This won't get posted until the weekend, but I'm writing it on Tuesday, so yesterday was Monday. It was a very tough Monday. It was the kind of day that immediately reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
It was, and still is, a favorite story because we all have bad days. And some days feel much worse than others. Some days are no good and very bad. They start badly and seem to spiral downward as the day goes on.
As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, I wake up in the mornings and immediately check my phone. The first thing I look for is a text from my daughter. She's up a lot later at night than we are because she has a lot of homework, and sometimes she texts me if she's not feeling well and wants to skip one of her early class periods, or if she needs me to sign something. Obviously if something was an emergency, she would wake me up, but if it's just something she doesn't need me to know immediately, she texts me.
The second thing I check is the news. Because, after 9/11, I wakeup every morning a little fearful.
Well, Monday, October 2nd was one of those mornings when my heart dropped as I scrolled through the headlines. The massacre in Las Vegas. At the time, the headlines were that there were over 50 people dead and 500 wounded at an outdoor music festival. Murdered by a gunman firing an automatic rifle in a crowd of 22,000 people.
My heart stopped.
My daughter Malia, her two friends, and my husband Brad had been in Las Vegas the weekend before, at a three day outdoor music festival not far from where the shooting had happened. They had been in the exact same situation, penned in, crowded around a stage, listening to music and not imagining they could be in harm's way.
It hit too close to home.
I was stunned. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. How do I just get up and brush my teeth and drink coffee like it's any other day when the fragility of life was slammed into my face? All those people. All those families. The grief made it hard for me to breathe.
My daughter had already left for school, but my husband was still home getting ready for his day at work. We talked about how awful the shooting was and numbly watched the news on television. We talked about how scary it was to think that it could have been my husband and our daughter just the previous weekend. Brad had woken up in the middle of the night and seen the news on television and had not been able to go back to sleep. It was too disturbing that just a few days earlier, he had been at a similar stage, just a mile or so away from where the shooting had happened.
It feels like a constant barrage of bad news these days. Between the political tensions and the natural disasters, I feel mentally worn out. The devastation of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria has been weighing very heavily on my mind. How much sorrow and worry can we handle before we have to tune it out?
And then the shooting in Las Vegas happened. And there are moments of wondering how we can continue to live in a world where we can't keep our kids safe? How do we explain to our kids what is happening? How do we reconcile it to ourselves?
A part of me wanted to curl up and hide in bed. But of course, life continues on. We couldn't just stare at the television all day, so my husband pushed aside the horror of the news and finished getting ready, and left for work.
A minute later, he came back in. He had apparently left his car unlocked the previous evening and someone had stolen a bunch of stuff out of his car, including his gym bag that had his special cycling shoes and some fancy wireless headphones.
It was blow to an already tough morning.
We both stood silently, not sure what to make of it. We were still numb from the news about Las Vegas. And although having his stuff stolen was annoying, it wasn't terrible. They didn't damage the car, but it felt like an invasion. It was another moment of wondering why people are sometimes so crappy.
Eventually Brad left for work. I went through the motions of doing my usual morning things around the house. I did laundry and cleaned up the bathroom. But my mind was focused on listening to the news playing in the background.
The heavy feeling of dread clung to me. I couldn't shake it. I couldn't stop hearing the sounds of the bullets rat-a-tat-tatting behind the music of the concert as the screams of concert goers pierced the air.
I needed to get out of the house. I needed to turn off the news.
Around 10 a.m., I got in my car to go to the store.
My car wouldn't start. Argh!!!
Deep breath.
With the new computerized engines and displays, it's a little hard to know what is going on with the car, but it wouldn't recognize the key fob and it wasn't coming on. It was sort of sputtering, but clearly wasn't going to actually start. And at this point, even if it did start, I wouldn't trust it to get me anywhere.
I got out of my car, went inside, and texted my husband:
Me: My car won't start.
Brad: It's just one of those days I guess.
It's just one of those days.
I went back and forth with myself about whether or not to rush around and figure out how to deal with my car. But it felt overwhelming. My heart was so heavy, yet my time was limited because I needed to drive my daughter to an audition in a few hours. She has her driver's license and her own car, but the time between when she gets home from school and when she has to leave for an audition is really tight, so it's easier if I drive her so she doesn't have to worry about figuring out how to get there and park. And since mine wouldn't start, I could drive her in her car.
So I stepped back and asked myself if I really needed to deal with the car right at that moment. The normal me would be panicked and feel as if I had to take care of my car immediately. The normal me would have already been on the phone with AAA.
