change

Yesterday evening, once my man came home and kids were seated at the table...I sank into his arms and cried.  I went through the motions of getting supper on the table with heavy limbs, dragging leaden feet across kitchen tile.  I squeezed my kids, smelled their hair, memorized their profiles, their pudgy hands, their stained-glass eyes, their innocence.  I was up and down.  Weeping, mad, weeping.  I became impatient over stupid things then instantly felt like an ass.  My mind wandered to the dark place of an innocent school...and then stopped, and then started.  I can barely begin to imagine the life of a parent who had one less mouth to feed that night.

There has been lots of late-night talk in our house about guns, the absurd availability of body armor, video games, our culture of violence, the huge task of raising socially responsible boys.  Boys who aren't afraid of their emotions and can own them, express them through voice.

I am sending prayers, tears, and...hope...to the people of Newtown.  But...I am pissed.  How many more have to die?  Guns are just a piece of the puzzle, but they're the deadliest piece.  I am a gun owner.  I probably always will be.  But it's true, it was easier to acquire my guns than to sign my 3-year-old up for preschool.  Nicholas Kristof wrote a fantastic column today: click here to read it.  I love the way he puts things in perspective:

"The tragedy isn’t one school shooting, it’s the unceasing toll across our country. More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined."  --Nicholas Kristof    

~Hug your children, teach them peace, change the world.