks. Even the car gets lettered in plastic decals. I've recently seen these things span the entire back window of a suburban.

   When I was a kid I wore Garanimals. Inexpensive clothes with the ingenious animal picture tags to help kids dress themselves. My mother loved this brand. Without it we were likely to go out the door looking like colorblind derelicts. Match the hippo to the hippo the giraffe to the giraffe. Easy.
Now kids have a closet full of clothes labeled with their initials. For girls, smocked dresses used to be the main deal, but the disease has become a superbug and moved on to contaminate even the average T shirt. Boys, God bless them, are subject to this humiliation until Dad puts his foot down or the boy's friends pelt him with rocks and call him a pussy. Some mothers just can't let it end. They take it to the limit and then drive it a little further, making Johnny wear his big white bibbed short set with the side buttons until he's emasculated and confused. Christmas cards are all the evidence needed to back this up. Even if he's not wearing them on a regular basis anymore, mom will make him for the Christmas photo. Even Dad can't save him from this one. This is the most important photo of the year. The annual illusion of family perfection sent out to the masses. The kids have no choice. Open the envelope and there they are. All labeled and organized like bottles in the spice rack.

     I understand the beauty of the lettering on a few select things.  Cursive curls with a pretty thread on a linen hand towel I can appreciate. It's just gotten out of control. A woman I know, from a long line of seriously southern women, recently built a new house. The house is huge and everything is white. Apparently white is the perfect backdrop for embroidering every surface with a monogram. You cannot look anywhere without seeing it. Seriously. What is the point? In my head I hear the seagulls in Finding Nemo. "Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine".
Another woman, of the same Dixiefied upbringing, monogrammed the belongings of her first daughter down to the fabric sleeve she stored the blue bulb nasal aspirator in. When the second child came along there was no way she could give her a name with different initials. She had invested way too much in getting the kid's trademark sewn, stamped or carved into every piece of related paraphernalia. But by the time child number 3 came along, a lot of the stuff was worn out. She found herself unshackled to the alphabet and adventurously gave the kid a name with a different first initial than her siblings. A few days after the birth certificate was signed she received her first gift. A layette gown complete with the monogram. To her horror she had given the child a label of ABC. This would never do. All the kid's belonging's would look generic and simple. Overcome with self reproach, she changed the kid's name. I know you think I'm making this up. I ain't.
What eventually happens to all this labeled stuff? You can't give the hand me downs to anybody else's kid. The folks who pick up these leftovers at Good Will probably put them right back, opting for something unbranded with the prior owner's logo.

    There is an irony to the whole monogram phenomenon. The women I know who love monogramming everything that can't run away also despise tattoos. Or at least they say they do. They have been raised to understand them as trashy. They raise their children to understand them the same. Seems to me this would be confusing and contradictory to a kid who grows up in an environment where nothing is safe from the mark of ownership. Could it be they secretly desire the freedom to mark themselves, to seal themselves with something that says 'I am my own'? Maybe monogramming everything is an evolutionary coping mechanism. Stifled by conservative southern norms, they mark everything else instead.
Perhaps under their one thousand thread count sheets (stitched with his initial, her initial and their initial) they dream of having a dragon on their back or a fairy over their right shoulder. And if they got a tramp stamp with their monogram, would mom even have an argument?

WELCOME

     We put off things. Things we should do, or feel we should do. I'm 47 and since I was 12 I've heard, "You should write" or "You should be a writer." Writing is good for the souls of those who do it and those who connect with the writer. I've always said I'd start someday. For 35 years I've put it off. I have the occasional journal entry, letter or poem. But the novel I daydreamed would sometime hatch on it's own never did.

Facebook relieves me of some of the overflowing words in the brain, and it feels good. My kid's aren't really pleased. What I've discovered is I'm not a novelist. There will be no engaging, romantic characters or suspenseful murder mysteries coming from my imagination. My brain is too overwhelmed dealing with the here and now to conjure up such stuff. And seeing as how it took me this long to get a blog going, I'd be dead before I ever finished it. So, here is my blog. The title comes from the way I feel about life. It's a balancing act for sure. We are constantly leaning one way or another, shakily trying to figure out how to stay up,  gripping with our toes to hang on. One minute we are giddy with excitement, feeling the security of the harness. Then the cord dangles at our feet. We realize we are attached to nothing and we cannot see a net. Thankfully there are those willing to grab us if we should fall. We learn as we go and the view is beautiful. Most of the time.

This is a place for me to think out loud to contemplate, wonder and question. To applaud people and the universe when they deserve it. To vent, and occasionally spew venom, when they do not.

I love pen and notebooks, but spell check, delete and the enter key are easier than dictionaries, erasing holes in the paper and finding a publisher. If you choose to read my posts, I hope you will feel uplifted or validated. I hope you will laugh. I love funny, but sometimes I get serious and I have heard, 'You made me cry', more than a few times after someone has read something I wrote. Tears can  be therapeutic. Don't fret.

I apologize ahead of time if I offend you. Occasionally, I can go off the deep end. You can always leave. But I hope you won't.

If I have figured this thing out right you can leave comments. I'd love to hear from you.

Sally