Friday, April 24, 2009

Olive Kitteridge and letting go

My book club happened to pick Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Kitteridge” as our selection this month before it received the Pulitzer Prize. We felt very smug about our discriminating literary tastes after it got the award.
The book is a series of interconnected stories about a large, 60-something woman who is very blunt to the point of abusive and who both adores and is mean to her husband and son. Naturally, the son moves 3,000 miles away to California and breaks his bewildered mothers heart. (Click here for a link to the Christian Science Monitor story and the Nite Swim blog about the book.
“If you have boys, you have to get used to the idea that you won’t be part of their lives,” one mother of two boys said. We then got into a lively debate about whether daughters really are better about keeping in touch.
Many of us said that we are the ones who are in charge of keeping touch and that we even keep in touch with our in-laws or nag our husbands to keep in touch. One woman said her brother was good about calling her parents but then again, he is in Spain and her parents are in New Jersey.
I call my mom a couple of times a week and she often laments that she hasn’t heard from one of my brothers for weeks. With all of my brothers, the onus is on my mother or me to make an effort to keep in touch. They don’t call, they don’t write. Is this the typical boy/man behavior?
Then again, one woman pointed out, the sons of single women seem to be very protective of their mothers and to be closer with them when they grow up. Should we all go out and get divorced to make sure we have a better relationship with our kids?
Then there’s the whole daughter-in-law thing. I live in dread that I will have daughter-in-laws who hate me as thoroughly as Olive Kitteridge’s daughter-in-law. I’m not quite as intrusive as she is but I think there’s often tension between mothers and daughters-in-law.
Two of my brothers live in my hometown and visit my father at least once a week. So they are dutiful sons to the parent who probably needs it the most. Maybe they’re less in touch with my mother because she’s so independent or maybe they have their own issues with her.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my sons probably won’t go shopping with me. (Although William does like to shop so maybe they will). They may not chat on the phone with me the way I do with my mom. And the probably won’t ever quilt with me. But I hope we’ll find some way of being in touch.
Of course all this hand wringing over children who are still several years away from college is a little funny. I told one friends I’m not sure whether I should worry about them moving away and leaving me or I should worry that they won’t move away and leave me. I suspect the later would be worse for them. I don’t really want them tied to my apron strings. I’m just hoping that whatever ties we have don’t fray or get broken when my sons are adults and I’m an overbearing old lady.
In the meantime, I have to pick them up from school and take them to piano lessons. We might go out for pizza and watch a video and if we want to be in touch, I just have to reach out. I might as well savor that while it lasts.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Columbine Shooting Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the Columbine shootings in which 13 people were killed and 24 injured. Since then we've had the shootings at Virginia Tech in which 32 students and teachers were killed and earlier this month we had the shootings at the Binghamton, N.Y. immigration center in which 13 were killed and four were injured.
In the wake of the Columbine shootings, there was a lot of searching for answers. There were anti-bullying campaigns and calls for better security and there was hope that maybe this would lead to better gun control.
Well, it turns out that none of it went very far. I think the anti-bullying campaigns are terrific, mind you, and they may prevent other types of violence and suicide among young people. But it turns out that the two shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, weren't bullied. Slate Magazine's Dave Cullen, who wrote a new book "Columbine," says that the two boys weren't bullied. He says that Harris that was a true psychopath while Klebold was the follower. Their motivation was to kill as many people as possible.
Cullen says that there is no profile of school shooters. They're not necessarily the bullied loners.
In another piece Cullen says that we have increased school security and learned to respond better to these incidents. We've learned that there is no classic profile. We've also learned that these kids often give hints about what they're planning in advance.http://www.slate.com/id/2216122/.
But all this seems like small potatoes compared to the gun issue. There's been very little progress on banning automatic weapons. Now President Obama has backed off promises to ban assault weapons and his administration is indefinitely postponing even making an effort because of the powerful NRA.
We are a very, very stupid country when it comes to guns. When are we going to take the steps necessary so that kids can't get hold of guns and certainly can't get hold of guns that fire round after round of bullets within minutes, killing innocent people.
It is maddening that with all the talk of the Columbine Anniversary there is so little talk about taking real steps to take the weapons out of the hands of psychopaths.

But all this seems like small potatoes compared to the gun issue.