the terror of almost

This I Believe:  America is a gun.  

I remember Columbine, the first mass shooting at a school, in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999.  We watched in horror from Jing Mei’s dorm room at Loeb Hall, in the East Village of Manhattan, and could not believe what was unfolding in front of our eyes.  Guns in schools, people who had been bullied getting back at their classmates in the most horrible way.  How could this happen? 

25 years later, it happens so often that elected officials offer “thoughts and prayers” for lives lost at school and forget about it in the 24 hours news cycle a few days later.  Multiple deaths in a school building has become something we’re desensitized to, and the gun laws haven’t changed much, as our 2nd amendment and the right to own a gun trumps the right to go to school, or the mall, or an amusement park, splash pad, concert, basically anywhere in America, and come home alive. 

Brian Bilston wrote “America is a gun.” Our obsession with firearms is well documented in Hollywood, in all genres of our music, and most importantly, framed as the 2nd amendment in our constitution.  But we shouldn’t have a right to semi-automatic weapons, silencers and bumpstocks that increase killing efficiency.  We shouldn’t have a right to military-grade assault rifles – nor should our military or law enforcement agencies – that have become more intensely weaponized to kill citizens for minor offenses, most of all for being Black and breathing.  

I don’t have all the answers, but I have a renewed sense of terror, as a lockdown happened at my daughter’s school on Friday, September 13th, 2024.  As we were picking up our kids from school, an announcement came over the external loudspeaker of the building to say there was an active shooter in the area and the building was going on lockdown.  Parents and students outside of the doors picking up kids were ushered into the building and I was walking up Oak Street, with Pape in his stroller, as people started running back to their cars toward us.  One dad said “fuck no, my kid’s in there!!!” and ran toward the building.  I didn’t know if there was a shooter on the street, so I turned around and ran with the stroller back to our car, pulling Pape out to get him to safety and leaving the stroller outside while I climbed back into the drivers’ seat and started the car.  

“What the fuck do I do?” I internally screamed as I dialed my husband, who didn’t pick up.  I called my mom and it went straight to voicemail. I called the school and got a busy signal.  People were walking toward the school, so I rolled my window down to tell them what was happening, and kept my window partially open to communicate with people walking by.  I had the baby to protect, so I didn’t want to go and see what was happening. “We could be a sitting target right here,” said one mom who walked back to the school looking for her husband.  “I hope your babies are safe,” I told her, tears fresh on my cheeks.  

Mulay’s friend’s mom, whose daughter goes to the same school called and asked if I knew what was going on.  I just got a Remind text from Sali’s teacher that said, “active shooter in the area, the school is on lockdown”, so I repeated the text back to her and she relayed her story of picking up her daughter and driving down the street when she heard the announcement of lockdown.   I burst into tears and told her I needed to talk to my husband and would call her back.   Her son called back a few minutes later to check on my daughter, and I told him she was safe, even though I didn’t know that myself yet.  

I started texting my friends whose kids went to the school, to see if everyone was okay and made it out of the building.  Dead silence.  F wrote back “no, I don’t have my kid yet”  Finally, someone called back, unable to get in touch with her husband.  I read her the Remind text and assured her that they were safe inside and had no signal.  Texted A to see if her daughter was okay.  Watched the Sheriff’s vehicles pile up on Prospect and block off all entrances and exits to the school, and burst into tears again.  

The minutes felt like hours.  Mulay called me back and said “I’m coming over there.” I said “don’t, there’s a shooter in the area” and he ignored me and drove over with Nas.  Mom said she was leaving her appointment and wanted to come to us, I told her no, we’ll come over there as soon as we get Sali.  We were supposed to be having a small birthday party for the boys, but that plan faded into the background as the reality of the situation came into scope. 

I don’t know what happened to time, but it took years before A texted me that they were releasing the kids.  Every single parent I saw had ghosts in their eyes as they hugged their child tightly and walked back to their cars.  Getting the baby in the stroller, I yelled across the street to J that I had talked with his wife and “I told her that you guys were inside and okay”, saw S with her son and gave her a hug, and finally, Sali came running out of the exit toward me and tried to keep my tears back while hugging her with all of my body.  Saw F from afar with their arm around their baby, hugged C and her son, and walked back down Oak with M and his kids, one of whom who was sobbing as we walked and told them “get it out, feel your feelings” as he called his partner. 

