I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

I have been overwhelmed and humbled by the support and friendship I’ve received over the past two days. Thank you. PANK is donating all our proceeds from sales of our first chapbook and PANK 4 to the American Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières between now and 2/13/10. Go here to get some great reading and do a good thing.

I have heard from old friends, acquaintances, exes, that’s the overwhelming part. I’m humbled because even people I’ve treated poorly when I was young and/or stupid have been kind enough to ask how me and my family are doing. My parents have experienced much of the same–almost everyone my father has ever worked with has gotten in touch with him. It’s kind of crazy to see how widely the story of the earthquake is being reported and how strongly people are reacting to the catastrophe.

Everyone asks me how I’m doing and I say I’m fine. I say I’m fine because really, what else is there to say? I cannot overstate how lucky my family and I are. We have suffered some great losses and I do not mean to minimize that but it is almost embarrassing to say I’m having a hard time when I think of the people in Port-au-Prince, both my family who are safe but traumatized and grieving and the unfathomable millions who are without shelter, food, water or hope. However bad you think the situation in Haiti is, whatever you think you’ve seen on the news, multiply that by a thousand. What’s even more disheartening is to know that in a day or two, all hell is going to break loose.

I am fine but I just cannot comprehend how something like this could happen in a country that could so little afford such a calamity. I have never been a woman of strong faith but I must admit that what little faith I had has been completely shattered and I’m not even remotely interested in entertaining any discussion about it.  I look at what happened in Haiti, I look at people like Pat Robertson (not even worth our time, right?) and Rush Limbaugh (human excrement) and the guys at Perkins tonight who were openly making jokes about the earthquake and I think surely there is no God.

I am fine but I feel numb because it is all so overwhelming. Watching CNN is overwhelming. To know the country well enough to understand how desperate and impossible the situation is, overwhelms me. Anderson Cooper is sexy. He is going to marry me, I think.

The Haitian government is an international embarrassment from top to bottom. Yes, I said it.  It has to be said. The president has given two weak, sad little interviews and has barely shown his face. We’ve seen every other official but the supposed leader of the country. I understand that he is overwhelmed. I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be in his shoes, but to to do nothing, to not address the people, to not try and coordinate with US and UN officials or at the very least, authorize them to take control so the bottlenecks at the airport can improve is… unspeakable.  It is such an outrage and I am shocked that the media is not reporting on this angle of the “story.”

The news coverage irritates me sometimes. Sanjay Gupta held a baby and changed the bandage on her head and then acted like he had resurrected her from the dead. The baby is 15 days old. I can’t even wrap my mind around the reality of all the motherless children in Haiti right now. CNN keeps going on about the prisoners fleeing the damaged prison as if there were other reasonable options. What were the prisoners supposed to do? Just sit around and… discipline themselves, wait for new guards to arrive? It’s just so stupid to act like it’s appalling that the prisoners left the broken prison. They say that an expert warned of the earthquake. So what? In a country like Haiti, that information is pretty useless. There was nothing that could have been done to prevent this given the ineffectiveness and corruption of the government. Some of the reporters keep on acting like Haiti is a normal place. The only saving grace is Anderson Cooper who has an infinite supply of tight little t-shirts, perfect blue eyes, clearly knows the country and loves the country and will probably marry me when this is all over. I am keeping my name but if you call me Mrs. Cooper I won’t be rude and correct you.

Attention makes me hugely uncomfortable, particularly given how far removed I am from any kind of suffering so really, truly, I am fine.

My great aunt and uncle died. They were married for 62 years. They were not distant relatives. I saw them often. They loved me unconditionally. They didn’t bother me about my tattoos, which for old school, conservative Haitians is some serious business. They gave me a couple looks at first but then life moved on because they love me. They were like grandparents to me.  They loved their children all of whom became great people, successful. They adored my father and his siblings. When my paternal grandmother came to the United States, my father and his siblings lived with my great aunt and uncle until their mother sent for them. When I was a kid, I would go to my great aunt’s art gallery in PAP and she would give me art and tell me about art and jewelry and my brother and I would run around the store and try to stab each other with wooden machetes and we would get stern looks and I would sit at the little cafe in the gallery and she would give me sandwiches and coke in a glass bottle which I thought was the most amazing thing. In the picture below, taken about a month ago, they are on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas which recently docked in Labadie, Haiti. The picture was taken in the before when Haiti had hope and things were looking up. My dad provided all the concrete for the new pier in Labadie and fancy people were on the ship attending a reception celebrating the opening of the pier and the maiden voyage of the ship.   My great aunt and uncle were so proud of my father. They said, “Look at what our son has done,” as they walked along the pier and once on the world’s largest cruise ship, they simply beamed.  They were in their 80s but they were super sassy and dignified and active. They lived a good life. They did not deserve this end. No one does.