The approach of Mothers Day fills me with a constellation of emotions that are tough to untangle. Maybe they can’t be untangled. Being a mother and having a mother seem like conflicting states rather than complementary ones.

My mom left this photo on my doorstep when I was 37. I know that because on a note she included in the manila envelope full of baby pictures, she wrote: “You piece of shit, thanks for 37 years of misery.”

Look at my innocent little self in that party dress! I wonder what the occasion was. She usually dressed me like a boy. At 21 months, according to her, she already hated me.

My mom was mentally ill but no one ever explained that to me and my sister. We knew she had mood swings and an explosive temper. We knew she was given to theatrical screaming. We knew she had an assortment of pills in her handbag that she sometimes threatened to kill herself with. But I didn’t grasp that she was crazy until the manila envelope appeared.

She was not a good mother. She was divorced early on and unequipped for the job of raising kids. Her own mother was cruel and rejecting; her passive father didn’t protect her. Her sister spent time in a mental hospital and abused her three children. It’s a mess.

But how can I hate my mother? How can I even blame her? What did she know? Now in 2020, what does anyone know about being a mother?

I know mothers who won’t vaccinate their kids or let them watch TV. I know mothers who won’t let their kids eat gluten or dairy. I know mothers who take their kids to shaman healers. I know mothers who abandoned their kids, and mothers who cling to adult children with disturbing tenacity. Everyone is just flailing around, trying to do their best.

I’m learning to strive for compassion when it comes to my mother, and for myself as well. I made so many mistakes raising my children but much more often I did okay. I made sure they knew how much I adored them. I was their advocate. They never had to be anything but themselves. They didn’t have to perform in school or anywhere else to be valued. They knew I admired them. I loved their friends and their girlfriends. I tried to always be honest with them.

I was a good enough mother. It’s a relief to know that.

My life as a mother is still the best part of who I am. My heart is broken but it’s full of love.

Those of you with crazy mothers, try to forgive them. Those of you who are crazy mothers, it’s never too late to apologize or to get some help. Don’t write shit on baby pictures if you can help it. If you can’t, it’s probably not your fault.

May we all find someone to mother and be mothered by, today and always.

Jaime King is an actress or something who recently appeared on a red carpet with her 4 year old son James, who as you can see is dressed like a girl.

Can we not pretend that he isn’t dressed like a girl? If we can’t agree on this, just stop reading. Thanks.

Jaime posted this photo on social media, and naturally, a bunch of celebs were eager to applaud her excellent parenting. “What a wonderful mom and human you are,” wrote Lisa Ling.

Jesus Christ! This is what gets you praise as a mother in 2018. Good for you, you’re letting a toddler decide its gender! I’m sorry but this bitch is way out of line with this. My belief system is going to be labeled outmoded and transphobic by forward thinking liberals but I’m good with that. My feelings come from experience with preschool children, who are all drawn to fancy clothes, whatever their gender.

Preschool children, when presented with a trunk full of clothes to play with, will go for the feathered boas and princess outfits BECAUSE THEY ARE FANCY AND PRETTY! My friend, who ran a beloved preschool for a hundred years, explained this to me when I expressed concern with one of my young sons. He was around 3 and wanted a sexy harem girl costume for Halloween. We were looking at a catalogue, and I said, “Nah, lets look at these costumes instead.” He grew up to be a regular cis male in every possible respect.

Do you think I should have squealed “YES, let’s get that harem girl outfit! Your wishes will guide me! Want a couple of dozen doughnuts, too?” I didn’t feel like encouraging behavior that struck me as inappropriate. If he had continued to exhibit a desire for dresses, at some point I would have sought professional help to figure things out.

I remember another mom, that same Halloween, who got her preschool boy a lavish gown to wear, with a lot of trailing chiffon. I disapproved but minded my own business. I’m pretty sure he dressed like a girl after that.

My mom dressed my sister and me in all kinds of outfits, but she kept our hair short. I think she was too lazy to deal with brushing it. I’m so glad she didn’t dress me like a cowboy or policeman. I had enough trouble fitting in. (Now, of course, I’m a gay man in a female body, but that’s a whole other post.)

In our effort to support gender fluidity, parents are jumping at the chance to be supportive. I think it would be more supportive to wait and observe. Toddlers love to experiment with everything. It’s how they learn. Gender is more than a social construct, as brain science tells us.

