Passing over Easter

Tonight I am exhausted. It’s psychic exhaustion. It’s let down. My head and heart have been spinning about this particular column for weeks now. This is supposed to be the annual Women’s History month column, but also the annual March 18th column, the date when my life was permanently changed at the age of nine by a drunk driver. Then again, it’s spring so it’s also the annual ‘don’t let kids get drunk or doped up on the Island so they get themselves killed’ column. Then again it’s Easter and Passover and I always have a bit of a piece about escape and redemption and being who God made you to be, believing you are loved unconditionally and letting that change your life.
 
But what I really want to write is this…and please don’t be offended. 
 
 Why does Vashon have to be perfect?  I’d really just like to have a ‘let’s be honest about Vashon’ column and then I’d like to not ever write again about the things of Vashon but rather about those characteristics in our lives that are just like everybody who lives off Island. But it just isn’t done. Not unless we form a committee and get a grant and have a survey so we can find out what we already knew but maybe couldn’t convince ourselves we were capable of dealing with   See…that sounds a little pissy doesn’t it? Or frustrated?  Or is it visionary?
 
Caity is home, for good, for a while. That means years maybe…till grad school.
 
Ten years ago I sent her off to a school where she could learn from 8-5 everyday what it means to excel as a student and as an artist with very high strict standards. See…don’t get offended that I couldn’t find that at VHS. That just means Interlochen Arts Academy offered her a twenty two thousand dollar scholarship to get a world-class education. VHS can’t charge each student thirty three thousand a year, the actual cost of tuition per year at Interlochen at the time, and give them a world class education with an absolutely zero tolerance policy. So why get offended?
 
Anyway, she stayed with me for two weeks while she and her roommate were doing clean up, paint up, fix up, to their apartment overtown and we laughed a lot. One phrase she frequently used in jest was, “ooooohhhhhh 1st world problems again!”  
 
I’m tired of first world problems. You know, problems that come because of excess of resources …and emotional lack.
 
For two weeks now, I’ve been remembering chasing after a van full of kids being driven by a woman who was sky high loaded and had been stealing kid’s Ritalin. I couldn’t get anybody to listen. I just found the little slips of paper on which I had written each day’s dosages for each kid and how much had been stolen. Caity and I were looking through boxes seeing what of her stuff she wanted and what was mine that still needed to be filed.
 
I threw them out, the little slips of paper. I waited several years for the agency to prove themselves to be fraudulent in toto and move off Island. I healed from feeling like the main character in “Nobody Listens to Andrew” and rejoiced the day they had the first drug take back where people gave all their unused meds up for disposal.
 
First world problems. Parks and Recreation. First world problems. Building permits, first world problems.  School schedule controversies. First world problems.
 
 At the age of 9, I suffered a double fractured femur, completely dislocated right hip, severed sciatic nerve, two broken feet, fractured pelvis and full force blunt trauma to the L4-5 breaking off the facets of one the vertebrae. They didn’t discover the full injury ie.my left leg healed two inches shorter than the right one, so I walked around with functional scoliosis until I was in my mid thirties at which time they gave me a lift.
 
Don’t drink and drive. You will hurt someone. This afternoon at work I was bemoaning how I could never move off Island because it was too noisy. There was this helicopter buzzing overhead as the kids and I were playing outside. Half an hour later I turned on the radio and discovered there was an accident a few blocks away with two people dead in the street, a mother and a two week old infant rushed to the hospital to try and save them. Driver was arrested for DUI. He cried. So did the guy who hit us. Susie, my friend, sitting next to me in the car died. She was eleven. We haven’t had anyone really young get killed yet here on the Island.  Let’s keep it that way. Sad enough with teens.
 
I can write a morose, whiny column like this that sort of calls things out because of the women’s movement. Women get to say things now and still be considered ‘feminine’. OK that’s women’s history month.
 
As to Passover… well…the Jewish doctor who did my mid life neurological assessment some years ago told me there was no functioning nerve below my right knee, ‘but obviously something is getting through’ he said. “No, “ I told him. “It’s a God thing”. My own personal parting of the Red Sea. It’s why I’m passionate about life and hell will freeze over before I get one of those little disabled cards on my car. I can’t ever give into it, my disabilities. I just can’t. He nodded his head in agreement. God wants to rescue you.
 
Easter, well…  I believe in confession and redemption. No cheap Grace. Saying I get frustrated off loads it so I don’t act it out. Tell your worst secret to someone. It will make your life better.
 
So, the Good News for Vashon is this. We don’t have to be perfect. Don’t make someone else next to you live a lie. Give them permission to screw up and tell the truth about it. That’s the only thing we need on this Island to be better. We need to know that someone’s behavior and their personhood are two different things.
Be the Love you want to receive. And that’s all I’m ever going to say about Vashon.
Deborah