But that day, I wasn't the normal me. I couldn't feel panicked about my car. I realized that I didn't need to do anything about my car at that moment. It could wait until the following day. And when I made that decision, a little bit of the weight of the day lifted. I was giving myself a little space.
When Malia got home, she was her usual laconic self, and I was my usual stressed self. I was trying to rush her out of the house and she snapped at me. I snapped back, saying it had been a tough day. She already knew about my car, but hadn't heard about her dad's stuff being stolen.
When I told her, she was completely outraged on his behalf and wanted to know if he was "pissed."
I replied that he was frustrated, but not really that upset. She couldn't understand why he wasn't outraged. "I would be livid!" she exclaimed.
I answered, "Well, it's not really that important."
Malia in her dogged way, insisted she wouldn't be able to let it go.
I finally said, "Compared to 59 people dying, a stolen bag is not really a very big deal."
I regretted my retort as soon as I came out of my mouth. I didn't need to be so harsh about the ghoulish reality of life. I know she knows that "things" are not as important as "life."
But she thought about my answer carefully for a moment and she said, "That's true."
And it is true. The day had been a tough day in multiple ways, but for our immediate family, nothing happened that we couldn't deal with. Nothing got stolen that couldn't be replaced. Nothing broke that we can't afford to fix. Yes, it's frustrating and inconvenient. But that's life. Life is frustrating and often inconvenient.
But we were alive. And as melodramatic as that sounds when people say things like that, on a day when so many people died under circumstances that none of them could have anticipated or imagined, the blessing of being alive was so present and important.
Fortunately, the rest of the afternoon went smoothly. I got Malia to her audition and home without a hitch. We had the opportunity to talk about what had happened in Las Vegas. She got to tell me how upset she had been when she found out that morning, crying quietly to herself as she got ready for school. We talked about how scary it was that they had just been in Las Vegas for a music festival. I got to tell her how much I loved her and how lucky we were.
And by the time we got home, things didn't feel as awful as they had felt earlier in the day.
Later that evening, when my husband got home from work, I asked if we could try jump starting my car. It seemed as if it might be a battery issue and, if I knew that the battery was the problem, then I would know if it needed to be towed or not.
So my husband dug out his old jump starter cables and connected his car to my car. Neither of us had jump started a car in a while, but it's pretty straightforward, right?
It's probably not a big deal on any other day, but on the no good very bad day, the jumper cables started smoking. And then they started smoking a lot. And pretty soon the entire cable was smoking and the prongs were sparking. The acrid smell of burning plastic filled the air. My husband ran inside the house to get some oven mitts to pull the now red hot wires off our cars. The wires were literally a glowing red. All the plastic coating had melted off.
By some miracle, we managed not to light both our cars on fire and neither of us ended up in the emergency room. However, the exposed cable did melt part of the front panel and grill of Brad's car. The car actually melted. It looks like someone swiped the front of his car with a light saber.
What the heck.
The no good very bad day had struck another blow.
I had a moment of just wanting to throw a tantrum. I wanted to just stomp around and scream and cry and ask the universe, why? It all felt too unfair.
But then I snapped back to reality. Honestly, we should have known better than to try jumping my car at that moment. Clearly, the universe was telling us that the day needed to be dealt with carefully.
My momentary mental tantrum passed and I managed to keep things in perspective. There had been such a heavy weight to the entire day. There were many times when I felt like just sitting and crying for the victims of the Las Vegas shooting, and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer helpless feeling of it all.
And then add to that, the frustrations of having Brad's stuff stolen and my car not starting. And, of course, the cherry on top of all the horribleness of the day—having melted part of Brad's car.
It really was a moment where we could have succumbed to our frustrations. We could have vented our anger and had a big fight. Brad could have been mad and blamed me. I could have been mad and blamed him. But we both just decided to let it go.
For all the frustration of the day, nothing that had happened to us was worse than some crazy person deciding to kill people. Nothing that happened to us was beyond our means to fix or deal with. And the melting of Brad's car? Well it's another story to add to a long list of bizarre stories that have happened to the two of us that are mildly horrifying when they happen, but end up being pretty funny in hindsight.
By the end of the night, Malia, Brad and I, were sitting at the kitchen table, listening to music and spending time together. We don't usually spend a lot of family time during the week. Everyone's tired and busy. But that night, we all needed to connect. We had all been emotional about the events of the day, and we were all simply grateful to be together.
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