Dear Eliza,
I wrote this letter to you a couple of week back feeling sad, angry, and helpless. I had to get my thoughts down in the moment as a way to process it for myself. Here we go.
___
This is the second consecutive week of a mass shooting. There are more mass shootings than days on the calendar.
This news hits close to home. Not physically close as the incident occurred in Uvalde, Texas, but close because it happened at an elementary school. You and Matteo were home from school today with a bad head cold, and I couldn’t have been more grateful to have you at home, in my sight.
I know you practice drills at school for these unspeakable events, and I know you can’t easily comprehend why. I suppose I can relate to earthquake drills in my time. The difference is that earthquakes are rare, not a daily occurrence, and they’re an act of God, not man.
It’s hard to comprehend the idea that school isn’t a safe place to be. Growing up as a white boy in the Pacific Northwest and attending a private elementary school sheltered me from a lot of the world and provided real physical safety. I traded some perceived safety for an expanded worldview, thankfully attending a public Tacoma high school. Although I got some personal items stolen, that experience was still reasonably safe.
This is a tough time to be a parent on so many fronts. Pandemic and vaccines. Online bullying. Gun violence. It’s hard enough being a parent without these factors. We waited so long in an IVF journey to bring you into the world, and questioned if you would ever come. The fact that parents are losing their children so soon because of racism, prejudice and ineffective policies is shattering.
I spoke with a colleague and mom of teenagers about parenting. She wisely said that you never stop worrying about your kids. You just worry about different things as they grow. The labor shifts from being physical - chasing after young kids for their well-being and safety - to emotional - worrying about what they do on their own, out of sight.
The labor of this parenting generation includes a new layer of worry about what total strangers may be capable of doing while your kids are out of sight, or just at school.
Like with environmental protection, gun violence is the responsibility of my generation to inherit and make positive changes. I hope we do our job for you.
Love, Dad