I still love picking Will up at the end of the day. When he was a baby, it was his big smile that would greet me as he crawled to the gate. When he started to walk, the waddle over to the door totally rocked. As he got bigger, I still got the run and the giant hug, but I’ve since learned to bend down to save my back.
Now that he’s talking like a 15 year-old, I love the recap of the day. For now I’m lucky, when I say ‘how was your day?’, I get a full blown answer. No ‘fine’. No ‘nothing.’ I get the recap of who traded what pokemon card to who. I hear how many strikes he got. I find out if anyone barfed and what the barf looked like (no matter how many times I say I don’t need the deets). I find out what he had for lunch and if he loved it or was disappointed that it involved salad dressing.
Yesterday, he was so excited to fill me on what they learned. ‘Mom. We did a drill called a lock-down drill’. He went on to explain that if a bad person comes into the school, they need to go on lock-down. His teacher will tip-toe to the door and close it and then turn off all the lights, except the computer. They will all go and huddle in a corner and the teacher will join them there.
Punch to the gut. I know they have to do this and it’s so important but .. man… the visual was all too much for me.
I remember Sandy Hook vividly. I remember seeing it come across Twitter. I turned the news on for 10 minutes and then told my boss I had to leave. I drove, in tears, to the school and got Will and just hugged him. The tightest hug ever, it scared him. I thought of the parents at Sandy Hook who would never be able to do that again. How the hell does this happen?
Why does my 6 year-old have to learn a lock-down drill? Why do these poor teachers have to explain this to kids. Ugh. I know the answers. My brain knows the answers. But my heart won’t accept them.
You?
It GUTS me that my son is growing up in a world where this is a reality. Devastating.