When we sat down for dinner last night, I told the kids about the girl who survived in the Sandy Hook classroom by playing dead.  I wanted to make clear that there is no right or wrong way to get through a crisis; there is only listening to adults and following your gut and hoping for the best.  That the people who died did nothing wrong.  That the people who did something clever — or had an adult do something clever — made it through by chance.  But my G-d, I wanted them to think up clever things now when there is no immediate danger; to maybe imprint those ideas into their subconscious so if they were facing down danger, they would play dead too in order to live.

I told them that our bodies have three responses to danger, and we move through them in the following order: freeze, flight, or fight.  Freezing would be falling down and playing dead on the floor.

“But how did that work?  People don’t just fall over in their chair and die in a moment from looking at a gun,” the ChickieNob said, confused.  And then the reality dawned on her.  “The other students were already dying around her.”

“I think that must be right,” I told her, apologizing with my eyes that she has to live in a world where an eight-year-old comes to a realization like that at the dinner table.  “She must have fallen down as her friends were shot.”

But there are other kinds of freezing — hiding in plain sight by standing very still off to the side, hiding in a closet or a bathroom or a cabinet.  I promised them that no adult would ever get angry with them if they crawled into a space they weren’t supposed to go or hid in a place normally off-limits to kids if they were in a crisis situation.  Boys can go in the girls bathroom, girls can go in the boys bathroom, the only rules are the ones the adults tell you in the moment to help you stick to a plan, and if there are no adults there to guide you, follow whatever your instincts tell you to do, keeping out of sight.

Flight would be running away.  Moving yourself away from danger, whatever direction that may take you.  Even if doing so would break one of my rules or one of the school’s rules, such as running outside without an adult’s permission.

And finally, fight.  Fight isn’t really a possibility when it comes to a gun; it isn’t even an unfair fight such as an adult overpowering a child.  It’s an impossible fight.  But if someone ever grabbed you, I want you to mimic a sack of potatoes and go as heavy as possible.  Fight back by not walking alongside them.  Make them drag you.  If there are people around you, choose any adult and call out something specific to them.  If all that emerges from your mouth is a general “help me!” that is fine.  But if you can be specific, all the better.  Look at the person and scream, “Man in the red shirt!  This person isn’t my parent!  Get the police!”  Never go quietly with someone who is trying to take you some place else, even if they tell you that they will hurt you if you don’t come with them.  Because they are more likely to hurt you when they have taken you some place else than they are to hurt you in front of the people they’re trying to take you away from.

I told them if they were ever being held, fight back by hurting soft targets on the body.  Dig your fingers into their eyes.

“If they’re wearing glasses, you’ll need to remove the glasses first,” the Wolvog pointed out.

“Yes, just rake your fingers down the person’s face, dragging off the glasses and sticking your fingers in their eyes.  Punch them wherever you can punch them.  Kick the knees, bite, pull hair, act like an animal.  If you are being attacked, you do not have to do good behaviour.  Actually, if you can, punch a man in the crotch.  Use the top of your head, use your elbow, use your foot — whatever you can do to punch him there because it will be painful.  I can’t speak from experience since I don’t have a penis, but I’ve been told that it is so painful that it can make a man throw up.”

“Well,” the Wolvog said doubtfully, “that would make more work for the cleaning staff.  If the person threw up.”

“The cleaning staff would not mind if you did it to protect yourself or another student; if it was a crisis situation and it was done in self-defense.”

“But, to be polite, once the bad guy is caught, you should go back in the school and offer to help clean up the vomit.  Not that it’s your vomit, but you should offer to help since you made the mess.”

“I don’t think the cleaning staff would make you clean that up,” the ChickieNob reassured him.  “They’re really nice, and they would understand.”

“I’m just saying to offer to help,” the Wolvog finally relented.  “If it was your penis-kick that caused the vomit mess.”

And that is what it is like to discuss a safety plan with eight-year-olds.  There is the amusing innocence; the worry about getting in trouble for making noise in the hall (you do not need to walk in a straight line if there is a bad guy in the school) or creating a mess that will upset the cleaning staff.  And there is the quiet maturity as they informed me of where they would hide or how they would run.

I worried about scaring them, but the reality is that their school already does these drills.  They know their school’s plan, have gone through a half-dozen different crisis scenarios as a school, acting out their safety plan.  They know that bad things can happen.  They know that the adults around them will do their best to protect them.  They know that no matter how scared they get, they need to wait until the crisis is over before they cry.  They’ve been promised that there will be hours and hours afterward to scream and cry and let it all out, but in the moment, they will need to be silent, orderly, perform their job, follow directions.  And they solemnly promised me they would do that.