How do you turn off the adrenaline?  How do you come down after the terror of almost?  Everyone is okay, and we are still traumatized.  We will not be on the national news (this time), nor even a blip on the local news and yet an entire community has fresh, new trauma to heal from.  It is two days later and I can’t sleep or get my hands to stop shaking.  I have no appetite, I feel numb and overwhelmed, unable to move.  I am not grieving the loss of my child, Masha’Allah, my family is not grieving my loss at work, Alhamdulillah, but I am still not okay.  

I know what’s next.  I drink water, Mulay cooks up a storm to take care of us, I place my body outside, in the sun, in the forest, on the soccer pitch.  I rest my body as much as I can, and force myself to lay down.  I read, I laugh, I try to enjoy the small moments with my kids.  Buy them a special breakfast and the drink they like, to celebrate one more day of being alive in this dystopia.  I connect and thank my child’s teachers, parapros, principal, offer support to others, go back to work tomorrow, take the kids to school and hug them tight when I let them go.  Look into their eyes and make sure they know how much I love them, because tomorrow and today are not promised.   

This I believe:  Human lives are more important than the 2nd amendment.  The 2nd amendment is literally killing us.  Our attachment to other human beings has got to outweigh our love of guns. 

I am world-building right now, trying to make possible the world my children’s grandchildren can live in.  Trying to learn from Indigenous folks (the Haudenosaunee people) about thinking seven generations into the future, and honoring seven generations in the past, and knowing that we have to call our representatives, we have to keep pushing, fighting for background checks and bills that ban the sales of semi-automatic weapons, bumpstocks and the guns that nobody needs to purchase.  Pressuring local officials for gun locks and buy back programs and ways to get guns off the streets.  We need a weapons embargo to stop supplying weapons and funding genocide.  We need to keep putting the pressure on.  We need to rest, catch our breath, refuel our bodies and spirits, and get up to keep fighting one more day.  All we have is this day, and all we have is each other.  We must remember. 

overstimulation

today begins week 3 of summer, but vacation is hardly the word for it.  i have a 21 month old climber baby who inherited his grandfather's love of partying.  he does sleep in a bit, but life with him is nearly escaping harrowing situations many times a day.  i don't know why toddlers are laser focused on harming themselves, but he approaches life with zeal and fully sprinting toward everything, including water.  

i just returned from Denver and Colorado Springs with the Ypsilanti Youth Choir (with Sali!) , where we got to visit cultural, scenic and scientific sites and perform at Red Rocks (in the stands during the day, flash singing mob style), Flying W Ranch (Back to Ypsilanti was the song we sang!) i spent my 44th birthday studying Indigenous art at the Denver Art Museum, touring street art in the RiNo district and at Meowolf Denver.  Then we toured beautiful rock formations and dinosaur bone excavation sites and took the train up to Pikes Peak, for the summit of our trip.  Sali got to sing, hang out with friends and explore art and culture in a new city in the mountains, building her confidence in public performance and her love of music.  

meanwhile, my mom took Nas and Pape up north for a cabin experience, so they got to have a summer exploration, even if much different from ours.  time and space always makes people see one another in a new light.  sometimes the people we love the most, we struggle to get along or see eye to eye with.  on Father's Day, it brought me great joy that Jude, Chris, Ben, Amy and the girls, my mom and my boys were on Torch Lake, with my dad.  

it has been a tough year and i stay overstimulated.  i crave quiet, peace, Sadé ushering in stretching, yoga, journaling.  i get none of the things i want, and feel pulled, demanded from, vilified all of my days.  i've written before about the idea of summer and reality of summer are different coasts:  one with a supple beach and warm breeze, one walking the frigid homelands of my last ounce of patience.  

i don't know how, when or where to find quiet, what she looks like anymore.  i struggle to know myself.  i found a copy of my first zine the other day and someone noted my poems were sexy.  where is that version of myself?  where is the love for myself that i used to feel?  how has motherhood and work stripped me of my ability to see myself as young and curious?  

i feel worn and withered, wrung out like a dishrag.  i am not nearly done resting, seeping in quiet, color, sunlight, breeze, water and sand.  i will find the energy to live loudly, to bring my own kids the brightness of my face and not just the dark shadows of my exhaustion.  i will turn toward the light of their love in the darkness that seeps into every day in this world.  we must keep holding our humanity up to the light, especially when powers that bomb don't see humanity or civilization under the places they hollow out. free palestine, and apartheid everywhere it exists.  we all deserve home, self-determination, education, health care and basic needs to be met.  

