On neighborhood violence, the price of feeling safe, and the future I’m trying to build.

The first five shots came in rapid succession. Loud, sharp cracks that sounded close enough to be coming from our front yard.

There was a pause, followed by three more shots. Another pause, and then four more. Each burst sounded a little farther away than the last. We could hear the gunfire moving away from us.

I’ve lived in the hood long enough to recognize gunshots. There was no wondering whether someone had set off fireworks or a car had backfired. I knew exactly what I was hearing, and my body reacted before I’d had much time to think about it.

My muscles tensed. My wife, Thy, and I looked at each other, and without saying a word, we both jumped up to look out our bedroom window.

Oh shit. That was close. Too close.

Outside, I could see children on the ground near their bicycles. As the shooting subsided, I watched them get up, leave their bikes where they’d fallen, and run for home. I felt horrified that something like this was happening so close to our house, and at the same time, relieved that my twelve-year-old son, Channing, wasn’t home.

I pulled away from the window and yelled for my teenage daughter, Rae, to lock the door. She did, then hurried upstairs to be closer to us. She settled into her own room with her phone and some music, feeling safer knowing we were just down the hall.

Our youngest, two-year-old Royce, was completely oblivious. He continued watching Toy Story as though nothing unusual had happened.

I called the police to report what I’d heard and seen. Sirens were sounding almost immediately, but otherwise the neighborhood had become strangely quiet. There wasn’t much activity outside for the rest of the evening.

Thy called Channing and his cousin Sylas, who were at a skatepark across the Mississippi River. They could hear the shots even from there. She told them not to come home yet.

We knew police would be responding, and we didn’t know whether the shooting might start again. We wanted them to stay where they were until things had calmed down.

Normally, when we call our kids in the evening, it’s to tell them to come home. That night, we called to tell them to stay away because we believed they were safer across the river.

They finally came home around 11 that night.

It wasn’t until later, when I read the news coverage, that I learned how much worse the shooting had been than what I’d witnessed from my window.

A grandmother had finished cooking dinner and called her family to the table. They had just left the living room when bullets struck their house, leaving holes in the room where they’d been sitting. If she hadn’t called them to dinner when she did, someone might have been seriously injured or killed.

The news also reported that a woman nearby had been shot in the stomach. I don’t know what happened to her afterward, whether she recovered or what her life looks like today. But someone else had been seriously wounded that evening.

When I stood at my window, I didn’t know any of those details. I knew someone was shooting close to our home, children were lying on the ground, and I needed to respond.

Although we returned to our normal evening once the boys were safely home, something about that night has stayed with me. Now, whenever I hear an unexpected loud noise, I find myself listening a little more carefully, almost expecting to hear gunfire again.

When danger becomes part of everyday life

We’ve been back in Rock Island for five years, although I’ve lived here before. I know this city, and I’m familiar with the realities of living in a rough neighborhood. I’ve never been someone who panics over every unfamiliar sound or assumes everyone around me is dangerous.

But things feel different lately.

In roughly a month, there have been three shootings in our area. The one near our home was followed by another at Douglas Park, along the same street where we live. Now there’s been another at a gas station farther down a main road that runs through our neighborhood.

I keep seeing familiar intersections in news reports. Streets we’ve driven a hundred times. Places where ordinary people stop for gas, visit the park, or walk home.

We already have rules about being outside after dark. Our children come inside before nightfall unless we’re out there with them, perhaps finishing up a barbecue or enjoying a little more time together. There are areas of Rock Island that I avoid when possible.

At the same intersection where the latest shooting occurred, my brother once had someone try to open his truck door in an apparent attempt to carjack him. He reacted quickly and drove away, but I’ve thought about how differently that situation might have ended for someone who wasn’t able to respond as fast.

These things accumulate over time. You start avoiding certain streets, paying attention to who’s around when you’re outside, and making sure the children are home before dark. You listen a little more closely when something sounds wrong. Eventually, those precautions become so ordinary that you hardly think about them anymore, until something happens that reminds you why you started taking them in the first place.

One of the difficult things about living here is that there really are people and things I love about our neighborhood.

Our next-door neighbor, whom I’ll call Vee, is wonderful. She has two preteen children who are some of the sweetest kids when it comes to interacting with Royce. They’ll be outside tossing a ball around and make sure to include him, even though he’s only two and much younger than they are.

It’s such a small thing, but I love watching them make room for him. They don’t have to include a toddler in their games, but they do. It’s the kind of kindness you hope your children will encounter as they grow up.

Our older children have friends nearby, too. There are families here raising children, working hard, and doing their best to build good lives. People who care about their homes and neighbors, and who deserve to feel safe just as much as anyone else.

