Six Months

Six months ago today, my husband went out to buy our Christmas tree. It was late for us, we usually have the tree the first weekend in December. For some strange reason, I began decorating the house the day after Thanksgiving, which is something I never do. Decorations rarely go up in my house before December 1st. It just doesn't seem right. Maybe my change of heart had to do with the impact of Sandy and getting life back to normal, but the decorations went up early. And we were getting the tree late.

I was upstairs, revising a manuscript, I think, when I picked up my phone and scrolled through Facebook. There were a bunch of posts about a school shooting. Then I saw it was an elementary school.

I put on the news - MSNBC, I think, and there is was - the elementary school had a name.

Sandy Hook.

I can honestly say the only news story that ever impacted me to this great a degree was September 11, 2001. To this day, I still cry over news stories regarding Sandy Hook. I look at those innocent little (and not so little faces) and my heart breaks all over again. I am the mother of a seven year old first grader. I try to put myself into Jackie Barden's shoes, or Nicole Hockley's shoes, or Veronique Pozner's shoes and I cannot hug my son enough when I do. I can't imagine that the pain of losing a child ever gets better. I don't understand how it ever even gets bearable. These families are far stronger than I think I could ever be. I cannot imagine losing my son, never mind losing him to violence because of some deranged nobody who was such a coward that he shot his mother while she slept and chose children as his targets.

And what's just as sad? Our country has done nothing - repeat after me, done nothing to prevent another Sandy Hook, another Aurora, another Columbine, from happening. Our weak-willed Congress does not have the balls to stand up to the NRA and say, "Gun control is NOT gun confiscation." It doesn't impede upon the 2nd Amendment. That amendment promises the rights to bear arms will not be infringed. It doesn't say that right is a free-for-all. It doesn't say there cannot be regulations on ammunition, or weapon size, or whether or not a person should have to submit to a universal background check.

Six months ago, twenty children and six adults lost their lives. It took that nameless, faceless coward less than five minutes to fire off 154 bullets and take those lives.

Think about that -

Less than five minutes.

154 rounds.

26 dead.

Charlotte Bacon, age 6           Daniel Barden, age 7               Olivia Engel, age 6

    Josephine Gay, age 7             Ana Marquez-Greene, age 6     Dylan Hockley, age 6

     Madeleine Hsu, age 6             Catherine Hubbard, age 6         Chase Kowalski, age 7

       Jesse Lewis, age 6                 James Mattioli, age 6              Grace McDonnell, age 7

Emilie Parker, age 6               Jack Pinto, age 6                    Noah Pozner, age 6

   Caroline Previdi, age 6           Jessica Rekos, age 6               Avielle Richman, age 6

     Benjamin Wheeler, age 6            Allison Wyatt, age 6

Rachel Davino, age 29

Dawn Hochsprung, age 47

Anne Marie Murphy, age 52

Lauren Rousseau, age 30

Mary Sherlach, age 56

Victoria Soto, age 27

Remember them.

Three months...

have passed since the horrible events of December 14, 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I still think about those kids, every day. I remember their names and I've seen their faces and I've read about their painfully short lives. Noah Pozner still haunts me, still makes me hold my own son a little closer. Newtown made me a better mother. A more patient mother. A mother who is never too busy to take a few minutes out to watch something silly or listen to an age-old knock-knock joke that I've heard a thousand times and probably told myself when I was seven. A mother who swallows her exasperation when it's an hour past bedtime and my son is calling me yet again. Only this time, it's for one more hug, which is gladly given, with an extra squeeze thrown in. My son and I call it the enormous, tree-monkey hug. And there are never enough now.

For anyone who staunchly opposes any sort of gun control in the wake of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I urge you to read this blog - written by Noah Pozner's grandmother. See for yourself, by reading through her Noah posts, just what happens when a six year old is murdered, along with his nineteen classmates and six other adults. Read the links concerning what gunshot wounds can actually do to a little boy. Read about the grief and the shock and the anger and even the guilt. And then come back and tell me why assault weapons shouldn't be banned, why gun control laws are just fine the way they are, and why universal background checks aren't necessary.