taking suggestions on resting styles, places, ways and wonders.  keeping myself at the forefront, not an afterthought anymore.  meditating on place, on home, on uplifting history and connecting ourselves to others.  we need each other, and we ALL collectively need rest and ease.  join me. 

love, lolo

                                                    (a highlight of my school year, Nov '23 - 

                                                  presenting Humans of Ypsi at the PBE Con)

International Day of Peace

Back in college, I went through a particularly rough breakup and decided that the logical solution was to go and get a tattoo from my dear friend Tanya at Medusa Tattoo on St. Marks Place.  Tanya asked me to write in her book about why this tattoo and why this day, and I wrote "Because it's the International Day of Lauren, celebrating in 75 countries worldwide!"  Thus began a tradition of annual self-indulgence and self-care. 

This year, it looks a lot different from when I was 19.  Woke up with a migraine, tried to sleep a little bit more, took the kids to school and have been folding laundry and watching Gracie's Corner with Pape, who just turned 1.  We went for a walk in the park and moved our bodies, and have been trying to care for our space.  Amazing how different seasons of life greet you, but anniversaries of something call you back to your former self. 

I have been beating the drum of self-care for so many years, even pre-COVID, and now I feel like it's been co-opted by capitalism and become an industry.  How can you take care of yourself by buying something?  I consciously resist this, and am actually sorting and preparing to give things away: kids' boots, sports equipment, winter coats and sweaters that fit last year and will not this year.   I take care of myself and our space by letting go, organizing, making space for ourselves. 

About 10 years and 5 tattoos later, I learned that September 21st is also the International Day of Peace.  It seems a fitting day that I chose to claim for myself; as I work in peacemaking and helping young people see the beauty of peace as a way to begin the healing process.  We have difficult conversations with the intention of ending drama that stems from miscommunication.  We aim to have a community where folks can be their true, authentic selves and co-exist across difference.  

Even as I type this, I find myself on the slippery slope of talking parenting and talking job when I explore what's going on with myself.  I wonder how 19 year old Lolo would feel about how decentralized I've become to myself, and how it's sometimes necessary; I can still love myself, love my life and what I've built, celebrate the song of myself, even as I make it daily practice to care for others and build community. 

May you find peace in your heart today, and space to breathe. 

trying to carve space

 i led a writing workshop last weekend inspired by women writers of color, Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and thinking about all of the ways in which women create magic from the ordinary.  but i cannot find a small moment of exhale for myself, a crack in the surface to begin creating.  maybe someday soon... until then, i'm breathing in inspiration: 

Mumu Fresh - Practice

Nas feat. Hit Boy/Shaka Senghor - Composure

Chika - Crown

Joey Bada$$ - Make Me Feel

Kenyatta Rashon - I AM

Formula 734 feat. Buff 1/Rod Wallace - Billfolds 

Che Noir - Fruits of My Labor

Athletic Mic League - Hold My Hand

Koffee - Lonely

Enny feat. Jorja Smith - Peng Black Girls Remix

the irony of this workshop was something I had to name: I too struggle, I am no expert at this, we are co-creating this space together.  we came up with a list of strategies for finding space for writing, but even as I led the workshop, the baby squealed from the other room, the kids came to visit/interrupt and I struggled with the time and space to truly focus.  

still, the dedication of 20 minutes to alliteration, rhyme and rhythm makes the difference, and I need to put it into practice.  making dirty the pages of the journals that are too pretty to write in, just a few lines of a blog post is better than nothing at all.  i know that I exist somewhere, under motherhood, beneath teaching and grant-writing and all that I do.  i am not my production, and I am valuable even and because i choose to rest and enjoy life.  

how many times do i have to say this out loud before i believe it? 

21 years

 I was 21 when 9/11 happened, and on this anniversary my life is literally sliced into perfect symmetry -- I lived half before this day, and half my life afterward.  In terms of pivotal moments, I can always pinpoint this day as a clear change in trajectory in my life. I was already on the path to becoming a teacher, a writer, an anti-racist thinker, an activist -- but this day propelled me into a passion for always learning more - about America's role in the world, about imperialism, capitalism and global power, about nationalism and its role in dividing and conquering people who have more in common than different from one another, across the world.

