It’s happened again.  And somehow the world keeps turning.  I can feel sideways glances looking for something in my face, in my eyes.  There is nothing there for them to see.

They can’t see it, that I am carefully placing steel plates around my heart.  They can’t see the bolts I am gingerly tightening so none of this can get through, they don’t understand how hard I’m working to pretend that nothing has happened.

I ignore headlines and turn my attention from any news updates.  Forty kids hiding in a closet. I don’t read names, I ignore details. The sounds, the terror.  I don’t want to see faces or know about families.  I don’t want to see the clips of students running with hands on their heads. Put your hands on your heads so they don’t shoot you! Now run!  I don’t want to debate, I don’t want to see the words ‘thoughts and prayers.’

Just…don’t.

If I loosen any of those bolts then I may think about what those parents are feeling.  This is the worst day of their lives.  My thoughts try to drag me down the path but I dig my heels in and think of something else.  They will never be the same.  Social media overflows with words.  So many words.  We should change this, if we did THIS is would definitely change.  Why does this keep happening? It’s this, they say.  Here’s why, they insist. They type furiously trying to be heard, trying to convince those who don’t want to change their minds.  Shoes in the middle of the hallway.  Bullet holes in the walls. Blood. They all want to change it, they all want this to end, but no, don’t suggest THAT, I will not do that.  They type and type and type.

What is the answer?  Take away the guns?  Mental health support?  Turn them in, report them, hate them, help them, where were the parents? Daddy, they were dead Daddy! Why didn’t anyone do anything? Why was he there? why? Why? WHY?

I watch my son, his blonde hair catching the sunlight as he leaps over a crack in the sidewalk.  His cheeks are pink from the chill in the air, and he laughs – a beautiful, heartbreaking laugh that shows his front tooth that is gray from when he fell on the driveway two summers ago.  And my heart swells with fear as my eyes fill with tears and I call him over and wrap him in my arms because I can.  He is here and he is safe in my arms.

I walked into my daughter’s school when I got the news, I tried to stay away because I knew it wasn’t rational.  But I had to see her, I had to get my hands on her and know that she was okay.  In the school.  In school where she should be so safe.  In the school where I send her every day but can never say goodbye without looking in her eyes to tell her how much I love her and how she is my everything – I never let her walk out that door without wrapping my arms around her.  Just in case.

Some days I cry as the car pulls away, as my husband takes my beautiful girl to school.  I sit on the bench in the mud room and wrap my arms around my chest, trying to keep my heart and my fear from bursting out and my tears fall from my cheeks to my knees and I try to stay quiet so my little boy can’t hear.

And nothing changes.

Nothing has changed.

What will change?