Go on. I'll wait.

One Month

Over the weekend, I was thinking about what I was going to blog about for this week, kicking around this idea and that. It was a normal weekend in my house - the kids played, they fought, we laughed, we watched some television together, we watched football (boo, hiss on the Patriots. I so wanted to see them lose.)

And as I was hanging out with my son yesterday afternoon, watching Haunted History (the Boy loves all things ghost related. Ghosthunters is his favorite show. He asked for a K2 meter for his birthday,) it dawned on me. All those things, that I so take for granted, will never be the same for those families in Connecticut. The routine, mundane, just lazing around snuggling with the Boy (at 12, the Girl is far too cool for that kind of stuff now) - twenty families no longer have that to take for granted.


Today marks one month since the tragedy in Newtown. One month since those twenty families have been able to take for granted the fact that their little boy or girl would always be there for some snuggling. I can't, as a parent, even begin to imagine the ache that void must leave. How empty those arms must feel. Something as simple as a hug - gone forever.

This has affected me in a way that no other national tragedy has. In some ways, it's even more painful to me than 9/11 was. I am a parent. I cannot imagine being in the shoes of one of those twenty families. And yes, I know there were 6 adults killed as well, but the loss of one child in so violent a manner is beyond comprehension, never mind twenty. Twenty kids robbed of their right to grow up.

I've never been much of an activist. I belonged to NOW for a long time in my late teens and early twenties, but it never went beyond writing a check for the membership fee. But now, I'm thinking maybe it's time to do something a little beyond just writing a check.

I firmly believe in gun control (and no, gun control does NOT mean banning all guns. Anyone who thinks that is a prime example of why we need gun control, as they are obviously too stupid to realize the difference and really probably shouldn't be allowed near a Nerf dart gun, never mind the real thing.) The ban on assault weapons needs to be reenacted. There needs to be a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips. There needs to be background checks and access to better mental health care in this country for anyone in the same house as a gun.

I'm not against guns, only certain ones. No one on the face of this earth beyond the military or law enforcement needs semi-automatic assault weapons to protect their home. No. One. 

For the first time ever, I'm writing my senators, urging them to have the balls to stand up to the NRA and do the right thing. It's something extremely small, but it's a start. 

A New Year

I know I've been away for a while. Hopefully there are still some who come by, on the off chance that I've posted, but I certainly can't blame anyone who's stopped entirely. I've been horrible about posting, just as I've been horrible about updating my website (although in all honesty, there isn't anything really to update) and keeping my Facebook page current (my professional one. My personal page is still about as active as it's always been.) I tweet on occasion, but days can and do go by without my so much even thinking about tweeting. I've lost a few followers, although not nearly as many as I probably should have lost.

But it's not just social networking that's gone by the wayside for me. I haven't written much these last few months, not really since I was pushing to get Windemere written. I do have two projects out on submission and am waiting to hear back on them, but other than that, I've done almost nothing as far as new words go. I know I'm not supposed to admit that, because who knows who's reading (such as an editor or an agent. Hey, you never know,) but the truth of the matter is that I've taken an very unexpected break. I just don't have the urge to write. There are a few ideas rumbling around in my brain, but I just haven't been able to make myself put them down on paper. And even if I did, the words just don't come.


The events of December 14, up in Newtown, have really gotten to me. I can't explain it. I don't know why. But I have to confess, I've cried at some point ever day since the shootings. I've avoided the news because I just don't want to hear the endless rhetoric on gun control - which would have been a moot point in Newtown. Those guns were legally purchased and a background check would have been on the killer's mother, not the killer. And I will NOT name him. Ever.

My heart breaks for each one of the families of the 26 gunned down by that man. But, there is one little boy in particular who has grabbed hold of me and wrapped around me in such a way that I choke up just thinking about him now.

Noah Pozner was six years old and in so many ways, reminds me of my own boy. And for whatever reason, the moment I saw Noah's picture, my heart broke in a way that I cannot explain. I hurt so much for him, for his family, that I felt sick reading his obituary, and yet, I've read everything about him that I can find. And the more I read, the more real he becomes. And the more real he becomes, the more I wish with everything I have that I could go back and somehow keep the tragedy from happening.