But still, I reminded them that the likelihood they will ever need to use anything I told them is slim to none.  Their great-grandmother went through life without ever being in a life threatening situation.  Their grandmother went through life without ever being in a life threatening situation.  Generation after generation is born and ages and dies without ever being in a shooting.  But I want them to be prepared as best as anyone can be prepared, to talk about it now in case they are ever in danger and anything we’ve spoken about can help them or another person.

And please G-d, never place our children in a position to need to use anything we’ve taught them.

I wrote this more for me than for you; to remember what I said to the kids in case I want to refer back to it in the future.  I’ll always know where to find it.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

Finding the Bo-flakes as we move from room to room.

How do we write again after Friday’s events?  I have cut myself from reading any sort of coverage except for the stories of the people lost.  I always have it in me to hear about a life; what I don’t have in me is to listen to people pontificate on why someone else takes lives.  I have been focused on taking Dyke in the Heart of Texas’s challenge to remember one of the people lost.  I’ve also chosen Noah Pozner because he was a twin.  Because he looks like the sort of boy my twins would have played with.  Because both of our families are Jewish.  Because I’ve been thinking about his surviving twin sister.

I’ve been trying not to think about the event itself, looking at the coverage out of the corner of my eye.  Do you know that is a preemie survival technique?  Their brains become so overwhelmed from stimulation that they cope by looking at things out of the corner of their eye instead of head-on.  So I am looking at the events at Sandy Hook out of the corner of my eye, trying to distract myself.

Sunday was the last scheduled day that our bakery was producing sufganiyot (little filled donuts served on Chanukkah), but they mentioned on Facebook that they were considering extending the baking run.  I jumped into that immediately, writing them that they needed to keep baking.  To give myself something to say that is not connected in any way with children dying.  Just flour and yeast and sugar and raspberry filling.

A small good thing, as Raymond Carver would say.

 *******

I need to think for a few minutes about something other than Sandy Hook because every time I allow it to get to the forefront of my mind, I feel like I’m drowning.

Last Tuesday after school, I picked up the kids and we went to the Israeli bakery a few towns away to buy sufganiyot as a Chanukkah treat.  Shula, the owner, was working the cash register, and we ordered two sufganiyah — a chocolate one and a raspberry one (the Wolvog does not eat sufganiyah, deeming them a “white food” even though they are brown) and then stood back to wait for them to come out from the back kitchen, still warm.

A man stepped up behind us and started to speak to the owner in Hebrish, moving back and forth between Hebrew and English every few sentences.  When we walked out of the store, the ChickieNob grabbed my sleeve and whispered, “they were speaking Hebrew.”

It wasn’t that she meant the obvious — that Hebrew was being spoken — but more the underlying message: we’re near home, it’s a language she only hears in the house or Hebrew school, and here she was out-and-about in what looked like an everyday store and finding that otherness amid the ordinary people around her.  It’s an otherness that I think Jews feel even more acutely this time of year, when the surrounding world is very vocally and visibly telling you they’re Christian through their greetings (which always assumes that we’re Christian too or that we’d be happy to celebrate their holiday) and decorations.

I feel the same way when we’re in that area with the Israeli bakery, one of the many small Israeli or Jewish pockets around the city.  The neighbourhood is overwhelmingly Jewish, and it contains several Jewish private schools, kosher restaurants, and Jewish stores.  I enjoy being there very much.  There is an ease to being there, a comfort to being there.  I don’t have to reframe questions so they’re understandable to a non-Jewish population.  I can ask my question in Hebrew, if I wish.  If the schools in that area were better, we’d consider living there.

When we were in London, we went to 7 or 8 churches.  We thought going to England would be this easy introduction to inter-country travel since we wouldn’t have a language barrier.  We thought anything out of the norm would be taken on face value as something that is “British” and is therefore interesting because it is different.  Isn’t that why we travel; to experience a place that is unlike our own?  Most of the time, the experience transcends meaning.

But we discovered that with 8-year-olds, churches don’t transcend meaning.  One church is fine, but many churches one after the other aren’t enjoyable if you don’t know what you’re looking at.  I sat down on the floor of Westminster Abbey, giving them a half hour version of the Gospels while they looked at the depiction of the Last Supper.  Eyes glazed over.  It got us through a few more churches, but I can’t say they really enjoyed any of them.  Let me put it this way: if I had to listen to someone speak Japanese for a few minutes, it would be cool.  But if I had to sit in a four hour meeting where everyone around me was speaking Japanese (with a tiny break here and there to point out something in English that I didn’t find particularly interesting), I would be daydreaming by the 10 minute mark.

Because that was what it was like for the twins.  Walking through a church for four hours as a Jewish kid was like listening to Japanese, with your parents bending down every once in a while to explain something in English — that wasn’t that interesting in their opinion — only to have the conversation return to Japanese.

