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Posts Tagged ‘Family’

Summer Soup

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2025| 2 Comments »

We’re back to the hazy, hot, and humid South. Southern summer soup!

I woke to heavy condensation on our old house windows and the possibility of storms in the afternoon. What surprised me most was the constant chatter of insects! You may have guessed, the whole Nashville family went to visit our California branch last week; to play with the Twins and give them their first swim lesson. Almost five months old, our baby girls had an abundance of arms to hold them and proved to be excellent travelers and doggy paddlers.

Recently, the Bride asked me about our Spring/Summer sojourns to Martha’s Vineyard with our friends Lee and Albert when she was a baby. She was talking with a girlfriend who had a family home on the island and told me she didn’t remember where we stayed… But I remember dancing in a cowboy hat, meeting Carly Simon in a dress shop, buying fish straight off the pier, digging up clams on Menemsha Pond. I remember the wooden carousel in Oak Bluffs. I remember riding my bike all over the island, past the pink rosa rugosa hedges with her blond curls tickling the back of my arms from her baby seat perch. We didn’t wear helmets then.

“Gay Head,” I said. We’d stay near the colorful clay cliffs on the wild side of the Vineyard.

But Gay Head hasn’t existed for over twenty years, which is why my daughter’s friend never heard of it. The name of the town was changed back to its Native American “Aquinnah” – home of the Wampanoag people. Which led me down the path of investigating the island’s history. At about the same time in the early aughts, the tribe had voted on whether or not to allow gambling, in the form of bingo, on the island. The vote was NO.

When we packed up the crew to drive from LA to Malibu, I was reminded of packing up a caravan for our trip from the Berkshires to the Woods Hole Ferry. Only this time it was the Bride making sure we had snacks for the Bug and the Pumpkin. The Rocker and Aunt Kiki timed the trip to coincide with the babies’ nap schedule – they had tiny swimsuits and sun hats and even sunglasses. Our Grand’s newest cousins were hitting the pool with all the right fashion notes.

I hope Bob finds the photo of me holding our dog Bones’ leash with one hand and the toddler Bride’s hand with the other waiting for the ferry. She is wearing one of her favorite twirly skirts and has kicked out one leg mid-pirouette.

I am determined to visit the island again that populated my dreams for most of my life. My BFF Lee and her husband Al live on Vineyard Haven full time now. I imagine we attended the Summer Institute last week together to listen to NY Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey talk about their investigation into Harvey Weinstein and jump-starting the #MeToo movement. https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2025/07/13/summer-institute-opens-journalists-who-inspired-metoo-movement

After all, it was Lee who encouraged me to write and submit an essay to the Berkshire Eagle. Back when the Bride was a baby and I was hanging diapers outside in the sun, she believed in me, always, and I adored her, my Convent of the Sacred Heart kickass/fellowJerseygirl/lawyer/friend. We picked ticks off our dogs together and didn’t mind the heat and humidity at all.

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When Words Fail

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on July 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We like to stay home on the Fourth of July, as y’all know. I’m not superstitious per se, I just don’t want to be on the road. We could hear the fireworks all right (and all night), plus we had a fun pool party at our neighbors across the street. My friend Les suggested I read Anne Lamott’s opinion piece in the Washington Post about the Zen concept around chaos and confusion. When a lot of difficult things are happening all at the same time, Lamott reminds us that it means we have to protect something new that is about to be born.

I want to believe that something good is coming, and the Bug’s Bat Mitzvah is right around the corner. But after this past week, and especially the devastating flood in Texas over the holiday weekend, I’m finding it hard to string a group of words together. A girl’s camp swept away. Every day the number dead and missing rises, like the flood water. And still this administration is planning to cut NOAA’s budget and eliminate its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), “… which performs and coordinates climate research” according to Axios.

I had to pivot to an Atlantic article on emojis titled, “What Are Emoji?” since the Grands had just informed me there are a bunch of new emojis on my phone!

There are certain people I text, with those crazy/heart/eyes/tongue/out critters attached. It’s usually the same people in my contact list who’ve earned a special ringtone; for instance, the Rocker sounds like a digital exclamation point, and Aunt Kiki has a melodic chime. I am like Pavlov’s dog when I hear Kiki’s notes because I know that twin pictures are usually attached. And I almost always reply with a text followed by a bunch of emojis, and I won’t apologize for it! But I did learn a few things about the history and evolution of the characters.

