This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 18, 2012 - On Friday night, like a lot of parents around the country, my husband and I held our two small children tight and let them fall asleep in our bed.
OK, we tried. But this was such a treat and they were so excited that our trips up and down the stairs to get them settled down finally ended with them tucked into their own beds. They still got extra hugs.
My children are now 5 and 2, and I think of them, of course, as I hear more about the first graders who lost their lives in what still seems an unimaginable act of violence on Friday morning in Connecticut. I also think of my niece, Juli, who is 6 and a first grader in St. Louis.
One of the blessings and curses of parenthood, I’ve discovered, is that it’s hard to hold on to what our children were like yesterday or last week, much less years ago as they kept us up all night, or were learning to ask for things sweetly instead of shouting angry little demands, or mastering some skill for the first time.
So let me remind you, for just a moment, about 6 year olds, and the magic they still carry with them.
Usually, they’re in first grade. They’re bona fide big kids, and they know it, but they still have princess and pirate parties.
They believe in Santa Claus, at least Juli does, and magic and fairies and fairy tales. Juli just lost another tooth and told my sister that she saw the tips of the Tooth Fairy's wings as she flew off.
They’re brave. They’ve been at school on their own for at least two years now. They ride the school bus or their bikes or they walk. But they'll still hold your hand.
That same school might have seemed scary one year ago, but now they know the halls and the teachers and the best swing on the playground. They have a pack of friends. They fight easily and forgive quickly.
They’re silly, erupting into laughter at things that make kids just a little older smirk or roll their eyes.
They’ve stopped napping, but at night, they sleep like milk-drunk babies, totally spent from all that running and playing and imagining what they’ll some day become.
They're learning to read.
They still hug their teachers.
And, according to my sister, “They can’t write once upon a time yet, but they know what it means.”
They’re 6, and to their families, they seem so big. Juli does to me, but I can remember the feel of her warm little body resting on mine the first time I met her and she fell asleep in my arms, breathing steady, her soft head smelling this perfect baby smell that I just can’t describe.
They seem so big, but they’re still so little, with so much ahead of them.
My husband and I haven’t spoken to our son, Max, about what happened at Sandy Hook, and so far, he hasn’t asked. But if he does, I’ll tell him that there were 20 kids in Connecticut. Their names were Allison, Benjamin, Avielle, Caroline, Jack, James, Chase, Catherine, Madeleine, Josephine, Daniel, Jessica, Noah, Emilie, Grace, Ana, Jesse, Dylan, Olivia and Charlotte. I’ll tell him they were first graders, like his cousin Juli, that their parents loved them very much and everyone in the country is very sad that they’re gone.
I’ll tell him his school is safe, that people are mostly good, and that I’ll do everything I can to protect him.
But Max is 5, and soon he’ll be 6, so my answers probably won’t be good enough.
That night, if he wants to, I’ll tell him he can sleep in our bed.