Things That Matter

It's been a few months since my last post, which means I've been due for one. I had plans of talking about how crazy life has been since school started. Or perhaps another post about how there seem to be babies everywhere when you can't have your own for whatever reason. (Seriously, my local Starbucks seems to attract parents with babies in chest carriers, waving tiny fists at their parents' Pumpkin Spice Lattes! and yet, there are rarely any parents braving a trip with a Terrible Two-year-old. Gee, I wonder why?)

But yesterday I was at work, mere blocks from the shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. I had dear friends in that building. I might have been there for meetings with my clients if I weren't waiting on a badge renewal. But now there are bullet holes in hallways I've walked down. There are offices where proud name plates with titles and rankings made people targets. There are people who had to leave behind their cars, phones, computers, everything, and have no idea when they can go back. Parents who had to wait hours to see their kids and now spend the day at home because their work space is a crime scene.

But even harder to comprehend are the people who won't get to come back for their belongings. Who will never again hold their children close or laugh with friends. Who took jobs where the biggest threat lately was cuts in pay due to sequestration, a challenge overcome for now.

We'll wait for answers, and maybe find some closure. Implement some policies to keep a tragedy like this from happening again. But somehow the issues I held so tightly in my head seem to be replaced by a fog, a disoriented haze from which I am pulled by the sudden wail of sirens or the whir of helicopter blades. Sounds, formerly so routine in my space, that now recall the fear of being told to stay in the building but away from windows, worrying about people who make up both my work life and my "family".

I went home that afternoon, against security orders, so I could hold Andy close and be with Brianna instead of going to class. She sensed that something was up, but she accepted my explanation that sometimes scary things happen that make Mommy want lots of hugs and then asked to go to the park. It wasn't quite enough to take away all the hurt, those moments pushing her on the swings and hunting for sticks and pine cones. But for now her innocence and laughter help me feel centered with the things that matter.