2 beautiful kids

I read the blog of the Upper West Side family who experienced tragedy yesterday. I can't even bring myself to say "whose two children were k---." 

I don't know them, but of course I feel like I do. We share a neighborhood, a love of kids and dogs and water fountains and blogs and the joys of raising a family in the city.

The blog was taken down this morning. It broke my heart to read it last night, and I cried and cried and cried.

What I saw:

A wonderful mom. A mom who spends the time to be with her kids, to enjoy them, to love them and to share that love and joy with the world.

Kids you wish you could play ball with, run in the water with, play in a cardboard box with, read a story to, pick pumpkins with.

Lucia has an absolutely beautiful smile, the sweetest smile you can imagine. She looks so proud to be the big girl in first grade. She still plays with the little ones--you can just tell she's the best big sister ever.

Leo looks like his mom. He likes trains and firetrucks, just like Samuel did. His little diaper sticks out of the back of his britches, just like Samuel's did. He has a great big smile, like his sister, and you can tell how much he is adored.

I can't even talk about them in the past tense.

When you become a parent, you forever see your own children reflected in every child from that day forward. It hurts to see any child in pain. It makes you smile to see any child smile. And you'll always instinctively turn your head whenever you hear a child shout, "Daddy!" Even if your kids are eleven and fourteen. Probably even when they're fifty. If you can still hear anything by then.

This? Man, it tears me up. It just annihilates me.

When I was younger I was afraid of dying. Now I'm just afraid of out-living my children. Given a choice between dying tomorrow or out-living Samuel and Ethan, I'd gladly take the former. You understand if you're a parent.

I walked Ethan to school this morning, and I actually held his hand, my poor little eleven-year-old. I made a point to hug him goodbye and kissed him on the forehead, which I just don't do that much anymore. I walked down 95th Street and turned left on Columbus Avenue to catch the bus across the park to work, and I noticed every other parent squeezing their children's hands a little tighter too.