Everything is within six degrees of
Sandy Hook. Second amendment flags wave and snap too soon, stinging
like locker room towels against a quarterback's behind, NRA haters
flail fatality statistics, mental illness advocates tell I
told-you-so stories, and the West Baptist Little House of Worship
Horrors prepares for a Connecticut debut. Some angrily equate this
event to the US drone strikes that have killed innocent children in
other countries, while others post beautiful spit-shined, toothless
school portraits and interviews of young children who were ushered
and begged to shush in dark closets while Adam Lonza walked their
school halls and killed 20 of their school mates and 6 beloved
educators. Even the most talented of surgical hands couldn't stitch
this unthinkable mess back together without leaving a scar as thick
and as glaring as the one Roger Daltrey bravely dared to bare when
his buttons finally bid farewell during “Love Reign O'er Me”
during Wednesday's concert for that other horrible Sandy incident.
How can I even begin to explain this to
my kids?
To the best of my knowledge and ability
my children have not seen a single news report of this event. We've
been on media lock down for the entire weekend. I chose to have a
very brief discussion with them on Friday, reassuring them with a
voice jacked up worse than Hepburn's that while they were very safe
and sound, something unusual and terrible had happened at a school in
CT and because they may hear others talking about it over the
weekend, I felt I needed to mention something. I explained that
before I went into any great details I was going to wait a few days
for accurate information to surface and that before school on Monday
I would tell them things I thought they might need to know. While I
would have preferred not to have said anything, I am very well aware
that every family handles news like this a bit differently, and some
children have quite likely been allowed to watch news coverage along
side of their horrified parents. Knowing there were basketball games
to attend and kid conversations to take place all weekend long, I
wanted to be a little proactive. I'm quite certain by now many
children are now prepared to report a third-grader filtered version
of whatever their horrified parents posted on Twitter. I decided
right away that I wanted to be the one to try and address this before
the playground chatter served this up through a gaggle of confused
and unsettled children over Monday morning's game of snowball tag.
In true press corps fashion Miller
reminded me Sunday morning that I was due for an official news
briefing.
I didn't serve up more information than
I was asked for, and even that felt like too much to share with my
eight and ten year old children who were unfortunately growing up a
little bit sooner this morning and right before my very eyes
beginning to think of Monday's school day and the world very
differently. They are so curious. They ask away and we talked in very
general terms about the horribly perfect (and thankfully very
unusual) storm caused when a mentally ill person gains unfortunate,
inappropriate access to unnecessary assault weapons. We talked about
the brave people who helped save so many lives. We talked about all
of the ways we work to keep ourselves safe at school and at home and
it wasn't long before Jackson had his fill. He is well aware of his
limitations regarding things like this and decided it was time to
take a personal time out. Miss Miller, however, was just getting
started. She waited behind while her brother left to process things
over a game of Madden '13 and knowingly shut the door behind him to
protect our exiting empath who was suffering enough. She returned to
sit on the edge of my unmade bed where this whole conversation was
carefully unfolding like a flag before hanging. She stared at me for
a good minute before saying anything at all.
“So children died?”
“Yes. Children died.”
We stare again for what feels like
hours. We both are putting forth a valiant effort not to cry.
“How many died?”
I don't want to answer. I tell her so.
I tell her just one is too many and that the numbers don't matter.
“Well like a hundred?!” There's a bit of
panic in her voice.
No, not one hundred.
“Well how many then?”
She is not
going to let this go.
I inhale deep, hold my breath like a
balloon and eventually exhale a loud slow soul-deflating hiss. I
really want to do the right thing here. So I'm stalling. I'm a firm
believer in honesty, but I also know it shouldn't always be
ultra-specific. I am tired and emotional and completely off my
game. I begin to think I'm fucking this up royally. She's waiting,
but her patience is running out.
“How many mom?”
I panic. I mumble the word twenty and immediately regret it.
I watch her brow furrow as she sits
quietly and does some mental math. “That's like my whole class.
Like almost everybody.” I imagine from the look on her face that
she's thinking about her classmates, her friends, their faces, and trying to
process something like this happening somewhere on her third grade
wing. I am pissed that I gave her an actual number and envision
pulling my hair and smacking my forehead like the late, hilarious
Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney saying something like
“Remember....um....remember when elementary school was fun? And,
uh, you used to only have to worry about being scared that your
cranky music teacher with the very high waisted pants might yell at
you? Yeah. That was so awesome.”
