Clair McFarland: Finding The Right Word After The Shooting

Let me document it now lest I forget how it felt.

I mopped my floors and scoured my toilets Saturday, not by a sense of drab duty but by an entitlement toward living in a pretty house.

The boys toiled under The Husband’s organizational fervor in their family room – the room that oozes a soccer-cleat essence and contains a large TV.

The Husband told them to sort the LEGOs by color, while he arranged the boxed board games into Tetrises which no one could recreate and so, no one dares disturb.

Outside, a furnace: one sprinkler spluttered at my roses but they, pathetic martyrs, ignored the water and resigned their tender frills to the grasshoppers’ ravaging.

It is a luxury, almost sinful, to walk barefoot in a cool and clean house on a hot day. The act germinated so much goodwill in me, I padded into the family room to help The Husband organize toys.

The twins crouched over a mess of LEGOs and nerf darts, sorting dutifully.

Middleborn languished on the couch with a sudden “fever,” which I believe was legitimate despite its convenient timing.

(Middleborn has been able to raise and lower his body temperature at will since the twins were born. He was not quite 2 years old, but he developed a fever every afternoon at 3 p.m., so I would put the twins down and rock him for an hour before whipping up banana breads and meat loaves and all the other spongy staples of which my fragrant, fluttering housewife existence consisted.)

Firstborn was outside pulling weeds in the 100-degree heat Saturday, because he had complained about sorting toys in our air-conditioned home.

I crouched on the rug opposite the twins, and I grabbed a few bitten old toys that looked to me like garbage. When no one was looking, I stuffed the toys into my back pocket – to smuggle them later to the dumpster.

Wedged against the stolen garbage, my phone rang.

I de-pocketed the thing and saw my editor’s name on the screen. Lazy assumptions ambled through my head. I figured that…

He was calling to laugh about a joke he’d sent; he was calling to gush about the quality of one of our columnists; he wanted to send the boys and me on some wild gonzo journey; he needed to tap my mental jukebox for a “Same Guys Dancing” song.

But I was wrong.

“Trump’s been shot,” said my editor.

“What?” I asked, certain I’d heard him wrong.

“Trump’s been shot,” he repeated. “He’s OK. I need you to find out what the delegation is saying.”

News people don’t get to react to news until after they’ve reported it.

My legs carried me into my office. I scavenged videos of the shooting. I counted the popping sounds. I looked for the origin of former President Donald Trump’s blood spatter. I texted the governor’s spokesman. I patched together the immediate statements of prayer by Wyoming’s congressional delegation.

Later, they sent over more detailed and informative statements as well.

While The Husband was doing things like calling his dad and answering the boys’ questions, I was thinking, “Gosh, this story is so quote-heavy.”

But that’s OK. Quotes – prayers – and a couple bloody videos were all the nation and Wyoming had for those first few, confused moments after the shooting.

The news didn’t really hit me until after I filed the story.

Then I nearly cried. Not, mind you, because of some special affinity for Trump. I don’t have an unwavering loyalty for any politician and I naturally distrust most of them. A lone wolf, I get nervous if I find myself buoyed by a crowd on either side of the political aisle.

Rather, I nearly cried because this is what we’ve come to.

Instead of being a people who self-identify by our faith, our goals, and our family, we present our political identities foremost, like a cattle brand.

And instead of defining our political opposites in literal terms, we’ve resorted to hyperbole.

The Left screams “fascist,” “racist,” and “homophobe,” at every argument it dislikes. The Right screams “communist,” “degenerate,” and “snowflake” at every argument it dislikes.

And here we are now, watching a bloodied old man struggle to his feet on a stage.

He’s not Hitler, he’s not our savior. He’s not perfect, he’s not the devil. He’s another flawed human being. As are we.

But because we’re also beautiful, walking masterpieces of unfathomable potential, none of us had the moral right to idolize or curse Trump to the extent so many have – shamefully reappropriating language and warping truth.  

We should all have taken our own lives in hand to do what little good we can, in our immediate spheres, instead of wasting our lives on worries about who will assume power over us.

We should notice a child crouched in contemplation. The ridiculous superfluity of a butterfly’s elegance. The grey despair of a grocery store clerk at the end of a hard day. The fleeting, pained facial twitch of a man or woman at a crossroads.

And then we should live our lives, armed with the truth of a word that fits just right. 

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.