#Orlando

"Be careful!!" I texted my son yesterday, June 12, 2016. As if he were a five-year-old about to cross the street. As if my words could somehow keep him safe in an America completely saturated with guns and hatred. I made him text me when he got home. He probably sighed and rolled his eyes.

The men at Pulse were young like my son. Their mothers would be about my age. They would know how little they could do to protect their children from another person's anger. The days of hand holding while they cross the street are long gone.

It has to be up to all of us, then, to protect them. To be sensible about guns. To be tolerant of others. To reject any religious or political justification for hatred. Because no mother should have opened her eyes this morning knowing that she has outlived her child.