Come up for air
“When you’re a sniper, your whole world is this big around,” Christopher Whitcomb said as he presumably made a hand gesture for the sight on a rifle, as heard on the Armchair Expert.
And I’d reply, “When you’re a mother, your whole world is this big around,” and I’d make a circle around my kids.
Has that circle changed with Nicholas gone?
No.
***
This morning I woke up to more evidence of our turtle problem.There were no clouds in the sky but crown splashes plopped on the glassy surface of the lake as if it was raining. Up close, those patter marks weren’t rain but little heads coming up for air. Here’s a video I took.
Background on the turtles if you’re interested: Red-eared slider turtles are invasive to Arizona. They spend most of their time in water, although they don’t have gills. Females lay eggs in tiny self-made holes on land. We have tiny holes all over our backyard. If you want to watch a female laying eggs, here’s a video. Red-eared sliders live 20-50 years. I thought I’d read that there are instances of parthenogenesis- self-fertilization- which occur in Arizona’s whiptail lizards, but I guess I was wrong. And… I kinda don’t think the scientists have studied this enough. But in any case, get two turtles together, and they’ll mate like bunnies.
We ignore the turtles, since ‘they’re not my problem.’
Similarities between addiction and the turtle problem. We have a whole backyard of people that are dying from overdosing in Arizona, and we’re ignoring it. Perhaps our apathy is because we classify addiction as a problem with self-will or a moral failing. We prescribe Xanax and Opioids as if they’re not addictive, paying lip service to moms like me with warnings. The equivalent of a plane load of people die every day in the US to overdose, and now we can “feel sorry” for those people while we stare off into the lake full of turtles.
Poem to mothers
Bad mothers, find
your
God,
White knuckle
through the dts
How many coloring books
can they sell
us
before we blur
the lines
Yesterday Arizona’s drug
overdose deaths
doubled compared
the rest
of the nation.
The reason is
our
triple digit
temperatures
If that doesn’t make
sense
don’t try and imagine
cooking
alive
Another commercial jet plane
equivalent of people went down
yesterday their
brains
sloshing with
addiction
And they keep telling me
it’s not a real disease;
It’s a lack
of willpower
They make coloring
books
for grown-ups
and I certainly
we all need one now
Focus on the
double
black lines
rather than
how
addiction
bleeds from
one generation
to the next. -Katie Rizzo
Katie’s memoir, The Trimesters of Grief is available anywhere books are sold -