“Gen Z Has Canceled the Thumbs-Up Emoji Because It’s ‘Hostile,’ ” one headline put it, citing data gathered in surveys and in the wild. Particularly as a reply to messages that contain words, Zoomers say, the 👍 is dismissive, disrespectful, even “super rude.” It’s a digital mumble, a surly if you say so, a sure but screw you. It is passive aggression, conveyed with pictographic clarity yet wrapped in plausible deniability.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/emoji-internet-communication/683261/?gift=MZkyOCULmn5OA_9_ikIP-xPBU6G_1aWa5Xz2SXeIsDE&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Who knew? Well, I did think the thumbs up has been overused, and I hate seeing Mr T with his fake smile and his thumbs up. But please don’t answer me with a “K” either, it’s like a tween saying, “Fine.” And did you know who actually comes up with these pictograms? After starting out in Japan and becoming popular on internet chat boards, the emoji actually has an organization making them up and refining them: It’s called the Consortium from Houston, TX:

“…a rotating group of engineers, linguists, and typographers charged with establishing coding consistency across the internet’s static characters (letters, numbers, and the like); its goal was to enable global communication among disparate computers. Now it found itself overseeing dynamic characters as the public clamor for more emoji mounted.”

My heart goes out to all the families and friends of loved ones lost By the Guadelupe River flood. And to all the children losing their Medicaid coverage and families getting thrown off SNAP. I’m sending all y’all a giant 🤗

That’s Nixon in the corner of a Watergate era quilt at the Frist this summer.

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The Hypernormalization Club

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2025| 1 Comment »

Three generations went shopping for a dress. The Love Bug needed just the right dress for her right of passage; something that was fancy but could also move since playing basketball would be involved. We all three nestled into one changing room – too frou-frou, too itchy, too grandmotherly! One was gorgeous, but she didn’t want to look like the princess bride. I remembered shopping for the Bride’s wedding dress, and her joy when she finally found the right one in Grandma Ada’s closet.

My joy of shopping, my retail therapy, has been tempered lately. Like most Americans who land somewhere between purple and blue on our political landscape, I’ve been living with an underlying sense of dread. Every morning I wake up and wonder what new catastrophe our commander in chief has tweeted us into; we’ve bombed Iran (!), Bebe is coming to visit (?), the UVA President has resigned :-(, and wait, SCOTUS thinks Mr T needs more power(?!!).

I cannot follow the Senate’s debate on his big “beautiful” [sic] domestic and tax policy bill, with its cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs, a testament to Republican greed and malice. I’m feeling helpless and hopeless, but I scan the latest updates and instead text the Bride:

“I loved the pale blue lace.”

Welcome to the hypernormalization club. I think this must be how the British felt during WWII, while bombs were falling on London and they were told to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. We are living in a totalitarian schizo nightmare, where people of a certain means continue going to work, going to the grocery store, picking up their children from school as if nothing else matters. And if they feel like protesting something – like the Israeli hostages or ICE picking up undocumented people in the street and shipping them to El Salvador – well, they risk not just jail time but even possibly their lives.

 “….two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.” https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/hypernormalization-dysfunction-status-quo

We stopped in the baby department to look for sun hats for the Twins, and I was lost among the pastel bears and embroidered flowers for awhile. Our newest granddaughters have grown into 6 month sizes! I can be grateful for each milestone our baby girls have reached, and still worry about the poor women and children who will suffer if this latest bill is passed. Even Elon is against it. But in order to do that, to carry on with sun hats and fear, we have to disassociate ourselves. And that is surely taking its toll.

When a country is fed so many lies, our response is to not believe anything. Or better yet, focus on the Bezos wedding, or the Diddy trial. Distract and demolish our institutions one by one in order to beef up the executive branch. But we must keep watch, we must call our legislators and protest, we must write letters to the editor, and never give up on our democracy. History is watching.

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The Minneapple

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Minnesota, the land of 11,842 lakes. Where the children are all gifted but the lakes don’t freeze over quite so much anymore. When the Flapper was living out her golden years on Lake Minnetonka, I loved visiting her in the summer and seeing my brothers and their families. Mike called it “the Good Life,” hosting epic Fourth of July parties at his waterfront home with his wife Jorja. I once tried talking Bob into moving there. But the Twin Cities couldn’t compete with the twin states of NY and NJ – even though their marketing slogan, Minneapple, begged to differ.

