The Battering Ram
Who has actually ever
seen a battering ram? I hadn’t.
One day, the feds
showed up at our door, with a battering ram: lettered vests, guns - lots of
very scary stuff. That day, and all that flowed from it, changed our lives
forever. It changed us.
It’s not so much the
battering ram itself, though it is a pretty mean looking tool. I’m more
bothered by the idea of it all. A bunch of guys standing outside, ramming
(hence the name) this big ‘ole heavy thing into your door, again and again. The
door you’ve always trusted to tuck you in at night and keep out the boogey men.
Now, here it is, splintering and cracking and shredding to pieces, until it
simply falls apart. And that’s just where it all begins. Next, the guys come
jumping through the breach, likely as not with guns drawn and an attitude that
would really piss you off, if you weren’t so scared.
We all hear about
these things but, typically, they have nothing to do with us. Battering rams
and such are brought out for drug busts and SWAT operations. We assume there
are bad guys behind the door who will be scurrying about trying to hide the dastardly
things they are doing. They might quickly flush or otherwise dispose of all the
evidence. They might shoot without warning. We figure a battering ram is
necessary – to catch them; to protect the good guys at the door, who need the
element of surprise. And force. And power.
They didn’t need any
of those things with us. We were a doctor, a lawyer, two children and our dogs.
They wanted documents. We would have handed them over without the guns.
That day with the
battering ram turned into years of much anguish for us. This blog will be a
place to discuss things that happen. Bad things, yes, but also the wonderful
things that, somehow, manage to live within, throughout and on the other side
of all the hardship. This discussion will visit the pain from which we all
recoil, and the beauty that lifts us up, like the first sun upon the horizon of
each new day.
