The Late Arrival

"What's that, mom?" Georgia asked as she pointed at my forearm. It was a bump, a little mole that appeared when I was carrying her and has lived there since. Thinking about how my body changed during those nine months brought a smile to my face and I explained that it was a "present" she gave me before she even got here. A year or two later, someone else asked about it and I told the story. Concerned, the person asked if it had gotten bigger, or if it hurt. They suggested it might be worth having a doctor look at just to be sure it wasn't cancerous. Geez. I hadn't thought of melanoma. The doc checked it out and it was the harmless present as I first suspected. Even so, I began to play it safe and religiously slathered on sunscreen from that day forward. Now enter Donald Sterling - He of bazillions of dollars who flaunts a girlfriend while married and airs bigoted, heartfelt rhetoric, He who has been sued for housing discrimination - is like my m...

A little over one year ago for the kid barely in his twenties. A month ago for the forty-nine year old rock star’s girlfriend. Barely a week ago for the twenty-two year-old entrepreneur. Come July, it’ll be seven months for the thirty-some year old mom of little ones not yet in their teens. Sometimes death by suicide makes headlines. Sometimes, the loved ones drowning in its wake are the only ones who know about it. When it’s a headline, count on news anchors to assume a pseudo-sad tone as they report the tragedy with heads cocked to one side, staring through the camera’s lens and into the eyes of whoever is on the other side, and asking Why? …and then moving on to the next news bite for popular consumption. "There are such things as dumb questions, and in suicide’s shadow, Why is the dumbest of question of them all." Answers to Why are never productive. They don’t restart the heart, cause oxygenated blood to course through the body to...

But. It’s the lovechild of Truth and Denial , second cousin to Nevertheless . A simple three letter word that takes up less than a half-inch of nine point Arial font. Easily read and pronounced unlike the billion dollar, multisyllabic words. And so we use it a lot. Maybe the sheer convenience of But is why we default to it so often. At the same time, And - another short, easily recognizable word - is used sparingly. I can’t help but think the world would be a better place with less Buts and more Ands . With But , everything is a mutually exclusive event, and everything is an either/or proposition. This pot roast is good, BUT it needs a little seasoning. Can’t you just see crotchety Aunt Sally (or whoever is notorious for critiquing your meals) grimacing as her words mask her intent to say your pot roast is barely palatable and far beyond the help of a little seasoning? And , on the other hand, is a connector. In the land of And , things happen in tandem and mutually excl...