{"id":15164,"date":"2012-12-19T13:51:56","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T21:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/?p=15164"},"modified":"2012-12-19T14:45:46","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T22:45:46","slug":"no-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/?p=15164","title":{"rendered":"No words"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a writer by profession, and I’ve blogged about children almost every day\u00c2\u00a0of the last six years. But I’m at an absolute loss\u00c2\u00a0for words when it comes to what happened in Connecticut on Friday – the details about which I finally read last night, after several days of traveling and being in somewhat\u00c2\u00a0of a (self-induced) bubble. I wasn’t going to blog about it at all, actually – I have\u00c2\u00a0lots of happy things to share here (Avery is three-and-half today, we just got back from Wisconsin and have tons of photos, etc.), and what can I<\/em> possibly say that hasn’t already been said by others, anyway??\u00c2\u00a0But\u00c2\u00a0it feels weird not to acknowledge it, it\u00c2\u00a0feels wrong and unfair to proceed as normal when there are other moms out there burying, not blogging about, their 6-year-olds today.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six.\u00c2\u00a0Zoe is six now – the same age as most of the victims. I would have, of course, been affected by the news\u00c2\u00a0even if I wasn’t a mom\u00c2\u00a0– but having\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0six-year-old of my own, plus\u00c2\u00a0another small one,\u00c2\u00a0takes the sorrow\/rage to a completely different level. When reading about some of the children who died, they sounded so Zoe-like: One girl loved math and her stuffed lamb, another was referred to as the “little CEO of the family” because of how much she liked to plan things. (Boy, does that<\/em> ever sound\u00c2\u00a0familiar.) All of the victims were, as my favorite mom-blogger put it<\/a>, “little children leading little lives, precious as miniatures.” Just like my own little ones.<\/p>\n

I said to Q at one point last night, after reading the increasingly depressing articles, “How did we let this happen?” and more than once I’ve asked myself, “What if this had been Zoe’s class?” And the sad truth is there are no comforting, easy answers to these questions. It was a horrible, random act – and it really could<\/em> have\u00c2\u00a0happened to\u00c2\u00a0Zoe, or any other child out there.\u00c2\u00a0We can’t protect our kids from every evil and harm, as much as we may want to – and this mind-boggingly awful truth is just one of the many reasons I have no (more) words for what happened.<\/p>\n

And so,\u00c2\u00a0the only thing I can really do here today is to\u00c2\u00a0remind readers, and to resolve to keep reminding myself,\u00c2\u00a0how precious life is. And I will\u00c2\u00a0continue to thank my lucky stars for the health and safety of my own precious miniatures.<\/p>\n

-M<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a writer by profession, and I’ve blogged about children almost every day\u00c2\u00a0of the last six years. But I’m at an absolute loss\u00c2\u00a0for words when it comes to what happened in Connecticut on Friday – the details about which I finally read last night, after several days of traveling and being in somewhat\u00c2\u00a0of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-78-two-kids-december-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15164"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15185,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions\/15185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}