On the last full day in London, we went to Bevis Marks, the oldest shul in the UK.  We got there too early so we had to wait in the cold while they finished up morning prayers inside.  We considered skipping it, but the kids wanted to wait.  We went inside and you could visibly see the ChickieNob’s body relax.  She was finally in a space where everything was just different enough to be interesting, but not so different that she couldn’t understand it.  We spent a long time just sitting in there and then exploring every nook and cranny.

Bevis Marks looks nothing like our shul at home; and not just due to age and the history that comes with age.  Our shul at home is completely different — egalitarian (and with that comes all the ways egalitarianism changes a space).  But with a few questions, they could bridge what they knew from home with what they were seeing now.  They were so enormously happy to be in Bevis Marks, to be able to lead their own exploration vs. having it handed and explained to them by someone else.  They could just be themselves.

Josh and I have chosen to raise our kids in mainstream America and all that comes with being part of mainstream America, which means that there is usually an otherness carried into all moments outside of the home.  But being in the bakery was like being in Bevis Marks, finding home in a place where one did not expect to find home.

And it’s a tiny bit of comfort.  Also a small good thing.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

The Christmas creche in the Grand Ballroom of the White House.

I cried with Josh in the mall parking lot like an animal, a guttural cry from the back of the throat, turning my insides out until I could feel myself gagging.  It was our first time alone since we heard the news about Sandy Hook.

I woke up in the middle of the night between Friday and Saturday and had to untangle my brain at 2 am.  Had the shooting really happened?  Had it been a bad dream?  I truly didn’t know for a few minutes, couldn’t wake up enough to coherently know, and therefore just sat in the dark in a state of disbelief until my rational brain confirmed it.  I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring.  I had dropped it off in the afternoon to get it fixed.  The television had been on in the jewelry store.  They owner had turned off the news for us so the twins wouldn’t see.  It couldn’t be a dream because the ring was gone.

On Saturday morning, we opted to tell the twins what happened, a sanitized, lie-filled version.  We were worried that the rabbi at shul would say something during the service and we wanted to control the news.  “This could never ever happen at your school, but we wanted you to understand why adults may be sad today.”

I told them each separately while I helped them get dressed after their shower.  “Did children die?” each child asked in disbelief.  Do you remember how innocent they were a few years ago when we first broached the topic of death, and you guys helped me through that conversation?  Back when you had to be over 100 to die or stop eating or get hit by a car.  And then we added cancer.  And finally they learned this weekend that there are people who use guns to kill other people.  Not in a war zone.  But here.  In a school.  And yes, children died.

In 2009, I said, “And I had to answer yes because I don’t make promises that I can’t keep.”

And then yesterday, I lied.  I lied while looking them right in the eye and told them they were safe.  And I held that lie in my heart all day, letting it wobble inside the ventricles and atria, flowing out through my body in the blood until the lie was even in the fingertips I was using to push their hair from the twins’ foreheads.

That night, we went out, leaving the twins behind with their grandparents so we could run errands.  We were talking about vegetarianism, and while it’s something I rarely talk about — and to be frank, rarely think about — I found myself passionately explaining to Josh why I don’t eat meat.  I don’t eat meat because I don’t just believe that you shouldn’t seethe a kid in his mother’s milk; I personally cannot partake in consuming another being’s child, even if that being is technically part of the food chain.  Even if it’s found to be true that the mother animal has no ability to comprehend that her child has been taken away.  I know, I understand, even if that cow doesn’t.  And I won’t take part in that.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I felt everything come out; the guilt from the lie and moreover the grief from the lie, the truth that replaces that lie.  There is no place on earth, including a home, that is completely safe.  I can do everything in my power to cradle their life, and still, our best efforts will never be perfect, will never be able to keep everything at bay.  I cried because there were mothers separated from their children, and they know, they understand.

There were parents who had sent their children to school and their children hadn’t come home; would never come home.  I couldn’t believe there was no rewind, no re-do, no chance to repair the damage and bring those people back.  There was nothing we could do to fix this; only things we could do for other children moving forward.  And that grief, that we couldn’t undo, that this was broken for some families beyond repair was too much to consider while we sat in the parking lot finally alone.

I asked Josh how I send them to school on Monday, and he replied that sending our children to school has always been an act of faith.  That the act of faith was the same on Friday as it will be on Monday, that our children are no more in danger tomorrow than they were last week.  We are just more aware of that act of faith, the fact that we make it.  I haven’t decided if I’m sending them Monday.  I’ll do what I need to do in the moment (which has been the philosophy that always gets me through things).  Monday is not what I’m worried about.  It’s Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, it’s making that act of faith again and again for eternity.

We all need to take that leap daily; to leave the house (or frankly, even to stay in the house).  To trust that we’ll return.

There is no point to this post.  But I had to write it anyway.  I have to keep giving myself an outlet to cry again and again.  This isn’t something that can be released in a single moment; walked away from unchanged.  I don’t want to read about it, don’t want to think about it, and yet there is nothing else happening inside my brain.