Last week was humming along smoothly, and then–out of the blue–my 8yo son started asking about the school shooting in Newtown, CT last year.
This is how parenting works: you have to talk about the hard stuff, eventually. Usually with no notice that the conversation is about to happen. You don’t want to, but it’s not really a choice. And it sucks. It really does.
But at least we’re all in this together, and can share our stories, see what our kids are talking about, see how we each handled those conversations.
Last year, on the day of the shooting, my thoughts collected themselves without my even trying into an essay that I shared on The Huffington Post. I had no plans to write anything else after that, but then last week’s conversation happened and I didn’t feel I had any other choice than to share it with you. Like it wasn’t just my conversation, it was something for us all.
Let’s keep the conversation going, and keep the families of Sandy Hook in our hearts, minds, and prayers.
I was sitting at the kitchen counter, checking Facebook on my phone while the kids gobbled up ice cream at the table.
It was a typical Friday night.
In between frosty bites, my 8-year-old son said, in a laughing voice, “Mom, you won’t believe what a kid in my class said. He said that a man went into a school and shot kids. THAT would NEVER happen—right? That’s crazy!”
My thumbs froze mid-type and I casually checked to see where he was going with this. Was it a movie? What did he mean?
He went on to give details about the Sandy Hook shooting last December 14th, and some of them were inaccurate. The most inaccurate being that it didn’t really happen.
I put my phone down, carefully got up, and sat with him and his sister. He looked at me one more time, saying, “A gun in a school? That didn’t happen . . . ” His voice sounded nervous. We both knew it was turning into a question, not just a statement. He finally met my eye and saw I was nodding my head. He stopped scooping ice cream as I quietly told him, “Yes, honey. It did. It did happen. Almost one year ago. We told you about it. Can you remember? It was that day I cried when you came out after the bell, when you told me to stop kissing you in front of your friends.”
We looked at one another, his brow furrowing, trying to remember as he asked me simple questions, to which I gave simple answers.
Then he asked, “What if a man come into our school to shoot kids?”
His sister chimed in, “Could that really happen, Mama?”
I inhaled through my nose, hoping the swoosh of air would stop the sting of tears that pricked my eyes. I wanted to appear composed, calm, direct.
My daughter is now the age of half the kids that were shot and killed last year. My son is now the age the other half of those kids would be had they not been shot and killed last year. Our schools serve the same grades; our communities, the same kind of close-knit fabric.
It couldn’t happen there, but it did. It can’t happen here, but it could.
When I found my voice again, I reminded them about the two kinds of drills they have at school. The ones for fire that lead them outside, and the other ones that have them hide in their cubbies, closets, and lockers. I told them that the second drill was in case someone came in with a gun.
“We hide really, really quiet and our teacher calls 9-1-1, Mama. That’s what we do.” My daughter looked proud to remember the details. I swallowed hard.
She’s still young enough to not quite grasp what it means, but I saw the subtle shift in my son’s sweet blue eyes as it sunk in that that was the reason for the “hiding and quiet” drills they do at their school. That there are people in the world whowould shoot kids—even kill them. That the horrible, impossible story a boy told him was reality.
My aching heart silently, slowly broke that evening as I sat at the kitchen table with the two most important people in my world.
I was letting them know how big and scary our world can truly be, but I also knew that every tomorrow I got with them would be another chance for them to heal my heart with their laughter and light.
A fact I hold onto as tightly as a hug.
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