Just Write {66}

Ryan walked through the door with Elsie and Asher. Miles and I had fed and watered the chickens and cleaned up the house. I’d been writing and Miles was playing something on the iPad. He’s now off the iPad for fighting with his brother over it. It was Friday. It was supposed to just be movie night and pizza and popcorn night.

I held Asher and Elsie close, just like I had squeezed Miles after school.

Ryan put an arm around me and I bit back tears because I wasn’t ready to answer “why are you crying, Mommy?”

So instead I asked Ryan to start a fire in the fireplace and the kids stayed right there because fires are so cool and good unless you get too close and get burned.

We watched over their distance from the danger from our chairs and took in the warmth. We shared time just thinking and looking over their magic. The way they are here with us where we can keep watch and give warnings. Don’t go too close to the fire.

A few days later, we had procrastinated. Miles was going back to school and we hand’t told him anything about Sandy Hook Elementary and it hit me that all my excuses to not talk about it weren’t going to shield him from hearing something awful and confusing from someone at school.

His eyes got so big. He was so still. That boy is never still.

Did anybody die?

Yes.

How many?

Oh honey…28. I bit back the tears. We talked about why the lock down drill is important and we talked about the way his school does everything they can to try to make sure this doesn’t happen.

But it can happen anyway, like being chased by a fire, and it’s not that no one’s watching or doing all they can do, it just is. I can’t explain that part to him because I’ll never understand it myself. So I sat there without much of an answer for why this can possibly happen.

Miles said that he would want to hide in the bathroom if someone with a weapon was in his school. Then he turned away to go back to playing chess with his daddy.

I walked outside with the excuse to check on the chickens and my boots felt heavy and I couldn’t stay in the stomped down path in the snow in the dark. The cold air burned my lungs and I made it to the coop in time to lean on the side and cry. I saw my boy hiding in a filthy bathroom in an old school building, his eyes wide, his little body perfectly still and my heart is breaking for the mothers and fathers who love like I do and couldn’t stop the fire.

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