Author: Sheila Quirke

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Ten Years at Home

Milestones are an opportunity to reflect.  Ten years ago this month, my little family of three moved into our current home.  It was an impossible move that kind of, sort of made no sense at the time, but it was a move rooted in hope.

In March 2007 we were casually looking at new digs.  There was no pressing need to move, no second baby warming in the oven, no sense of growing out of our space in the near future.  In hindsight, I don’t even remember why we were looking exactly.  We had a lovely home with friendly neighbors.

On a cold and snowy Sunday afternoon, we decided to take a drive together to comfort our young daughter, just a 19 month old toddler, who was fussing.  We drove around some local streets and noticed a few open house signs.  Donna was finally comfortable when we rolled past one such sign for a condo that was just a short walk away from our favorite park.  I suggested I hop out and do some quick recon, only bringing in the family if it looked promising.

It did look promising.  It was lovely and almost twice the size of our previous digs.  Closets for days.  It had room for a washer and dryer that weren’t stacked and there was a pantry.  The kicker, for me, was a sunny playroom.  I was smitten.  I ran outside and told the husband to park the car — this was a home he should see.

A couple of days later we put an offer on it.  SOLD.  A few days after that, our fussy toddler was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and required emergency surgery.  The developer very kindly agreed to let us off the hook after hearing of our girl’s cancer.

We chose hope instead.  In a walk-through we did before putting in an offer, when we asked Donna if she would like to live here, she easily said, “Yes!  This is my home!”  Her words felt prescient.  Is it crazy to make a decision based on the whims of a toddler? Yes, absolutely, but dang if toddlers don’t have a clarity and wisdom that is often missing in us grown up folks.  We thanked the developer for his kind offer and decided to move forward.

Before we closed, Donna had relapsed.  We learned that her brain cancer had migrated to her lungs and she would require a second tumor resection followed by some hard core chemo.  Our hopeful choice to move suddenly felt overwhelming in the midst of guiding our girl through cancer and chemo.

Cue the friends and family.

Within a few days, an email chain was circulating looking for volunteers to help us pack and unpack.  My husband’s father flew in from Massachusetts to organize an army of beautiful people who came in shifts to pack up our home.  Other friends offered us their place to stay while they were on vacation.  Donna and I were dispatched there to recover from her second round of high dose chemo while about 25 of the kindest folks I will ever know worked to get us packed up.  It was almost completely done at the end of the first day.

Other friends met the moving trucks in our new home and unpacked what others had packed.  Donna’s room was painted the same cheerful orange color of her old nursery and her old curtains were hung so she would feel a sense of familiarity.  Our mortgage broker solicited a crew of professional organizers to donate their time to help us get settled.  On a Saturday morning I walked out of our old home as if I was just away for an overnight and a few days later walked into our new home with everything unpacked and waiting for us.  Even the moving boxes had been recycled.

Kissing Donna

I will never, ever forget the kindness that was shown to us by so many folks who wanted to help our little struggling family during those days.  My eyes are welling up as I remember their generosity and compassion.  How do you replay that?  I still don’t know.

Ten years ago we moved into our home.  We had one daughter.  Now we have two sons.  They share the room that was Donna’s.  It is no longer orange, but it is still overflowing with stuffed animals and books and children’s laughter  and toys.

It’s impossible to think about this ten year milestone in our home and not think of our dear girl and the people who surrounded us with such love and kindness and cardboard and packing tape.

So grateful for all of it.

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Fireworks and Guns and Empathy in Chicago

My Facebook feed has been chock full these past few days with angry friends and family who live in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.  Are they angry about the 101 shootings that occurred in Chicago over the long 4th of July weekend?  Probably, but that’s not what they’re talking about on Facebook.  They are annoyed at the loud and booming fireworks that have disturbed their peace over the past few days.

Officially, fireworks are illegal in Illinois.  Just like guns.  Officially, lots and lots of people don’t care.  As easy as it is to cross the border into Hammond or East Chicago or Munster and load up your trunk with fireworks before crossing back into Illinois is about as easy as it is to purchase guns and cross that same border.

Let that sink in for a moment.

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There is no question that the noise from fireworks is out of control in the days leading up to America’s birthday.  And there is no question that the loud booms from firecrackers and Roman candles and other fireworks can be harmful to pets, young children, veterans, and others who may experience the loudness as a trigger.  I am sensitive to that and appreciate it is a real problem for a great many people.

But those loud noises are a passing nuisance that can be expected.  Every year around the end of June, we know that we will be startled by the explosive noises.  As I’m typing this, one just went off, and it’s 10:24 a.m. on July 5.  It sucks.  Last night felt especially out of control, as a few friends posted live video of how bad it was in their neck of the woods, and there is no question, it was pretty dang bad. The sounds mimic a war zone, without exaggeration, and go on for long hours late into the night.

