Insignificant

I have not posted anything in over a week. In part, this is because Steve was in Chicago and I was just too exhausted at the end of the day, but the greater reality is that I just couldn't write. I would think about it, but there were so many overwhelming tragedies in the world and tremendous hurdles uncovered in the lives of family and friends that I simply could not bring myself to write about anything. Everything ordinary seems suddenly so insignificant and yet, so much more significant than it did a week ago.

China mourns today, officially for three days, and yet, we all know, for so many more. Having recently fallen in love with one of her children, I feel the magnitude of suffering with intensity when I read of newly orphaned children, of hospitalized children having to sign their own waivers to have a limb amputated because their parents are no more. Their mothers, their fathers, cannot claim them. I drop Alex off at school and feel the stabbing anguish of a parent whose child is buried under the rubble. We face each day with the trust that these things won't happen. Parents come home from work. Children return from school. But then, life is life, and these things do happen.

When devastation like this occurs, I am always gripped by the horror of suffering, of loss, of hearts broken, lives destroyed, interrupted, extinguished, without warning. And then, unconsciously, I prepare my buffer. I feel the pain and my mind, like a drug, begins to buffer it, preparing a whole list of reasons why it is different for these people, why it happened there. It was a developing nation, they lived in trailers, why would anyone build on a sand bar, the warning signal wasn't given, something, anything, to remove myself. Human pain is human pain, whether it happens in NYC or a remote island in the Pacific, but finding ways to distance myself from the possibility of it happening in my world is a skill I have mastered. Until now.

My trip to China was too recent. The worry I felt over every bit of disturbing news while Cate was there and we were still here is still very present in my mind. I have been to China. I have been a part of that country. I have climbed the Great Wall with her citizens. I have helped push my child up and down on a teeter-totter while her citizens pushed their children up and down on the other side. I have eaten the food her people prepared, shared smiles, caught taxis. I am raising one of her daughters. When I read the news or hold my breath and look at the pictures, I see these people. The places we visited were far from the epicenter. The people in those places, unhurt, but still I see these people. I picture the buildings, the school courtyard across from our hotel, the young children skipping rope and roller blading during recess at the park. The people are happy, distracted, glad to help, in a hurry. Children laugh. They cry. It is the same for all of us. And although it was not these people, it was not these places, it was not here, it was not us, it was not me, the pain is too overwhelming. Too, too overwhelming. We are all the same.

And I am reminded again that life is short and precious and unpredictable and that the best thing I can do is dwell on the seemingly insignificant details - the way the sunlight falls across the old pine floor, the funny way my son shrugs his shoulders when he tells a story, the smell of lilacs so delicious it fills the house and I simply cannot take them out even though I can't breath or swallow when I stand next to them, my husband's joy as tiny birds quickly take up residence in the new bird house he put up in the yard, the cat, quiet and purring at my feet, the way my daughter says "Cheese, mama," when she tries to say, "please." These are the details of my life, the ones I love, the ones I would miss.