Where Home Is

 

Because of my infamous great-grandmother, most people associate me with Missouri. That’s just Mom’s side. Dad’s family hailed from Illinois—well, Wisconsin before that, where the homestead was. Ireland before that.

But my dad mostly grew up in a small town in Illinois. He returned there after his stint in the army in WWII. He drove a taxi for a while, which is how he met my mom, offering her a ride home one night after she’d been pestered by a guy at the club where she’d been singing with the band.

Mom and Dad married in 1947, and Dad got a job on the local police force. A family story we heard repeatedly as kids was the time Dad got a call on his radio to Be On the Look-out for a two-year-old boy who had wandered away from his home on such-and-such street. My dad responded immediately and found him, blocks from home, walking with his dog, headed downtown. He recognized the boy right away—because it was his son, my oldest brother, Danny.

My siblings were born back there, but Mom and Dad moved to California just before I was born. When Dad passed away in 1963, Mom piled us in the station wagon and we drove back there to see all the aunts and uncles, all the cousins we would never have the opportunity to grow up around. And damn, they were good people, even when we were kids, accepting us, playing with us, as if we’d lived there all along. I was only nine years old, but I do remember that. That, and the small-town feel of everyone living within a short distance of each other. One night we’d be at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Betty’s house. The next night we’d be at Uncle Mo and Aunt Lee’s. Lots of Irish people. Lots of Italians. Lots of food. Lots of love. That’s what I remember.

Now, most of my cousins, except for a couple of them, have moved out of that small town, but they still live close enough to gather often. When my sister and I visited in 2018—my first time back there since 1963—there they all were, gathering in my cousin Mary’s home to hang out with us, just as they had 55 years earlier—as if we’d been there among them all along. Lots of food. Lots of love. Lots of stories to share. My cousin Donny drove us around town, pointing out where various people, including our grandparents, had once lived, and Fort Sheridan, where my dad would’ve been inducted into the army. All of it still there, all these decades later. Gotta love that small town life.

Recently I spoke with my cousin (by-marriage-but-who-cares) Stephanie, who told me about how the town still had that small-town feel. “I’m so near-sighted,” she told me, “I wave at everyone. This stems from an incident in my childhood when a neighbor called my mother and accused me of being rude because I hadn’t waved back at her. I just hadn’t seen her. Ever since then, I wave at everyone.” She went on to say there was a particular young man in the neighborhood who used to ride by on an electric scooter, blaring loud music. Stephanie and her husband worried about him being hit by a car. She always waved at him. “One day,” she said, “he actually waved back.”

You know, having been born on July 4^th, I’m a sucker for a Fourth of July parade. We have one here in the park, though it’s a golf cart parade—no marching bands, but if the local fire department isn’t on a call, they show up and roll through the park. It’s always fun. This year I watched with my neighbors, then got in the car to go look at a typewriter I wanted to buy. I had to veer off the road and send out a frantic text message, though, as soon as I turned on the radio and heard there’d been a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.

Highland Park. That small town where my parents met and married. Where my dad had received commendations for his service with the p.d. Where my siblings were born. Where my cousins, Kathy and Donny still live, and Stephanie just blocks away in Highwood. That boy she always waved to, the one that finally waved back, turned out to be the shooter.

Like me, Stephanie and her husband have always loved a Fourth of July parade, have always gone to the one in Highland Park with friends. “It’s our tradition,” she told me. This year, their friends could not attend, and Stephanie and Joe made a last-minute decision not to go. It may have saved their lives.

I asked her what the atmosphere in the town was like since the shooting, how people were coping. She told me she’d worked with one of the victims who died, that people were raising funds for the survivors, that Highland Park had been big on helping people during the pandemic, so once again the citizens dove in to help out. Lots of food. Lots of love.

This is small town life. Or was. As we’ve seen, small town life may never be the same again. There is—was—that sense of safety and security that everyone talks about when everyone in a town has lived there long enough to know everyone’s parents and grandparents: “That kind of thing doesn’t happen here,” the mayor of Highland Park said. She believed that… up until the day it did happen there. Be mindful. And, I hate to say this part, keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Because if it could happen in Highland Park, Illinois, it could indeed happen anywhere.

 

What Will it Take?

 

Remember back in 2016, not long before the presidential election, when that bit of footage was found and re-played with Donald Trump saying you (“you” meaning celebrities and/or powerful men) could grab a woman by the pussy? Remember how outraged we all were? And fed up? Remember how women finally started talking to each other about all the times they’d been violated in some way by men, whether verbally or physically? And women across the nation made pink pussy hats? And thousands upon thousands of women came out and marched to show support for one another? To say, ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore’?

It changed things. Women changed things, changed the conversation or began it, or whatever, but all across the country, it was no longer okay for men to behave badly, and if they did, they might meet swift and dire consequences for their actions. Bravo, ladies.

If you’re a bit older (old enough to remember the 1980’s), the name Candy Lightner might not ring a bell, but you probably do remember MADD, the organization she founded after her thirteen-year-old daughter, Cari, was hit by a drunk driver and killed. MADD—Mother’s Against Drunk Driving—started out as many women’s movements did back then—with an uphill battle and a great deal of derision on the part of the (male-dominated) press. And yet, that small group of angry mothers who had lost loved ones to vehicular violence grew and grew into a nation-wide organization that is still active today.

Those women, in raising their united voices, raised our awareness of the horrific lack of legal consequences for drunk driving, and more importantly, they lobbied the courts and legislators doggedly for years until stiffer penalties were finally introduced, thus saving thousands upon thousands of lives. Bravo, ladies.

Women, when we are angry enough, when we are fed up enough, can be a formidable force.

Case in point: Rosa Parks. (Ms. Parks, by the way, did not sit in the “white” section of the bus. She sat in the “colored” section. Why didn’t she stand when the bus driver demanded she give up her seat to a white man? Because, she said, “I was tired.” One can only imagine how exhausting life was for a Black woman in Alabama in 1955.)

Which brings me to another case in point: Mamie Till-Mobley. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was abducted from his uncle’s home by three white men because his behavior had been perceived as inappropriate toward a white woman. He was tortured for hours, then murdered, his body dumped in a river. During that night of torment, Till’s body was mutilated and his face beaten so severely he was rendered unrecognizable. And yet, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that her son be given an open-casket funeral. Why? In her words: “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” People flocked to the funeral. The press came. Women fainted when they saw Emmett Till’s mangled face. Photographs were taken, and the images eventually shared across the country.

Mamie Till-Mobley’s courage forced people around the country—around the globe—to confront the atrocities of racism. Bravo, Ms. Mobley. Your son, and your love for him, will never be forgotten.

In one of my many conversations this week with other women—other mothers—about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a friend said, “All these funerals now, all these small caskets…. I heard a reporter suggest that we need another Mamie Till-Mobley. Maybe we need to have open casket funerals for these children, for all the children who die as a result of gun violence. Maybe that would turn the tide. Maybe if people saw that, it would make it real enough for them to vote for politicians who support gun control reform. I don’t know. It’s awful to think about. But maybe that’s what it will take.”

I’m asking the mothers, the grandmothers, the sisters, the aunts, the teachers: What will it take? What do we have to do to turn the tide? We already know that we can be a force to be reckoned with if we unite with a common purpose, if we are so angry, we refuse to accept the status quo. Are we there yet? Have we reached that “mad as hell” point yet? Or will it take just one more slaughter of innocent children to have us all out marching?