The federal government has unveiled an innovative new approach to public policy: when confronted with a crisis, identify what would actually help, then do something else entirely. Welcome to the Department of Completely Missing the Point, where the fire department needs firefighters, the patients need affordable surgery, and the flight crew would merely like someone to measure the radiation. Naturally, we have arrived with logging roads, luxury eyeballs, and pretzels.
Things are moving here on the Homefront, too, but unlike the federal government, we’re at least attempting to solve the problems we actually have. I have finally settled on a stair design. Cabinet stairs, people. Cabinet stairs. They will admittedly be steep, but they will carry my children from one floor of the house to the next. They will allow furniture to cross the threshold, and perhaps most importantly, they will prevent either child from ever having to consider walking through the other child’s territory, an offense our household currently treats with roughly the same gravity as an international border violation.
The stairs will also provide useful storage instead of becoming a giant obstruction with no purpose whatsoever, except, of course, for the stated purpose of being stairs. My Home Depot cart is calling my name. My brother, our resident contractor, is at the ready. My husband is fearful for his life, and the children are children, so they are happy.
Ezra, my Mister Boy, my Snuggle Bug, my adorable little piece of baby pie, began the morning with our usual snuggles on the way to a diaper change. Just as I walked through the bedroom doorway, he threw his head back in laughter and smacked his little face against the door jamb. He cried, I cried, we cursed the door jamb together and cuddled some more. He had a bottle, I took a breath, and all was well in the world again.
My oldest came home yesterday, so my daughter also feels as though the natural order has been restored. She has her favorite playmate back, and I may regain one tiny inch of peace while they entertain each other. Maybe, just maybe, I can get some work done. I will not be placing any bets. Things have been moving very quickly around here. There is the deck, the cabinets, the appliances, the plumbing, the attic renovation, the stairs, and a list that appears to reproduce every time we turn our backs.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, my husband and I realized we haven’t stopped to smell the roses in a while. We haven’t taken that quiet moment to breathe, look around at everything we’ve accomplished, and simply enjoy it. Things don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon, and that’s okay. My husband and I both prefer to be busy. Still, we must not forget to watch the children grow, watch each other grow, and love with everything we have. So we will build systems that help us come back to one another, create the security and structure our children need to thrive, and remember that a family can’t live indefinitely in a state of emotional home renovation, with every feeling covered in sawdust and somebody always asking where we put the drill.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the chaos and forget the small wonders of the world. It’s easy to forget the best parts of each other beneath the stress, the doctors’ appointments, the school-clothes shopping, and all the ordinary pieces of life that seem so small on their own but become enormous when piled together. The list never ends.
Sometimes we have to stop, breathe, and remember why we keep going. We perform the tedious tasks that make a family and a home function because of the simplest little feeling. Love. We love being together, learning together, and discovering new things about one another and our children. We love the life we are building, and we love watching our kids come into their own in this complicated world.
A home doesn’t function because love floats around inside it like a pleasant air freshener. Love becomes infrastructure. It becomes stairs and cabinets, clean bottles, doctors’ appointments, school clothes, repaired plumbing, shared burdens, and the decision to keep showing up. A country isn’t so different. Many of our public institutions were created from a form of love. Love for our neighbors, for the land, and for the people we will never meet but still believe deserve clean water, safe workplaces, affordable healthcare, and firefighters who aren’t worked until their bodies give out.
That love of country is now being defaced and repurposed as a justification for destroying the systems built to protect us. While the rest of us try to slow down long enough to remember how love keeps a family together, the Trump administration has put its foot on the gas and is barreling toward the nearest piece of public infrastructure.
The administration is moving forward with a proposal to eliminate the 2001 Roadless Rule, which restricts road construction, logging, and other development across 58.5 million acres of national forest land. Approximately 2 million of those acres are in Oregon. Many sit inside municipal watersheds supplying drinking water to communities including Bend, Eugene, Baker City, and Ashland.
