When There Is So Much More We Can Do

When the name of a mountain flower is never the same: Columbine, Columbine...

 

Columbine.

When your eight-year-old daughter is trying to figure out where a yellow plastic triangle fits in her Playmobil set and she places it in the hand of the teacher and you say, "Sure, maybe teachers need shields"-- and your sentence sinks to the floor, slithers to the corner, tail between legs, abruptly aware that the light of its words left years ago when school children slaughtered at desks became a regular feature of the nightly news.

Maybe teachers need shields. You swallow the irony that lands over your daughter's barely-still-innocent head.

When you can't keep all of the names straight anymore and you know some get more press than others, you remember Sandy Hook, Parkland, and now Santa Fe.

So many blooming children. Gone. Dismembered. Remembered. Forgotten.

When the Columbine you transplanted pokes green shoots through the composted soil and dirt creeps beneath your fingernails and you dig up the Fireweed, the majestic bloom that threatens to overtake your other plants.

Fireweed, royalty of the hillside, queen of the weeds, capable of spreading underground.

Fireweed like triggers pulled, like inaction, like thoughts for the family, like political gridlock, like prayers and promises, like stalled legislation, like fingers pointed elsewhere, like too many doors, like broken families, like arming teachers, like asking why, like throwing our hands up and saying there's nothing we can do.

When there is so much more we can do.

And yet you can't remember all the schools filled with teachers and children, schools with names like Columbine, the one that remains forever etched in your mind, back when massacres in locker-lined hallways still shocked, still mesmerized, before, like voracious weeds, they multiplied.

Before you forgot to remember.

Every last beautiful one.

Comments

[Laura]

This is terribly beautiful.

[Deb Bowers]

If it had not been for a Resource Officer and a teacher, at our local High school in Dixon, il. The results would not have been the same. The one that was shot was the victim himself. The armed officer and teacher saved many Seniors practicing for graduation.
Have a beautiful weekend!

Deb Bowers

[Christy]

Wow, Deb, thank you for sharing your story. I know there are so many more incidences than I even know. Wish it wasn't the case.

Thank you Laura.

[Greta]

The flowers are so pretty. Delicate, fantastical, yet hearty and tough. So many different colors. No matter how many columbines I encounter in our garden, the forest, or in town, each time I remember the high school in Littleton that shares its name with the CO state flower. The violence of that day, and so many more to come, and the beauty of this flower do not reconcile with one another. What beautiful images you capture! If anything, may the flower’s beauty remind us of nature’s constant harmony despite our endless, ignorant attempts to dismantle all that is good in this beautiful world.

[Christy]

Oh Greta, your comments always make me a little teary. I'd love to hike and talk with you someday in the mountains we love.