30 days keeping the darkness at bay.

  A month has passed since that terrible day.   That day when a nightmare entered our living rooms by way of a television a screen.   Each parents worst nightmare playing out on continuous repeat as we learned the name Sandy Hook.   That night I slept in restless fits.  I walked the hall of my little house checking and rechecking on my precious daughters, both obliviously lost in peaceful dreams.   Around six am the flood gates finally broke.   I sobbed into a couch cushion,  consumed with grief.  With the grief I imagined was being felt on the other side of the country,  and God knows, I could never fully understand.   Grief sent like a massive shockwave across a nation with a broken heart.

   The next morning I timed the 18 minute drive to my daughters school.   Mentally making a ridiculous plan of action if anything should ever happen.  If I sped and ran all the lights I could be there in 15... and I could leave the baby with a  neighbor if I had to.  Because, that's what we do as mothers.   We imagine every worst case scenario and  hundreds of heroic solutions.  A twisted insurance plan.  I try to outsmart the unknown and shore myself up against possible heartache.   Always be prepared.   As if thinking it through could somehow keep the darkness away. 

  In effort to curb the tears that never seem to end my husband soon banned all news media from our home.   Which was probably for the best.   Just a glimpse of one of those little faces sends me headlong over a cliff of despair.  Pictures of six year olds with earnest trusting eyes. Six year olds that wont get to open Christmas presents that have already been bought and wrapped by adoring mothers. It is all so unspeakable and too much to bear.  "You can't live your life in fear," my husband whispers softly and I know he's right. It is not so much that I fear this happening in my town or to my child.  Maybe I am foolish in that regard.   Mostly I am grieving.  If I fear anything,  it is that this country might loose its soul if it doesn't come together under the weight of this tragedy to find a solution.

 When I pick up  Ella from second grade she spouts off the erie details of "intruder drills" and panic rises in my throat.   She says how they all huddled together in the corner of the classroom and couldn't make any noise or move for five minutes.   My heart aches and stretches as I remember the simple innocence of my childhood,  something she won't experience.   I stare at two little immunized,  well harnessed,  organic fed girls through my rear view mirror and wonder how I will ever get them safely to the other side.  Can the words "I love you," ever be enough ?  If I arm them with forgiveness and compassion,  with hope and wonder can those things add up to being enough?   
The words of J R R Tolkien ring like a bell for me and give me peace in a time when peace is hard to find:

"Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things. Everyday deeds by ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay."

   And I pray that is true, because it has been a month and we'll never forget what the darkness looks like.