Change Is Hard

I’m back from Washington DC where I attended the Sorrow to Strength conference hosted by the Truck Safety Coalition.  The objective of the Coalition is to support the enforcement and strengthening of safety laws surrounding large trucks.  I do this because my Dad was killed by a tired trucker.  His death was sensless and what’s worse, more people are dying at the hands of tired truckers every day. Fourteen will die today.  In fact, more than 5200 people have died in each of the years since Dad’s 2004 death.  Over 10,000 people have died in similar crashes since we got that life changing call December 23, 2004.  The figures were similar each year prior to his death as well.  The trucking industry seems to think this is a cost of doing business.  I am beginning to believe it’s outright irresponsibility, valuing profit over safety.  Their motivation is profit.  My motiviation is safety.  Do we need to kill 5200 people a year in order to get cheaper goods on our store shelves?  Would we be willing to pay a few cents more for items to avoid the deaths of so many people?  I think everyone would agree that saving 10 cents on our next microwave is not worth the death of a single stranger.  Certainly not worth the death of people we know and love.

So the sorrow in the title of our conference revolves around remembering the people we loved who are lost.  We had a wonderful grief therapist speak.  We held a remberence ceremoney where we sat in a candlelit room and spoke about what we missed about our loved ones.  We cried.  We hugged.  We cried some more.  We got angry.   

We took that anger and channeled it into something strong, the strength of our conference, when we met with Senators and Representatives’ staff people on Monday, telling our stories and asking for help on multiple truck safety issues.  This year I didn’t feel the energy of capital hill, I didn’t feel the hope and promise I felt last year.  Maybe because I was talking to some of the same people about the same issues as last year.  Maybe I am becoming more realistic about change.  Maybe my feet just hurt and distracted me.  Regardless I am not going to let the feeling of hopelessness overtake me.  The mission remains the same;  get tired truckers off the road, enforce the laws that are already on the books, and change some laws to make the movement of goods in this country a safer industry.

I know that the trucking industry has a lot of money and a lot of influence on Capital Hill.  I know I’m just one voice, one face.  But my face had tears streaking down it, and my voice trembled in anger and pain when I spoke.  My eyes locked on Capital Hill staff’s eyes and dared them to ignore my pleas.  I won’t go away.  I’ll be back.  Again and again I’ll force them to listen to my heartbreaking story and the stories of all the families that I was with this weekend.  If staffers want to stop the pain of having to listen to horrible stories then they need to stop the pain the trucking industry is imposing on helpless people who just got in the way of commerce.

My second of two midterms is now completed. Though I don’t know how I did on either of them yet, I am not that concerned. Talking to other students reassures me that though I didn’t do great, I didn’t totally bomb them either.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Washington DC. The three days are filled with talking about big rigs and trucking issues, unexpected death, meaningless loss, and more importantly what we can do about it. There is a certain comfort in spending time with so many people who are hurting the same way I am. But the closer the conference comes the more sad I get. It makes me realize the depth of my loss, and worse, makes me face up to the reality of it.

This year I have an added responsibility to make sure the family here in Michigan whose daughter was killed last July gets around Washington OK. I want them to feel comfortable and to get the same sense of value we did last time we were there. That there was something, no matter how small, that we could do to make a difference. That’s all any of us want. We want to make a difference so that the people we loved who were killed in horrible crashes will make a difference.

Midterms won’t make a difference. Maybe getting a degree won’t make a difference, though I hope it will. But saving one person’s life; making changes in rules or regulartions or just in awareness that ultimately saves one person’s life,THAT is what will make a difference.

I’m just back from New York; there are five days in this school week and Friday is a midterm so I’m concentrating on that. Other homework and readings are getting put off. Then Saturday I fly to Washington DC to attend the “Sorrow to Strength” Conference. I’m there through Monday night, so next week will be pretty crazy. I wish I wasn’t going to Washington because I already feel like I’m behind in work. But this conference is something I owe my Dad, my siblings and myself. So I go. But I’m taking my laptop and somehow, somewhere, in between sessions I need to get some homework done!

It’s only the middle of the term and I’m very worried that I can’t get it all done. Why is this? Part of my brain knows that the semester will end and be at least somewhat successful regardless of how much I stew about it. The other part of my brain is screaming “WHYT ARE YOU SLEEPING!? YOU NEED TO BE….(fill in the blank) writing a paper, reading a paper, designing an evaluation, writing a report, doing math homework…!!!!” Which is why I am sitting here at 11:19 on a Wednesday night instead of sleeping. You will also note, however, that I am not…(fill in the blank) writing a paper, reading a paper, designing an evaluation etc….either.

