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Friday, December 14, 2012

Extra hugs tonight

Reading about school shooting wrenches my heart every time.  I don't know if it's because I am part of the Columbine generation, but it shakes me to the core every time.  I am taken back to my junior year of high school, where we were profiled in Time as the next likely school for a tragedy.  We had the SWAT team on our roof and various bomb threats.  We had police walking our hallways as we collectively held our breaths, and we were blessed with no serious issues.  When I taught at  Jacobs we found out after the fact that a violence threat was found within the school.  It was scary to find out months afterwards that nothing had been shared with even the faculty, but again we were blessed that nothing came of it.

I am blessed every day that I get to spend so much time with my kids.  Even as the fight and argue, when Carolyn turns the mixer on and sprays flour all over, and as they struggle to sleep at night, we're lucky to have them.  It's going to take me days to get over this tragedy in CT, despite not knowing a soul there.  I scooped up both kids and gave them extra hugs today.  It was hard to leave to go tutor this afternoon, with sad thoughts lingering in the back of my head.  What is a parent to do these todays to protect the most vulnerable?  Kindergartners should be immune to violence, we shouldn't find a roomful that has been murdered.

Days like today make me add another item to the list of why to homeschool.  It eliminates a place where my kids could suffer loss without me at their side.  But I don't make decisions out of fear and I never have.  So it's not really high on my list of reasons as I've written about those before.  For the next few days though I'll be checking locks twice, giving lots of extra hugs, and being sure to tell the kids I love them a few more times a day.  Life can be so short and tragic.  We'll never understand the whys of such tragedies, but I will continue to pray that something will be done to stop something like this from happening again.

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