Month: July 2014

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Cupcakes and Guns

I am both honored and saddened to share this guest post today. The writer did not wish to be identified, to lessen any alarm for family and friends concerned over her safety.  This is Chicago, folks, in 2014.  

By Anonymous

The only crime scene I expect to see when I take my son to the bakery is the inevitable mess of crumbs that result from the collision of a kid and a cupcake. This Saturday afternoon, however, was not so idyllic.

We walked to get our cupcakes. When we were about two doors down from our favorite neighborhood bakery a police car sped by with its sirens on. It was loud. My son covered his ears. Other than the noise I didn’t think much about it. We live near a police station. The car could have been going anywhere.

We went in to the bakery so quickly that I didn’t notice the police car stopped on the next block.

The vibe in the bakery was odd. Adults were talking in hushed tones, clearly discussing something they didn’t want children to hear.

That’s how I learned that someone had been shot. On a street in my neighborhood. At 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

It had happened just minutes earlier. There were two kids alone at a table enjoying their cupcakes. I was told their mom was giving a statement because she had seen the shooting.

It's crazy to see what you find when you Google "cupcakes and guns."
It’s crazy to see what you find when you Google “cupcakes and guns.”

If we had not been walking at a 5 year old’s pace, stopping frequently to balance on concrete dividers and look at interesting leaves, perhaps we would have rounded the corner early enough to witness the crime. Or worse.

Gun violence does not respect the invisible lines that say it is a south side problem or a west side problem. Gun violence is a Chicago problem. More so, gun violence is an American problem.

Even if certain places, such as Chicago, try to limit access to guns in their communities other guns will find their ways across the invisible lines that separate counties and states with varying levels of gun control laws. To be effective a solution must be national.

And while limiting access to guns will help, we also need to address the poverty that makes desperate people do desperate things that often involve guns.

Yes, if you were wondering, the news accounts do say this incident was gang violence, but the only victim is reported to be an innocent bystander. He died.

We can’t dismiss gun violence by saying it’s just gangbangers killing each other. Other people get shot.

We can’t dismiss gun violence by saying it’s a different neighborhood’s problem. Those neighborhoods are not that far away.

We can’t dismiss gun violence by being against gun control because some good people want to have guns too. Guns are dangerous and need to be regulated.

I am writing this anonymously because my family already fears for my safety because of the headlines about Chicago gun violence that appear on the national news. Knowing how close I was to a shooting would have people coming to pack me up for somewhere safer.

But I don’t want to go. I love my neighborhood, and I love Chicago. To borrow a phrase from the gun rights folks, I will stand my ground.

I like to believe this can still be a place where a mom can take her son to get a cupcake without happening upon a crime scene, but a lot of shit is going to have to change. It’s not going to get better on its own.

Yep, we have an issue when folks actually want to start EATING the guns they love so much.
Yep, we have an issue when folks actually want to start EATING the guns they love so much.

The victim of this shooting was 28 year old Wil Lewis, a young man who had moved to the neighborhood last year and was supposed to start a new job this week.  He and his wife had previously lived in Wisconsin. Read about the shooting here.  

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Chocolate Cake With Numb Frosting, Please

Sunday, July 20 marks my daughter’s would be 9th birthday.  Those days are hard on me — those phantom birthdays of Donna’s.  Given my druthers, I would curl up in a wee little ball in a dark room and not show myself until the morning of July 21.  I always breathe easier the day after a milestone of Donna’s.  The emotional burden of some specific date passes and I know, I feel, that I have 364 days until it makes its way back again.

Donna Candles

I try to imagine what it might be like to parent a tween girl, my tween girl.  I can’t.  It’s just blank.  I can’t imagine what Donna would be like at 9.  I mean I can try, but my efforts are pretty useless.  For one, am I imagining a nine year old Donna who never had cancer?  One who sasses her Mom and wants to shop at Justice?  A girl who plays Minecraft and still dances at recitals?

Oddly, it is somehow easier to imagine a 9 year old Donna who has survived her cancer diagnosis, but is living with the badges of honor her treatment left behind.  She is sweet and has short tufts of hair that never quite grew back after chemo and radiation.  She still reads a lot and wears black, too. We travel to the hospital, for regular visits with her oncologist, but the visits are much less frequent.  We make a day of them, those hospital days in my imagination, having lunch at Water Tower or Eataly.

By 9, had Donna survived, some of the ramifications of brain radiation would have asserted themselves.  Maybe her memory was impacted, or her comprehension.  You see, you can’t irradiate a three year old brain and not cause lasting damage.  No doubt she would be on synthetic growth hormones and acutely aware that other girls in her grade were developing in a way she never would.