Many people assume that I started learning about Islam when I married my husband, but it was in 2001 that I responded to the attacks in New York by wanting to learn more, wanting to understand why when classmates or family members said "they hate our way of life/our freedoms", who is the "they" and who is "us".  I wanted/ to understand a faith vilified by American media before but especially after 9/11. I never knew then that I would be engaged in a mosque, be married to a Muslim man and raising 3 Muslim kids; so it wasn’t personal then, the way that it is now, 21 years later.  I simply wanted to learn more so that I could teach more, about love and compassion, common humanity, as well as the geopolitical reasons why the U.S. is so hated across the world. 

I still don’t always know what to do with my hands, often I write first, try to reflect and make a plan for action and then I try to act, to move, to help, to push toward justice.  One of the hardest parts of the days after 9/11 is that everyone wanted to help, but we couldn’t find ways to be helpful, and we felt helpless, and hopeless.  We tried donating blood, the lines were 7 hours long on the first day, but they didn’t pull people out alive, and ended up not needing extra blood like they anticipated, which was a terribly grim reality.  We wanted to go downtown to volunteer somewhere, but the air was toxic and they wouldn’t let anyone unauthorized below Houston St.  We flocked out to the streets, to Union Square Park, Washington Square, any public space we could find, to see what we could do, to organize, to connect, to write messages to loved ones, to mourn, to hope, to try and figure out how we could act, how we could be useful. 

 

The first night, we took to the streets to chalk messages to our community.  It was a tangible action that Louisa, Jennie, Nicole, Emily, Eli and Eleanor came up with that felt important, would be visible, encourage critical thinking about the media we were all consuming and the immediate message of nationalism and unquestioned patriotism that seemed to be all around us.  In the face of the unknown in the morning, with tanks rolling down University Place outside my bedroom window, it felt like something we could control. We received a lot of supportive cheers and “right ons” and some haters, but it felt important and right.  After that night, we turned to focus on anti-war protests, and more locally, a teach-in at our college about Islam, using the opportunity to organize on campus about the anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiment that was already spreading like wildfire around the city, and the country.  A woman in Hijab attacked in a grocery store parking lot in Queens.  Sikh men mistaken for Muslim harassed on the train.  The polarizing “us” (read:  white, Christian, straight, male = “American” 🙄) vs. “them” (read: non-white or racially ambiguous, non-Christian, queer, female/marginalized genders = “unAmerican”) in a terrifying throwback to McCarthyism of the 1950s.

One detail I’ve failed to write about very often in 20 years is the missing posters.  They still haunt my dreams to this day.  Photos of loved ones, wedding photos, people with their children and their families, on vacations, professional headshots from work, what floor of the towers they worked on (99th floor, 102nd floor, 86th floor) and how to get in contact with their loved ones if they were found.  Every available surface across the city was plastered with missing posters, starting Tuesday afternoon and multiplying throughout the week like viral locusts.  I would turn a corner and see a wall of scaffolding on a building covered in them, and immediately begin crying.  I would stop and read them, look into their faces, trying to hold space for each of them, since I didn’t have anywhere to go or be that first week while classes were canceled.  Each encounter a private memorial service, because I knew, as many of their families knew when creating them, that they were probably not alive.  But there were miracles of escape and folks delayed on the trains who never made it to work that day, and we heard these stories as we escaped to the bars for a sense of normalcy, comfort and release from the stresses around us. 

All this time later, I am thinking about the ways that we took action, the ways that we held space for each other to process and grieve, and the ways that we forged new community in the face of tragedy.  It is true that New Yorkers felt connected in a clear way, but we were not united under patriotism, as is often the narrative: rather many of us were united under the banner of being anti-war and NOT retaliating, though of course, this event led to a 20 year war beginning in Afghanistan and shifting to Iraq, where in response to the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, our military took over one million lives.  We cannot call out terrorism, then perpetuate it with millions of times of the military power, and still call ourselves the Land of the Free.  We cannot limit citizens’ freedoms with the Patriot Act, and insist that we are still the model of equality and human rights. Yet, this is America, and we are exactly this hypocrisy, as Frederick Douglass told us.

