Tears come easily these days.
Listening to Hamilton-- the scene when Phillip dies, with both his parents by his bedside, the song "Its Quiet Uptown" that follows--I find myself sobbing in my car on my way to Kenai for a meeting of school counselors.
I think of all the children we serve, all the families who love them, all the possible accidents, injuries, sicknesses that await underneath a shroud of our overcrowded understaffed emergency rooms.
I think of all our healthcare workers, who live in a loop of crisis response, unable to rest, running from bedside to bedside, doing the best they can in dire circumstances.
I cry for our kids who live in a world of feuds over health policies, fueled by politics, instead of dueling medical approaches. A world where everyone is an expert, regardless of experience, and our ability to hear has been silenced by the blare of alarmists, apathy, indifference, rage.
A world where denial, anger, and blame reign supreme, where kindness, compassion, and acceptance shrink in the shadows, searching for a space to land. A space to expand beyond borders, to burst through boundaries, to stand above the icy fog of fear.
Looking at iconic photographs from September 11, 2001--the second plane before it hits, the dust covered New Yorkers caught fleeing, the firefighters raising the flag in the rubble--I find myself crying on the twentieth anniversary, before I've even gotten out of bed.
I think of all the lives lost, all the families forever changed, the courageous acts that defined so many folks in the end. The man with the red bandana, Welles Crowther, who led people out of the burning building only to run back into the tower before it collapsed around him. The passengers and crew on Flight 93, who chose to fight back against the hijackers, with nothing more than bravery, love, and boiling water.
I cry for these crystalline moments, when humanity rises above the destruction and chaos to shine a light towards hope. The statue of liberty in the foreground as the smoke of the twin towers paints the sky grey. The way people in our country united beneath the eerily silent skies. The babies born to 9/11 widows, who burst into the world gulping air their fathers could no longer breathe, who emerged with their Dad's eyes, their Dad's heart, their Dad's stories.
Reading the news--Hurricane Ida, Caldor Fire, European Floods, Colorado River-- I cry for the drying lakes, endless wildfires, reckless storms, dying trees, melting glaciers, rising oceans, littered beaches, tainted rain. For the villagers who need to relocate, the salmon that didn't return, the polar bears without ice, the shorebirds unable to fly.
"Why?" the children ask, "Why?"
In response, all I can do is cry.
And love.
I can always choose love.
Whenever I feel overwhelmed in my work as a school counselor by all the obstacles our children face, I return to this mantra: "All you can do is love them when they are in front of you."
I do not possess a magic wand to take away their challenges. I do not own an easy button that actually works. But I can sit amidst the hurt and help to hold it for awhile. I can witness pain. I can validate feelings.
I can stand with them, on the edge of the abyss, as we holler together into the unknown.
And I can love the patch of earth I call home.
I can tend the soil, plant seeds, water, weed, and give thanks to all the various animals, plants and trees that share this space with me.
I can always choose love.
I can love. I can love. I can love....