All the playing's stopped in the playground now

When I got home from work tonight, the Beautiful Boy was sitting in his mother's lap watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the twinkle of the lights on our Christmas tree, and I turned my head and looked at it like I probably haven't since we put it up a few weeks ago.  I noticed the stockings hung above the piano, and the Christmas cards lined along its top.  At the first commercial break the Beautiful Boy came up to me and I beckoned him into my arms and I kissed him and squeezed him again and again.  He, I am certain, had no idea why those hugs and kisses were especially needed tonight.

There are twenty parents in Newtown, Connecticut this evening--not to mention the families of the six murdered adults--who would give everything they own and more to have these simple few moments that I shared with my family tonight.  They will never have them again.

The blood of the children killed today is not, as one gun rights organization suggested, on the hands of gun control advocates. It's on the hands of gun advocacy groups like the NRA who lie to the American people about the efficacy of guns and insist that, unlike any other right we possess via the U. S. Constitution (speech, assembly, press, etc.), that somehow the second amendment is sacred and cannot have limits that keep the peace.  The killings today are not the result of taking God out of the classroom, as Mike Huckabee so callously said today.  They are the result of pseudo-Christians who can quote every picayune detail of the Bible to support their agenda (usually interpreted incorrectly) but always seem to forget Christ's admonition that we love each other as we love ourselves; God-loving people who sold their souls to further their beliefs and in the process proved that they are not pro-life, as they claim, but rather, pro-birth.

I was very glad that Barack Obama is the President of the United States today and not some soulless republican who would have stood before the American people this morning and babbled on while still keeping their lips on the teats of the NRA.  As much as I appreciate the President's acknowledging that we need "meaningful [gun] reform" I don't hold out much hope that change to our gun laws will be coming any time soon (especially since an administration spokesman almost immediately responded that today is not the day to discuss such gun law reforms--and to which we should all respond, "why not?").  I don't believe this will make our will any greater.

And so we'll sit in our cars at lunch and cry while we're chewing on a bologna sandwich, and give thanks that when our workday is done, we're going home to a family that's still in one piece.

Peace,
emaycee