But we MUST face history to remember, we must look clearly at the past in order to make change in the present and NOT repeat what has been told to us as the truth.  We must critically question the media, create our own media, share our stories, write our own histories, so that history is not only told from the winner’s perspective (Orwell, 1942), or tainted with red-white-and-blue colored glasses.  

in avoidance of hard truths

i have been avoiding reading and writing all summer, and i'm a bit embarrassed about it.  i have touted writing as my go-to in terms of how i process and heal, and in a summer of proclaimed healing and resting from the tough school year that ended in June... it seems like i'm avoiding something.  i'm circumventing hard truths right now, i realized in therapy last week, and intentionally not-writing so that i do not look at myself in the mirror.  

now seems like a good time to unpack that, and i'll start with this:  there is going to be unprecedented school staff shortages in the fall/next month.  programs will close, departments will shift, schools will shutter, lots of things will shift to virtual, which is a hierarchy in the quality and personal attention of public education.  the institution of public schools is in the process of ending, and what it will become is what so many Republicans have been working toward for the past two decades of my life and work: voucher systems, private charters with no accountability, an exacerbation of the school-to-prison-pipeline which places our Black and Brown students online to self-navigate through computer correspondence courses, and calls that an education.  segregated schools have never left our national ideology, we know this. 

i don't know what this means for me.  how long can i exist inside of a toxic system that does not want to see young people as human beings with aspirations, goals, lives to build?  i want to work in a place where my contributions are valued, truly, not with awards and vague understanding of what i do, but in a way that uplifts our community, empowers our young people and encourages them to build long and lasting relationships with teachers, friends and family as they grow and understand themselves.  

we need to address the violence that has taken so many young people in our community.  how COVID-19 has ravaged and set grief upon our families at an even more accelerated rate.  how poverty and houselessness have impacted us.  we need to have spaces to process, grieve collectively and work toward healing, share resources and hold each other up.  this has always been my goal in working within schools: to use my location to positively impact the community, but it must extend beyond the schoolhouse to families and the community.  if we teach restorative practices at school, but they learn something different at home, who are they going to trust?  and why should they trust the school at all? 

i don't know what's next.  i do know that i've begun to put into the universe what i want, that i've spent time building relationships with other circlekeepers who i deeply value and respect, and that my love for my work is reaffirmed whenever i have the opportunity to be in circle with others.  i had such an opportunity this morning and i'm convinced it's the reason why the words are flowing out of me now.  i have to stay open, and willing to connect with others.  but grief and healing is really hard and ugly work, and i have to commit to it, for myself, for my children, for my students, for my husband and family and friends.  i need to be the best version of myself, and that begins with taking the time to rest, to unpack, to resolve, to heal, to dance and locate joy wherever life will bring it.  

also, there is so much pain in our community, and i must heal myself so that i can help others be able to navigate their pain, and provide resources and empowerment to parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles just like i have tried to do with students over the past 20 years (and will continue to do with young people, no matter what path i walk).  real healing work does take the whole hood, and United Playaz continues to inspire as i figure out the next way forward to a Better Me, and a Better Us.  our young people deserve it, as does each member of our beloved community.  

titles change things

working on poems with my 9th graders, and just finished a poetry unit with my 10th graders, we've moved onto a Jason Reynolds book and i am finding the rhythm of back in the building, in a new system (quarters) where I must work hard to build relationships and pack content into 9 weeks.  it's challenging, and i appreciate challenge, but this year it almost seems like too much to do anything more than teach my classes.  the work life balance has shifted since COVID, and i want to be more present at home, especially as winter melts into spring (maybe sometime, right now we're covered under a fresh 6 inches).  by the time i get home from work, i have used all of my patience.  i feel anxious.  i want a clean, quiet space to help with my anxiety, and my home is the opposite.  i don't know when i will ever get used to a maladjustment of my spirit, but i do know that titles change things.  we wear the mask in our buildings, and we read dunbar, angelou's riff of dunbar and deonte osayande as we asked ourselves which masks we wear.  here's the mask i wear: 

at this point, 
i have become 
used to wearing
the villain mask.
I, terrorist of the
living room kingdom.

i am tired of the mess:
your worst storms, 
amplified by years of
desert island isolation.
i am under a spell 
of exhaustion. 
tempered and tan-toned,
i have become 
exactly what i said
i wouldn't.

i don't know how to unsee
the mountains, how to let 
the molehills slide,
how to stay quiet like breath
when you thunder-rumble.
i am tired of asking, 
and getting silence
in return.  you are tired
of talking, and i am a griot.

i turn off myself 
like a light switch.
taking rest and searching
for what i need in
wild dreams of turquoise
water on our skin. 
i have to be the hero
of my own life, even
if i'm always the villain
of yours. 

titles change things: 

(mom poem #893453495)