Laurie’s mandalas

Sometimes life hands you rocks. Sometimes they’re pretty rocks. Sometimes they’re art pieces made by a kind soul so that their heft in the hand is downright healing.

That’s what Laurie Aboudara-Robertson sent me. She’s the women I met while visiting my friend Ursula at the Yountville Veterans Home in late March. (You can see my post about that here.) Laurie made a series of commemorative mandalas, as she calls them (because, really, they’re no longer mere rocks; they’ve been transformed) to honor the people killed March 9 at the veterans home. And the day I visited Ursula, who is the acting director of the veterans home, Laurie and her friend Harrell came to place the final rock—the littlest one for the baby who died in utereo when her mother was killed.

As soon as Laurie got to talking to us about this mandala project, I knew I wanted to ask her to do some healing stones for me, too. She’d done a series of them to honor those killed in Parkland, Florida, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She sold them and sent the proceeds to the Parkland survivors’ fund. And she felt moved to do a similar tribute closer to her home in Napa.

So after I returned home to Sacramento, I found Laurie on Facebook, and we began a conversation about the mandalas. Could she make some for me, too? I’d be happy to buy them, including one of the Parkland commemoratives. Sure, she said, and set to work.

What I didn’t expect was my reaction when they arrived in the mail, three stones with serious heft and a smaller, oblong-ish one with a painted heart for the Parkland folks. I stood in my dining room and took each stone, one at a time, into my cupped palms, and I breathed deeply, closing my eyes.

To be honest, I’ve had trouble sleeping since the veterans home shootings, since the killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento. This is nothing compared to what Ursula and her team or Stephon Clark’s loved ones are experiencing, but in a smaller way, horrific images have awakened me in the night, making it hard to find peaceful sleep. Maybe it’s because this random, hideous violence has struck close to my heart, deeply affecting a dear friend. Maybe it’s because I, too, am on the verge of taking up a sign and chanting, “Enough is enough.” No one should walk into schools or offices or back yards and shoot people. Of any age, size or color. Ever.

As my mother used to say to my sister and me when we were kids, “No hitting. Anyone. Ever.” We didn’t always comply then, but as far as I know neither of us has struck anyone since we’ve been grownups. My sister didn’t spank her kids, and neither did I when they were in my care, even though we used to tell them that Aunt Jan had “spanking privileges.” We wouldn’t have dreamed of it.

No hitting. No shooting.

I realize that I’ve swung deeply into the camp of advocating for serious gun control. As in saying to people, “Do you really NEED to own that gun/rifle/assault weapon?” I can’t imagine this country banning all forms of firearms; the gun lobby and the second amendment will see to that. But I—who have long disliked guns of all kinds, who was married to a responsible but enthusiastic gun owner who, at the end of his life, had enough weaponry to take out the small town he lived in, had he wanted to—am done with this. Clearly, I’m not alone.

And yes, I know people, love people, who own weapons and who are perfectly responsible gun owners. Some even have permits to carry concealed weapons. But really, people. Something’s got to change. Could it not start by giving up guns you’re not using, just collecting? Could you not release the most deadly ones into responsible hands that could dispose of them properly? Could this be more than a symbolic act, as in the case of people in Florida and Chicago and Baltimore, who walked into police stations and handed over their weapons?

“I could have sold this rifle, but no person needs this,” said one of them named Ben Dickmann in Broward County, Florida.

“I am member of probably the second-most vilified demographic in the country currently (if you didn’t know, I’m a conservative leaning, gun-owning, middle-aged, financially stable white male),” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Within this demographic I’m probably in the minority, but maybe more like me will stand up, because I’m sorry, until my demographic gets behind this, nothing will change.”

So I hold these mandalas in my hands now, and I offer what have become daily wishes/prayers/mantras to end this violence revved up by the emergence of so much bigotry and ignorance and hatred, especially in the last couple of years.

“We are better than this,” I tell my students in my Race and Gender in Media class before we pull out our journals to put our outrage on the page. “This should not even be a concern on a college campus, the possibility that we could be shot or killed. I’m deeply disturbed that I cannot protect you. I hate how vulnerable we are, sitting here in class or walking on this beautiful campus or in the park across the street or any place in our city.”

They nodded. Some of them had things to say. We listened. We wrote.

On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, I did a PowerPoint presentation about MLK in class and said, “Like so many others, I’m sickened by the knowledge that one of our former students was shot and killed by our city police in his grandmother’s back yard.”

And we got out our journals and wrote about that, too.

Today I’m bringing my mandalas made by Laurie’s loving hands to class. I will pass them around and let each student feel what those stones have to offer. Perhaps the healing that Laurie imbued in them will seep into the hands of my students, who have weathered injustices as people who are Latino or African American, Asian American or Puerto Rican, Korean, Chinese and more. Some are LGBTQ or have disabilities others can’t see. Everyone has faced discrimination or name calling, whether as children or more recently.

But we all agree: This has to stop. We’re starting by being kind to each other. By listening to each other’s stories. By sharing the rocky love of a stranger in the Napa Valley whose mandalas we will hold and appreciate. Then I’m playing this video, which makes me smile and gives me hope:

People all over the world
join hands
start a love train, love train

Paula Abdul and the Turnaround Arts kids doing “Love Train”

Sing it with us:

People all over the world
join hands
start a love train, love train