A Quota of Emotion

I am in charge of social media at work. Why? Because at the time I was one of the few people under the age of 30 in the office.

One of my coworkers sent me a resource to post on said FB page, and it was about a man with a red bandana who went to work saving lives as his own was threatened during the September 11th terrorist attacks. The video itself was great, but afterwards - you know how youtube rolls another video right after the one you've watched finished? It did that to me, but with the live CNN footage from the day-of, fourteen years ago. Which was exactly the footage I watched the day-of, fourteen years ago.

I have three memories from that day, when I was a month from my 14th birthday. It was actually one of my childhood friends' birthdays. One: I woke up around 6 PST, and sat down in front of the news to eat breakfast (my father had been a big CNN man). I remember eating a toasted bagel with strawberry cream cheese and hearing disinterestedly that a single plane had crashed into a building in NYC. I finished my bagel and didn't care much.

Second memory: Riding the public school bus and talking to the-guy-I-had-a-crush-on talk about the plane incident - and that actually a second plane had also crashed into the building next to it. Strange coincidence, I thought. And went on my merry way to school, disinterested.

Ok, second memory part two: The news was on all the TV's at school that day, for the morning anyway. I don't remember much distinctly of what I saw. I do remember seeing some of the videos that they eventually stopped showing....like the view from below, as the second plan hit the building. Disappeared into it like a rock into the ocean. It was sometime during the day that someone else told me that it had been a terrorist attack, not reaaaaaally coincidental accidents.

Third memory: Picking up my sister early from her high school extracurricular activities because she couldn't handle staying the rest of the day. She had seen the videos of people in a panic, launching themselves off the building to avoid being burned....

It still makes me sick to think about it. I'm pretty sure that is a normal human reaction. But there are two things I've noticed over the past fourteen years that I need to process.

The first is my own fascination with the story. Like - WHY did I watch a two hour recap of the footage I had seen years before? Why does my heart still break, why do I need to memorialize the moment in my heart over and over again? Why, when I knew no one and still have not met anyone who was victimized in the attacks, did I need to go to the memorial in NYC and why did I cry, and why did I need peace and healing from this event by watching the waters flow into the footprints of the buildings which were so many people entrances into eternity?

And secondly, why are so many people so obstinate about NOT commemorating the day? I worked on a military base where they sent out a memo to everyone to not fly the flags at half mast that day on the eleventh year. Ok - my best friend who lives in NYC says that it's overdone in the city. Ok, I can get the need to "move on" and widows get remarried and kids go to college and people keep working in the WTC, and that movie that was made was way too soon and making money off of the memories is not cool, not cool at all. But there's a difference between avoiding the marketing of memorialization and just wanting to not remember it at all.

Who was it that said "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it?" I don't remember..ironically enough.. I want to say Teddy Roosevelt but if I'm wrong I'll feel dumb. I don't believe that if I forget this piece of history that I, personally will be responsible for letting another terrorist attack happen. But perhaps the reason it happened at all was because we as a nation forgot that we are humans with weaknesses, and that not everybody likes us - just as history has shown over and over.

That just brings me back in an easy circle to remembering that I am human, and those killed that day were human, and the terrorists themselves were human, and that day, September 11th 2001, all three of those human groups presented their weaknesses. The terrorists, their unlucky belief that this would somehow do Allah any good. Me, that as I ate my bagel and heard of death my first reaction was to consider what I heard to be "Regular News" and therefore not worth noticing. And the victims, that they could not avoid such violence to their bodies no matter how much they tried.

Maybe it's my strange, alien need to be healed from this attack that lashes out against the Forgetters. Perhaps there is a certain amount of "caring" that my heart needs to do for this event, and since I was 2,500 miles away at the time and know no one related to it, that I have needed fourteen years to give a damn; that my heart has to give a quota of emotion for something that was such an atrocity, and for which I didn't feel enough for at first glance. Perhaps it will teach me not to forget history - my own history - so that next time, my heart knows how to react to human loss regardless of how common it is, or how far away.




RMVZ

Nothing to do with Writing: Our Lady of La Leche

My ex-boss was from Spain, and when I was pregnant she gave me this devotion that she had learned about while she was growing up, and then visited in Ft. Lauderdale. I promised that I would take my daughter on a pilgrimage to the Ft. Lauderdale shrine before she turns 18. It gave me a lot of peace during pregnancy and I felt really helped with Carole nursing - about the only problem I didn't have when she was born.

 

It's the Devotional prayers to Our Lady of La Leche. You can read more about her here if you wish: http://missionandshrine.org/?page_id=80

but here are the prayers:

Lovely Lady of La Leche, most loving mother of the Child Jesus, and my Mother, listen to my humble prayer. Your motherly heart knows my every wish, my every need. To you only, HIs spotless Virgin Mother, has your Divine Son given to understand the sentiments which fill my soul. Yours was the sacred privilege of being the mother, that, in accordance with His will, I may become the mother of other children of our heavenly Father. This I ask, O lady of La Leche, of the Name of your Divine Son, My Lord and Redeemer. Amen.

