The TV is on and the 6 o'clock news is all bad. Someone was stabbed. Someone was shot. Someone brought a gun to school. Someone left a 2-year-old on a bus. More U.S. soldiers have been killed and terrorists are everywhere. ``It's a horrible world,'' I tell my daughter. ``Not in this room,'' she says, her 10-month-old sitting on her lap clapping her hands and smiling.
Read MoreHe arrives at the door on a perfect spring day wearing a helmet, riding shorts and a grin that is his signature. With some people, you notice their hats, ties, scarves. With Antonio, you notice his smile. It's after 5, after work, and he has pedaled from Brockton to Canton, a distance that takes 20 minutes to drive, without traffic. ``It's a beautiful day,'' he says. ``So warm. So nice.'' And I look at him and think, he's right. It is.
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Strange, the things that break your heart, then suddenly don't one day. A school bus stops across the street. It lurches and screeches and then starts up again. I watch it from my window, see the shadows of children inside, and I think, when did this stop hurting? For a long time after my youngest child finished school, that sound made me ache. I missed what it meant -
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They stood at the bottom of an escalator at T.F. Green Airport in Providence Thursday afternoon, three little boys and their grandparents, the oldest boy no more than 4. He was holding a sign that spelled out with different-colored crayons, ``WELCOME HOME, MOM AND DAD.'' The sign was bigger than he was. I wasn't the only one riding the escalator who smiled and then swallowed hard seeing this. A lady who'd been on my flight wiped tears from her face. Even the hardest faces softened. I didn't hear the grandmother say, ``Look. There they are!'' But I watched her point and saw the boys - all three of them - find their parents in the crowd and light up the way only children can, everything that matters to them on that escalator coming back home to them…
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We walked four-and-a-half miles the day before he was born. We didn't intend to walk this far. But city blocks go by fast because they're crowded with people and things, and before we knew it my daughter and I were sitting on a bench in Central Park, tired but not exhausted, though she should have been. But she was pumped then, and ready to burst like the forsythia and magnolia trees with their buds. Like the daffodils and the hyacinth, like all the unfurling things, she and they partners in creation, waiting for the sun, for warmth, for time, for whatever it is that coaxes new life into being. Waiting and waiting and waiting. `
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Middle of the night is the worst. I wake now at 3 a.m., and hear the silence and think instantly about the noise on the other side of the world, and how lucky I am to be in my house, in my bed, safe. And how grateful I am that my son isn't over there. Or my daughters. These are my first thoughts. Then I think about other people's children, the faces I see in the paper and on TV - kids still - under all that protective gear, in harm's way, fighting an enemy no one understands.
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