What I Know Now

I remember where I was when Columbine happened.  I was sitting, with my then-boyfriend-now-husband in the Rotunda Cafe at Princeton and the news was closed-captioned on the small TVs above the coffee counter.  And I was appropriately aghast and appalled and saddened as befits a 20-something when Serious News Happens.

I remember where I was when Beslan happened.  I was living in London, and working part-time, and I watched the raid unfold on the BBC and I cried that night, into my husband’s shirt on the bench at the pub next to our flat, that people do these things to other people’s children.  The next Monday, at the international school where I worked and where a serious group of Israeli ex-military guarded the doors, I was informed that we were a “soft target” and that as Alumni Manager I was the weakest link.  (That was a fun call back home.)

And now, I remember where I was when Connecticut happened.

But things have changed.  Perhaps not in the world, perhaps (definitely) not enough.  But for me, things have changed.

I know now, why my mother called my dorm room late at night back in 1999, even though I was 2,000 miles away from Colorado and in no danger at all.  I know now, because I drove like a maniac to North Beach come pick-up time on Friday, that all reason flies out the window when it comes to our children and their safety.  I know now, the illogical, panicky feeling that it’s taking the teachers too long to open the doors this afternoon, and don’t they know we’re out here?  I know now, that I was not the only one in the room — or in the city, or in the country, or perhaps in the world — clutching a little too hard when the bell finally rang and we were permitted to file into the classroom to collect our charges.

I know now, that you can look at your babies hours (days) after you watched the news for the first time, and feel so blessed that you burst into tears.

I know that now.

But what’s next?

The so-called “national conversations” have begun, in their frustrating way, with all parties being so careful not to capitalize on a tragedy and so quick to accuse the opposition of doing just that.  But I believe change might come, this time, because the tone has morphed, suddenly: on Facebook, on blogs, on message boards, there is sadness and compassion but also the anger is palpable.  Somebody do something.  We. Have. Had. Enough.

In the meantime, what are we, the parents, left with?  Our fear, yes.  Tempered, perhaps by our consolation that it was an isolated incident.  But also this looming, awful question: how can we keep them safe?  “Makes me want to home school them!” declared one acquaintance.  And why not?  If schools aren’t safe, and churches and synagogues and mosques aren’t safe, and government buildings aren’t safe, and movie theaters aren’t safe, what are we left with?

Never take them out.  Never let them go.

Over the weekend I bought LittleMan a book-on-tape of Finding Nemo (trying to keep him occupied in the midst of the holiday madness).  There is a scene in the book (and movie), where Marlin — the dad, for those of you less-familiar with the Pixar canon — laments of his lost son: “I promised him I would never let anything happen to him!” His sidekick, Dory, responds thoughtfully: “That’s a funny thing to promise. Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him.  Then nothing would ever happen to him.”

I’m with Dory.  I don’t want anything to happen to my kids but I want things to happen for them (semantics, maybe).  I want them to be in the world, of the world.  I want them to fall down and get back up — Oops!  Dust it off! — and do things alone, without me.  I can nurture them forever, but it is only in leaving me that they will really have room to grow.

I remember my mom, letting me walk to the corner store “alone” when I was five years old to buy some Freshen-Up.  I had to cross one street to get there and she would stand in front of our house and watch, and wait.  I would stop on the corner of Cornwall and 3rd Avenue and look back, and see her: she could see me until I turned into the store, and we knew the kind owners — Carl & Diane (I can’t believe I still remember that) — and then she could see me when I came out and walked the block back home.  In other words, I wasn’t alone at all, not for a minute.

But I felt alone.  I was brave and big and doing it on my own.  The change in my pocket, the gum in my mouth, the crush of the syrup as I bit down for the first time: just the beginning of my life of adventure!  And the years marched on and I lived on two coasts and two continents and suffered heartbreak and triumphs — the greatest of these being the births of two babies.  The way I see it, my job is to help them get there too.

I will do everything I can to prepare them.  I will do my due diligence, conduct research and interviews.  I will check and double-check their itineraries.  I will hope and pray that the rest of society observes The Contract.  Then, like my own parents, I will probably never stop standing on the corner, on my tiptoes, waiting nervously for them to pop back into view.  When they get home, I will hug them close.  I will be grateful, and forever a little relieved.

But I will let them go.