Just In Case

I had the great gift tonight of playing Apples to Apples with my three young sons. I heard their infectious giggles and gazed deeply into their sparkling eyes.  They swatted each other with pillows and argued over who deserved to win.  I sat on the couch, marveling at Matthew's glossy hair, Ryan's broadening shoulders, Connor's enormous coffee-brown eyes.  I slowly realized that I was scrutinizing them with a camera-like eye, trying to memorize their birthmarks and breathe in their Honey Nut Cheerios scent, taking note of the length of their fingernails, making mental sketches of the particular tilt of their heads and each crease of their eyelids.  I was trying to etch them into my brain like a stone carving. Indelible. Indestructible.  Forever.

Just in case.

Yesterday we were reminded of our vulnerability in the most horrifyingly brutal of ways.  That sometimes stewing sickness and pain bubbles to the surface and roars to life in a flash of gunfire that cuts down the very core of innocence.  That sometimes safe places are not safe.  That those most precious to us can be destroyed and taken away without reason or warning or care.  

Yesterday morning, twenty mothers and fathers poured milk on cereal, put pink barrettes in their daughter's hair, found matching socks, packed lunches that were never eaten, put crayoned homework in folders that never got turned in, kissed tops of heads and rosy cheeks and said goodbye - never once thinking that it would be their final hug, the last warm kiss.  I cannot begin to understand what the parents and families of Newtown are enduring.  I do not know what it feels like to be plunged into that kind of hell.  But I do know how deeply a mother loves her son, how dearly a father adores his little girl.  

Newtown parents, my youngest is seven and is in first grade.  I did all the same things for my child yesterday morning that you did.  It never crossed my mind that it might indeed be my last kiss goodbye. But now it will. In tribute to your gorgeous darling sweet babies, it will.  The lives of your tiny children were ripped away but we will not let it be in vain.  I will squeeze tighter, laugh louder, take more time with, read the extra story, snuggle "just for five more minutes."  I will love even more fiercely and ferociously and without boundaries just as you will always love your precious, irreplaceable, shining children.  They will live on in our collective hearts and in mine.  Indelible.  Indestructible.  Forever.