We Need to Go Back to the Beginning

Years ago when my kids were tiny, I read them the entire Harry Potter series three times over. I did this because when we read it the first time my son was six and my daughter was three-and-a-half, and when we finished the final book - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - they were devastated and so was I. Sometimes you fall in love with a group of characters and the world they inhabit, and don’t want to let go.

I loved that this had happened for my kids - this understanding that a book can take you somewhere that feels as real as anything in life - so we just went back to the beginning and did it all again.

That second time around, when we finished a book in the series, we’d watch the movie that went with it. Then my daughter wanted to read the whole series again when she was six, so we did, happily. It was like going back to see old, close friends. For the rest of my life, some of my favorite times will be the three of us curled up in bed, their little limbs thrown over mine, reading. We didn’t just read Harry Potter of course, we read all kinds of books, but that was a big series for us.

This was long before anyone knew J.K. Rowling was going to turn out to be a truly awful human being, hell-bent on setting her legacy on fire with her relentless attack on the transgender community. People are so strange and disappointing sometimes, aren’t they? Here’s a woman who writes this incredible tale of good versus evil, of kids who are outcast because they’re special and different…and then she betrays so many of the children she inspired and comforted once upon a time.

But back then we didn’t know, just like Sheryl Crow (and the rest of us) didn’t know Michael Jackson was a child predator when she was on tour with him in her twenties, just like we all used to think Neil Gaiman was a terrific guy.

My kids were obsessed, and often dressed up as Harry and Hermione. We had wands and capes and brooms, my kids would cast spells and have Quidditch matches in the living room - and I could tell you about a Christmas Eve Day I spent searching the entirety of Los Angeles for a Crookshanks stuffed animal for my daughter, who suddenly rolled over that morning and whispered to me that she had asked Santa and felt certain he’d bring her one.

She was three-and-a-half that year, sure that wishes would come true, which is why I ended up standing over a boiling pot of water and orange Rit Dye, stirring a white, pansy-faced stuffed cat in circles at midnight like some kind of desperate witch - then running it in the dryer until it was dry enough that I could wrap it.

This was also right around the time I told my son it was okay to use the word “bollocks” if he was frustrated, because I thought it was just a British curse word like ”shoot” or “damn” - somehow I missed the memo that it actually meant “balls” as in “testicles.” It’s not as bad as the guy who packed a White Shark in his daughter’s lunchbox, but it’s not my proudest mom moment.

When I realized my error, I told my son what it actually meant and that it probably wasn’t a great thing to mutter if he dropped his crayons at school - and he threw his head back and laughed uproariously the way kids do - which is, in fact - the dog’s bollocks. There are not too many things funnier to a six-year-old boy than finding out his mom accidentally taught him the British word for testicles. My bad.

the dog's bollocks

idiom UK offensive

a rude phrase for something or someone that you think is extremely good

The attacks on transgender kids are going to get worse because of the school shooter in Minneapolis at Annunciation Catholic School - which sucks very, very much since 99% of mass shooters are cis-gendered. We know this. I will not be surprised if J.K. Rowling weighs in because she seems to make it her life’s work to never miss an opportunity to embody Dolores Umbridge.

Less than 4% of mass shootings happen at the hands of girls or women. Mass shooters are usually white, male, American citizens. I tried to find out what percentage of mass shooters have been drag queens, and weirdly there is zero data available…likely because it has never happened.

We ban books here, but refuse to protect our children from guns. Absolute madness.

But none of that will matter. I’m already seeing horrific comments under posts. I’m not going to repeat them, but it’s the same old gaslighting stuff - 2Aers who now want to pretend the real issue is transgender people - and unsurprisingly some white supremacists taking the opportunity to blame Black people, too, even though mass shooters are 54.4% white and 21.6% Black. But I don’t expect racists to be good at math. There are people blaming Tim Walz, because of course there are.

It is odd that these are the same people who always say “now is not the time to make it political” - unless they think it’s politically expedient for them, I guess. The truth is it is Republicans who block sane gun control legislation at the state and federal level time and time and time again.

