Coming Up Empty-ish.

I've been doing everything I can for the past few days to avoid reflecting on the awfulness at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday, here on my blog.  Well, wait.  That's not exactly true.  I've been doing everything I can to avoid reflecting on the awfulness, until I knew just what I wanted to say.

I don't have anyone here twisting my arm.  I know I don't have to say anything.  But writing is therapeutic for me, as is typing, and expressing myself to others, regardless of the feedback I may receive.

And, really, after all that, I don't have much to say.

What can I possibly offer?

While those poor little babies in Connecticut were having their lives snuffed out, we were doing this:

9 2-year olds and their moms, gathered together in a cozy, festive home, painting salt dough ornaments, decorating cookies, unwrapping Pollyanna gifts, playing, chatting, sharing lunch.  

We returned to our own houses to find out some little children had been killed while they were at school.  School.  Again.

I believe in the importance of placing ourselves in the bigger picture.  While it may strike some as odd to reflect so directly on what we were doing in our little corner of the world at the same time as a tragedy, it may help others (me, included) accept it, and stay grounded in its tumultuous wake.  

December 15, 2012 will not live in my memory as a day of misery.  It can't.  Because I was experiencing so much joy on that day, too.  That joy was real for me.  I felt it, touched it, could see it with my eyes, living and breathing.  I hugged it, kissed it, tickled it, laughed with it, and wiped off its sticky, icing-covered fingers.  

But I certainly, and thoroughly, reflect.

It wasn't too long after I heard what had happened that a thought entered my mind, quietly, but with great force:

Bless those poor moms who will have to pull out Christmas gifts they hid away from prying eyes.  They'll have to do something else with them.   

Christmas.  My God.  

This will no doubt, require weeks of recovery in some capacity for those of us who were hundreds of miles away from Sandy Hook Elementary, and more than likely, a lifetime of recovery for those who witnessed it firsthand.

Do we need to dialogue about mental health resources and treatments?  Yes, continually.  Do we need to dialogue about gun control?  That might be a good idea.

Oh, and yes, about those teachers.  You know, the ones who walk into school at 8am and walk out at 3pm?  The ones who get three months off in the summer?  The ones who demand better health benefits for their families and competitive cost of living adjustments to their salaries every year?

Right.  Those teachers.

In closing, I'll share a thought from one of my most treasured teachers & colleagues from Monday, December 18th:

"Today, as I greet the little ones in the school hallways, I'm pausing an extra minute with each one.  I've been greatly comforted by an image in my mind since Friday.  None of us reading this has been to heaven so it may not work this way, but here goes: Dad was an Episcopal priest.  Every single time a parent handed him a child for baptism, the child stopped crying.  I picture him with his arms wide open, receiving very surprised brand new angels into those strong and most loving arms.  Each of us has people we have loved who would do the same.  That may be how we come to understand the tiniest fraction of God's infinite love amid such senseless heartbreak.  Now I am going to go sing with my beautiful students."