Miller is still staring and I'm totally
failing to find my “The love you take is equal to the love you
make” moment.
Cue Farley's “IDIOT! You're so
STUPID!!” I want to prat fall into the empty moving boxes that
still sit in my room and be done with this. Suddenly, I'm ripped from
my fantasy SNL debut by Miller's voice.
“I don't want to die at school, Mom.”
I can't stand it. My
eight year old child--barely a year beyond most of the children
who lost their lives Thursday--now has to consider the possibility, no
matter how slight, that someone could somehow figure out a way to get
into her locked elementary school, bust open the door to her classroom and do the previously unthinkable. I watch a bit of innocence
evaporate as she stares back into me. Life and love are so not for the faint of heart. I reach over and tighten her
pony tail and we sit quietly while I search for some brave new words.
It wasn't long before Miller
interrupted the silence to ask me for the impossible. She wanted some
sort of promise that something bad like this wasn't going to happen
again.
Using the word promise is a really big
deal in my house. For me it is a sacred word and it couldn't be
clearer. If I use the word promise, my children know that I am
guaranteeing something. It's going to 100% abso-fucking-lutely
happen. Or not happen. The end. So if I promise I will be home by
9:00 pm to kiss them goodnight, that I will sew the strap onto a
dress before Tuesday, that I will not forget to pick them up from a
play date, or that I will bring in Newman's lemonade juice boxes in
for the holiday party, it's happening. Drink up, Johnny! A promise is a promise. They know this.
This has worked to every one's
advantage. I'm no doubt still successfully pulling off this pending Santa business because no one has (likely strategically) elected to
officially ask me about the big guy using the P word. No one has dared to ask “Do you
prooooomise you're not Santa?” I suspect they are
fully aware of the potential implications of that question, and so
while they are willing to ask about my “involvement” with Santa,
I'm able to act like his half-assed accomplice a la Lt. Debra Morgan
and just bumble horribly through half-truths and fibbish responses
until they leave me alone.
I'm suddenly well aware that Miller is
using a little reverse strategy here. She is in desperate, deserved
need of a promise right now. One I so very desperately and deservedly
want to give her. But I can't. I mean I could lie, but I can't lie. I
can't look my kid in the eye and make a promise that I can't
guarantee.
For the last two nights I have barely
been able to sleep thinking about the myriad of mentally ill children
I have worked with over the past 20 years and how we continue to cut
resources for, quickly diagnose, over and half-ass medicate, and
isolate these children and families. As someone once responsible for
coordinating services for some of the neediest families in our state,
I simply could never in my heart promise that something horrible like
this is not going to happen again because I am soberly aware that it
could happen at any moment in some of the most precious and
unthinkable places.
“I can't promise something like this
isn't going to happen again. It hopefully won't. I think there's less
chance of it happening now that we're all talking about it. I think
we'll all work hard to try and make sure it doesn't ever happen
again. But I can't promise something bad like this won't ever happen
again. But here's something I can promise you. Principal
Boodey and Mrs. K and Mr. Roux and Nurse Claudia, and your librarian and Mr. Charlie and
allllll of your teachers are your Woodman Park heroes. They
are there everyday to teach you and to protect you. You have a school
full of superheroes on your side every single day. Teachers are heroes. That
I can promise you.”
I'm just getting on a roll, back on my game, prepared to
tell her a simplified version of how I can also promise her that I'm
going to contact our legislators and advocate more aggressively for
the elimination of assault weapons and for better mental health
services. But before I can continue, she suddenly stands up.
“OK, Mom.”
She leaves, but not before grabbing the
wipe board and orange dry-erase marker she propped up against the
wall before we started out chat and says “Let's go, class.” You
see, just before this discussion Miller was jotting the names of her
stuffed animal students and playing school, as she does in literally
every spare moment. My daughter longs to be a teacher. A hero.
Still.
“Are you OK, Mill?”
“Yeah. I'm OK.”
With that, she disappears from sight. And as her feet pad down the hallway
carrying her very well behaved “students” back to class, I
whisper the question I didn't dare to ask straight to her beautiful
moonie face for fear of her answer.
“Promise?”
1 comment:
Absolutely beautiful. You are an amazing woman, Stacie.
Post a Comment