O Lord Jesus Christ, through the intercession of your tender Mother, Our Lady of La Leche, who bore You close to her heart during those long months before Your birth, I place my baby and myself entirely in Your Hands. Free me, I beseech you, from useless and consuming worry. Accept the sacrifice of my aches and pains, which I unite to your sufferings on the cross. Above all, most merciful and loving Jesus, Protect this child you have given to me from all harm, bestowing the health and vigor every baby needs. Implant in my heart and on my lips the words and prayers of your mother and mine, our lovely Lady of La Leche. All this I ask that my child and I may live to praise forever Your Holy Name. Amen.

To you lovely Lady of La Leche, and to your Divine Son, do I now dedicate this little baby whom our Father in Heave has given me. Grateful for the trust He has placed in me, I beg you to obtain for me the physical and spiritual graces I need to fulfill my duties at every moment. Inspire me with the motherly sentiments you felt during your days with the Child Jesus. Make it possible for me, in imitation of you, O lady of La Leche, to nurse my child to perfect health. In all things help me to follow the example which you, as the perfect model of all mothers, have given to me. Let my family mirror the virtues of your HOly Family of Nazareth. Finally, I commend to you loving care all the mothers of earth, in whose hands He has entrusted the soul of His little children. Amen.

May the blessing of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, through the intercession of Our Lady of La Leche, descend up on us now and remain forever. Amen.

So, I think it goes 1. prayer for conception, 2, prayer for pregnancy, and 3. prayer for nursing. and then the closing. I just prayed all three during my last few months of pregnancy (after I was given this!)

RMVZ

Life Giving (or Quadrant II)

I have sort of half-finished stories all over the place. In my documents, of course, in a little folder called "writing," But also in about five journals which I have actually filled. Which is a bit ironic, since what I am writing about now is that-which-I-do-not-accomplish. And even more ironic, is that as I write this I realize that not finishing things really isn't my "thing." I LOVE to accomplish. To get things done. No matter the cost - I like to feel like I've ended each day having checked something important off my list. Mmmmm - sweet satisfaction.

So why the finished journals full of unfinished stories?

Writing for me is not like anything else. It's almost just an emotion, and so fleeting is it that it can sometimes crop up and disappear before I even get my documents file open. Like trying to take a picture of a wave on the beach. Or trying to get my six month old daughter into her crib and she wakes up the minute I lay her down.

Trust me, it's not the baby that keeps me from finishing.

Anyway, I have two things now that I am writing (other than the obvious blog entry!) The first I started a few months ago when I was dwelling on a really strange Advent book I had bought because of the beautiful artwork and suspected amazing stories and family discussion questions. It turned out the writing was super sappy and completely incomprehensible  to an adult, much less a poor child. Super broad and emotionally advanced and just - emotional. Too much emotion, not enough heart.

I decided to write my own, and one that follows the liturgical seasons as well so it will not start on December 1st, but the first Sunday in Advent! Hooray! Purple!

I've only gotten through the first week of stories, but I think things are going well. I can't help but include impressions I learned from my theology courses on Scripture, and I think I'm doing well with explaining deeper theological themes in a way kids can understand. Or at least presenting themes for my kids to delve into more when they get older. Perhaps I'll have my Scripture professor take a look at it when it's done, to see if there is anything he thinks is glaringly obviously wrong.

The second book I wrote is strictly for my daughter, CNZ. (Sounds a bit like 'sneeze' to me.) Baby books are easy, and it was especially easy for me to write as a mother because it's just the sentence "CN is...." completed in various forms of praise over and over again. CN is beautiful. CN is amazing. CN is Polish, Jewish, Czech, French, German, English, Scottish, Norwegian (if there ever were a mutt...poor thing. At least she looks very Polish. Czezc.) And praising one's own child is super easy. Especially if you've met CN....(mom bias, ha ha. But also not. She's objectively the best baby in the world.)

Both are very satisfying projects because I believe I can actually finish them and have a game plan of how to get them published. (Shutterfly, self publishing, kick-starter...etc).

I'm currently listen to CN sing herself to sleep (well, hopefully to sleep), and wondering how I finally got the initiative to finish something when I am being pulled in so many directions being a working mom. Ugh. I never thought I would be self-identifying as that. It sounds like it's my banner....gross, it's not. I have too many other banners that are much more descriptive. But it will have to do to describe the contrary life I live now to what I lived before when I was single and free and couldn't accomplish one damn story.

And here I am, re-starting this blog for no reason other than I don't give a crap-ola what people think of me anymore, I crave doing things that give me life, and I want CN to have a good example of prioritizing those life-giving activities.

Thus far: being a wife and mother = freedom. Being single and free = procrastinating, and "quadrant IV."




-RMVZ