But Jaime King started a gender-free line of clothing two years ago. Is this the chicken or the egg? Who knows. I only know that the photo above does not merit a Mom of the Year Award so much as a HOLD UP! citation. Just no.

Alright, come at me, social justice warriors!

Okay, some of you have reminded me that I don’t need to be a hero or activist to be okay. That seems fair. I’m lowering the bar for me and for everyone else. For those of us suffering from a life-changing trauma, getting out of bed and going through the motions are commendable.

I remained upright to take care of my younger son, to see him graduate high school, go off to college, fall in love and get married. I survived a crazy hate mob of trolls. I learned something about forgiveness. Not everything but something. I have bonded with readers of this blog who offered comfort or shared their own stories. These connections are like little miracles.

So you know, I take back the stuff about being worthless. I will marvel at people who make an effort to change the world when their own world has collapsed. I’m just not a doer. I’m better at communicating through writing. I’m better one-on-one.

I’m good at being preachy. I’m good at urging people to stop shaming addicts and to treat them lovingly, with compassion. I’m good at calming people who are frantic with anxiety and depression.

I’m good at styling people who go shopping with me. I’m good at making them over in my own image. I’m good at advising on red lipstick and steering people away from Zara. I’m good at finding silk pajamas at Salvation Army shops. I’m good at affecting obscure accents in public. I’m good at giving compliments. I make great roast chicken.

I think that’s it for now. I’m okay, alright? I’m going to limit self-deprecation to special occasions. Like my birthday, coming up next week.

Thanks for being the wind or the wings or however it goes! Thanks for being here. xo

How can you watch Susan Bro speak about her daughter without tearing up? What a magnificent woman and mother.

On July 31, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry lost her only son to a drug overdose, but she is back at work, fighting for DACA.

And earlier today, I read about a mother who started a foundation to distribute naloxone to drug addicts after her twenty year old son died of a heroin overdose.

These mothers are everything I’m not. They have pulled themselves together to do something good in the world. They are memorializing their children with so much courage and fortitude!

All I’ve done is cry and wail and sleep and try to distract myself. I feel like grief is the defining aspect of my entire existence, even though I don’t want that to be true.

Maybe it’s not too late for me to be productive. Who knows. I am skeptical, given my laziness, which is legendary.

What I do is sleep with his stuffed animals and wear his hair in a locket and go around feeling lost. But I did write to Mayor Barry and she wrote me back. I wanted to tell her that it would never be okay but it would get easier. Her son had the sweetest face, and his name was Max.

If you didn’t hear Susan Bro talk about her daughter Heather, here she is.  On the one hand we have Trump, a disgraceful amoral piece of shit, and on the other hand we have a ordinary woman exhibiting the best of humanity on one of the worst days of her life.

Let’s thank her for giving us hope, and for being a light in the wilderness of 2017.

I wasn’t looking forward to Mother’s Day since no children were going to honor me and my own mother is long gone. My plan was to just suck it up and go out for an omelette. I forgot to factor in my newsletters.

I get so many newsletters even though I’m always cancelling them. The one’s I really should cancel are the suicide alliance newsletter and the one for parents of adult children who hate them. They mean well and at times they have been mildly comforting. They aren’t as bad as the one from Compassionate Friends, which has a lot of butterflies.

So they each sent out a special thing about mother’s day, offering platitudes that make everything so much worse.

The suicide one offered poems from mothers, sharing their Journeys, along the lines of

I remember my shock and how numb I felt
and how I cried
and sobbed
and how I couldn’t get out of bed and
wanted to die
and how I sat in his room
and sobbed some more….

This isn’t verbatim, the poems were actually more upsetting and alarming. Not a Journey I wish to take since my own Journey is quite enough even though I’m not on one.

The Adult Kids Who Hate You newsletter had some advice on how to answer  questions from nosy friends about what you’re doing on Mother’s Day. Stuff like, “My daughter is very independent so she’s off doing her thing.”

Haha, jesus christ, how about a nice “Fuck you, mind your own business”?

Tips on how to handle shame and guilt must be good for somebody and there must be market for them. Me, I’m not ashamed or guilty. My kids can go read about shame and guilt since they’re the ones who left the world or Can’t Stand Mommy.

