Tribute to My Mother in Law

Marlene Fuller, my lovely wife's mother, is a wonderful person.  From the first time I met her, around 7 years ago now, she has always showed concern with others, how they are doing, and what she can do for them.  I know it sounds like a theme in most of my tributes that many of the people I pay tribute to are more concerned with others than they are with themselves, but I see it in almost everyone I have paid tribute to.  Marlene is no different.  She has graciously helped my wife and I out on a number of occasions, but it goes beyond just helping us out.  Being retired, she now volunteers at blood drives for the red cross and also spends quite a bit of time with her mother helping her out.  What amazes me even more is that she takes the time to call my grandparents and have a conversation with them, to see how they are doing, even though she hasn't known them that long.  I know my grandparents appreciate this, and I am sure that they welcome her calls to see how they are doing.  Going forward, when she comes back from her winter haven in Florida, she will be helping us out even more by watching our son at least 3 days a week.  This alone, goes a long way in showing her support.  She lives about an hour away from us yet thinks nothing of driving down 3 days a week to help us out, helping us save money, and to spend time with her grandson. 

To see Marlene now is to see a changed person, even from the first time I met her.  She has been through 2 different husbands, the first being the father of my wife.  All I know about the first is that she got out at a good time.  I have never met her first husband, father of my wife, and I don't know if I ever will.  In regards to her second, I saw her during that relationship and afterwards, and must say that she is much happier now than she was before.  Her whole demeanor has changed as she has moved past those relationships and has now forged her own identity in retirement.  I am sure that it is not the easiest thing to do, especially since she spent most of her life with someone else to help her out, but I must say she is doing a good job of it.  It is an interesting thing to look at the mother of my wife and see both the similarities and the differences.  Looking at how my wife is now, it is easy to see the values and mores that were instilled by her mother at an early age.  I know that my wife had to deal with the breakdown of her mother's first marriage, but to see how she drew upon her values instilled during her early years is to see how good of a job her mother did at raising her.   It is those early years that matter most and her mother excelled at them. 

I know that in the future, Marlene will remain as wonderful as she is now.  I am sure that she will try to spoil her grandson as most grandparents do and I am also sure that her grandson will continue to bring her joy.  Whatever difficulties arise in Marlene's life, I know that she has the will power to overcome them.   She has been through a lot already and I doubt that anything that comes up now will present too much of a challenge to her.  She has her winters in Florida with friendships she has forged down there and of course the beautiful weather and she has the rest of the year up North in Connecticut where the rest of her family lives.  So as I think about having her as a wonderful grandmother to our son, I can only be glad that I have her in our lives.  So to many more good years with a fantastic mother in law, I pay tribute to her today.

Not Laws but Mentality

So another unarmed youth was shot and killed over this past weekend, this time by police, after a 911 call about a robbery of a backpack.  (NYTimes Article)  It gets even better (sarcasm) when you hear that the police arrested the 911 caller for claiming that the assailants had shoved a gun in his face and in part contributed to the killing of the unarmed youth.  Once again, as in the case of Trayvon Martin in Florida, the youth was black.   The police officers claimed that they felt their lives were in imminent danger when the youth, 19, reached for his waist where they felt there was probably a gun.  The officers then unloaded their guns, 8 or 10 bullets (their story has changed), and the youth died in the hospital later on.  What makes this even more troubling is that they youth they shot was running away from police when he reached for his waist.  Lives in imminent danger?  Doubtful.  The 911 caller?  He will probably be charged with involuntary manslaughter because he lied to police about the gun.  Yet the caller claims he lied in hopes that the police would get their more quickly.  This is simply another twisted case in which a youth was shot and killed because he was suspected of having a gun, which he didn't.  There seems to be this overwhelming mentality that if you have darker skin, you will be more likely to be armed and dangerous than if you had light skin.  Its not about the gun laws, its about a prejudiced mentality that our country can't seem to shake off and get rid of.   If we want to talk about equality, we must start with the perceptions and prejudices of the majority and seek to alter them dramatically.

Its always something in the United States that stokes feelings of inequality, racism, prejudice, unfairness, etc.  You can be a black man, Muslim, Jew, Hispanic, female, or any other subset and be a victim of inequality, of unfairness.  One month we hear of Christians rallying against the Muslims for fear they are all terrorists.  The next its all about young black men getting shot and killed needlessly.  After that its all about the government impinging upon the rights of Catholics.  It seems that no matter what we do, we can not escape the grip of inequality or prejudice at any level in our society.  With such diversity in the United States, such freedom to be who we are and do what we want, can we ever reach true equality amongst all citizens?  I don't know if we ever will reach that point of true equality.  The only way we can truly be equal to everyone else in our society is if everyone seeks to change their mentality about people who are different than themselves.  Don't get me wrong, this would be a monumental effort and one not likely to succeed in my mind, but one worth pursuing nonetheless.  As humans, we have a proclivity to stay within the realm of whats comfortable.   Most people are skeptical of anything that is different or of anything that challenges their notions of what "should be".  What must happen in order for prejudices and preconceived notions to be torn down is for us to start viewing each other as Americans; nothing more, nothing less.  If we live in this country, regardless of how long we have been here, there is an obvious inclination to desire freedom, a desire to live a life of our own choosing.   Yet too often we can't see each other as simply Americans.  There is always some other indicator we must attach to "American" in order to specify what we are talking about.  We have Black Americans, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc, etc.  It seems that many people have a problem with simply considering their fellow citizens as "Americans".   All of this plays into our mentality and how we deal with people on a regular basis.  For some, it means demonizing Black Americans and considering them to first and foremost be armed and dangerous.  If we can change our mentality, perhaps we can change how people are treated every day.

