Wings

“Mommy? Why did that man kill those police officers?”

This is the question my son has asked me every day since July 17. On that day, my boy was three.

Now he is four.

And he is still not old enough to understand what happened. And how can he be? I’m not old enough to understand what happened. But every day, multiple times per day, I find myself on the receiving end of a question that I can barely wrap my own brain around, much less find an appropriate pre-school-aged answer to.

Other parents may ask why he even knows what happened that day. Why would I ever expose a child to such a horrific event? My answer is that in an instant our normal Sunday of going to church and the grocery store became a day where my two children were not allowed to play outside.

A day where helicopters circled above our neighborhood all day after a lone gunman shot six Baton Rouge police officers, killing three of them.

He had a lot of questions. I decided to answer as honestly and age appropriately as I could, understanding that his older, 7-year-old sister had similar questions. My kids are young but precocious. Innocent but curious. Hopeful but fearful.

Today marks one week of terror hitting our city. Every night for the past week, my husband and I have been praying Saint Francis of Assisi’s “Make me an instrument of your peace.” We say it after reading "The Giving Tree" and "If you Give a Dog a Donut." We say it after watching back-to-back episodes of “Full House,” where our kids giggle at Uncle Jesse’s zingers and Stephanie’s predictable exclamation of “How rude!” We say it snuggled together in what we hope is the safety of our home in a world so different from the one Danny Tanner raised his girls in. We say it with faith, knowing that where there is hatred, there is also love. Darkness. Light. And sadness. Joy.

Our community knows that light follows darkness. We have seen it in the faces of the people lined up on the interstate clutching small American Flags in one hand and large umbrellas in the other, shielding them from the suffocating heat. A small but strong way to show support for our fallen officers. We see it when we drive by blue ribbons tied tightly to light poles and sturdy old Oak trees. We see it in every gender and color and age of person who calls this city their home. Understanding is here. Love is here.

Every day, my children and I drive by or near the site where three officers were killed and three more were injured. Not because we want to, but because we have to. It’s across the street from our Albertson’s where we buy hot French bread, next door to Benny’s where we can wash our car for $4. Near Michaels, where we buy canvasses at 40 percent off.

The site is less than a mile from our home, less than three from my kids’ schools. It’s part of our daily loop, and it’s not a rough, drug-dealing, prostitute-walking stretch of road like CNN described. It’s part of the fabric of our day, and as we stood out there yesterday, shoulder-to-shoulder with people holding American Flags and waving and thanking officers as they drove by, I reminded my kids that good always prevails.

But my son already knew that.

“You know what, Mommy?” he said.

“What’s that honey?”

“I bet when those police officers died, they grew wings. Because that’s how you fly to heaven.”

July 24, 2016