The lightness of being, here.

Reflections on the latest shooting, across the pond.

Right now my 6 year old is making bug hotels out of sticks and leaves at school. The 3 year old is probably digging a hole to China. They’ll come home filthy, bragging of new “owies” from falling off a swing or a nip from the teacher’s puppy, Cuda.

But they’ll come home. I know this. Because we’re an ocean away from the Land of Mass Shootings. 274 in the last 12 years, to be exact. News of the latest in Uvalde, TX hasn’t reached their forest school here in Portugal.

Our Portuguese friends do not, cannot understand why this keeps happening in the States.

For whatever reason, the rationale of “it’s a people/ sin / mental health/ (fill in the blank) problem”  doesn’t stick here. Because it’s obvious. We have those same variables here without the same outcome. Without gun lobbies.

But more importantly, the vulnerable, and especially children, are prioritized here. It’s baked into the system. I still breathe a sigh of relief every time my toddler and I are whisked from a long line to the priority line. But it’s no favor. It’s the law. It’s the Minimum Standard of Care. 

The idea that people should follow certain rules, accept some restraints on their behavior to care for their neighbors is woven into the fabric here. 

In the States, that fabric of civic duty has been unraveling for a while now. Those tattered threads look like bitter battles against mask mandates and phosphate bans in detergent.

Because freedom. Freedom that claims access to weapons of war as a constitutional right. Freedom that swaps personal preference and privilege for neighborly care. Freedom for an unwell teen to go Rambo and massacre 19 children.

I’m watching as leaders in my home state of TX barely try to make sense of how to protect kids. Turn schools into compounds; arm the teachers, they say. Mere words to muffle the wails. Because the truth is, they’ve long decided that a school shooting every now and then is a reasonable price to pay for “freedom.”

We came to Portugal last fall for a year of family adventure– to immerse ourselves in a new culture, wrestle with unfamiliar words, and give our girls the world – at least that’s the optimistic line we gave most. The truth is, we also came here because the shackles of American freedom became too heavy for us. We longed to be lighter, if even for a short while. We longed to give our Black girls a fighting chance.

After being in a country that truly loves its children more than guns, I can tell you, we are lighter. We didn’t realize the weight of those shackles until they were lifted.

Today, my girls tuck snails and spiders into bug hotels while their friends in the States tuck their tiny bodies under desks, just for practice.