These past weeks, unless you were living under a rock, the already scary, unpredictable, and unfeeling world we’ve been living in got worse. Then a few days ago, one of my teenage daughters was assaulted by a former friend over a false rumor.

This week, my own fourth grader, a constant reminder of the fourth graders who senselessly lost their lives this week, sat shirtless at the computer doing his math, narrating to himself in a hilarious monologue. I came over to him and put my arms around him, my face against his back where he couldn’t see me crying.

At the same time as parents in Texas were asking, Why wasn’t my child safe at school? I was asking the same question about my daughter. I was thinking about the privilege that allowed me to teach my fourth grader at home, and the lack of resources that made my daughter’s school unsafe the day she was attacked.

There was no hall monitor on the floor where it took place, and although my daughter already knew she was the target of animus and had sought a trusted teacher for help, the teacher was a petite woman who was unable to immediately intervene.

When I heard my kid was suffering from a severe headache and blurry vision, I picked her up at school and went straight to the emergency room.

While we were in the waiting room, I was sent a video of the event by a friend whose kids had already seen it on social media. The kids were home that day because school just didn’t feel safe. I couldn’t argue with that.

The supervising doctor who visited with us after my girl had been worked up told us it was a concussion and that it could be managed at home. I’d been hearing how crowded the ED was for our entire stay in the waiting room, from staff and other people waiting. I felt like he was telling me, “You don’t have to be here taking up space.”

He was never unkind. They gave us a doctor’s note and instructions for what symptoms to keep an eye out for.

Right around the same time as the “altercation,” as the school termed it, photos of the Texas fourth graders started coming out in the news. They look just like my nine and ten year old kids.

I’m not a person whom pain galvanizes action. I want to lie in bed and never get up again, to sleep until the hurt goes away. I don’t know how to answer my kids’ questions, take care of myself, attend to my daughter and give her the emotional support she needs, and do regular baseline parenting all at the same time. I just shut down.

I know it will be OK, it always is. We all have to move forward one moment at a time even when we don’t have a map.

We marched for George Floyd. I know it was right, but sometimes it’s hard to see how it did any good. In the coming weeks, we will almost certainly take to the streets again to advocate for change to gun laws in this country. Maybe this time something will change, but I’m not feeling terribly hopeful today.

I titled this The Safe Place because I wanted to circle back around to talking about where we can go to be safe – even if that’s a quiet place within our hearts. But that isn’t much comfort to the families who lost loved ones to gun violence this month. And frankly, my heart is so heavy that calling it a quiet place is kind of like calling a dishrag a source of water. It probably is, but not in the way you want it to be.