How can one little boy, whom I've never met, affect me the way it has? How can you cry for someone you've never met, someone you'd probably never meet? Why does this one little boy stand out from all the others for me? I can't explain it. Maybe I have no right to cry over him, but I do. Even today. I look at my own little boy and I think, "He and Noah would have gotten on like a house on fire." They are so much alike.

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember Columbine. I remember VA Tech. But none of them hit me the way what happened in Newtown did. I think it's mostly because I have a seven year old son, who is in first grade, and I've never once really worried about his safety in school. I now do. When he went back that Monday, there was a police car in the driveway of his school. And I wasn't at all sure I even wanted to send him to school.

It's taken me a while to come out of the funk I've been in. I found a blog written by Noah Pozner's grandmother, and her stories, her recollections, of Noah make me feel as if I know him. They make me tear up, as do the pictures she posts. He was such a beautiful little boy. My heart still aches for his family, but the stories make me smile and bring back a little light into a world that feels like it'd been so much darker. And it's helped in so many ways. I know I will never forget him, nor will I forget his impact on my life.

So, I think where I used to concentrate this blog on writing, I'm going to write about a little bit of everything, let everyone in a little more. Share a little more of myself. I've begun to feel the urge to write again, although I'm not exactly sure what I want to write. I'm not sure what my next book will be, but I'm looking forward to writing it, whatever it turns out to be. 

Newtown, Connecticut

By now, everyone knows what happened at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday, December 14.We've all sat in horror and shock and sorrow, grieving alongside the families and friends of those who were killed.

Since that awful day, I've been trying to make some sort of sense of it all, trying to understand what drove one individual to kill twenty innocent children and six innocent adults. My mind just cannot comprehend it. I don't understand it. And my heart aches for those families, especially the families of the children. Since last Friday, I've cried what seems like buckets of tears, for children I didn't even know, but who've touched my life in a horrible and beautiful way. I cried for them as if they were each my own child.

My son is seven. He is in first grade. And I suppose that's why this particular story has hit me the way it has. Any one of these kids could be him. He could be any one of those kids.

I've written and rewritten this same post in my mind a thousand times since Friday. No words seemed right. I'm a writer, why was I struggling with this so badly? Why couldn't I find those right words?

Because they don't exist. Or if they do, I am not gifted enough to craft them.

No parent should have to bury their child. Ever. But especially not when that child is only 6 or 7 and whose only crime was being in school at the wrong moment. There shouldn't even be a wrong moment to be in school. Schools are supposed to be safe. Our children are supposed to be safe in them.

I don't know if stricter gun control laws are the answer. I don't know if there is an answer, if this could have been prevented. All I know is that these children should not have died. Twenty-six families should not be having funerals at a time when a good portion of the world is celebrating the coming Christmas holiday.

Twenty children should have been given the right to grow up.

Even now, I cry when I see their beautiful faces. And I'm angry that something so terrible happened to them. That something so terrible destroyed the innocence of every child in the Sandy Hook Elementary School that day. 

Charlotte Bacon, age 6           Daniel Barden, age 7               Olivia Engel, age 6

    Josephine Gay, age 7             Ana Marquez-Greene, age 6     Dylan Hockley, age 6

     Madeleine Hsu, age 6             Catherine Hubbard, age 6         Chase Kowalski, age 7

       Jesse Lewis, age 6                 James Mattioli, age 6              Grace McDonnell, age 7

Emilie Parker, age 6               Jack Pinto, age 6                    Noah Pozner, age 6

   Caroline Previdi, age 6           Jessica Rekos, age 6               Avielle Richman, age 6

     Benjamin Wheeler, age 6            Allison Wyatt, age 6

Rachel Davino, age 29

Dawn Hochsprung, age 47

Anne Marie Murphy, age 52

Lauren Rousseau, age 30

Mary Sherlach, age 56

Victoria Soto, age 27

Rest in peace, Heaven's newest angels. Soar high.