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These fireworks were shot off by my neighbors across the alley last night. They were “BALLS TO THE WALLS” loud.  The logo tells me they came from Krazy Kaplan’s in LaPorte, Indiana.  It is illegal to use or be in possession of these in Illinois.  It is illegal to purchase them and cross state lines, but, sure enough, thousands of nice and respectable folks, just like my neighbors, were shooting off these illegally obtained and transported fireworks across the city and suburbs.

This morning, I connected the dots between the local news about gun violence and my annoyed friends and family upset over fireworks.  This is an opportunity to practice empathy.  Those same folks whose lives have been disrupted in tangible ways these past few days can use that disruption as a way to better understand what it feels like for those other folks who live in Chicago neighborhoods where gun violence is rampant and disruptive, the difference being that the loud noises are more than a nuisance for some.  Those loud noises are attached to bullets instead of firecrackers.

Actual people in actual neighborhoods not five or ten or twenty-five miles away know to duck for cover while sitting outside or in their living rooms when they hear the loud bang of a gun being shot.  Those loud noises are business as usual in Chicago neighborhoods that are being decimated by gun violence that now garners international news reports and more than occasional tweets from our POTUS.

But that’s the small picture (micro system is what we used to call it in grad school).  The big picture (macro system, for those who like jargon) involves how easy it is to get guns into a city and state that until recently had very strict laws against gun ownership and use.  Because I write about gun violence on the ChicagoNow platform, an almost immediate response to anything I post about guns is, “Yeah, and you live in Chicago that had the strongest gun legislation in America, which just proves that laws don’t work!”

My response has always been the same — the guns are coming from outside Chicago and outside Illinois.  Chicago could have a wall around it and guns would still permeate it easily, given Indiana’s lax gun laws.

It was a gut check this morning to realize that as easy as it was for me to go into a gas station last weekend and purchase a few dollars worth of sparklers, that same ease applies to gun purchases.  And I can pretty much guarantee that those same suburban men who yell the loudest about Chicago gun violence drove their mini-vans across the border to stock up on illegal fireworks to impress the other dads in the sub-division.

We all have to start connecting the dots.  We all have to start taking ownership of the problem of gun violence.  We all have to understand how this isn’t strictly a Chicago problem or, as POTUS’ spokesperson suggested last week, a morality problem.  We all have to better empathize with the folks who live in these Chicago neighborhoods that are plagued with gun and gang violence.

The problems are clear.  Fixing them will be a lot harder than crossing that Indiana border.

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Are We Great Yet? Raising Children In Donald Trump’s America Is Getting Harder

I sat down at my computer this morning to write a post about littering.  True story.  And then I saw some words that Donald Trump littered on Twitter about a news anchor and her bleeding face lift and low IQ and how he kept her from attending a party at his Florida golf club and 35K followers “liked” it and I just cannot anymore.  I.  Cannot.  Anymore.

When will America, Democrats and Republicans and independents and apathetics, call uncle? When do we say enough is enough? When do those of us not blinded by power, gaining power or losing power, band together to reclaim an America we can be proud of, an America that is not the laughingstock of the world, an America that is swiftly becoming the biggest bully on the planet?

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I am sitting at my keyboard literally weeping salty tears for what has become of us.  POTUS would call me a liberal snowflake, no doubt, but the truth is that we live in a world where the President of the United States uses Twitter to bully and intimidate and mock and lie and sow hate and fear. Given the 140 character constraints of the platform, he is quite accomplished.  Like corporate America demands, he is doing more with less.

This is not normal.  This is not healthy.  This is not okay.

Set all your politics aside for a moment.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  No matter what political umbrella you fall under, if you are a human being with even an ounce of compassion, reasoning, intelligence, character, manners, or moral compass, you have to acknowledge that Donald Trump, the President of the United States, acts like a mean, angry, bully.  His actions are, in point of fact, the textbook definition of deplorable (disgraceful, shameful, dishonorable, unworthy, inexcusable, unfortunate, atrocious, insert synonym of your choice here).  If you dispute that basic fact, please refer to any lesson your mother or father or teachers or religious leaders tried, though apparently failed, to teach you as a child.

As a mother raising two young sons, I don’t quite know what to do about this.  I am sitting here at my keyboard typing these words because I need to do something.  I feel a rage and anger and disgust towards the actions and behaviors of this president of ours, but more concerning is the fear I feel about how many fellow Americans support Trump’s particular brand of hate and divisiveness and ugliness.  To use an analogy I am comfortable with, I feel like America has been diagnosed with cancer and it is metasticizing quickly. Where is the chemo that can cure hate and fear?

His official spokesperson of the day, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stated this morning that Trump was simply “fighting fire with fire” with this morning’s tweets.  If either of my sons conducted themselves the way our POTUS does on Twitter, justifying their actions by saying they were fighting fire with fire, rest assured they would incur the fire of their Mama.  But how do we teach our children no, when our Bully in Chief gets applauded for his actions?  The only way I know how is to explain that POTUS, their president, is wrong and acting shamefully.

“Be kind.  Think of what the President of the United States would do, and do the opposite, sweetheart.”  This is the lesson I am imparting to my boys. What a shameful place to be as an American.

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Filing this one under, “Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You”