Instead of the omelette, I cooked a chicken for my mother-in-law and brought it over to her. I make a damn good chicken, as many people already know, and she cleaned her plate. Her own daughter had  elected to celebrate mothers day by going to Las Vegas and not even calling.

Mothers and children of mothers, it’s a hard road being a human being even if you aren’t in Yemen eating dirt. The only thing to do is cancel your newsletters and carry on.

photo – Denis Dailleux, Mother and Son 2009

The second time Max killed himself it was too surreal to take in. He was lying in his bed with one knee up and his headphones in his right hand, next to his IPod. When he wouldn’t wake up, I yelled his name sharply in a parental tone, the one I used when he was little. I was so sure I could bring him back. I breathed into his mouth and continued to call his name. By the time the coroner guys arrived, I was getting panicky. I didn’t want them to take him away. I cried and argued with a hulking red-faced man who followed me when I got a scissors to cut a piece of Max’s hair. I looked up at the red face and demanded, “Do you believe in god?” I was planning to issue a mother’s curse, foretelling an eternity in hell. But he threw me by answering “No.”When they wheeled the gurney into the living room, Max was in a blue body bag, unzipped just enough to show his face. He looked peaceful, but white fizz was coming out of his mouth. I kissed his lips and told him that I’d see him on the other side. I once heard him say this to a friend, one of the times he was off to rehab.

The first time Max killed himself was so shocking and traumatic that none of us could get over it, especially Max. I told him later that when he jumped, he took everybody with him. His family and friends, all his loved ones. I thought this would increase his efforts to recover, because he owed it to us. What a stupid and heartless thing to say to a man whose failed suicide attempt had left him with so many physical disabilities. I would like to take it back, along with so much else.

That first time began at six in the morning, with his text message: “Going to jump onto PCH. So sorry.” It took just a moment for me to understand that “jump” didn’t mean jump into his car and drive. I was flooded with horror and adrenaline. I woke up my husband and called Max’s cellphone.

I can’t remember what happened in the next two hours. I think we made some frantic phone calls to Max’s friends. We didn’t think of calling local hospitals. When I got the call from UCLA, the woman on the phone said that they had my son and that he was hurt but alive. She urged me to sit down. She told me that at first, Max wouldn’t give them permission to call his parents but finally he had relented. She was great. You need great people when your son kills himself. You need people who are experienced with trauma.

We found the ER, where Max’s dad was waiting, jingling his keys. He turned to me and said, “It’s just like September 11 only this time it’s real.” On September 11, Max was working at the World Finance Center, next to the twin towers. A morning with a better outcome: Max was fine. Max’s dad, Nick, had grown more repressed and robot-like over the years. His tone was almost jaunty. I fucking hated him. It would only get worse as we moved through this tragedy, mirroring our bad marriage and again trapping Max in the middle.

After a few hours, we were directed to the Intensive Care Trauma Unit, where Max was in an induced coma, with tubes and machines everywhere. I felt only relief. UCLA seemed like a heavenly safety net designed to save my son and nurse him back to health. I didn’t know about the internal bleeding or the broken sacrum or anything else. Max was alive. He was meant to be here. How could he have doubted that?

By nighttime, everyone had gone home except for me and Duncan, Max’s cousin. They were like brothers. A nurse offered us juice and we fell in love with him. His name was Tim. We grew to become seasoned connoisseurs of nursing staff. The good ones, like Nurse Tim, earned our sincerest adoration.

That first night was endless. The blood transfusions and flashing monitors and complex web of tubes seemed reassuring to me. I inhaled the acrid odor of stomach acid that flowed through a tube into a large bag. It was fragrant with life, with Max, like the sour milk he spat up as a baby or his filthy socks as a teenager.

The next day, Max was being prepared for surgery. His attending nurse refused to speak to me and handled Max like a tire she had to rotate. She stood staring at the drip bags as if trying to decipher ancient wall drawings. I complained to the nurse in charge, who scolded me for complaining. I wrote a desperate letter to the head of the hospital, begging for a different nurse and explaining that Max was my firstborn child who meant everything to me. I must have sounded crazy but the nurse disappeared and we never saw her again. It was the first of many times I would beg, threaten or manipulate people whose decisions, to my mind, could either save or kill my child.

