Who's the important person who died?

All our flags in St. Louis are at half mast. Last week, five officers lost their lives in a shooting in Dallas. Other officers lost their lives in other cities. Before that, two innocent men lost their lives to police officers. Friday, another police officer was shot just down the street from me. The shooter was captured in our neighbors' lawn. You can't escape violence. No matter what you do or how far you run, it seems to get closer and closer.

My son and daughter - 10 and 6 respectively - know that when a flag is flying at half mast, that means someone in important has died. When my son asked me who, I tried to be as honest as I knew how to be.

"Everyone is important. Every life matters. The lives of two innocent men were taken by officers who were meant to protect them. For revenge, someone took innocent police officers' lives. Not only in Dallas, but in other cities as well. I don't know if he was doing the same thing, but another police officer was shot in St. Louis, too."

When they talked about what a horrible thing it was, I didn't know what else to tell them other than all people are a mixture of bad and good. What matters is what you do. Everyone has bad thoughts. But your actions matter - your voice can speak only words; your actions speak volumes. Taking that step to thinking something bad, then doing something bad is one of the most dangerous things you can do - it's toxic. Mix that with easily-available weapons, and you have a deadly mix of willingness and the tools to carry out your intentions. And it doesn't matter who you are or why you're doing it - whether it's your religion driving you, your frustration, whatever.

I don't know what the answer is. Certainly I think that we should have far better gun control than we do now. But how do we fix a broken relationship? I'm about as white as white can be and even I can tell that there is a serious difference in how I'm treated and how someone with darker skin is treated.

I even see that sometimes in my children. "Oh, they're part Indian? I was wondering where they came from. They must be very hard workers." (Well, they sure as hell didn't come from the supermarket, and actually they're just about as work-averse as any kid unless you threaten their allowance.) Or my husband, who is apparently not supposed to sound like a Midwesterner, but a caricature on The Simpsons. I can't even imagine what being African-American is like in this country, where Donald Trump is for some ungodly reason on the rise while sanity seems to be waning. I guess that's what happens when people are afraid.

But until we air all our shit, important people - everyday people - will keep dying. And all our flags will keep flying at half mast.

I honestly don't know what the point of this blog post is. Venting frustration, maybe. Reminding people that someone's out there who's just as confused as everyone else, who's trying to find a way to explain to her children what in the hell is going on in the world. This may always have been happening - maybe we just didn't know until we had 24-hour media. But holy hell, we've got to do something other than what we're doing now. You want to make America great again? You want to make the world a wonderful place to live? Stop killing people. Stop giving people the means to kill other people and give them the tools to communicate.