On Saturday, I was holding down the fort while my Nashville family attended the “No Kings” march. I was armed with a lawyer’s number, just in case, but I was particularly worried because of the news from Minnesota. I texted my brother Dr Jim, who said he was sheltering in place. We were just hearing about this psycho killer, disguised as a cop, on the loose targeting Democratic officials. And like any good terrorist plot twist, nobody knew if some extreme, right-wing, white-nationalist, militia group was planning to disrupt the marches around the country on our would-be king’s birthday.

It was a feeling I’d forgotten, like post 9/11 when I couldn’t find the teenage Rocker and unbeknownst to me the Bride had left her federal building in DC and I couldn’t reach her, and Bob ran to the Highlands dock where the injured and dead never came.

Only this time the terror has come from within. A list with over 70 names of Democratic legislators and Pro-Choice advocates across many states was found in the perpetrator’s fake cop car, along with more assault rifles. I refuse to name the murderer, but the woman he gunned down, Representative Melissa Hortman, was in many ways what we would all like our elected officials to be – someone who could work across the aisle. She died alongside her husband Mark.

“Over the years, she gained a reputation as a workhorse, skilled at getting difficult objectives accomplished and at collaborating effectively across the aisle. “She always did her homework,” said Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Democratic secretary of state, who met Ms. Hortman in law school at the University of Minnesota in the 1990s. “She was steely and strategic and savvy and yet so likable as a person because she always remembered people’s humanity, even and especially if they were on the other side of the aisle.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/minnesota-slaying-melissa-hortman.html

Thankfully, this madman has been caught. I read that we Americans may just have to accept politically motivated violence, in the same way we’ve come to accept school shootings. This gave me pause. Because if that’s true, well, what does that say about our society? A culture that glorifies guns at all costs?

Senator Mike Lee (R – Utah) chose to make fun of the senseless killing spree over No Kings and Father’s Day weekend, writing on X, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” with a photo of the killer at Ms Hortman’s door. Then doubling down following that post with a joke aimed at Gov Tim Walz. Lee is a disgrace to his office.

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Tis the Season

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We’ve had a noteworthy Spring so far in our family and friends network. Aside from the early arrival of our beautiful baby grand girls, there’s been a record number of graduations – the Pumpkin from lower school, one high school, two college alums and a law school! Congratulations to ALL the graduates out there. May our Grandson have smooth sailing in middle school and best of luck to everyone on their next chapter.

And remember, no matter where you start out, it’s the journey that counts.

My Father, a pharmacist from Scranton, PA, turned away from the family business of butchering to pursue an education in science. The Flapper told me his family never forgave him, and well, they also didn’t approve of her – a widowed, ex-dime-a-dance girl. His family was well established Irish; they came over early and made their money in cattle. The Flapper’s Mother, my Nana, was a domestic worker. I have a picture of my paternal grandmother looking quite formidable. All I know about her is she went to Mass every single day.

Excuse my nostalgia, but Bob has finally filled two legacy boxes with all our old paper pictures. We are on the cusp of entering the digital visual world! So I’ve spent the weekend going through lots of black and white photos. My foster parents kept an album of my baby pictures glued to thick, black paper and I can’t thank Bob enough for managing to free my childhood photos. It seems after reading the back of one photo, they actually entered me in a cute baby contest! I love the one of me pretending to read a newspaper, like Daddy Jim. He left school after 8th Grade to help support his family.

He was the most loving and nurturing father a child could ask for, I was lucky.

School pictures, my college graduation picture, my wedding pictures. The Flapper with Cab Calloway in MN. A picture of my sister Kay in a white coat next to one of the first ultrasound machines in NYC. Kay tells me that buried in her apartment is a 1958 graduation picture of her National Airlines stewardess class. My brother Dr Jim’s graduation from OCS in NC, before he went to Vietnam. The Flapper pinning his bars on his shoulder, my sister wearing her wings.

Journey joyfully and with alacrity, and always be ready to pivot. My Kindergarten picture.

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The Believable Lie

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Remember that movie with Jim Carey playing a lawyer where all of a sudden he couldn’t lie to save his life? It was hysterical. His facial expressions alone were comedy genius.

The Flapper could lie with impunity. One time she announced at the supper table that she’d made the dessert herself! I remember being dumbfounded because I knew she had bought the cake at a bakery that very morning. Mind you, my foster parents never lied and I was taught at Sacred Heart School that lying was a sin, which is why this moment of time is embedded in my brain.