Every night at 7 o’clock, visitors in the ICU had to leave during the change of shifts. The hallways at night were dimly lit and mostly deserted. Duncan and I would sit together in one of the tiny waiting rooms. If he left me alone, or if I tried to sleep, my mind would fill with dread. What if Max died? The thought was literally unbearable. He had to live. My world depended on him. Why would god take him from me? I don’t believe in god but I believe in his vindictive streak. Maybe he was mad because I once lost Max at the beach, when he was only three years old. God wasn’t going to let me get away with this unpardonable sin, even though Max himself had officially forgiven me.

One night Duncan left me alone to make a phone call. I could see his reflection in a waiting room down the hall. The silence was broken by the horrible sound of a woman sobbing. The sobbing rang of uncontrollable grief and I wanted it to stop. When Duncan returned, I asked him if he’d heard that woman sobbing. He paused for a moment and said, “That was me.”

I don’t know how to tell Max’s story without lingering on his time in the hospitals. The hospitals became a progressive nightmare. The ineptitude and carelessness were terrifying. At one point, we took turns sitting with him so that he was never alone with a nurse or a doctor who might kill him. I had absolute faith in my ability to save him, and even boasted about my various triumphs, like getting him moved to a bed near a window. I was the one person who could comfort him. But I had no understanding of what he was going through. I thought it was the story of a heroic mother. I remember stroking his hair and whispering, “Don’t worry, honey. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He answered, “It already has,” and he cried for the first time.

At UCLA, Max became delusional. I walked into his room and thought I’d made a mistake. A sweaty old man lay trembling in the bed with his mouth open, not my handsome 34 year old son. I actually said to my husband, “Oops, wrong room.” But it was Max, jerking spasmodically and staring up at the ceiling with wild eyes. He jabbered nonsensically and didn’t know who he was. At one point, he began singing “I’ve been working on the railroad” in a comically strong voice. Maybe he was back in first grade. He waved his hands in the air and clawed at something invisible. Eventually they tied his arms to the bed after he pulled out an IV.

They tried sedating him but his body continued to jerk and spasm. I sat with him in the dark, watching the monitors. I could see that his heartbeat was climbing. A doctor from the psychiatry team stopped by and ordered two mgs of lorazepam every hour. A neurosurgeon came in and expressed concern. He asked me what drugs Max had been given and I sputtered, “Don’t you know? I’m just the mother.” I told him the latest theory, that Max was in withdrawal from klonapin, the drug that had landed him in rehab. “I don’t like the way he’s breathing,” he said darkly, and left.

By morning, Max was deeply sedated. The shift changed and a nurse named Sarah Spendlove was alarmed to find he had no gag reflex when she inserted the tube to clear his lungs. She looked at the clock and hesitated. She announced that she was going to make a decision she wasn’t allowed to make, overriding the doctor’s order. She stopped the lorazepam and slowly Max began to rise toward consciousness.

I remember all the times I thought about sending flowers to Sarah Spendlove to thank her for saving my son’s life. Now it’s too late. I don’t know how to thank her and then tell her that he’s gone, that he took that life because he found it unbearable.

The only other time I saw Max cry as an adult was the day he revealed that he was a heroin addict. He was 20, home from college for the summer. It was a confession made under duress. A friend had given him 24 hours to tell me, and then she would spill the beans. She was the only friend willing to rat him out. The code of silence in his circle was as strict as the Mafia’s.

Heroin addiction was alien to my world. It was still something that William Burroughs did, coughing and spitting in the junk-sick dawn. I had no idea that half the student body at Sarah Lawrence was strung out on heroin. I was shocked to the core but I felt no anger, only concern. “It’s been so horrible,” he choked out in despair. All I could do was hold him and chant, “It will be okay. I’ll help you.” Over and over. For the next fourteen years, I tried to help. I insisted on helping. Keeping Max alive was my engine, humming in the background of other struggles. I didn’t believe in the concept of Tough Love and I scorned every parent or professional who espoused it. The one and only night I practiced it, Max drove himself to a cliff and jumped.