The administration says removing these protections will give local officials more flexibility to manage forests and reduce wildfire danger. Its own proposal acknowledges, however, that increased public access can produce more human-caused ignitions. It also says timber harvesting would create the greatest demand for new roads.
We have arrived at the Department of Completely Missing the Point. The forests are burning. Federal firefighters say they are critically understaffed, crews are being stretched beyond reasonable limits, and preventive work has been canceled because there aren’t enough people available to perform it.
The obvious answer would be to hire, train, retain, and adequately compensate more firefighters. The administration has instead brought us logging roads. It’s roughly equivalent to finding your kitchen on fire, firing half the fire department, and announcing that the real solution is an additional driveway.
The same department has been hard at work in American healthcare. Medicare pays doctors approximately $520 for a standard cataract operation, about 20 percent less than it did a decade ago. Rather than repair a reimbursement system that is squeezing medical practices, the industry has found another solution: sell elderly patients a laser upgrade that can cost an additional $1,000 to $3,000 per eye.
Research has found that laser-assisted surgery doesn’t produce better outcomes than traditional surgery for a standard cataract procedure. The American Academy of Ophthalmology says studies haven’t found fewer complications or better results. One ophthalmologist compared the choice to buying a Toyota Camry or a Lexus. Both get you to the same place, but one supposedly has a more premium feel. He also acknowledged that the laser doesn’t make the patient’s vision better. Welcome to the Lexus Eyeball Package. Your eyesight arrives at the same destination, but your wallet gets to experience the thrill of luxury transportation.
To be clear, lasers can be useful in certain complicated cases and when implanting some premium lenses. The problem is not that the technology exists. The problem is that patients may reasonably assume spending thousands more will produce a better medical outcome when, for an ordinary cataract procedure, the evidence says otherwise.
The doctor needs adequate reimbursement. The patient needs clear information and affordable care. The medical equipment company needs someone to pay for a machine that can cost a practice up to $500,000. Guess which one our healthcare system was designed to prioritize.
The Department of Completely Missing the Point has also reached cruising altitude. A new study examining more than 12 million death certificates found that 6.9 percent of flight attendant deaths and 6.7 percent of pilot deaths were caused by cancers associated with radiation exposure, compared with 5 percent among the broader working population.
Researchers couldn’t measure each worker’s individual exposure, so the study doesn’t prove cosmic radiation was solely responsible. Disrupted sleep and irregular schedules may also contribute. Still, people who work at high altitudes receive greater exposure to cosmic radiation, and the Federal Aviation Administration has acknowledged the occupational risk. The federal government has no radiation-exposure limits or monitoring requirements for American flight crews. The pilots and flight attendants would like someone to measure the invisible occupational hazard passing through their bodies. The Department has provided complimentary pretzels.
This is what happens when a country forgets that protection is an act of love. Patriotism isn’t a slogan printed on a hat. It’s not opening protected forests to logging while exhausted firefighters beg for reinforcements. It’s not creating a healthcare system in which seniors have to determine whether the expensive laser is medically necessary or merely the leather-seat package. It’s not praising workers while refusing to measure the risks they absorb on the job.
Love is maintenance. It’s staffing the crews, protecting the water, funding the care, monitoring the danger, and repairing the systems before they collapse. At home, we’re building cabinet stairs because our family needs stairs, storage, safe passage, and a durable peace agreement between two children who consider each other’s bedrooms sovereign territory.
We identified the problem, found a design, and we’re building something useful. Perhaps the federal government should come over and watch. My brother’s already here, my Home Depot cart is ready, and my husband is terrified. There may still be hope.
Bingo. There are simple, obvious solutions to some problems. And before anyone says one single word about how much it would cost, remember the war that was started for no legitimate reason & could have paid for these solutions 10 times over. 🤬
Your sharing glimpses of your life is brave and heartwarming. Your perspective is so healthy. And characterizing this chapter as “Department of Missed Opportunities “ sums up the current situation perfectly. Thanks for your writing.