Piercings
I should have told them. I had wrestled with the decision as I went about my morning ritual, brushing my teeth, washing my face, getting dressed- the normal activities that start what should have been an unremarkable day.
I should have told them before we got in the car, after I had hugged them too long; so long that they wriggled away from me, complaining of being smothered. I should have told them before they powered on their devices, before the texts of anxious kids overran their feeds. I should have been braver, but I wasn’t. I didn’t want my anxiety to become theirs.
I want to tell them not to worry; that they’ll be safe; but I have promised to be honest with my children. In good conscience, I cannot say the words. What if I am wrong? What if my last words to my children are a lie?
I want to tell them that they are likely safer at school today than any other day. There is increased police presence, heightened vigilance, acute readiness to hit the panic button; but I don’t want them to be scared tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.
I don’t want to tell them that their grandparents have been sheltering in place for twelve hours; that our family has bowled at the bowling alley where this occurred, that the hospital where the victims are being taken, their bodies ravaged, their lungs gasping, their families praying, is where my daughter took her first breath.
I don’t want to tell them that it could just as easily have been here; that this isn’t the first day I’ve dropped them off with a pit in my stomach; that it’s not just at school where they need to worry; that it’s the grocery store, the playground, the post office, the church. That unless something fundamentally changes in our country, they will, at some point in their lives, be even more closely affected by a mass shooting. I don’t want to tell them that it’s an unrecognized anxiety that Americans carry with them. I didn’t recognize it myself until a recent trip abroad, where the weight of that anxiety disappeared until we returned home.
I don’t want to explain to them that the reason they will now carry this fear with them is because our politicians won’t act; because money is more important that human life, because adults have been duped into thinking it’s their God-given right to have a weapon to commit mass murder more than it’s my child’s God-given right to live.
I don’t want to tell them that there is nothing I can do to protect them. I don’t want to tell them, but now they know.