They were mine for a while. Clouds. Clouds of fluffy white that moved lightly through the spring air like cotton. What a gift to watch them like a child, as they took the shapes of fanciful creatures and everyday items; a crocodile morphing into a perfect frying pan, a butterfly becoming a car. Oh, look, that one looks like Ringo.
Then there were the looming dark clouds, making the sky seem close and ceilinged, almost rumbling with the promise of some grand weather event, as if nature wanted to remind us it is there and bigger then we are. Personally, I take comfort in something bigger then me. Those days and days of the same California blue sky, where it could be any season, began to seem empty to me, as if God and nature both had somewhere else to be. We are so often left with the same old backdrop; even when the circumstances and plot have changed, I have to wonder if the grand stage manager has fallen asleep, or stepped out with the ingénue from the first act to the bar ‘round the corner.
Yes, changing weather provides an atmosphere to living that can inspire, can quicken a step, lighten a heart, provoke a new dream, or wake a memory long forgotten. So, too, can an idea whose time has come.
I bless the conviction and daring of youth, still so close to knowing its heart and, without faltering, following where it leads. We have seen that esprit and determination rise up right in front of us, like gleaming new clouds on the horizon, in the person of the Parkland Students and all those joining their noble ranks to create change. Here is the best of us and I can’t help but hope that the Never Again Movement sends a shiver through the wooden old men and that hardened NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch. Please.
I know these times need and deserve their own song but a troubadour from another generation, a generation that once also knew and followed its heart, sang some words that express the power in a nation on the brink of change. In Bob Dylan’s lyrics:
Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.
For the times they are a-changin’.
And thank god they are a-changin’ for I was beginning to feel a kind of creakiness setting in, an acknowledgment of reaching a certain age, accompanied by an almost Eeyore-like “why bother” attitude. I noted a resignation to what seemed the inevitable, such as someday needing the protection of a leakproof panty, or having to make “final arrangements,” or of living to see the return of the TV show, “Rosanne.” Now that’s something to protest. So, it was with renewed vigor I anticipated joining the March for Our Lives event March 24.
It seemed appropriate to have my daughter home from college for spring break to share the experience. Instead of shopping at the mall we would march together, two different generations united in America, standing up for a cause, carrying our signs. But Miranda and I were stymied as to what our signs should say.
The purpose of the sign is to provoke and inspire change, so having at times a way with words, I thought, “I’ve got this. I’ll come up with something pithy yet powerful,” but nothing mighty poured forth. We didn’t want to duplicate the obvious, “Arms Are For Hugging”, or “Make Love Not Guns,” and although good, I figured they would both already be in play. I wanted originality. Miranda requested something simple, a play on words or a Dr. Seuss-type rhyme. I thought and thought and seemed to get nothing but a headache. It was as if I had sign-writer’s block. I was reduced to the most banal of wordage:
The Cat In The Hat
Knows Guns Are Crap!
Or the one that came to me in the middle of the night,
The Wise Old Owl Says,
“Hoot Hoot! Don’t Shoot!”
Or my homage to the Margaret Wise Brown classic,
Goodnight Violence, Goodnight Hate,
Goodnight Gun Laws Out Of Date.
But it is the NRA that needs to be addressed, so I reached back to the sixties and adapted an anti-war chant,
Hey, Hey!
NRA
How Many Kids
Got Shot Today?
Miranda ended up taking inspiration from the name of our own Topanga Gypsy Flower Caravan. She printed out a picture of a gun fashioned out of colored flowers and wrote, “Flowers to the People” next to it. Its very simplicity made it powerful. We were good to go.
We traveled up to Ventura to join my good friend, Cindy, with whom I have marched for peace and change beginning in the ‘60s. Her sign was a printout of the Time magazine cover depicting the Parkland students.
Then, under a sky of swirling clouds, suggesting a change coming, we joined that city’s march, while not thousands, was perhaps hundreds strong. Carrying signs raised high and receiving supportive honks and peace signs from passing cars, were participants of all ages. We were parents with young children, teachers, students, grandparents, but it was the teens that shone. Students from Ventura High School had organized the march which was about a mile long, culminating at Plaza Park where the students spoke. Now and then I fear that our “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” naïveté will be met by the hard-core ugly, machine side of politics and trample the vision of the teens. But that was not the case in what I heard them say. They were bold and bright and right.
Sam Coats, a student from Ventura High, spoke the truth, “We can walk up and down the Main Street, and get newspaper coverage and have powerful politicians come to speak and it won’t do a damn bit of good. What can we do to change the world? We can vote.”
“He’s good,” said Miranda.
I smiled to see my daughter, now a young woman, standing next to Cindy and me, holding her own sign along with a new generation, believing that they can make a change. They made me believe it too.
Your old road is rapidly aging; please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand,
For the times they are a changin’.
