Intimations of Mortality

First off --bonus to anyone who gets the joke of this title. Hint: Lake Country poet...

I was on the patio reading the paper this morning when D2 left for school. I have a silly little custom with her in the mornings I see her leave the house: I imitate a whipporwill's call, badly, and she looks up at me, with a half smile and a smirk. There's an ability at sarcasm and feigned apathy teenagers have that's lost as they approach the non teen years. Whatever.

Anyway, I make my silly bird call, we each say "I love you," and she's off for school. I always watch, amazed, in the same way I did when her older sister left for school. I'm amazed at my daughters' beauty and grace. To steal from McCartney, I'm amazed at how much I love them.

So I turned back to my newspaper, and the front page story was about the latest South Florida tragedy: a sophomore at Dillard High in Broward shot a fellow 15 year old to death, apparently because of spurned romantic advances.

I thought about the spectrum of life: how I was sitting at my house, enjoying the morning sun and quiet, watching my beloved child drive off, and less than 50 miles north of me a family was dealing with the unthinkable. It's what I've been teaching my girls their whole lives: the unfairness of life.

I have a friend who always tries to rationalize and justify misery in the world. She believes that there's always some explanation for the horrors that befall us. In this case, the victim was a white girl in a 90% Black school. I'm sure my friend would say "You see --that's what the parents get for sending their child to such a school. I would never have sent my child there!"

I see things differently. It's just a random horror. Of course, my friend thinks the way she does as the ultimate self protection mechanism: thinking her generally prudent life choice confer some type of immunity from tragedy. I know better. It's comforting to separate ourselves from "them" --the victims of life's random acts of cruelties, but it's also wrongheaded and immature.

So, I'm left to be thankful for another day, is all. Hopefully my beloved D2 will come home safely this afternoon, and take her place at the kitchen computer for homework and IMs and Facebook chats. Hopefully D1 is safe up at UF --nearing the 3/4 finished with a degree mark!

No one here gets out alive. As parents we always hope and pray that we leave first.