Imagine this.

The app tells us you are no bigger than a pomegranate when we pick out a car seat. It must be new, and meet all the current safety standards. We put it on the list. We add muslin swaddle blankets and organic cotton sleepers and crib sheets, but no crib bumper, because the APA says those are out. I take the prenatal vitamins and make myself to eat beef to get my iron levels up and I don’t eat deli meat or soft cheese and I don’t drink wine. I make sure I sleep on my side at night. 

And when you are born, we have the doctors and nurses give you all the shots and the tests, and they teach us how to safely strap you into that car seat. We trek back and forth to the doctor for at all the recommended intervals.

When you start sitting up on your own, we strategically place pillows to catch your head when you fall. And when you start crawling, we install the baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs.

You finally start walking, start climbing, start jumping, and running, and we become a chorus of: “Watch out! Be careful! Take your time! We’re right here!”

You begin striding forward on the balance bike, and we strap a helmet to your head. We become a broken record: “When you get to a street, you stop, look, listen, and wait for a grown up. Stop. Look. Listen. Wait.”

We teach you the proper names for your body parts and we teach you about consent and body safety. 

One summer, you show us that you are fearless in the water, and we immediately sign you up for swim lessons. 

And when a global pandemic upends our lives, we buy you masks, and teach you how to wear them to keep yourself and others safe. We keep our distance. And when you are finally old enough, we take you to get vaccinated.

From the moment we knew you were growing in my belly, we worked to keep you safe. Healthy. Strong. There was always an answer. The latest research and guidelines from the top experts in every field. But when I try to figure out how to keep you safe from a man with a gun who could enter your school, I am at a loss. They tell me there are bulletproof backpacks. That your teachers will train you through active shooter drills. I fill out my ballots in all of the Novembers, and I add my voice to the chorus calling for gun reform legislation. But it does nothing for the tightness I feel in my throat at the thought of you in that school just a few blocks from our house, just a few miles from my office, hiding under your desk, or in a closet, or worse.

In the hours that follow the latest mass shooting, when 19 children and two teachers were murdered, mothers speak up: “We must stop saying this is ‘unimaginable.’ We must imagine it. There is no such thing as other people’s children.” And I feel this. I can imagine it. I can imagine what it would be like, to know that the part of my heart that lives outside my body is gone. And it destroys me. 

I have no grace left for people who keep electing other people who value their own power over children’s lives. And for those people, the elected officials who offer their prayers and sympathy but will not do anything to stop the slaughter of children? They had better hope that the god they are praying to has mercy on their souls. But I wouldn’t count on it.