Katrina

I avoided the 5th anniversary hoopla about Katrina. I avoid most coverage of Katrina. I don't often think about it except the sort of once-removed way of wanting the house to sell. Jo brought up an article from the Tampa Times that her mother cut out for us. It was one of those 5th anniversary articles. I had no intention of reading it.

It ended up on top of the bathroom reading pile. It was one of those articles: "Unbowed, Unbroken". I put it down. The lead photo was one of a woman pushing her elderly mother in a wheel chair through the flood water. I picked it up again. I read the short blips about the musician, the hero, the children. I remembered why I don't read things about Katrina. Instead of really dealing with the issues, the media sets up archetypes to represent what it wants to find in the story of flood.

I don't see myself or my family in these stories. They are like myths meant to teach something but not meant to be lived in day-to-day life. I live in a very daily world. I do the laundry, pay the bills, and hang out with my children. I don't dwell on the flood. I know that I survived it and that it made a demarcation line in my life: Before the Katrina/After the Katrina. Before Katrina, I thought I would stay in New Orleans. After Katrina, I knew that wasn't going to happen. It wasn't that it was impossible. I could have gone back, figured out a way to make a living, and gone on with my life. I didn't do that because it was too unstable and unsettling for Ethan and Ryan.

New Orleans became a place that would always be associated with danger. What if it happened again? What if the patched levees didn't hold? How could feel safe? No place is really safe. Life involves risk. Those are cliches. I fall back on them when I try to understand my world in a context that makes some sense. Katrina did not make sense. The hurricane itself did very little damage to our house. The flood was what hurt it. The water flowed into the spaces of lives we try to keep warm and dry. It made Ethan worry about the heavy rain in springtime and made Ryan want everything recreated exactly the way had been in New Orleans. It made me think that having a land-line would somehow signal the return of normalcy.

We never returned to that version of normal. We moved passed being "the hurricane family" and have become something new. Katrina is still here. When people ask how long we've lived in Connecticut or what brought us here, Katrina reappears. I might not mention it. I might gloss over it, but in my head, it comes back. The sequence of events that led up to up, the summer full of hurricanes, the evacuation, Florida, buying this house, trying to reproduce the way things were in New Orleans, the friends that have scattered across the country, and a hundred vignettes of things that happened dance through my brain even if my mouth is saying, "We came up from New Orleans and decided to settled in Connecticut."

I read the article and put it back on the top of the reading pile. I tried to calm the swirl of thoughts. I want the house to sell. I want the comfort of being able to say, "Well, now that the house is sold Katrina is finally over." I know that selling the house is just another event, it won't erase what happened, but I want to be one more step removed from water that lives in the back of my mind.

Kids Deserve Better

I've been thinking for days about how to write about the current rash of suicides by young people who were GLBTQ or who were accused of being GLBTQ. Many people have talked publicly about how bullying contributed to these deaths. Many people. both straight and queer have said "It gets better. Just hang on." In fact, this seems to be the preferred answer to the problem. If queer kids can just get through those tough tween and teen years, then life will improve. They will find community and acceptance. They will grow into happy adults. After all, they have their whole lives ahead of them.

I find this answer unsatisfactory, distasteful, and wrong. How can we expect people who are told throughout their youth that they are less then everyone else to grow into adults who can suddenly find joy in themselves and their own sexuality? How is it fair that we ask queer kids to "just hang on"? Doesn't every child, and every adult for that matter, deserve to be accepted for who s/he is and deserve a life that is satisfying, even joyful, no matter his/her age, or race, or gender identity, or sexual orientation, or first language, or any other of a laundry list of differences perceived or inherent?

We, as a society, are responsible for their deaths just as much as the kids who bullied them. Is it fair of President Obama to say that gay marriage is an issue that is best left up to the states and that "don't ask, don't tell" ought to be repealed by Congress and that he intends to appeal the legal decision striking down a failed policy? What message is he sending to queer kids? Why aren't people across the country asking our president to stand up for our children?

Queer kids are being failed at school, at home, in their neighborhoods, and in the country at large. As a queer teenager, I knew that I could never go home to my parents and tell them the abuses I suffered. I knew that whatever happened at school or in the neighborhood, I was on my own. If parents, teachers, neighbors, all people who come in contact with queer kids treated them with respect, there would be places for kids to talk and to get advice and help. As it stands now, kids are left to figure things out and cope as best as they can until that magical moment when it "gets better".

