The same thing has happened twice this year, and it proves that we have taken political correctness way too far in this country.  The first happened in May when kids in one California school were chastised for wearing shirts with the American flag on Cinco de Mayo, and the second happened this past week when a boy was told to remove the American flag from his bicycle.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/05/06/2010-05-06_california_kids_blasted_for_wearing_american_flag_shirts_on_cinco_de_mayo.html

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-americanflagbike11122010,0,3045879.htmlstory

I'm sorry (actually, I'm not), but this is bullshit, especially when the reason turns out to be the same in both cases, and that reason is because people whose heritage stems from a different country are offended.

In the case in California, some Hispanic students complained because they thought the kids who wore the shirts with the American flags on them were "insensitive" to a day that was special in Mexico; however, there's a problem with that...the holiday isn't a national Mexican holiday, has very little to do with Mexican independence (that is celebrated on September 16, but Cinco de Mayo is a lot easier to drink to than diez y seis de septiembre), and it isn't widely celebrated in Mexico.  Cinco de Mayo represents the victory of the Mexican army over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, and it is still celebrated in the state of Puebla, but that's as far as it goes.  Yet it has become big business in the United States, and now it seems at the expense of our own flag.

The second incident stemmed from complaints, again, about how it was offensive to be able to fly the American flag on the back of a bicycle when the Mexican flag couldn't be brought to school.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Last time I checked, I don't live in Mexico, I live in the United States.  I don't go to Mexico and expect to be allowed to fly the American flag everywhere (and I don't expect translators, either; I speak Spanish fluently), and I don't see why the Mexican flag should be allowed to take precedence over our own flag here;  it infuriates me that we have become such a nation of pussies that we cannot take a stand for what that flag represents.  And what angers me even more is that the people complaining the loudest most likely weren't born in Mexico...they were born here, in the United States, which entitles them to the best this country has to offer, including the right to enjoy their heritage.

I am not trying to be racist, and I have no problem with the celebration of Mexican/Hispanic culture; but the celebration of this culture, or any culture, should not supersede the homogeneity that United States was meant to be.  We are a melting pot, not a bunch of little side dishes all demanding equal footing at the buffet table, and our flag represents this homogeneity.  When we start teaching our children that this is no longer the case, and, in fact, start punishing them for standing behind our flag, then we begin to erode the unity that has made this country great for over 200 hundred years.  And that's not fair...not fair to the Founding Fathers, nor to the people who have lived for, fought for, and died for this country, and that includes some people who are very, very close to my own heart, and to whom I have more respect than I can ever convey.

The United States has always entertained a variety in its populations: Republican or Democrat; Liberal or Conservative; Christian or Atheist; but the one thing we have always had is patriotism, and this patriotism has allowed the Christian and the Atheist and the Democrat and the Republican and the Liberal and the Conservative to stand together in defense of our nation.  This is why I insist my children stand every day with their classmates and say the Pledge of Allegiance (complete with the "One Nation Under God" part), and why I make sure they learn our history.  I want them to be proud of who they are and where they come from, and I don't want them to ever feel the necessity to bow to another nation's flag...unless they move there.

To my veteran friends - Thank you, and I will always be proud of our flag because of you.

I have a question for some of my Christian friends who follow this blog (whether they admit it or not):

My girls go to church.  I haven't hidden the fact from them that I'm not a believer, but I have decided to not force my lack of belief on them.  We all make decisions and determinations in our lives, and we deal with whatever the consequences of our choices may be.  My oldest has been very frank with me about her desire to learn about God and to establish a "relationship" with him/her/it, and I see no reason to counter that desire with my absolute lack of. 

We have actually had several discussions about it, and I usually end up telling her the same thing:  the only person who can make this choice is you.  If you truly want to go to church and learn about the Bible the way that whatever church you attend teaches you, then I will encourage you to do so, because the more you know, the better equipped you become to choose. And if you ultimately decide that you want to be a Christian, then I will support and respect this decision, as long as you respect my decision not to be.  I also have no problem with her asking me questions about something that was said, or the sermon that was preached, because I want her to know both sides of the issue.

So here is my question...does this door open both ways? 

If you are a Christian, and your child comes to you and says he or she no longer believes (or perhaps never did), how would you handle it?  Are you going to accept your child's proclamation, and allow him or her to stop going to church, but leave yourself open to the option that one day he or she might return to a life of faith?  Or are you going to insist your child keeps going to church every Sunday in hopes that somehow this loss of faith is only temporary, or that the belief will somehow force its way back in?

I am not knocking Christians, because I know atheists who are just as adamant that their children grow up to be nonbelievers; however, I don't believe you can lead your child's life for him (or her), and there are some things they just have to decide for themselves.

So tell me...what would you do?  How would you handle it?

