Shadows

Regi Haslett-Marroquin tells a story of growing up farming near the rainforests of Guatemala. Weeds sprouted in a day, and even when Regi’s family hung the pulled weeds in the air, their roots continued to grow toward the earth. When he was about eight years old, Regi’s father decided to try some herbicide on the weeds, and it worked. The robust plants turned to mush. Regi remembers his father studying the dead vegetation a couple of days later. He decided the chemicals were too violent to use in the fields where the family grew their food. They never used those chemicals again.

I expect that the fields around us will be sprayed with herbicide within the next couple of weeks when the ground dries out enough. I am waiting for this uneasily, wishing that more people shared the views of Regi’s father.

In the meantime, the skies have been gray, and in some places water lies bright between furrows of turned earth. The wind has been raw. My children have been playing inside for the most part, and my son is engrossed by a huge collection of Star Wars action figures and space ships, saved from my husband’s childhood. Our family room is the site of constant battle.

I wish I felt easy putting an end to this game. With all this talk about guns and shooting, shadows are gathering in my heart. As a survivor of gun violence and other abuse, I know a murky land that lays itself over the rest of my life. Gray vapors hover at the edge of my sight and evaporate when I turn to look at them directly. A dank coolness pools around me and wraps me in fear now and then.

Playing with action figures is a normal part of growing up for lots of kids. My husband thinks it is part of a developmental stage. I don’t want to keep my children from what most people consider to be normal childhood fun. Already, we don’t have a television, and watching a movie is a huge deal in this house. And yet, why is it normal for so many toys to be based on games of murder? Why is it impossible for a family to watch a baseball game on television without seeing people shoot at each other during the commercials? The prevalence of violence makes it feel more awful, not less, and I feel wildly alone and a little off my rocker because I can’t accept this as normal and fine.

The same feeling envelops me as I wait for the neighboring farmers to start spraying the fields. Like Regi’s father, I believe those sprays are violent. Most people feel the sprays are helpful and necessary, and that they prevent the misery of hunger. Perhaps they are deferring some misery, but I feel in my bones that future generations will be repaying that debt with crushingly high interest. I also remember the six-legged frog I held in my hand, and I picture the nearby sign that stands at the beginning of a corn field, honoring a child who died of cancer. Every week or so, someone ties a new stuffed animal to that sign. I feel lonely and even a bit frantic as I think that the collective wisdom of the culture is not keeping us safe.

I know from experience that nothing good will come from staying in a place of fear. So I am holding on to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I am standing at the bottom of a terrible, haunted stairway, its walls covered with peeling yellow wallpaper. The stairway is the symbol of all of the destruction left behind by violence. Fear fixes me to the ground, and I grieve that I will never be able to climb those stairs. I’ve dreamed this over and over, but one night Jesus stood with me at the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, not afraid or even surprised, and then his laughter echoed warm and spacious in that narrow place.