I’ve read the news headlines countless times. I’ll be honest – I read about skirmishes in in Afghanistan and Pakistan and gloss over them. Sure I am aware of what’s going on, on a very superficial level but it all seems so distant, so foreign, so very far away.

But I think yesterday changed that, I think the events that took place in Martin Place yesterday have changed the way we will react to news for a long time to come. I don’t think that we were the target of a terror group, I don’t think the Australian way of life is in any way endangered but I do know that our senses are heightened. We are all feeling fraught. I do think terror came that little bit closer to our front doors even if it was ushered in by the media.

Tonight we read about a terror attack in Peshawar in Pakistan

BBC News reports

At least 100 people, 80 of them children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistani officials say.

Five or six militants wearing security uniforms entered the school, officials said. Gunfire and explosions were heard as security forces surrounded the area.

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A Taliban spokesman says the assault is in response to army operations.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.

A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School’s auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students.

There are no real words to describe this terror.  None that convey the enormity of the situation, that can describe the horror, the loss, the anguish.

But today when we read about Pakistani children being killed we think about the three children left behind after their mother perished at the hands of a very disturbed man in Sydney. We think about our children. We think about the mothers of these children murdered in Peshawar and we feel our chests close. We hear their anguished screams, we feel one hundredth of the pain that they feel and even that feels like it could destroy us.

I have no pithy ending, no grand solution – not even a suggestion. Just a heart full of sadness and a fervent wish for peace. For all.

For the longest time I have been petrified of terrorists in the same way that some people are afraid of say spiders or clowns. It’s been an irrational fear that has been with me since I can remember.  Long before the media were informing us of terrorists on planes, I have been spotting suspicious people on planes – on my honeymoon 23 years ago I didn’t want to fly because of my fear of terrorists. I was flying from Johannesburg to George which is much like travelling from Sydney to Wagga Wagg. No terrorists likely. Still I was petrified.

Today’s events in Sydney have not yet been confirmed as a terrorist attack but they have terrorised me. I can hardly think.

I feel selfish to even talk about how scared I am because even I  can see that, in reality, I could not be safer than I am right now. I cannot imagine how the people inside that cafe are feeling  – and I cannot imagine the fear and hatred that is going to be present after this has all been settled and everybody is safe and well.

The small mindedness and the fear that a situation like this brings is almost as bad as the event itself….

But I can hardly think – so I have been spending my day retweeting

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As I write this post three of the hostages have been released. I hope they are all released soon. And that everyone is safe and no one filled with hate.

 

 

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On the weekend I noticed a message in my Facebook newsfeed from a friend of mine. It read “Anyone have a scooter they can donate to a young boy in Villawood detention centre?”

Yay, I get to get rid of some stuff I thought to myself. My son is spoilt and I am a cleanliness nut who hates hoarding. We had more than one scooter from that dreaded time my husband decided the family should take up scooting as a hobby. It was not pretty. And it did not last long (where long means more than a day).

I messaged her immediately saying that I had a scooter and I had also been sent an amazing box of craft from Clever Patch that I am sure a young girl in detention would love.

A young girl in detention. Even the sound of that line just sounds so tragic, so sadistic. So unchildlike.

I drove over to my friend’s house with the scooter and the box of craft thinking about the many times I had been asked by my friends if I wanted to accompany them to Villawood on a Thursday where they visit refugees in detention centres. I am a huge emotional mess, I don’t think I would ever sleep again if I met these families. I have a hard enough times as it is even thinking about the hideous lives these people are subjected to fleeing for their lives only to be imprisoned when they get to “safety”. Just because they weren’t born as lucky as I am.

How bloody awful is that? Too scared, too soft to see what’s going on in my own back yard? I am not proud. I cry about it a lot – yet I never do a single thing to help.

I got to her house, she told me that there were around 22 kids and 6 bikes at Villawood. They were allowed to play with the bike for one hour a day. ONE hour a day because the guards say the bikes will last longer. One hour are day to split the bikes between them. These are kids – kids who have done nothing wrong, whose parents have tried to save them from a life of tyranny. Parents like you and I.

I showed her the box of craft – of course she loved it. It’s rare for these children to receive anything new and so special and which child wouldn’t like to see a box laden with craft? Thank you Clever Patch for helping me make that happen.
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She told me about some of the kids, some of the REAL PEOPLE that live in detention shuffled from one side of the country to another from Sydney to Darwin, to Perth to Curtin. It’s when you hear the stories of people, real people that you understand it’s not a news item, it’s not a political agenda, it’s a human life.

I still can’t visit a detention centre just yet but I can and will use my voice.

789 innocent children are currently incarcerated in Australian detention camps. 186 children detained on Nauru will never be settled in Australia, even if found to be refugees

Please watch this video. And get your friends to watch it – and their friends, and their friends’ friends – and then visit We’re Better Than This and make your own voice heard

 

Benjamin Seitz was fifteen months old when his father buckled him into his car seat on a hot summer’s day in Connecticut. It was really hot that day, in fact the temperature hit a maximum of 31 degrees at some point.

On his way to work Benjamin’s dad Kyle Seitz was meant to drop him off at day care but instead he stopped to get a coffee thinking that he had already dropped his son off. The arrest warrant for Seitz is chilling in its detail as it explains that his wife saw his car in the car park at the coffee shop as she was taking her kids to holiday Bible school but she thought nothing of it because it’s not uncommon for him to stop for coffee after he has dropped his son at day care. The warrant goes on in more aching family detail describing how Seitz’s wife and two daughters came to surprise him for lunch but he couldn’t go because he was too busy, instead he got into his car and went to get a quick sandwich.  Then at around 5pm he drove to the day care centre to pick up his son.