I just sat there in the dining room on Orchard Street, my ten year old self trying to make sense of my first major moral contradiction. Of course I didn’t contradict her, children were taught to respect their elders. If I could talk to my ten year old self, I’d tell her to wait patiently because soon I would be moving in with the Flapper. I’d exchange my black and white, absolutist home for a home of many colors, religions and shades of grey.

I wonder how much longer the GOP can continue to buy into the fire-hose of lies from this President.

“Some of Trump’s 2025 false claims were about consequential policy matters, others about trivial personal fixations. Some were sophisticated distortions about obscure subjects, others obvious fictions about issues average Americans experience in their daily lives. Many were ad-libbed or posted on social media, but many were scripted into prepared remarks. Aside from the staggering frequency and the trademark brazenness, what stood out was how repetitive Trump’s lying was. Though he regularly sprinkled in some fresh deception, he deployed a core batch of favored falsehoods again and again – undeterred by the fact that many of these claims had been publicly debunked for months or even years.” https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claims-debunked

“…trademark brazenness.” In fact the Washington Post fact checker chronicled 30,573 lies in his first term! Many were repeated over and over again on Fox news. Mr T has continued lying to the American people – more than a hundred times in his first hundred days this year. How we managed to elect this man is still a mystery to me.

One of my favorite authors, Anne Tyler, was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend. She said that in order to write fiction, one must be able to craft …“an extremely believable lie.” Which got me thinking, maybe that’s why I wanted to write non-fiction, because I knew I’d be no good at lying. But I can embellish a story like any good Irishwoman. And the Grands tell me I’m great at playing “One Night Ultimate Werewolf,” a card game of deceit where the object is to lie if you want to survive.

But if the Republicans want to survive as a party, they will have to stop lying to themselves. Because I’m pretty sure that most Republicans don’t actually believe Mr T’s lies. They just want to survive the next election cycle.

Hope your summer is off to a good start. It’s still wild weather here in Nashville, to be honest…

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Wild Weekend

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Do you get Mother’s day gifts? We’re a more experiential type of family – gardening, cooking togther, going to a play are all acceptable activities for this holiday in particular. I started the day on Zoom with my siblings and reminded them that i had two mothers; a warm, nurturing, demonstrative mother, and the Flapper. The yin and yang of unconditional love.

The Bride feted me with freshly baked sourdough bagels for breakfast. The Groom delivered scrumptious sandwiches for lunch even though he was on call in the MICU. And for dinner, we all piled into his car and traveled across town for a Mother’s Day celebration with our cousin Peg’s family that couldn’t be beat! It was also her son’s birthday. He was finishing up medical school and about to apply for a residency so we wanted to hear all the gory details! The weather cooperated with sunny blue skies and puffy clouds; “A good day to fly,” Bob said. Like a good pilot, I can expect to hear this several times a month.

It seems Mr T was given a 400 million dollar personal gift this weekend. It did not surprise me to hear that our President of Grift wants to accept a 747 plane from Qatar, even though this is obviously unconstitutional. “All of this would be worrisome to the White House except that, as I’ve written, Trump does not care about national security. “Trump is the only thing he’s interested in,” former National Security Adviser John Bolton told me earlier this year.” https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/trump-qatar-plane-gift/682785/

What bothers me most about our current president, besides his lack of empathy, is this transparency – his belief that he can get away with anything so why try to hide it. He pivots with impunity. He dares us to try and stop him in the courts, and if a judge opposes him, his sycophants send pizzas to their homes. Hundreds of unsolicited pizzas have been delivered to federal judges in seven states – a sick and dangerous threat that echoes the shooting of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl five years ago.

If that isn’t alarming, if it doesn’t look like we’re sliding into a kleptocracy, well you’re not paying attention. Remember Melania’s coat that read “I really don’t care, do you?” She wore that on her way to visit to an immigrant child detention center no less. I wonder how she celebrates Mother’s Day. This was part of her official post a few days ago on celebrating moms – “I urge you to prioritize your well-being. Nurture yourself, for your strength is the bedrock of a brighter future for our children…”

Happy to hear FLOTUS wants us to care for ourselves since this administration is dismantling many of our social safety nets and aggravating allies. But I had a Pinterest plan to bake a French strawberry cake for our cousin, which ended up being more like a cobbler unfortunately. On Saturday, we got up early and stood in line at the Farmer’s Market waiting for the cow bell to signal its opening – I didn’t want to miss out on the first strawberries of the season!