Melissa Hortman, remember her? I really, really hope you do. She was a staunch gun reform advocate and was assassinated in the doorway of her home along with her husband Mark and family dog Gilbert, by a Trump-supporting, gun-loving, straight, white evangelical extremist. I’m glad the potus allegedly called Governor Walz to express his condolences over the school shooting - since he said it would be a “waste of time” to call him after the Hortmans were killed - but condolences are not good enough when you are the president of a country that continues to allow its children to be slaughtered at school.

Childhood should be a time when kids feel safe and protected. My daughter was three the year I was boiling Crookshanks in a pot - that was 2012. My son had just turned six. My kids got to wake up on Christmas Day - but the Sandy Hook kids did not because they were shot down in their classrooms on December 14th. Anyone who had school-age children at the time will remember where they were when they heard what happened.

I was at home, I had just finished teaching a class and had two hours before I had to pick up my daughter from preschool. I was doing laundry listening to NPR, and suddenly details started emerging and I could not believe what I was hearing. I sat down on the laundry room floor with my head in my hands and sobbed.

I knew exactly what “six years old” looked like, felt like, sounded like - the chubby little arms, the wide open faces, the giggling, the jokes with not-funny punchlines shouted with fervor. Bath time, tiny bare feet padding down the hallway, the weight of a six-year-old from the carseat to the bed.

And the fear. The way they would have wanted their moms. How many times a week did I wipe away tears, wrap my arms around my kids, tell them everything was okay? My heart shattered for the parents, because they would have to live with that forever - the knowledge that their children’s last moments were spent in terror, and they were not there to make it okay. I felt sick at the thought of it and still do.

I remember opening my closet door the week before Christmas and seeing the wrapped gifts I had hidden for my kids, and my knees gave out because I realized there were all those closets in Newtown, Connecticut with hidden wrapped gifts that would never be opened. I thought of all the ways those parents and siblings were suffering, that entire town, and it just broke me. It should have broken everyone. The fact that it didn’t is all the proof you need that the soul of this country is deeply sick.

Anyone who rails about their precious 2nd Amendment rights at this point is lost. You have an addiction and you need help if the first thing you think when you see children murdered while they’re praying is, “Yes, that’s heartbreaking, but don’t come for my guns!” We have so many guns in this country, do you really imagine anyone is “coming for them”? I wish we could get rid of them. That’s where I am at this point, because seeing enough murdered babies has gotten me there. But that’s not even on the table, we’re just talking about sane gun safety laws, and people freak out.

All the folks screaming that it’s a mental health issue…the mental health issue is yours. You have the issue. We’re talking about passing common sense gun laws with mental health guidelines. There are currently states that squash bills requiring a 24-hour waiting period to buy a gun. Nope! Can’t have those, either. See the problem? You want to say it isn’t the guns, it’s mental health - but don’t legislate about that, either!

Do you know here in California if someone is having a mental health crisis where they are considered a danger to themselves or others, they can be placed under a “5150 hold”? That means 72 hours of involuntary confinement in a mental health facility so doctors can determine if they need further treatment or are safe to be released.

Does it not occur to everyone that it’s a red flag in and of itself if someone is desperate to buy a gun today, right now, right this minute? If you can’t wait three days for something - let alone 24 hours - and the thing you can’t wait for can take a life? Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have that thing.

Also, if you’re one of the people who believe it’s a mental health issue…your president and his administration are in the process of cutting one billion dollars in school mental health grants awarded through a gun violence bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2022 - created to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers. DANG, THOSE SOUND LIKE REALLY GOOD IDEAS, but apparently they “don’t align” with the ideas of the current administration.

They’ve already cut $1 billion in funding for people dealing with mental health crises and substance abuse through SAMHSA, and they terminated the LGBTQ youth suicide hotline which was serving 1.2 million young people. That is appalling and wrong and utterly despicable. So if you want to make it about mental health, I sure hope you’re calling your senators and representatives and letting them know how absolutely outraged you are about that, and I mean it. Otherwise you’re seeing children killed at school week after week and you aren’t doing anything at all, which would be really horrendous.