So back to the original story of the youth being shot and killed by police officers.  I must be fair and state that the two assailants did in fact rob the 911 caller of his backpack.  That being said, however, there still remains that fact that there were no guns found and that the police shot and killed one of the assailants.  Can they claim they acted because they felt their lives were in imminent danger?  Absolutely, but they wouldn't necessarily be correct in that statement.  It just sounds odd to me that someone who is running away can be a threat to someone's life.  I can understand if he rushed cops while reaching for his waist, especially considering the 911 caller's statement about a gun, but that still doesn't exclude the excessive use of force, of unloading 8 or 10 bullets into this young man's body.  Last time I checked (and I do not want to test this out myself) it usually only takes one well placed bullet to stop a person.  But all we can do now is let it unfold as it will and see how the cards fall.  Besides that, we can all start to adopt a different mentality of the people around us, one that espouses equality instead of working against it.  Until we can view everyone around us as "Americans", we will not be equal and some group or people will feel unwelcome, discriminated against, and not equal to the rest of us.  We have been working at this "equality" thing for way to long.  It is time we stepped up our efforts to be all inclusive without prejudice, and maybe one day we won't have to worry about dealing with "inequality".

A Long Day

Yesterday felt like an interminably long day.  Not that it wasn't a good day, which it was, it just seemed to go on forever and drain me of most if not all of my energy.  Yesterday was the first of my two days at home with our son on any given week.  With our son being more active now, it seems to take more energy on my part when I am watching him.  The morning is never that bad.  After breakfast and after my wife left for work, we did our normal routine, retreat to the living room floor and proceed with the rolling and the continuous attempt at crawling.  Before we even got to the floor I already saw the tiredness creeping into our son's face, his eyes becoming a little glassy and his smile diminishing, leaving him with a blank stare a good portion of the time.  There were still little bouts of energy being expelled so I knew that he didn't have too much floor time in him.  That's where we retreated however for about ten minutes before it was time for his morning nap.  He went down fairly easily and slept for almost two hours.  There was no down time for me with diapers that needed washing and some minor cleaning that needed to be done.  By the time he woke up, I had finished and before his morning snack we got a little more floor time in.  Well, after eating, we ventured out to go see his great grandparents.  They were ecstatic to see him and he was on his best behavior while there.  They both got a chance to hold him before he was ready for more floor action.  We were there for almost two hours and during that time he ate his lunch and proceeded to fall asleep during the process in my arms.  I managed to transfer him to the floor where he luckily stayed asleep for about 45 minutes. 

Well, that was the end of his naps on my watch.  When we got back home, we tried to play on the floor a little more to no avail, he was just too tired and verging on hunger again.  So I decided to try a nap for a little bit.  That didn't go over so well.  So time to feed again.  And from the time of feeding till my wife got home from work, he needed to be held and walked around.  He was simply too tired to do much of anything else.  We tried playing on the floor, but frustration at not being able to crawl cut short our time there and the only thing he seemed capable of handling was walking around the yard, exploring the plants, and of course going out front to check on the construction of a new water main down our street.  He loves to stare at the big trucks and anything that rumbles by our house.  When my wife got home, I then got ready for work.  Once I made sure that she was all set for the afternoon stint, I hopped in my van and headed off.  I wasn't at work for that long, but with work being half hour away, I didn't end up making it home till about 7.  So there was my day yesterday.  Exciting, right?  Well, it is exciting being with our son all day, it just gets tiring after a while, especially the early afternoon where he just got over tired and needed to be held.  Naps weren't going over well yesterday and in order to keep him from totally losing it, I needed to put in extra effort.   Couple that extra effort with going to work in the late afternoon and you have a serious recipe for exhaustion.   I suppose I could have done some stuff around the house when I got home, there was just no desire on my part to do so. 

Luckily most days are not as tiring as yesterday.  At least our son sleeps through the night and affords us the opportunity to get enough rest for ourselves, but the days watching him can drain us.  Its just his constant activity that ends up taking its toll on us.  Don't get me wrong, I love to watch him struggle to crawl, study new faces and new objects, and talk and laugh in his non-verbal way, but I never realized how tiring it can be.  Its not even like the day seemed to drag on, in fact it flew by (except for the last half our or so).  I couldn't believe how quickly the time went.  But I guess that is the sign of being truly busy and active.  I know some people love babies and wish they could keep them there forever.  Not me.  I love our son, but I am glad he is only a baby once in his life.  So now, as I wish to go back to sleep for another hour or two, I am preparing myself for another wonderful day with our son.  I love every minute, I will just need to make a little extra coffee during the day to keep me going.  Coffee it seems, is the lifeline of parents, a necessity for getting through the day and doing it all again the next.  Maybe I should buy stock in coffee.  It seems to keep on going up in price and with the amount that I am going through I could probably make some serious money.  So maybe not, but its a thought.  In any case, its time to wake the little man up and get him started on another day.  Can't wait, seriously!