I don’t want to paint our neighborhood as a place filled with bad people, because that wouldn’t be fair or accurate. There is good here. Sometimes, though, the frightening parts make it difficult to enjoy the good ones.

We live in low-income housing, and our home is actually quite nice. I’m grateful for it. I’ve worked to make it comfortable and welcoming, a place where our children know they’re loved and where we can enjoy being together.

But no matter how nice I make the inside, I can’t control what happens outside. I can decorate the bedrooms, fill our shelves with books, hang artwork on the walls, and create the kind of home I want my children to remember.

I can’t stop someone from firing a gun down the street.

People sometimes talk about moving to a better neighborhood as though it’s simply a matter of making a decision. But moving requires options, and options often require money.

We’re a family of five living in a three-bedroom home. We need enough bedrooms, a place we can afford, and a location where we feel safer. Finding all three isn’t nearly as simple as deciding it’s time to leave.

There’s a particular kind of helplessness that comes with knowing your children would be better off somewhere else and not having the resources to make that change. You’re still responsible for protecting them, even when the circumstances affecting their safety are largely beyond your control.

I want our children to have a yard where they can play without us worrying about shootings. I want somewhere quiet, with enough room for everyone to grow and a little distance between us and the neighbors. Honestly, at this point, I’d love to live somewhere I couldn’t even see the next house.

I don’t need luxury. I don’t need a mansion or some picture-perfect version of life where nothing ever goes wrong. I just want to give my children a better chance at growing up somewhere peaceful.

There’s a billboard at the corner of 18th Avenue and 11th Street in Rock Island asking for information about an unsolved murder. Someone lost their life to gun violence, and their family is still waiting for answers. Every time I see it, I’m reminded that the consequences of the violence around us aren’t hypothetical. They’re real, and they’re permanent.

I don’t want my children on that billboard.

I know I can’t guarantee their safety, no matter where we live. But I want to do everything reasonably within my power to protect them. Right now, knowing that I can’t afford to move us somewhere safer is one of the hardest things I carry.

What I’m trying to build

If you’ve followed Midwest Mimi for a while, you’ve probably noticed how much I’ve been creating lately. Essays, artwork, videos, and ideas for books and products that I hope to eventually offer for sale.

What you might not realize is how much of that work happens in the little spaces between everything else.

I draw while Channing works on his homeschooling. I write while Royce naps. I create TikToks and other social media content sitting in our van while my children are at therapy appointments or while we’re out thrift shopping together.

I’m building a creative business around the ordinary responsibilities of raising three children, with limited time and energy to devote to any one project. And I genuinely love what I’m doing. Writing and making art are things I would want to do regardless of whether they ever earned me a dollar.

But I’m also working toward something beyond the satisfaction of creating.

I’m trying to build a way to get my family out of here.

The hard part is that ideas don’t pay the bills simply because I have them. They have to become finished projects, published books, artwork, and products that people can actually purchase. Getting those things from an idea to something ready to sell takes time and energy, and both are resources I have to manage carefully.

Some days, I feel like I have enough ideas to keep myself busy for the next ten years. What I don’t have is ten years to wait for our circumstances to change.

Every new shooting makes the need to move feel more urgent, while the process of building something financially sustainable continues at its own slow pace. But I keep working because this is something I can do. I have skills, creativity, and ideas worth pursuing, and I believe they can become something that gives our family more choices.

That’s why supporting Midwest Mimi matters so much to me. Every person who reads or shares my work helps it reach more people, and as I begin offering artwork, books, and creative products for sale, those purchases will help me build a business that can contribute to our family’s future.

I’m not asking anyone to fix our circumstances for us. I’m working to change them.

A different kind of ordinary

I keep thinking about those children and their bicycles. About the grandmother who called her family to dinner and the living room they had just left. About how easily an ordinary evening could have ended in tragedy.

When I imagine a different life for our family, I don’t picture anything particularly extravagant.

I picture a backyard with a fire pit. Maybe we’re roasting marshmallows, talking about our day, or just sitting together watching the flames after the sun goes down. The kids are laughing, somebody’s probably asking for another snack, and nobody’s particularly worried about what time it is.

We can’t have a fire pit where we live now because of our housing rules. Even if we could, I wouldn’t feel comfortable having the children outside after dark without us right beside them. I want a home where we have the freedom to enjoy those simple things, somewhere we can spend an evening together without worrying about what’s happening down the street.

I want my children to ride their bikes until they’re tired and leave them lying in the yard because they’ve been called inside for dinner. I want the sound of children running to mean they’re playing tag, racing each other, or trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of fun before dark.

I want to hear a loud noise outside and not immediately wonder whether it’s gunfire.

I want dinner to be just dinner.

And more than anything, I want home to be the place my children run toward when they’re scared, not the place I tell them to stay away from.