One cannot even begin to imagine the thoughts, images and sheer terror that crossed his mind when he was told that Benjamin had not been there that day.

Seitz ran outside. According to a the arrest warrant he shrieked and grabbed the limp child, trying to shake him awake.

“Oh, my God,” he cried returning 15-month-old Benjamin to the car seat so he could rush to the emergency room.

“Are you OK?” asked one of the mums who witnessed the scene in the parking lot of the day care centre

“No,” the sobbing Seitz answered, hurrying off in the car towards Danbury Hospital.

Benjamin Seitz was pronounced dead at 6pm, the official cause of his death was hyperthermia.

Kyle Seitz turned himself in to police after learning there was a warrant for his arrest. He has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, which is punishable by a maximum one year in prison. He will reappear in court on 21 November.

It’s not even worth going through the judgment and holier-than-thou assertions that “good parents don’t forget their kids in the car”, because clearly they do. There is nothing at all to suggest that Kyle Seitz was nothing but a caring, loving and attentive father. In fact until recently he had been stay-at-home dad while his wife was at work. They were a regular family like yours and mine. And Kyle Seitz thought that he had dropped his son at day care on the morning of 7 July, the day his son died.

I can’t imagine facing my husband after learning of the death of my child. To be honest I can’t imagine facing getting out of bed, or even opening my eyes. But Benjamin’s mum Lindsey Rogers-Seitz knows that in reality you do have to stand up, get out of bed and face the day – especially when you have two daughters, aged 6 and 8. Rogers-Seitz also knows that her husband is a good father and a loving man and made the worst mistake that any person can make, a mistake that will live with them for the rest of their days and beyond. She knows that her child has died and that no amount of finger pointing and blame can ever bring him back or undo the love she holds for him. Instead Rogers-Seitz has channeled her grief, her sadness and her passion into a blog that you cannot read without crying and is now an advocate in raising awareness of the dangers of leaving children in hot cars.
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Lindsey started reading anything she could about child heatstroke in cars. She talked to nonprofit advocacy groups and read all she could that the experts had written about “Forgotten Baby Syndrome”. Remember, just like you and me she could never understand that anybody would forget about their baby in the car, but she knows now that it happens. And her family is not the first family affected.

Kelly Wallace writes for CNN ” She learned about failed attempts to include a provision in previous legislation back in 2007, which would require that cars include some way to remind drivers about passengers in the back when the car is turned off and the driver leaves the vehicle. She wondered why there isn’t a law like that on the books now. Rogers-Seitz, who’s a lawyer, talked with her husband about making their family’s new mission the push for action against child vehicular heat stroke.

“He’s an engineer, so we would sit together and he has his notepad, and he’s like drawing out ideas for devices of things that could be developed, and I’m sitting here looking at the legal stuff. And we just kind of came together and said, you know, together as a family we’d like to do this,” she said.

She has since even drafted a bill, which she calls Benjamin’s Bill, and is using it as she reaches out to U.S. senators and representatives about options to consider. Her bill includes ideas such as having the Department of Transportation convene roundtable discussions with everyone from the automobile and car seat industries, to child safety advocates and victims, to academic and medical professionals.

She also wants to see more funding for research and development for technology that would detect a child in the rear seat when the driver leaves the car.”

But it is the first entry on her blog that contains the words  every person needs to read before they rush to judge her

Lying in bed last night, I began realizing what an integral role the press has in deciding what “the story” will be. The truth is that there is a bigger picture out there – an ongoing, political and intellectual debate about the history of these efforts to elicit change and how to go about it in the future – and I would hope that citizens would be just as interested in that as the local, sensationalized story. It saddens me that local media outlets are still stuck on “Ridgefield details” – is that story divisive (do we really need that type of thing now – it still hurts my heart)? Does it stir the pot enough to sell papers or website clicks? Maybe. But, I ask that we move beyond the sensationalization of the events of July 7th to deal with the real issues at hand – that will continue to affect hundreds of more children in the future if nothing is done. Did I forgive Kyle? Yes. Was it a horrible, traumatic day? Yes. We will always grieve that day…but we need to move forward to the bigger discussion right now. No discussion of his actions that day – it’s not about that. And, we have a working relationship with all local and state officials involved – and I will continue to give deference and respect to the privacy of the processes they are going through right now. I refuse to discuss the big sensationalization of the day – charges or statistics? That’s not the point. This isn’t about that – if it were, we surely would have remained quiet and holed up in our house.

In an interview yesterday, I talked ad nauseam about why we were speaking and pubic awareness: I got one sentence at the end –

“Since that time, Rogers-Seitz has kept her silence to maintain a point of privacy during the mourning period, but she chose to speak Tuesday because Thursday is National Heat Stroke Prevention Day.”

I’ve maintained my silence because for three weeks my mind couldn’t form words for these events or our emotions but also to respect the state processes going on at this time. The title “Mother Mourns Child, Defends Husband.” I am not discussing my husband’s ongoing state issues in the media, nor did I. If by saying I love him and forgive him and that we are a healthy family unit moving forward and that he is a wonderful father – then I guess I did defend him. But, I did not defend or discuss any events of July 7th related to him, nor will I…at this time. One day, but we respect all parties involved right now. My grieving as a mother – what that is like – yes, this can reach others to make them see how quickly the unimaginable happens and why they should care about this issue – but nothing else. Not now.

I wish the entire family strength and think of them, their sadness, their pain and their lifetime of grief and I wish them love. And as we enter the hottest months in Australia I continue to hope that no one amongst us ever has to deal with such an awful tragedy.