Schooled.

I have trouble feeling safe sometimes. Or rather, I have trouble, all the time, when I don’t feel safe. All anxiety, all sleeplessness, all distrust and mistrust, all the nausea I’ve ever had, save for a few Mexican food related incidents and one virus in first grade…it’s because I didn’t feel 100% safe. Somehow or somewhat or somewhere, my world turned on its end.

It’s all standard, really. Abandonment. Change. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Loss.

My mind generally doesn’t go to too many other places, and luckily, it often doesn’t need to. And then there are hurricanes in NYC, and serial killers in elementary schools. And this is more of the same, and yet, not at all. Such sinister, darker elements that make me wonder how/if we will all power through. Global warming and extremely violent mental illness. Close to home. Not that it shouldn’t have gotten our attention in other states or other countries at other times. It always does to me.

I’ve been struggling and quiet with the recent news of paralyzing horrors. It’s affecting me as if I’ve been beaten up, or as if I’ve exercised past my limits. I wake up after a good sleep and I don’t feel rested. I feel sore and achy and so tired. For hours after the news reached our home, I wandered the house, opening and shutting doors. I must have looked in on Desmond’s extra long baby nap a dozen times. I stared at Scarlet until she became uncomfortable and asked me if she had gotten yogurt in her hair. Again. And I wished that was why I had stared at her. Everyone said, “Hug your kids tonight. Extra tight.”

I couldn’t possibly hug my kids more. I couldn’t possibly tell them I love them more. No one would eat or sleep.

Later in the day, Scarlet watched “Alice in Wonderland” and asked me why the Queen was so grumpy. I remember as a child I thought the Queen of Hearts and the Wicked Witch of the West were about as evil as it gets. I used to hide behind the couch when they came onscreen. Now they look positively like puppies. Ill-tempered and ugly puppies, but meek and mild.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself on Thursday night, before things happened. Cassidy had been away since early that morning and wouldn’t be back until the next day. Both kids were fed and bathed. I combed Scarlet’s long, long, wet hair. As I combed, she said, “Mama, why are you grumpy sometimes? You’re not like the Queen of Hearts but sometimes you seem a little mad and you’re not very nice at me and it makes me sad.” And I froze, mid-brush-stroke. I considered myself schooled.

There are days we argue before preschool. She takes forever to get dressed, when we’re already late. She yells at me that I’m not walking to the car in the correct way. I didn’t open the correct door. She’s not wearing the correct coat or hat or mittens. It’s early in the morning and I had to wake up a warm baby to drag him out into an angry, frostbitten morning so that he could hear us bicker and then make up, barely, but in the nick of time. And now I think about those mornings in which I lose my temper and tell her that she’s slow. I think of those bright sunny mornings in which I send her to school, making her feel anything but totally loved and secure. I think of the bright sunny morning on Friday, that turned our world to black.

And it’s too hard. I can’t bear it. I’ll never send her to school the same. And I yearn for her to feel safe, in all of the ways I never really have and all of the ways I never really will.