I should just accept defeat graciously and stick to baking muffins. This is the unwritten rule in our neighborhood; Les is the Queen of cakes and Kris is the Empress of rosemary bread. And our beautiful Bride, besides baking bagels, raised money for our TN neighbors’ legal representation after a soul deadening week of ICE agents marauding Nashville’s streets in masks. If you would like to help, please contact TN Justice for our Neighbors: https://www.tnjfon.org/

Remember that your grandchildren will ask you what you did during this time. This was us on Peg’s porch with her sons and her 92 year old MIL who had just flown in from California.

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Sprucing and Locking Up

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2025| 2 Comments »

When you’ve been away from home for awhile, things pile up; for instance, our car’s neural network failed. Granted it also didn’t want to start, and once jumped, our Subaru kept beeping and beeping its displeasure. Turns out, the back hatch has some locking system that needed adjusting. It was my first foray into the Nashville world and all I wanted was to go to the grocery store…alone. No “Do we need that?” in my ear.

But then, my NPR radio station changed on the dashboard monitor, as if possessed. I changed it back. It changed again. So I switched to the map. The image of my street zoomed out to include the Gulf of Mexico! After saying a small thank god in my head that it was still the gulf of Mexico, I realized there was a strange feedback loop happening in the upper right corner. My car was losing its mind, and so was I. It was the most frustrating trip, so of course I called Bob to complain.

“Call Bob mobile!” I said, as I pressed the little ear/speech ativated button on the steering wheel that is connected via Bluetooth to my phone.

“Cancelling,” my car spoke back.

I won’t repeat what I said after that. Today while I’m writing, Bob is at the dealership getting this fixed. Turns out it was a manufacturing glitch for two years that included our 2018 model, and since we have tariffs to look forward to, we’re putting off purchasing another car. What we couldn’t put off was a new heating system for our house.

Right before we left for California, we were informed that we should not use our heat since we would have a carbon monoxide leak! Now this would not be an easy, or an inexpensive fix. This past week, we had a whole new HVAC system installed which included replacing possum damaged ductwork in a crawlspace sized for a Lilliputian. Needless to say, the Rheem unit outside my snug is quiet and much more efficient.

Remember back in February since the twins came early, on my first morning alone in LA, I heard a loudspeaker in the street telling people they didn’t have to open their doors to ICE agents? I can recall that surreal feeling so vividly since this weekend TN state troopers and ICE agents raided South Nashville and sent buses containing people who have no due process to a prison facility in Louisiana. I thought Nashville was a sanctuary city! I wanted to scream; he was doing it again, separating families. THIS IS HAPPENING HERE.

Mr T’s agenda is pure malicious evil. Our Mayor Freddie O”Connell clarified:

“While O’Connell cannot institute official sanctuary policies, the mayor announced a partnership with the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to assist the families of those detained. The newly minted Belonging Fund will go towards emergency assistance for childcare, housing instability, transportation and other needs. “’Belonging is more than a feeling — it’s a sign of safety, stability, and community,” said Hal Cato, CEO of CFMT. “When immigrant families face a crisis, we want to ensure they’re not alone. This fund helps organizations on the ground respond quickly, compassionately, and effectively.’” https://www.nashville.gov/departments/mayor/news/belonging-fund-launches-provide-emergency-support-immigrants-nashville

BUT it does NOT pay for legal fees!! Why? In retrospect, my car, our home heating problems are minor compared to this administration. If you know, or would like to start a GoFundMe for legal representation for a family in crisis please comment below.

I’m so glad to see my son has continued playing guitar for his girls. Hearing from my sweet California family melts my heart and brings me peace.

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Plus ca Change

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 1, 2025| 2 Comments »

The more things change, the less I like it.

But I am not like my Nana, who refused to give up her “ice box” for a newfangled refrigerator. When the ice man stopped delivering, she reluctantly accepted the new contraption with a round condenser sitting like a pill box hat on top. It’s ironic that it was my sister Kay who had the Frigidaire delivered to our Nana, but later refused a microwave from me!

Today it’s more complicated. It’s not as if I’d like to return to the days when a milkman came to our little house in Victory Gardens… or my Daddy Jim had to climb up on the roof to adjust the TV antenna. But milk IS the driving force of our lives now that the twins are home! The Rocker had to install a small freezer in the garage for the overflow of breast milk Aunt Kiki is delivering. It’s actually Amazonian.

The Flapper told me very little about our lives before that Year of Living Dangerously. But I did know that her doctor took her aside one day and told her she didn’t have to sanitize my baby bottles – which meant in 1948 she didn’t need to boil them. The doctor knew my Father was dying of a brain tumor in the dining room of our home, and he figured she had enough to worry about, what with three other children in the house.