Max’s delusional episodes in the hospital were mystifying to the doctors and nurses. They all offered different theories. Some of them stuck with Klonapin withdrawal; one suggested an imbalance of potassium. Seeing someone you love staring into space and smiling insanely is profoundly upsetting. His agitation was heartbreaking. Duncan had the most success at calming him down. There were times when we laughed, during his imaginary phone conversation with Michael Moore or his mic check for a gig with his old band. Duncan was the only one who could get Max to put his arms down when he thrashed them helplessly in the air. Duncan was the Max-whisperer.

The delirium passed and Max was serene but confused. A voice from a speaker called for Doctor Something to report somewhere. Max turned to me and asked: “Am I him?” I began to write down his questions and comments, finding his confusion adorable. When he asked, out of the blue, “Does God have any greater insult?” I had no idea how to respond. It never occurred to me that he was serious and rational. “Oh, I’m sure he does,” I told him. Max nodded and said, “Yeah, probably, because he’s God, right?”

Max’s dad came to visit the ICU at exactly 6 pm every night. He is a man who lives by routines. For the first few days, I would confront him outside the security door, and elaborate on how this was all his fault. I made no attempt to contain my rage. I blamed him for screaming at Max on the morning of the night he jumped. I blamed him for every bad decision he had ever made, all leading directly to Max’s broken body on the other side of the door. I sobbed and shouted in his face that every one of his instincts had been wrong. I still believe this but it gives me no comfort. I hear from my family that Nick is a broken man, a ghost of his former self whose life feels pointless. “Then let him blow his brains out,” I always tell them.

I don’t know why I married Nick except as a way to opt out of my own life. He was a daddy figure who would take care of me. I wouldn’t have to make my own way in the world. I had no ambitions beyond the wish to avoid anything difficult. He was controlling and emotionally constricted. There was nothing about me that he appreciated. Later, I would have affairs just to hear someone say that he loved my hair or my hipbones. Meanwhile, I kept a journal and ranted there about my empty marriage. Then Max was born. He was my savior and my gift to the world. He was indescribably beautiful with huge solemn eyes. An old soul, everyone observed. He was so sensitive that he covered his face when a contestant lost everything in Final Jeopardy.

Growing up, Max was physically timid, an observer. He sat and watched as other kids performed risky maneuvers. He was exceedingly gentle with his stuffed toys. He loved books and he loved to sit by the fireplace and watch the dancing flames. When Mr. Rogers said “Goodbye, friends,” Max would cry out fervently “Goodbye, Mister Rogers!”

What am I supposed to do with his baseball card collection? Heavy binders filled with rookie cards, boxes and boxes of random cards and unopened sets. For several years, they were his life. He and his friends would spend entire afternoons bartering for cards. I learned to love baseball because Max did. I came to love the avuncular voice of Vin Scully and wished he would run for President. Max joined a small baseball league and earned a reputation as a reliable pitcher with a masterful poker face. Maybe that’s how he learned to keep everything inside. When he discovered music, he began to ponder the dilemma of becoming either a baseball player or a rock star.

Last night I dreamed that Max was alive again, after being dead for two years. It was some kind of medical miracle. I was telling everybody how miraculous it was, emphasizing that he’d been buried all this time and now he was alive. He was in a hospital where his health was being monitored. I told him how great he looked: he looked so healthy, young and fresh-faced. He was pleased. But the next thing I knew, I was desperately trying to make my way to the hospital, fighting my way through detours in a heavy rain. When I finally got there, a nurse told me that Max had died. I was devastated. It was an upsetting dream and yet I got to see Max, and to tell him how happy I was to have him back.

Before the dream, I had been sobbing hysterically, reminded by someone on TV of Max’s taste in music. It hit me with unbearable force that he is gone and not coming back. My husband sat with me and handed me tissues. It hurts him to see my pain and it frustrates him, too. He thinks there should be a time limit to this grief, that I should be ready to resume some kind of purposeful life full of activities. He can’t understand that my light has gone out. I’m not coming back, either.

So you’re going along being a mom, and you think it’s permanent, because, you know, but then all of a sudden he or she decides it’s over.

He or she refers to you as a “biological mother” and pretty much tells you to fuck off.

He or she is just not that into you.

Naturally, you didn’t see this coming and you start wondering what happened, what drove him or her away.

Were you too clingy or too distant, too needy or too demanding, did you complain about the messy bedroom too many times? What did the other moms know that you didn’t?

