Small Days

I think I mostly used to live for the Big Days.  The tropical vacations, the international getaways, the lavish 10-course meals that ashamedly tallied up close to a mortgage payment.  Before our daughter, Brad and I had a lot more of those.   He caressed the binding of new edition Lonely Planets and I scoured the gastronomic menus at all the North American Michelin stars.  I was addicted to the planning, the anticipating, the sheer adventure of escaping from the daily grind.   I loved my life.   There were big days with lychee martinis, passport stamps, and inventive camera poses while scaling rocks, eating seaweed, and perching under street signs written in Arabic. Now there are Small Days with milk dribbling out of sippy cups, twisted car seat straps, and deranged-looking dinosaurs drawn in purple bath crayon.    Yet, it didn’t take me long to make peace with that.  My new reality may not be big, but it’s bountiful.  

Last month, however, I found myself in a bit of funk.   I was dreading the cold this winter, bracing for the gray monotony of piling on layers of wool, gripping frigid steering wheels, and drying out wet socks on the radiator.  I wanted to travel.  I wanted to go somewhere fabulous.  Somewhere exotic with fruit I didn’t recognize and sand that felt like powdered sugar.  A place that required three planes, a boat and an ATV to get to.  And then, one morning I made the sluggish trek down the hall in my fleece robe and slippers to pluck my toddler out of her crib and she greeted me with those words I had been waiting two years to hear, “I love me, Mama.”  (Well, close enough).  And I felt the sweet rush only a small day can provide.  Never mind that she then proceeded to squat down and poop.  I was smitten.   I am slowly learning as a parent that life is actually the meat in between whatever big days we are granted.   It is our sustenance.  And it is delicious.

That is what makes today, December 14^th, an otherwise small day in my life, a day of such profound sadness.  Today marks the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.   As a mother I cannot help but feel gutted about the events of that day.   I remember staring dejectedly at the news that week, shaking from my safe perch on the living room coach, tangled with conflicting emotions: feeling lucky, terrified, outraged and yet, bloated with empathy.   For several nights I laid in bed, confounded that something like this could happen.   I wrote a blog entry in attempt to mourn the profound loss I was feeling after grasping how little control I actually have over the safety of my own child.

Twenty-six lives were taken that day at Sandy Hook.  Twenty of them children.  7300 small days.  Simply stolen.  7300 nights without a pajama-clad child brushing their teeth over the sink while pretending to slay dragons and 7300 mornings of zipping coats and tying shoes by the door that were denied existence.  There were no trips to the library or underdogs at the park or running after the ice cream truck in bare feet, waving a dollar.  There were no puppet shows or twirling in dress-up clothes or building forts out of sofa cushions.   I am guessing the anguished parents of those children felt the most cheated by all the small days they had missed.  All the minuscule moments; the bony hugs after soccer practice, leaps over sidewalk cracks, kissed-away paper cuts, cookie-batter licks, and sleepy yawns at bedtime that patch together a day. I am guessing they most miss the mundane.

The Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America movement isn’t calling for a moment of silence on December 14^th at 9:30am EST.  They are organizing gatherings all around the country to make noise.  They are convening the masses in three dozen states to ring bells in honor of those who died at Sandy Hook and to the 30,000 others who lost their lives to gun violence this past year.   They are gathering to mourn, but to mourn with purpose and resolve.  Something must be done to provoke continued progress in the legislative fight against automatic assault weapons.  Something must be done to reform gun control and secure universal background checks.  Our children are dying.   Twenty-six school shootings have occurred in the 365 days since the tragedy in Newtown. CT.  Twenty six.  One for every life at Sandy Hook.  

Moms around the country are demanding action.   So I am making noise.  With my daughter by my side, I am ringing my bell today.  In a small way.  In my small house.  On an otherwise simple, single, small day that is anything but mundane.