And so when the Bride was born, the Flapper helped me in many ways but she knew next to nothing about breastfeeding. Ditto for Grandma Ada. Their generation was expected to bottle feed, only poor women who couldn’t afford formula would nurse. And yet, the culture changed so dramatically by the 70s – we women read “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” we had consciousness raising groups, we had Gloria Steinem!

And the La Leche League of course. It was considered a badge of honor to nurse your baby anywhere and everywhere. And like most things, we went too far. I suffered through the flu and a mastitis and kept on going, determined to make a success of it. When in fact, training your baby to take a bottle along with nursing makes sense for your family’s sanity.

Especially with TWINS!

My son and his wife had a crash course on caring for preemies in the NICU. They had a lactation specialist and an occupational therapist! Best of all were the nurses, who each shared the tricks of their trade; including the last night nurse who hugged me and said I looked like a mystery writer!

So now I am my Mother, knowing very little about bottles. The baby girls are excellent nursers, but the bottles at first were not getting the job done in the NICU. And Kiki came up with the idea to change the bottles from one brand to another, and voila! They started meeting their “shift minimums.” So yesterday, we brought the girls home to meet Leo the Protector and his two resident cats.

Bob and I will stick around to help in any way we can. Ive learned how to defrost breastmilk and use the new bottles and their special cleaning appliance. The rest is like riding a bike, right? I hope they got some sleep last night.

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Lockdown

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2025| 4 Comments »

Last weekend my stepbrother Eric and his wife Bev, from St Louis, were visiting their daughter’s family here in California. We have a history of missed opportunities to see each other whenever we overlap on the West Coast but this time I was determined to make it happen. We made a reservation at a French restaurant near the hospital, we would sit out on the terrace to avoid germs.

Then this happened:

Aunt Kiki and I left Bob and our son in the hospital’s cafeteria – they were headed into the Starbucks cafe near the gift shop while we wanted to get back to the NICU. Only when we got to the locked door leading into the maternity ward, a spot where I would pick up the wall mounted phone and announce myself and the name of the babies I was visiting, we met an armed policewoman.

She said the hospital was on LOCKDOWN and we couldn’t get back into the NICU and we couldn’t go outside! We made her say it again.

All of a sudden a fairy godmother holding her dinner plate looked at us and said, “She’s one of our mothers, follow me!” It was the NICU charge nurse sweeping us through maternity’s locked doors and into the nursery where we learned there’d been an incident in the ER. I asked our fairy/nurse if this was a drill, she said no. Kiki quickly texted the Rocker to tell him he should abandon his coffee run and meet us in the NICU pronto.

Without knowing anything – was there an armed shooter in the building, had a car crashed into the ER, or was the next plague contained behind locked doors – we settled into our little room with the twins. I told Kiki we were in the safest place imaginable, behind multiple layers of security. The Rocker texted back he heard helicopters outside while Bob was using his doctor bona fides to reach us.

We were the only visitors in our “twin room.” At one time we had three sets of twins with three nurses each but on that day we were down to two sets and the remaining two nurses were trying to put us at ease. “There’s plenty of breast milk to keep us hydrated,” one said. The baby girls slept peacefully all swaddled up in their bassinets and I hugged Kiki. The boys arrived.

For over three hours it was business as usual, kind of – Kiki was nursing the twins and I was tentatively texting with Bev. They were at the restaurant holding our table and enjoying some French onion soup. We learned that someone had left the ER unhappy with their treatment, threatening to return and, “Shoot up the place.” The LAPD were looking for him (I’m assuming their gender) and until he was arrested we were held captive, obliged to miss yet another attempt to see Eric and Bev!

Once the threat was over and we were driving back to our AirBnB, I was slowly aware of my suppressed rage. When Bob worked in a hospital, there were no metal detectors. Today we must present our drivers license, stand in front of a camera and have a badge made every day we visit the twins. Every baby has some sort of security band on their foot. And yet

These babies, my brand new grandbabies, have already experienced their first distinctly American terrorist threat… their first active shooter drill. They were not even a month old. Even if this disgruntled patient was at home having his dinner, we were watching the NICU door, listening for gunfire. I was terrified. He was arrested, we got the all clear and picked up dinner – cookies – from the hospital’s vending machine.

But do I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country with 125 guns for every 100 people? Here is a screen shot of that night.

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