Home Is Wear I Hang My Heart

The day of the horrible shooting, however, I spent thanking all the angels and saints for my children, and trying to explain to them that I was not coming untethered from my sense of sanity, I had just been snapped back into the harsh realization that I needed to be forever present and enormously grateful for each second I had with my them. Even when they were acting like insolent little eye-rolling piss pots.

I looked at Hil's face as she walked in the door, bewildered that I had asked her to return home earlier than she'd liked, and noticed the blueness of her eyes (as she rolled them) and the delicate freckles across the bridge of her dainty little nose, and her tiny little shell-like ears. She was scowling, however adorably, that I'd posted on Facebook that I wished that she would come home and let me give her a shamelessly adoring smooch and squeeze. She came home, mostly to pressure me to remove the post.

Until she saw my face when I saw her. And picked up her bean pole frame, lifting her tiny little feet off the floor, the laces of her turquoise Chucks dangling on the carpet, and buried my face in her face and neck, breathing in her little girl Lip Smacker and hand sanitizer scent.

I planned a carpet picnic for dinner, against my normal rules. A fire in the fireplace. Take-out burgers, fries and milkshakes for dinner. The tablecloth spread on the living room floor so we could all sit beside each other. And watch Elf.

I was so happy to have my children close enough to touch. To have them giggling next to me and leaning over and into me with laughter. To have them steal fries from my plate and put their pickles on mine. To have them hold their milkshakes in my face begging me to tell them which one was the best flavor, the Oreo Cookie or the Strawberry Cream.

And as the kids nodded off, leaning on me, during the second movie, the plates piled up on the ottoman behind us and the cats each choosing one lap or another, I let my mind wander to the mothers to the north who were not putting their children to bed that night. Not smelling their dirty-dog-played-hard-all-day-little-boy smells, and not braiding anyone's hair into a Katniss braid before bed. Not promising pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse or banana muffins for breakfast. Mothers who were regretting having made a big deal out of missing the bus that morning or having scolded their child for forgetting about the permission slip until the last minute. Mothers who were curled up in their children's otherwise empty beds, aching for them, and crying themselves to sleep wondering how on Earth they'll put their feet on the floor the next morning. Or any morning after that.

And I wondered, as I walked my half asleep, drowsy children up the stairs to bed, how anyone with a heart beating in their chest could look into any one of those mother's faces and dare make an argument against stricter gun regulations.