This morning I took the final step toward getting my life back, and I never realized until now how something could be so easy and so complicated at the same time.  It is easy in the fact that it has been coming for a long, long time, and complicated because no matter how hard I try, there is still the inevitable guilt, anger and frustration that tears into you when you look into the faces of two innocent children who are wondering what in the hell is going on.

I have given up 16 1/2 years trying to make this work, and I'm to the point where I just can't do it anymore; the last 3 years have almost destroyed me.  When I look at it now, I think that's the key...I shouldn't be feeling like I've given up my life for someone else; mutual sacrifice I can understand, but not this kind of loss of self.  I have swallowed far more anger and resentment than any one person should be forced to (although I know there are those who have endured far more than I).

One thing I have noticed about my friends whose marriages have all endured is that there is more giving than there is taking.  I know it sounds corny, but it is true.  They give each other support; when one is sick, the other steps up.  When one is tired, the other makes dinner.  When one just needs some affection, the other gives it.  And when the tables are turned, the one gives it all back.  They each appreciate the other as a gift, and they cherish what they have been given.  My grandparents survived 52 years together this way; when one died, the other followed from a broken heart.

I am not a needy person; I don't need to hear "I love you" 10 times a day, or to be waited on, or to be put on a pedestal.  I don't need to be taken care of when I'm sick (in fact, you will find I am much easier to deal with if you leave me alone and let me be sick in peace).  I don't mind giving, and if you show me just a little appreciation, I will give you everything I have, and then some.  I don't believe in doing things half assed (except cleaning house, but that's a different matter); but when I start getting taken for granted, I can't give anymore, and in this case, it's way beyond that.

I have been asked repeatedly if there is someone else; even though there is someone skirting my peripheral vision, it is strictly coincidence.  As I said, this has been coming, and has been coming for quite some time.  But I was sick of being asked, and so this morning I finally said yes.  Yes, there is someone else.  Of course the demand was made that I say who, but the answer was simple.

The someone else is me.

Every so often we all have someone come into our lives who leave such a mark, good or bad, that no matter how far away they go, or how much time has passed, or even if death has claimed them, we can never let that person go.  I have been fortunate enough to have someone like that not just once, but three times.  Each of these people has changed me and the way I look at my world in some way.

Today would have been one of these people's 38th birthday if cancer hadn't claimed him in 2008 at 35.  I could go on for a while about what if felt like when I opened the paper and saw his obituary, but why?  Instead, he is one I would rather remember him as I knew him; strong, tough, defiant, and full of ego and shit.  He and his buddies "ruled the cruise" in our day, and everyone knew when he was in town.  He was the quintessential bad boy; nothing and no one ever phased him.  And he drove me absolutely crazy.

I will never forget the time he and his friends decided to go camping, and it was somehow determined that I was going, too.  I remember standing there thinking he was just flaming crazy if he thought for a second that I was going anywhere with them; it was almost 10 o'clock at night in October and it was COLD...and anyone who knows me knows if there is one thing I cannot stand, it is being cold.  I told him repeatedly which end of my ass he could kiss, and he just kept looking at me with that cocky ass smile of his.  Next thing I knew, I was loaded up in a truck, and I was going camping.

I froze my ass off that night, and by morning, I was ready to kill him; that sentiment didn't change when he, suffering from a hangover no less, dropped a cooler in front of me and asked me how long until breakfast.  I was like, I am not cooking breakfast.  He just said, "Well, what do you think we brought you for?", and we weren't leaving until I fixed breakfast.  I think I invented names to call him on the way home.

We lost touch after he went into the military, but I never forgot him.  Then, when I saw him several years later, there was no mistaking those blue eyes and that cocky ass smile, and there's no forgetting them, either.

The second one is a friend who I use to raise holy hell with, and who I am now regaining a closeness to because, even though our lives took very different paths, we have endured the same trials, tribulations and struggles.  There is a kindred there; we have both battled with depression, which means we have a unique kind of understanding and support for each other.  There is a certain level of strength that I gain from her, and that she gains from me.

The third...well, that one defies explanation, because I can't define how this person has affected my life so greatly; I just know, and I'm glad I do (whether this person has figured this out or not, I don't know...but I'm good with that).

I guess the best anyone can ever hope for is to have just one person like my three, because they are the ones who help make our lives special; they give us our memories (although some are sometimes painful), and they give us something to look forward to.  They provide us connections to our pasts, conversations for our present, and reasons to look toward the future.  I know my life would not be the same without these people in it.

In Memory of Jesse Neal Simpson, Jr.

November 13, 1972 - May 13, 2008

May you forever be at peace...

My mother lost her battle with drug addiction 5 years ago today when she learned the hard way that pneumonia, COPD, and an eight ball of cocaine don't play nicely together.  She died the same way she lived her life; hard and brutal, and her death was a sentence I would not pass on my worst enemy.