Procrastination used to be my favorite thing as an undergrad. I couldn’t start working seriously on anything if the sun was still up. I worked best at night and slept during the day. After 28 years of work in the real world I can no longer stay up all night and sleep all day. However this student stuff is messing with my mind and I still do my best thinking at night. When I can keep my eyes open that is!

So..time to either get some work done or go to sleep. I think I’ll try sleep.

Last night while sleeping in my own bed I woke up to wonder why my dresser was in my New York dorm room.  It took me quite a bit of thought to figure out that I was no longer sleeping in a hard, narrow bunkbed in a bright orange hostel room, but rather in my own bed at home.  I had been dreaming of busy, loud New York streets and somehow had transported myself back to the city.

The interesting question in my mind is;  did I like New York because it was New York or did I like it because while there I could avoid studying for the 502 midterm?

I love New York City. I’ve been there only once before, as a kid with my family. This past week I conquered the city subway system, worked in the Queens Library system and visited a few New York City tourist attractions. My feet are exhausted. So is my brain. I feel as though I have returned from a trip to a country far far away. And in fact, many of the people I interacted with during my library and subway experiences were from places far away from the US. I ate food I’d never eaten before, heard languages I didn’t recognize, and some that I did, rode subways through neighborhoods that are very different from where I live, and tried to act less like a tourist and more like a New Yorker. I’m sure they saw right through me.

On my last subway ride, coming back down to midtown New York from Central Park, a young man gave up his seat for me, an old tired tourist. I took it with a smile.

Hello to all from NYC!

It is cold here, sometimes snowy.  We are staying in a youth hostel which is an adventure all to itself.

Work is ok, could be doing more.

Sightseeing is great, but we are often too tired to go out at night!  Tonight, maybe Times Square.

More later…

My first midterm in over 20 years is this afternoon.  In my mind the words midterm and graduate student should never intersect.  But no one asked me to design the course.  Though if I had, I’d have put in lots of POP OUTS! (Inside joke)

Tomorrow I leave for New York City.  Alternative Spring Break is a program that allows graduate students to give up their break and work at locations in Washington DC or New York City in their field.  Since I am interested in public libraries I chose to work at the Queens Public Library.   I don’t know exactly what I will be doing there, but I know it’s an hour commute on the New York subway system.  I have very detailed directions on how to get from my youth hostel to Queens.  Should be very interesting!  I work from 10-6 Monday through Friday, so I guess the night life is out of the question!

This is another example of the amazing experiences I am so happy to have as a student.  Me, youth hostel, New York City, subway.  Those are things that just weren’t going to happen to me as a long time banker!  I’m excited.  Or I will be after I get that pesky midterm out of the way this afternoon.

Today as I drove to Ann Arbor to meet a group of students studying for an upcoming midterm I saw four Canadian geese fly across the freeway. This put an instant smile on my face. I used to have this silly supersticion when I saw geese flying, if I saw six geese then everyone in my family was fine. Today there are just four of us, but we’re still tight, still together even after all we have been through. Seeing four geese flying was a good thing.

As I sat on the bus I noticed a squirrel in a crab apple tree, going out to the ends of the branches and hanging upside down, grabbing last years freeze dried crab apples for lunch. The bouncing squirrel made me smile. Bonnie hated squirrels and she’d be barking if she saw. Maybe she’s barking now.

Almost into campus the bus passed a billboard. I thought it said “Unlimited tagging” and I thought that was odd (you’d have to be an SI student to get this). But really what it said was “Unlimted TANNING.”  As I realized how consumed I am with school I laughed.

It’s good to laugh.

A woman who’s daughter and only child was killed when their car was rear ended by a semitruck last July has asked me to come speak to her daughter’s friends.  They are, of course, stunned and angry and sad all at the same time.  They want to DO something about the issues in the trucking industry that led to their friend’s death.

 I too am stunned and angry and sad all at the same time.  So of course I told her I would come speak to them.  It has now turned into something bigger, with their parents coming as well as the press.  So now I am spending more time putting together something that they can walk away with.  A take away if you will about what they can do as individuals and as a group to help fight for other people’s lives.

Sometimes I think I should just focus on this, that working on trucking issues is so much more important than going to school.  But then I think maybe someday I can use the two together to reach more people. 

Meanwhile, I work out a talk for the teenagers today.  Rehearase it in my mind and out loud (rehearsal helps embed information in long term memory; 502 lecture this week). 

I hope I don’t start to cry when I talk about Dad;  hope I can help them to cry when they talk about Janelle.  And wonder at the sense of it all.

Yesterday it began to snow early in the morning.  I went outside and noticed Bonnie’s pawprints in the yard from her many trips outside.  They were slowly filling with snow and soon would be unrecognizable.  By the end of the day it was if she had never been there.   Like foot prints on the ocean beach, nature has earased evidence of Bonnie.  But she was real, just look at the newly torn hole in my already patched together heart.