What hope are we offering them that it really gets better beyond the pointless assurance that it will? Kids aren't stupid. They see the president saying that he won't help them. They hear their teachers framing issues in terms of straight relationships. They read the textbooks, the teen literature, the adult literature in which they just don't appear. They know the song proclaiming "I kissed a girl and I liked it" is controversial because the singer is female. They see people on the street and in the news holding up signs that read: "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" or "Fags: Get AIDS and Die!" They know that who they are is at odds with who society wants them to be and they know that no amount of time will make them any more acceptable to a society that sees queers as less than.

GLBTQ kids deserve better. All kids deserve better. They deserve a society that says "It will get better because we are committed to making it better." Sadly, they have a society that prefers platitudes to action and that would rather put the blame on other kids than on itself.

What have you guys been doing?!

We've been doing lots of fun stuff lately. I guess that's one reason I have so neglected this blog. Of course we've been in lots of water. In August we met Faith, Easy, Malila, and Zola at Riis Park in Brooklyn.

Sitting in chairs: Esther & Malila

Sitting on a Towel: Ryan & Easy

Ethan had a really great time talking with Malila.At the end of August, we went to the Northeast Unschooling Conference in Massachusetts. We hung out with friends.

Drue and Ethan

We got tattoos.

We laughed...a lot!

Drue (Standing) Declan (Pointing) Ethan (Sitting) Ryan (Standing on a chair)

We even played some of our favorite board games.

We had sleepovers and even slept at some of them!

Ryan (Left bed) Amory (Sleeping bag next the right bed)
Doran (Right bed) Ethan (Sleeping bag in the foreground)

We tried out new pools like the one at the newly opened Shoreline Y.

Mimi, Ethan, and Doran

We had a visit from Aunt Kathie.

We tried out chocolate fondue. Doran wasn't as fond of it as everyone else. He enjoyed eating the fruit without dipping it.

Ryan, Ethan, Amory, & Doran

We went to Madison Square Park in NYC and then went to see the King Tut exhibit.

Ryan asked to have his picture taken on top of the tire swing structure.

Ethan on the tire swing.

For my birthday, Ethan made me chocolate brownies! He and Ryan lit the candles. Afterward Ryan had a blast re-lighting a candle and blowing it out until it became nothing more than a stub.

We've been having amazing sunsets here lately. This is one we saw from the top of East Rock.

East Rock has been Ryan's favorite place lately. He loves building cities in the sand pit and being buried up to his neck.

So, that's a little of what has occupied out time lately. Now it's time for me to go play with Ryan.

So much has been happening that I hardly have time to enjoy it all! Ethan turned 10 in May and this month Ryan turned 7. Mimi made him a Light Saber cake.

He lit the candles himself.


We ate pizza at Pepe's and Ryan got Silly Banz from Ethan.

Ethan got his first stripe on his blue belt in Kung Fu, and we've been to the beach, and hiking, and playgroups. Today we painted with popsicle sticks.

Life is good and full and just living it right now seems to take up every waking moment. I think this is the best thing really: Living without having to stop, going to sleep, waking up and starting all over again.

Water Park, Computers, and Snow!

Wow it's been a long time since I wrote here. Guess I've been too busy enjoying life to write about it. We just got back from the UWWG.That was big fun.

Ryan loved the sword fight and the endless games of chase.
He enjoyed reconnecting with friends (Jared is on the right) and making new ones (Jet is on the left).
Ethan had a blast selling and trading Pokémon cards with Aryn and Evan.
Ethan really wants to learn to surf. We thought this would be a perfect place to try it out, but he absolutely hated the flow-rider. He said it was too fast and too scary.
After he tried it out, cried, and calmed down he said, "I'm really proud of myself for trying that." Way to go Ethan.

We left the Water park on Friday and arrived home Saturday to a visit from two wonderful friends. Doran and Amory are here for the week. They arrived just in time for Ethan to get his long awaited holiday present. He wanted a laptop and used all his Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice money to get it. He waited until we could find one in his budget that met his needs. That finally happened yesterday. He was so excited. He and Doran opened the box together.
Mimi helped get it all set up.
Ethan hasn't been off it for long since.
Today we have lots of snow. Doran wanted to go play in it, but was having trouble convincing the other guys to go out. I suggested we could cover him in snow without leaving the house. Ethan leaned out the back window and shoveled the snow from the overhang. All Doran had to do was wait. It was Ethan's idea of perfect snow fun. He got to cover someone in snow without going outside.

Now we're setting up all the computers in the house so that all four guys can play Wizard101 together.