Were you not a good listener? Were you too involved or not involved enough, too protective or too negligent? When they got big and started to scream at you, was it wrong to scream back? When you patiently read to them or tucked them in bed or served them dinner, was it stupid to think it was part of a lifelong deal?

When you get dumped, you have to let go. Mommy up.

They once loved you but now it’s over. Don’t stalk them online, looking for news, because they’ll just block you until you get the message. Even on Instagram.

It’s hard! But there’s nothing you can do. Accept that you have no power. It was good while it lasted. It was fun nursing them, dressing them up in those cute little outfits, watching TV with them, wrapping their Christmas presents, taking them to see Patti Smith, visiting their college.

They never asked to be born, remember?

Just try to forget about him or her. There are plenty of other kids out there.

Recently, some words from ‘Charlotte’s Web‘ surfaced from my unconscious. (If you’ve never read Charlotte’s Web, I don’t know what you’re doing here. We are probably from different planets.)

When Wilbur sees Charlotte’s egg sac, he asks if it’s a plaything. Charlotte replies:

“It is my egg sac, my magnum opus.” “I don’t know what a magnum opus is,” said Wilbur. “That’s Latin,” explained Charlotte. “It means ‘great work.’ This egg sac is my great work – the finest thing I have ever made.”

This is how I feel about my children, how I imagine all mothers must feel about their children. They were my gift to the world. And they are gone, one from the world and one from the nest.

At least Charlotte got to go first. That is the natural order of things. There is no consolation for me, but there is art.

What a wonderful book! It is so full of wisdom. I always thought it was about friendship, but it is also about death. I guess it’s about everything. When I read it to my kids, I remember feeling upset by Wilbur’s panic when he thinks that Charlotte’s children are leaving him.  It triggers my fear of abandonment.

Watching the last season of ‘The Wire’ the other night, I wondered if Templeton, the unscrupulous reporter, was an homage to E.B. White’s Templeton, a rat. Maybe all roads lead to Charlotte’s web.

Here is an excerpt from Eudora Welty‘s review of Charlotte’s Web, written in 1952 (which I found here)

What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done. What it all proves–in the words of the minister in the story which he hands down to his congregation after Charlotte writes “Some Pig” in her web–is “that human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.” Dr. Dorian says in another place, “Oh, no, I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.” The author will only say, “Charlotte was in a class by herself.”

~

*illustrations by Garth Williams

Kelli Stapleton is in jail without bond, for the attempted murder of her daughter Issy.

Kelli has documented her challenges as Issy’s mom in a blog called ‘The Status Woe.’ Issy is a lovely blonde 14 year old who is autistic. I’m not sure about Issy’s complete diagnosis but clearly the main problem has been her aggression. And her aggression is aimed primarily at her mother.

Kelli has been hospitalized twice following attacks by her daughter. Watch the video above to see what it looks like when there is an aggressive outburst.

Last week, Issy came home from 20 days at a treatment center whose complete program was too costly for her family to afford. They were hopeful about a new behavioral plan for Issy. But it didn’t work out.

Kelli managed to get her daughter into the family van, and then tried to kill herself and Issy via carbon monoxide poisoning. When they were found, both were unconscious. Kelli recovered quickly but Issy remained in a coma. Issy’s prognosis was not good.

But miraculously, Issy has recovered without brain damage.

Now what?

Is Kelli a monster? Is murdering your child ever anything but a capital crime and a mortal sin? Is sympathizing with Kelli tantamount to approving her actions? Should Issy’s parents have kept her at home, despite the obvious inherent danger? What if you love your child and can’t bear to have them institutionalized?

Isn’t the attempted murder of a disabled person the same as the attempted murder of any person? If not, why not?

Can you forgive Kelli?

I want to know what you think.

Watching the news tonight, I am struck by the word “evil” in reference to the shootings in Connecticut.

A disturbed 20 year old young man who lives with his mother, has no friends, hasn’t spoken to his older brother for two years and is remembered only for his nervousness and inability to fit in….that is not evil. I see no possible evil in this tormented soul.

A mother who hoards firearms and leaves them around her house, now that might be evil, since no one could be so astoundingly careless and stupid.

I am dreading the revelations to come.