Reading & Writing (and 'rithmetic?!)

(I've been trying to focus writing time - even while at work LOL - onto The Next Great American Novel (or going forward, TNGAN - or even better/easier to remember and write - "TinCan!") 
ok start over - so I've been trying to focus my writing time on TinCan, so the blog may suffer a bit... but here's a post I started writing while in the throes of highlighting...)
(ALSO - reading update to immediately follow this)




somewhere, today someone's world -as they know it- is ending.

There is someone who has just received that phone call about their spouse's fatal car accident.

There is someone who is sitting at their parent's bedside, listening to them take their last breath.

There is someone who has just lost a child.

There is someone whose whole axis has just shifted - been totally knocked off kilter - from fresh tragedy.



And yet.

The world continues to turn.

And yet - "How can that guy be cutting his grass?? DOESN'T HE KNOW MOM IS IN HERE DYING?!"


"How can they blithely waltz into the office, smiling - DON'T THEY KNOW WE WERE JUST TOLD THE WORST NEWS EVER??"




I recently sat out on my back porch - beer, monitor (Mack was napping), book, highlighter and pen (this book.. needs notes and highlighted sections. you'll see...) and enjoyed the first warmish (55 degrees!) sunny day in a long time...

Another "first" in a while, I am reading a paperback.  I pointedly ordered this one from Amazon - proceeds from the purchase will go directly to charities dedicated to helping the mentally ill.

Why, this book of all books, did I order archaically in paperback? (And natch, pay for it! (I can download most books for free........ #sorryNotSorry) )


Because 33 years ago this year, my grandmother's world shifted terribly - her son, with a fresh baby and wife, died by suicide.

Because 20 years ago this year, my uncle's world - as he knew it - ended when his teenage daughter (my cousin) died by suicide. (On her LAST DAY of a second stay in a treatment facility...)

Because over 4 years ago, E's father received a call from her sister - her world had come tumbling down when her husband (E's uncle) died by suicide.


The woman who wrote A Mother's Reckoning lost her son - seventeen years old - to suicide.

The book I'm reading is also about another very difficult topic - school shootings.

A Mother's Reckoning is written by Sue Klebold, mother to Dylan Klebold - one of two shooters from the Columbine massacre in 1999.


I read a fabulous review/discussion of this book, here.


This story, written by a mother who discovers she didn't know who her child was, touches on just that - the fear that I know I have as a parent: that one day, they'll become someone you don't recognize.

As Button develops friends at daycare, and falls on the playground - as he wrestles on the lawn with the neighborhood boy who is only 6 months older but about 6 inches and what seems like 60 lbs - you realize they will become independent at some point, that they will develop into a separate entity.

I hope and pray we are doing right as their parents to create an open communication - for good stories, for bad times when they need help...






((that's all I wrote on that. still wrapping up reading the book, as I'm in the last chapter of "aftermath" years later - I spent a lot of Monday at work reading about the massacre, and the victims, and the police reports - and at the end of day fell down a rabbit hole that led me from - at the time- the deadliest school shooting in US history, to the wiki page on the Virginia Tech shooting, which with its occurrence, became the deadliest school shooting - and then farther down the hole to the Orlando nightclub tragedy.
After the recent scary false-alarm at our local mall, I just keep praying that the violence does not encroach on our lives - not the daycare, not our work places, not our neighborhood))