I remember sitting in the hospital unable to do a thing as she panicked while every organ in her body failed.  She couldn't breathe because her lungs were filled with fluid; her heart was beating so fast and her blood pressure was so high that every blood vessel in her eyes ruptured.  She had turned this sickly yellow and she was foaming at the mouth; she was in such a panic that they had physically restrained her, and all the skin over her wrists was torn and bruised.  She was begging my uncle and me to either kill her or save her; she wasn't even coherent enough to make sense from one minute to the other.  It was absolutely the most horrible thing I have ever watched happen in my entire life.

When the doctor came, he took me aside and told me point blank: your mother is going to die, and she either dies like this, or you give me permission to force her into a coma so she can die in peace.  I didn't even have to think about signing the form, and I stood there while they administered the narcotics; her drug tolerance was so high that the amount they gave her would have killed a 200 pound man in less than 15 minutes, and even then it still took nearly two hours and two more doses before she finally slipped into the coma from which she would never wake up.

My mother was an enigma; there was no rhyme or reason as to why she was the way she was, other than she was just born that way.  She had never been a warm or loving person, and I was often told that even as a child, she could be cold and manipulative.  Addiction, depression and psychopathic behavior runs rampant in my family history, and these traits culminated in her...it was just one of those things.

Truth be known, my mother did have her better moments; she was an incredibly gifted artist, and something about my oldest daughter triggered a certain instinct in her that no one else did.  Furthermore, she was good for an entertaining instant or two.  I will never forget her and a big old tom turkey that I had; that thing just hated her, and he would wait for any opportunity to chase her.  One day she pulled up in my driveway, and I saw her looking for that turkey.  I knew right where he was; he liked to hide on the other side of the hedge by the side of my house.  But she didn't see him, so she figured it was safe to make it through the front door.  I just watched her out my kitchen window, because I knew...

Sure as shit, here he came.  My mother's eyes got wide as could be when she saw him, and she started flying up the ramp to my deck with that damn turkey right behind her, his head bright red, wings outstretched and flapping and tail feathers straight up in the air.  He's gobbling up a storm, and she's yelling, "Heather!  Get your goddamn turkey!!" 

And I'm of no help, because I was in my kitchen absolutely rolling. 

She finally made it in the house; she yelled at me and cussed at me, and the more she yelled and the more she cussed, the harder I laughed.  After about the 20th threat to turn him into Thanksgiving dinner, she finally calmed down, but it took her a good three days to get over being mad at me.  (Meanwhile, that crotchety thing paced up and down the deck in front of the door for the next hour, still all puffed up and gobbling every so often just to let her know he was waiting for her.  I was nice, though, and penned him before she left.)

She was also the one who helped me recover from a near fatal illness after my first child was born.  Eva was barely three weeks old when I collapsed one day from a massive E. coli infection which had settled in my kidneys and a staph infection in the c-section incision; either one on its own could have landed me in the hospital, but combined they were almost lethal, and I had been suffering from both since my daughter had been born (I had also had preeclampsia and had to undergo an emergency cesarean after 29 hours of labor, which left my immune system compromised).  She sat by my side in the hospital for three days helping care for my newborn daughter while they pumped me full of antibiotics, trying to save what was left of my kidneys.  (Glad to report that my kidneys are now fine.)

When she went into the hospital for the last time, we knew she was never going to be the same.  My uncle and I had spent the morning making arrangements for hospice and nursing care, as well as for her impending death (although we weren't expecting it to happen as quickly as it did; we thought a month, two at most).   My family has always died at home, and my mother was going to be no different - I was fully ready to take care of her for however long necessary.

Maybe this was her way of making sure I didn't have to.

I honestly think my mother knew she was close to the end of her life even before this last bout; about three weeks before she died, my youngest daughter, who had just barely turned a year, was trying to climb on her lap.  My mom picked her up and held her, then she said to me, "Do you think Isella will remember me when I'm gone?"  She then looked at my daughter and just smiled.  After a moment, she said, "No.  She will have no memory of me."  I didn't give those words much thought then, but have never forgotten them since.

So now, five years down the road, I still catch myself thinking about her, and, in a weird sort of way, missing her.  She had always considered herself a free spirit (although she also said she never figured out quite how to land), and there was nothing more fitting of that sentiment than when we released her ashes above the canyon, and the coldest wind I swear I have ever felt in my life caught them and sent them swirling through the air.  It was at that moment when I realized that all the demons who had tormented her all of her life were gone, and she was finally and truly free.

A very curious thing happened the other day; I had not participated in the religion and faith forum I belong to for about a week, so I thought I'd check in.  As I was reading through one of the threads, I caught a dig at me and at my blog; one of the other members, the one who said he would pray that I would at least get an interview for the next $7.25 an hour job I applied for, accused me of "skewering" what he said, and "warned" the other members of the group to be careful of what they said to me, because I would turn it around on my blog.

