Shooting

I’ve found it difficult to put virtual pen to paper this week. I’m still coming to grips with the Newtown tragedy. 

For those of you who are reading this in 2027, there was an unthinkable shooting at a Connecticut grade school a week go.  Many of the victims were children Elijah’s age. 

I cannot fathom what the parents of those kids are going through. It’s a horror so deep I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.  It’s like trying to figure out an algebra problem where the answer is always hell.

I was working from home when I heard.  My dad broke the news to me via text.  It read, “Especially with the Ct. tragedy, sending you and your family a hug.  Let’s count our blessings.”

A quick scan of the internet confirmed that the world can be a terrible place.

It just so happened, Hannah and Luca entered the house, fresh from PDO.  I immediately gave him a most unwanted embrace.  But he could see something was up.  After he squirmed away he said, “Dada, can you be here when I wake up from my nap so I can hug you?”

I said yes.

Diana needed to pick up Eli from school at a chemical level, so she took off from work.  She also threw away every toy gun in our house.  Yes, even the Boba Fett gun.  We also had a serious need to do something for them.  Even though they had no idea what had happened.  We just needed to make them feel special and safe and loved. 

So we went to Chuck E Cheese for dinner. 

We claimed it was to celebrate Eli’s good Kindergarten grades.  On the way, we turned the radio on to the all Christmas song station.  But the normally saccharine DJ mournfully spoke about the day’s event.  We snapped the radio off before it could register.

We walked into the brightly lit sensory assault and Eli and Luca immediately ran to the nearest gun video game they could find.