For us February 14th, this year both Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, was a good day. The sun came out. My husband brought flowers and chocolate for both Lil Bit and myself. I made a nice dinner featuring Spanish chorizo and potatoes. We split a bottle of wine and cuddled on the sofa while Lil Bit spun in circles until she was so dizzy she fell down.
It wasn’t until I signed into social media late the next morning that I learned about the murders. This transition from the States to Denmark happened so fast that it’s been hard to wrap my head, much less my heart, around it. Being isolated in a hotel room, in the middle of a construction zone, with just my toddler to talk to for hours at a time. It’s easy to focus exclusively on the good things we’ve left behind. Family, friends, festivals, the food.
This is a visceral reminder of other side of the US. In my studies for my course I came across an article on fat and sugar consumption. It noted that we Americans don’t believe in government stepping into altering our behavior. We look for ways to fix the problem instead of ways to prevent the problem. Rather than addressing the issues of our food, our car culture, our prioritizing everything but exercise, we look to gastric bypasses and advances in diabetes care.
In mass shootings instead of looking for ways to control access to guns, ways to prevent the next would be murderer from getting his hands on a weapon of mass destruction, we focus on “active shooter” drills in our schools and placing armed guards on campuses, workplaces, and in malls. The only other countries with levels of gun violence at or exceeding the US are areas of active conflict. We ignore the fact that this doesn’t happen elsewhere. More determinedly, we ignore why this doesn’t happen elsewhere.
Whatever my grumps are about Denmark one worry I do not have is that my kid will be shot to death in her schoolyard. Only in America.