That thought breaks my heart — knowing that because she died, Donna was spared the cruelty of unknowing folks.

Donna’s birthdays trip me up, too, because I never know what to do with them.  It doesn’t feel right to celebrate them.  It doesn’t feel right to ignore them.  Like I said, my preference would be to hole up in a cave with only a fully charged iPad and a mainline of Coca Cola, but that really doesn’t work for my husband or sons.  Indulging my wish to lick my maternal wounds isn’t, well, very maternal.

This year, in an ironic twist of fate only the Universe could provide (cruel, baiting Universe that she is) we have been invited to a 5th birthday party for a little girl we barely know.  She is one of Mary Tyler Son’s future kindergarten classmates that he met at orientation last month.  She is adorable and sweet and took an instant liking to our boy.

Were her birthday being celebrated on July 19 or July 21, this would be a non-issue and of course I would go.  But this dear girl’s birthday is being celebrated on July 20.  A 5th birthday party on July 20 with cake and pizza and presents and a room full of people singing happy birthday.

I don’t think I can do it.

I don’t think I can stand in a room full of strangers and sing happy birthday on July 20 to any girl that is not my girl.  I am weak that way.  Or bitter.  Or both.  Or just sad.  So terribly, terribly sad.  And to a certain degree, damaged.  Broken.  Changed.

It is what it is.  I will send Mary Tyler Son with his Dad and we will figure something else out for the rest of the day.  Sigh.  The rest of the day.  The rest of all of the days.  Yes, we will figure something else out for the rest of all of the days.

I miss you, dear Donna.  Every day.  And every day I work to remember all the amazing things you taught me.  

We’ll meet you there, girl.  We’ll meet you there.

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Magritte and My Husband

When I was 26, I flew across the ocean to visit the young man I had started dating just six weeks before he moved to Europe to work in a small theater as a barkeep and fill-in performer.  He was dreamy and living in a garret apartment in Amsterdam, so OF COURSE I FLEW ACROSS THE OCEAN TO VISIT HIM.  My spontaneous acceptance of his spontaneous offer to come visit was, to this day, one of the best decisions I have ever made.

So for ten days in August of 1996 I lived the life of a young woman in love hanging out in Europe with my handsome young man.  Those are some of my sweetest memories.  We rented a car and drove across the Netherlands and into Belgium.  I knew he was a keeper when I failed miserably at learning how to drive stick in the pouring rain and he had to push the car I had stalled out in a busy intersection and he still thought I was adorable and forgave me instantly.

One of the things we did on that trip was visit the Rene Magritte wing at the Modern Art Museum in Brussels.  I have always loved Magritte.  His art is clever and smart and precise and winsome.  He had such a clear aesthetic and I find his particular take on surrealism so much more accessible than Dali or some of his other contemporaries.  You know when you read a book or see a film or painting that just speaks to you? Magritte speaks to me.

Shhhh. No photography in the galleries, but I'm badass that way. I've always adored Magritte's trim, precise signature.
Shhhh. No photography in the galleries, but I’m badass that way. I’ve always adored Magritte’s trim, precise signature.

Yesterday, almost 18 years later, my now husband and I went to see the Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.  We are no longer young. We are, though, still in love.

As we walked through the galleries, sometimes together, sometimes apart, and looked at Magritte’s art — still as clever and potent to me as ever — I was reminded of our Brussel museum visit so many years earlier.  It is really something to spend your years together with the same person.  It is a gift of life that not everyone gets.

We talked about our son who we both thought would enjoy the paintings. He will start French lessons in school this fall and would get a kick out of Magritte’s simple declarations, Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

Speaking of badass, Magritte's comment on this iconic painting, "Well of course it's not a pipe, it's a painting."
Magritte’s comment on this iconic painting, “Well of course it’s not a pipe, it’s a painting.”

Eighteen years ago, walking through a different museum in Brussels, there is no way I could have imagined the life we are now living together.  In that time we’ve cared for and lost a child to cancer, are somehow surviving our grief, created three homes together in our beloved Chicago, are raising two boys together.  I’ve left my career in social work behind, and now write words that people actually read.

In so many ways, life is like those galleries you walk through in museums.  Some of the rooms are bright and full of light and interesting, rich, joyful art that you could linger in for ages.  Other galleries are dark and poorly lit and depressing as hell.  You want to leave and leave now, but it’s not always so easy to move from one room to another.  Some galleries are just meh, humdrum, boring.

I feel so lucky to have been walking through museum galleries with my husband for eighteen years now.  We’ve seen much together, appreciated some of it, feared some of it, trudged through some of it, but always together.  Best of all, I still feel excited to see the galleries yet to come, the hidden treasures we have yet to find.

Ceci n’est pas une billet doux.