Tag: teenagers

Posted in College, Insight, Teens, What's Next? (18 & beyond), Wisdom of Youth

Parenting bites…

Posted on by Kelly Salasin

With the nest almost empty now, my parenting insights come in shorter bits which I suppose is just about right as I turn more & more toward other things…

And yet, I’m learning that this role is the role of a lifetime…

~

Payback Theater

That rare night when he goes to bed before us. A dramatized rendition of what we endure night after night. Door latches. Stairs. Lights. A sudden desire to share scientific discoveries, insights, intimacies.

~

IN A FAMILY WAY

It’s such a comfort, this being a family. A buffer. An ease. A certainty. Sweet. Exhausting. Consuming. Distracting.

The silence, after, is deafening. Resurrecting. The original. Sin. Of separation. Abandonment. Mortality.

There is this larger family. This shared dwelling. This belonging.

There is this whole.

Past. Present. Future.

One.

~

OUR TURN

My state is proposing a 24-hour waiting period to buy a handgun.

Here’s an idea. Until this country figures out its shit when it comes to guns, men are unable to purchase them, and women are in charge of any firearms in the home. Furthermore, public funds are provided to women for firearm training and to provide the necessary equipment for safekeeping. Additionally, all new hires in positions that require firearms will be women until such time that a 50/50 gender balance is achieved in police departments, security teams, military personnel, etc. Public funding will also post armed women at every school, church, and each of the other venues that the men of our country frequent to kill people begrudgingly and at random.

You’ve had our vote, our money, our bodies. We’ll have your guns.

~

FROM THE MOUTH OF BABES

”It’s like the release of a new iPhone. Is it going to be good, and are we gonna like it, or is it just gonna be the same thing without a headphone jack?”

Our youngest, on the Mueller Report

~

APOCALYPSE

You know how if your kids are plugged in–at home or in the car–you gain some well-deserved solace, but it’s bittersweet because they’re checked out, like that rambunctious kid in your classroom on Ritalin, or the outlying boroughs of NYC, silenced by the seduction of indoor screens, or the neighborhood of my childhood on the base at West Point, the roads in front of the homes now three times as full with oversized SUVs obscurring the view of the Hudson, while the sidewalks and the playgrounds and the woods, once sprinkled with kids, are barren, even on a perfect July day, like the ghost town we visited when we lived in the Rockies, or the Apocalypse we inhabit now–quieted, distracted, consumed.

Posted in Fragile Life, Insight, Mother to Crone

Half-Mast for School Kids

Posted on by Kelly Salasin


In February, I found myself stuck in a chair, inside a building, listening to people talk at me for 7 hours a day.

When it was time to leave, they filled my arms with work that would eat away at what remained of the evening.

In encountering such violence (made more apparent in its stark contrast to self-employment), my heart went out to high schoolers everywhere, and thus when I later saw a group of angry-looking teenagers roaming the streets of the city, I understood.

On the second day of this three-day training, despite the holiday, there was no mention of LOVE, and so that when I returned to my hotel room, alone, I gave in to the novelty of television, discovering that a school shooting had just taken place in Florida.

What I wanted most to do in that moment was to embrace my own high schooler and keep him home from school for the rest of the week (or forever), but instead, I messaged him to be sure he opened the  chocolates I’d left behind, and then I got into a hot bath, and never opened my homework.

On the final day of training, there was no talk of the shooting, and yet just the thought of any high schoolers made it hard to breathe, and when one passed me in the parking lot at the end of the day, he looked me in the eyes and said with surprising warmth:

How’s it going?

And right there, with the sun high above us, and my satchel heavy on my shoulder, and the flag at half-mast, I almost cried.