5calls.org, I’ll make it easy. While you’re at it, you might want to mention all the chaos at HHS. This isn’t making any of us safer or healthier.

It’s almost like you shouldn’t put a science-denying vaccine skeptic in charge of America’s health.

I just Googled: how do far right evangelical Christians accept that children keep getting shot at school? And this link popped right up. I have to say it enraged me, so click on it at your own peril, but basically the idea is that these shootings happen because the “devil” is after our children, and the instruction is to take authority over your child’s school by praying. I guess if you don’t pray hard enough, it’s your fault if things go wrong:

When you pray this prayer in faith—not doubting—you can have peace that your children are under a covering of protection that cannot be touched by the enemy. Continue in the good fight of faith. Keep praying and interceding for our schools. Let the enemy know one thing is sure—he can’t have our children. Remind him that he has no authority—we have the authority through the blood and the Name above all names—the Name of Jesus. Glory to God!

This sounds like the people who tell you cancer is caused by repressed rage, or rape is caused by what you’re wearing - you know, the people who say if bad things happen to you, it’s your fault, one way or the other. If your prayers don’t work, it must be that you were doubtful. Your faith wasn’t strong enough. Yeah, that’s it. It’s not that your representative in Washington would sell his mother’s soul to the devil if it would make him a little bit richer.

The lengths some people will go to make everything fit their worldview is exhausting.

Look, I get it. It’s much less scary to think “everything happens for a reason” than it is to walk around feeling like everything is random and no matter what you do, the unthinkable could happen any day of the week. I love the idea of reincarnation, for example, because I’d like to think we get more than one chance at this thing (god knows every single person in the current administration is going to need several hundred go-arounds to come close to anything decent), and I like the idea that the same souls may travel together more than once. That’s all really comforting.

Energy doesn’t die, it just changes form. I’d like to believe in some kind of continuation of consciousness even if it’s just me going back into the earth and becoming part of the trees, the stars, the rivers (assuming we have any left). Maybe my kids could come sit by a tree where some part of me has been absorbed into the roots - and feel comforted. That would do. But I don’t get to know any of that, so my best bet is to be the best person I can be while I’m here. I’ve seen too many devastating things happen to too many wonderful human beings to think “everything happens for a reason” or that there’s any kind of quid pro quo.

We’re letting our babies get murdered at school. It’s not “the devil” doing that, it’s not some esoteric thing we can’t control, it’s the NRA, the gun lobby, rampant greed, unchecked capitalism, and the current iteration of the Republican party, whatever it is. They sure are not your grandpa’s Republicans. We can control this and we can fix it, but we all have to agree we’ve had it. We’re done letting this happen.

I do not believe the mothers out there who voted Republican because “abortion is murder” can take themselves seriously at this point. I heard from some of those women leading up to the election. You cannot say you care about babies and continue to allow this to happen on your watch. You cannot call yourself Christian and watch babies get shot at church and think thoughts and prayers are working. They. Are. Not.

A couple of weeks before I had my son. Photo credit: verofoto dot com

The men who think feminism is the thing to rage against, not patriarchy, are the ones who don’t want to change their behavior or cede any privilege. It’s the corrupt evangelical pastors who want you to keep coming to church on Sunday, and keep filling that collection basket. It’s the tech-bro billionaires who want to “make your life easy” with drones and same-day delivery and AI - so your brain turns to jelly and you forget how to write for yourself or how to think for yourself - then you won’t notice as they plunder the earth for every last resource she has.

It’s the 2nd Amendment die-hards who want to say guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

I’ve written about this before and I am likely to write about it again because we have a sickness here. A soul-sickness. We need to go back to the beginning and start again. We need to tell our children - and ourselves - a much better story. A story where good overcomes evil and wishes come true and good things still happen and people care about protecting children and each other - and rainbows appear right when you want them. If only there was a spell for that.

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