You don't have to be a parent to be heartbroken & profoundly affected!
Damn it, I keep hearing "as a parent....." or "if you're a parent....." preceding statements about how profoundly you're affected by twenty children being senselessly murdered by yet another mass murder of children in this country. I'm hearing it repeatedly on the news, seeing it here, from our President....
I'm not a parent and my heart broke when I heard the news today. I've had periods of tears gushing interspersed with tears welling for most of the time since I heard. I don't have to have children of my own for my heart to break for each child who won't get the Christmas presents his or her parents have already bought for them and the children who were getting all excited about Christmas coming, for children who'll never even get to read a "chapter book" much less know what it's like to grow and graduate from high school and move through their adulthood, for the children who went to school this morning and giggled while whispering a secret in a best friend's ear and 20 minutes later lay dead on a schoolroom floor, for children who went to school in the morning and now must struggle with a lifetime of witnessing their friends and teachers murdered in front of their eyes. You don't have to be a parent.
We who don't have kids also often have kids in our lives who we love. I have nieces and nephews who are now young adults. The child my thoughts went to today, though, were my little neighbor. Her working parents needed childcare they couldn't afford and I needed work done around my house, so we set up a wonderfully amicable barter system wherein I was her unpaid childcare for a couple of years and her dad mowed my lawn and did work around my house. I adore that child. As we often tell each other, "I love you big as the sky." My favorite 2 pictures on my fridge are one that I took after she, at age 5, spontaneously drew a picture of us on my walkway with the sidewalk chalk I'd gotten her and under it she wrote in big bold letters, "I love you _____" (my name) and one with her sitting with a wonderful expression on her face (mock frustration) when one of my dogs chose to sit on her coloring book she was coloring on the floor and stared back into her eyes in sort of mock defiance. After her parents divorced, her mother almost remarried and moved to a different state. I have to admit to being heartbroken that she wouldn't be nearby for me to be involved in her life as she grew up and I will further admit to selfishly being kind of glad when her mom called off the wedding and they stayed put. I adore that child....."as big as the sky."
You don't have to be a parent.
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