Into the Woods

It has been a very horrible weekend to be a Mom, and to be a (former-ish) teacher.  On Friday morning, just after the morning announcements, a 20 year old man with reasons unknown and unfathomable at this time walked into an elementary school and killed 26 people.  20 of them were first graders.  The first I saw of it was checking Facebook while trying to get my kids to leave me alone to get work done around the house.  I started checking the news online, looking to Facebook for updates, not wanting to turn the news on in front of the kids.  As the news started coming in that most of the victims were children, that at one point they were reporting that an entire Kindergarten class was unaccounted for, my heart sank.  I felt like I could barely breathe.  It was the saddest thing I have ever heard, and taking it as a mother of small children, and as someone who had practiced the lock down drill with many a classroom, I could imagine too well what the scene might have been.  The media started discussing without the knowledge of schools, the state of the art security where people had to be buzzed in.  They talked about how the announcements were on, and I immediately thought about the kids carrying the attendance down to the office.  I thought of how close it was to Christmas, and how Kindergarteners are not that different from preschoolers.  The day before I had dropped my kids off in their Christmas finest at the door of preschool.  Ben in a sweater vest, Maggie in a dress with Gingerbread people on it and her new red sparkly shoes.  All I could picture was sweet kids, ready for the holidays, talking about Santa or making gingerbread projects at school.

There is more to this tragedy than the obvious victims, the 20 six and seven year olds and the 6 adults who died in that school.  I can't imagine a single child in that school feeling safe ever again.  There is a class of first graders that was hiding in closets and cabinets when their teacher was killed.  Some reports said they were with her body when the police found them.  I can't imagine that scenario, how the kids will process that.  Kids in that school lost friends, lost siblings, lost beloved teachers and their principal.  One of the boys killed was a twin, survived by his sister who was in another class.  I simply cannot comprehend how his mother and sister feel right now.  Or any of their family.  Or anyone in that town.  God bless their little souls.  

This horrible event happened on a Friday.  All around the country, children will go back to school tomorrow.  Many with questions, many with fears.  I imagine there will be many, many schools where the staff is rebriefed on a security plan, that teachers will walk into their classrooms and think again about where they would hide.  Move things around so they have something easy to shove in front of the door, clean out a closet where they could hide their students if need be.  Tonight is a night I am very glad I am not walking into my own classroom tomorrow.  I can't imagine the conversations that will need to happen tomorrow.  The fear that will be in so many classrooms.  I personally know a lot of moms with young kids.  They are scared to send their kids to school.  Not that they fear an immediate rash of more shootings, but just that they don't want to let their kids out of their sight.

When the twins were born, I remember feeling such a strange sense of knowing I was no longer just a person, or part of a couple.  Those kids are part of me, they are in many ways the best and worst parts of me, and to think of those nearly impossible to imagine realities, where you drop them off at school and someone does the unthinkable, it makes you want to gather them up and keep them with you at all times.

This weekend, we ate cookies for lunch, and stayed up late, and hugged and cuddled and smooched.  I grieved the grief of a mother who loves her kids, who can only imagine what it would be like to be a mother in Newtown this weekend.  But of course, when you dealing with preschoolers and a toddler, they don't know.  They don't know why Mommy won't let them get up off her lap, or why suddenly asking for candy canes isn't met with resistance.  We went to see Santa.  I dressed them in those same outfits, pictured again in my head, things you shouldn't ever picture about kids you don't even know, and what their classroom might have looked like.  I contemplated homeschooling.  I hurt, inside, and cried at the news conference where they released the names.  When the president spoke and wiped tears away.  When the first father spoke out talking about his daughter.  When they started releasing pictures of the smiling, missing tooth children.

It was a sad weekend to be a mother.  I can only hope that this event brings some kind of change.  I don't know how I feel about gun control, and right now, I don't care to talk about it.  I know that there is no reason anyone needs a gun like the kind the shooter had, and that if he had been stuck with a bow and arrow, the scenario would be much different.  But thinking about banning guns, but knowing how many are already out there, I have no idea what would be practical.  I wish there was a way to just legislate crazy, to ban people who have that kind of madness inside them.  Because this is the world we are sending our kids into.  This is the world we are stuck with, this is only one of a series of horrible tragedies that have happened in my lifetime.  In this case, in particular they are talking a lot about mental illness.  Because there is clearly nothing sane about a person who could do something like this.  The killer committed suicide, so there is no way to know what really happened, or why he did what he did.  I don't think that anyone can ever know.    

I was editing photos this weekend trying to get our annual calendars ready, and I got to these.  I took them out at the Christmas tree farm when we were getting our tree last weekend and it really struck me about how we really do send our kids out into the woods.  There are bad things, and darkness, and you can get lost or knocked down.  You can not always be there when the bad thing comes.  You can try.

I want my kids to always hold onto each other and to us.  To believe in magic, and Santa, and the good in people.  To never have to know the kind of horror that so many saw Friday morning.  I want them to feel safe, and loved, and warm.

It doesn't feel right posting happy pictures at the end of this post, but this is what brought me a little bit more joy this weekend.  They almost always bring me joy (there are days they bring me headaches as well), but this weekend, in particular, I needed their joy.  We hugged tighter, we listened longer, we thought about how lucky we were to have our children safe in our house, knowing nothing of heartache and tragedy.

My beautiful babies.

This was our impromptu, not very happy, but it was good enough Christmas Card Photo Shoot.  I should have waited a few more days, because as you will see a little farther down, I could have done better.  

Totally unprompted dancing when she put on her pretty Christmas dress.  I can't imagine one without the other.  I hope I never have to, and my heart goes out to a mother in Newton Connecticut who tomorrow has to bury her son while his twin sister has to live life without the other half of her.  

 Cutest photo shoot ever on Santa Claus day.

Two different Santa visits, with slightly different results.  

And this.  My heart, my soul, my life.  These little people that are so precious, precious to me, and precious to everyone who knows them.  I am lucky to be their Mom, and I want to try to do better, and to make their lives as joyful as possible.  Because you never know.  Twenty families woke up Friday morning with no idea that it would be the last pancake breakfast, the last kiss goodbye, the last argument over socks.  They deserve a change in not just laws, but in perspective.  If everyone hugs their kids tighter, and appreciates them more, if as a nation, we do better, then something good can come out of heartache.  

My charming kids.  Merry  Christmas from mine to yours, from us to you.  May they know joy, and love, and feel safe, always.  I will do anything I can to make it that way.