I about fell off my chair laughing.

First of all, I have never hidden the fact that I write a blog, and secondly, when I ask this groups opinions on certain issues, I let them know I may use it in the blog.  It should be noted that this particular member and I, however, constantly go rounds.  He is, without a doubt, one of the more fundamentalist members of the group, and I, without a doubt, am not.  If there is a fight to be had, we have had it.

Truth be known, I don't think he's a bad guy; but I do believe his "version" of things are as skewered as he accuses me of being.  He is one of those people who grew up in faith, kind of lost it for a while, and then gained it back with a ferocity usually only found in a predator/prey situation.  I have no doubt he truly believes what he says, repeatedly, over and over, and then a few more times just in case we all missed it the during the previous 500 statements, but he does so with such a rigidity that he often leaves no room for discussion.  This means that what could be a well rounded debate turns into a battle with neither side gaining ground.  (And rarely is there a discussion that doesn't include at least one reference to the fourth turning, to someone's personal life, or to the internal vs. external locus of control, which has led me to wanting to tell him to take his locus and shove it internally up his control.)

I think part of the problem, though, is that I, along with some of the other atheists in this group, are just as rigid and unforgiving.  He is far from the only person I have engaged in extremely heated discussions with; however, many of them tend to retain some level of cordiality, even when there is absolutely no chance of agreement.  Yet there is very little of that with this particular person, and to say putting us in a room together and locking the door would be a bad idea is the absolute understatement of the year.

But that's not good, either, because, as someone whom I've grown to care for quite dearly and whose opinion I do respect a lot, reminded me once before, when I get to the point where I can no longer give room for their beliefs and opinions, then I really become no different than the people whose absolutely rigid fundamentalist views drive me crazy.  (Ding, I know you are reading this, and are sure you know whom I am referring to, but it isn't, and if you still think it is, you can go fly.)  Of course, my friend was referring more to the people who offer prayers and support as a genuine aspect of their faith, but it applies here as well.  If we both just want to spout our side without respecting the side of the other, then there will never be conversation, and without conversation, there cannot be consensus, and without consensus, there can be no balance, and without balance...well, you get the idea.

Truth be known, there are several members of this group who, while I may not agree with their views, I have a great deal of respect for.  They are just good people overall, and when they offer something, the try to keep it positive (they also tend to stay out of the more intense conversations).  I could probably learn from them if I would let go of some of this ego of mine; in fact, all of us fundamentalists on either side could.

Maybe if I took a page from their book, I could be part of the solution, instead of just the catalyst for an argument.

"Hope" and "Faith"

"Hope" is such a loaded word; people will tell you to have hope, not to give up hope, and to not lose hope.  On the flip side, others will tell you not to get your hopes up, don't set your hopes to high, and while it's alright to hope for the best, you still need to prepare for the worst.  You can have all your hopes met, or all your hopes dashed, or you there can be no hope for you at all.  So what, exactly, am I suppose to do with it?

A lot of times, the word "hope" is used in conjunction with the word "faith", which also can be far more loaded than its one syllable would indicate.  Both words carry such positive, yet such negative, connotations; you can have all the faith in the world in someone, and the next day, lose all the faith you ever had in that same person.  By the same token, you can have such high hopes for something you want so dearly, and then when it doesn't, lose all faith that anything like it will ever happen again.  Those two words can bring a lot of joy, but at the same time, deliver more than enough pain.

I really try to avoid engaging in either one; it is much easier to handle the disappointment that comes with having your hopes destroyed and your faith lost if you avoid it in the first place.  Perhaps that is a pessimistic, not to mention jaded, stance to take, but it is by far safer, at least for me...yet despite my very guarded nature, sometimes they both manage to sneak in.  I've been feeling them (hope more so than faith) sneaking around, and I have caught myself wanting to open up, in spite of the possible hurt I can experience with either one.  I have been asking myself all day if I can do it, and if it's even worth it.

Today has been one of those weird, off kilter days because of what has been playing out in my mind.  My normal, arrogant, egotistical self has been rocked a little, and that is something I am just not use to.  My brain has been going back and forth all day between wanting to, yet not daring to, and it hasn't even begun to settle down.  This isn't me; I don't do this...I don't let myself go to that place of hopes and dreams and uncertainties, and here I've come close to doing just that.

And it hurts.

By tomorrow, I'm sure I will have wrestled myself back to that place of guarded control which is, by far, my comfort zone, with all of its complications firmly in tact.  But today, I seem to be losing the match.  Perhaps I should just give in for now, and hope by tomorrow it will all be back to normal, and have faith that it will be.