My Rogue Heart

Grappling with gun violence as a new mom

Before I had Felix, I’d always hear people say, “Being a parent is like watching your heart walk around outside your body.”

Yea, yea, I get it. You love them. It’s intense, I’d think.

But Jesus Fucking Christ. The sheer vulnerability of this love can be so overwhelming.

It was Felix’s first week of daycare. I’d heard it a million times before, picked up the phone when my sister or bestie was crying after dropping their kid off for the first time. I knew it could be emotional.

We made it through his first two days feeling like God damn champions. Felix was excited, had fire in his eyes as he crawled the classroom for the first time. A play space built for someone just his size! Other kids to play with! He’s a social little dude, and I’d known he needed this.  

I walked away from his classroom and back out the front door, my heart swelling at his independence and courage.

But then, on the third day, reality seeped in. It was like suddenly he understood that this magical pint-size place was also where mama leaves him, the anticipation of my exit now overshadowing his excitement.

He was fussy before we brought him to school, crying mama when Justin tried to feed him breakfast, reaching needily for me.

“I wonder how drop-off is gonna go today,” I said to Justin.

I had a bad feeling.

When we arrived, he started screaming bloody murder, fat tears dripping off his chin as the teacher pried him from my hands.

I walked away, took a deep breath. Luckily, I made it to the car before my own tears rolled.  

Throughout the day, I refreshed the school’s online communication platform about a hundred times, a psychotic fool hoping for something, anything to ease my worry.  

The first note from the teacher read: “Refused lunch.”

He hasn’t had anything to eat?

A few hours later, another note: “We need a pacifier for naptime.”

What? I left one there! He doesn’t even have a pacifier?! The poor kid needs a damn pacifier!

Thankfully, a busy day of clients kept me from dropping everything & hauling ass to daycare to grab my little dude so we could cling tightly to each other and never let go.

Pick up wasn’t much better; he was red-faced and sweaty, sobbing again as soon as he saw me. I wanted to change my mind, backtrack on the whole daycare idea, keep him with me, avoid his discomfort. I know this is not a trauma, I told myself. This is normal growing-up stuff. It’s part of our process of separating. He’s safe. This is healthy.  

Regardless, all the worries and mom guilt flooded to the surface.

Am I doing this right? Should I just quit my job and stay home with him? What kind of society is this anyway, one where we all just work and leave our kids for someone else to raise? How will I survive loving this human so much while he becomes increasingly independent and vulnerable to the world? How do I show him that I believe in him, it’s the world I don’t trust? How do I allow him the space for growth? How do I tolerate feeling his suffering?

Before becoming a mama, I didn’t fully understand what people meant when they talked about watching their hearts walk around outside their bodies. I didn’t get that it’s about so much more than love. Yes, it’s such an intense love, it can bring you to your knees. But it’s also the responsibility for a tiny human’s safety and well-being. It’s the wanting to do right by them. It’s the never-ending list of decisions, both on the day-to-day, and the big picture, to protect them in a world where danger is inevitable. And it’s constant.  

I know enough to know he will face adversity, hardship, & pain. And that it’s not my job to protect him from those feelings and experiences. That they’re important too. Essential, even. That my job is to help him learn to be resilient and strong, to be able to rise above. To show him that I trust him to do so without shouldering it for him. But damn, if that’s not fucking hard.  

Within a few days, Felix started loving daycare. He understood that he was safe and that I would always be back to get him. Before I knew it, he was smiling and waving goodbye in the mornings without missing a beat.  

And did that make it easier on me? Hell yes.

One week after he started, the Uvalde school shooting happened. Since becoming a mom, the expansion of empathy toward other parents has changed me, and I processed the event from a new perspective, that of a mother instead of a child.  

How? How do we tell our children that the places they go to be safe and learn are also the places where they can be shot and killed? How do I explain that they will have to participate in active shooter drills like we did for Tornados in the Midwest?

Columbine happened in April of 1999. I was a freshman in high school. School shootings didn’t occur before then; it wasn’t even a hint of something that could happen. I try to wrap my mind around the reality for kids growing up now. Yes, the statistical likelihood that my child will be killed in a school shooting is small. But the chance that he will grow up worrying about it, that it will be part of his consciousness, is definite.

I have to accept this reality? Shit, I’m worried about him making it through some normal parent-child separation, so much so that it’s heavy on my heart for days at a time. But this? This is warzone-like trauma, and my hands are tied.

I think about having a child’s mind, one that’s contemplating the world for the first time. How do you explain this to him? This normalcy to which we’ve become accustomed? I have to ask him to accept this reality?

My rogue little heart, walking around outside my body. The one I’m supposed to keep safe and protect, the human who I love so much it’s incomprehensible.

The one I let sleep on my chest when he’s teething to relieve him from the pressure of his pounding gums. The one who actually motivates me to check my tire pressure because I know he’s in my backseat. The one I took prenatal vitamins for, the one who kept me up all night, happily kicking my rib cage from the inside. The one I put sunscreen on every morning and the one I stood in line for at the hospital to check his car seat installation while my stomach stood a mile outward. The one I read instructional books for, listen to podcasts, and watch YouTube videos, always coming up with new ways to approach his ever-changing development.

I question if he’s had enough water (how do you teach a baby to drink from a straw?) and if he’s wearing the right sun hat (how do you get a baby to keep a hat on?) I worry about him eating his vegetables and how to be patient and present with him. I think about where he should go to school and how much time he should be independent versus how much time he should spend with us. I think about threading the needle of the right amount of Tylenol to ease his pain, but not too much, because, I don’t know, that must be bad. I feel literal aching in my chest when he gets shots at the doctor.  

This human. This perfect, precious, vivacious, hilarious human, who I have the task of protecting. Who I love so much, the passing of time can feel almost devastating.

All these ways that we protect our babies, and yet. I am going to have to tell him that I can’t protect him when he goes to school, or the grocery store, or a sporting event, or a concert, or a parade, or anywhere else, because we live in America? This is the cost of living in America?’

This is the cost of living in America.

How did we get here? I feel this way, and my son is white. The added insurmountable anguish if he were brown or black growing up in this country. How to explain it? How to accept it?

I feel this cognitive dissonance for all parents. We give all of ourselves to protect them, but to live here, we have to minimize this colossal risk that hangs over us; we have to push it out of our minds, pretending it isn’t threatening us. How else do we go on parenting with such a gaping vulnerability?  

As parents, we have to accept the unacceptable. That if we choose to raise our families here, in the land of the free, we have to accept gun violence. We have to accept that assault rifles remain legal because some people think they’re fun. That their right to own a gun means our children will partake in shooting drills at school. That their right to own a gun means the potential loss of my child and the definite loss of another’s child.

How to accept this?

I sit in this vulnerable space with every other American who feels the rage and heartbreak.  

I know there are things to do about gun violence, like vote, donate, and advocate. I am not saying this is hopeless or there is nothing we can do, because we all need to act. I am speaking about how insurmountable this problem feels when legislation doesn’t budge year after year, shooting after shooting.

And while I don’t have the solution to this problem, I thought it might help to discuss how to talk to your kids about the hard stuff. We can’t change gun legislation today, but we can control how we show up with and for our kids.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how to talk to your kiddos about the hard stuff. Even when you don’t have the answers.  

 

Organizations to support: 

Everytown For Gun Safety 

March For Our Lives

Moms Demand Action