Editor’s Note: June 12 marks the anniversary of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people died and 53 were wounded when a lone gunman attacked patrons of the gay nightclub. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time (it’s since been eclipsed). This article originally ran just two days later.

I woke up Sunday morning blissfully unaware. It was a rare opportunity to sleep in, not having to get up and hustle into action. When I did roust myself, I leaned over, kissed my husband good morning, and shuffled into the kitchen to pour my morning cup of coffee. And, of course, I checked my phone.

The first thing I saw: a text from a good friend of mine.

“When I saw the news this morning, I immediately thought of you and Chris, and wanted to express my sadness and outrage that even in the most powerful country in the world, we are so flawed, so full of hatred and fear,” it said.

She went on to let me know that she loves me and my family, and was thinking of us.

I didn’t know what prompted her message.

A quick web search revealed facts about the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people gunned down on a Saturday night. During Gay Pride Month.

And, once again, I had to decide how to discuss evil with my daughter.

Nightclub shooting our latest tough conversation

It’s not the first time. She’s almost 15. Like so many other parents, I’ve been having conversations with her since she was a toddler, with horrifying regularity. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. San Bernardino.

When she was little, I consulted books about how to talk about death and violence with children. Do you avoid the topic, and shield them from it altogether? Should you mask real-life tragedies in analogies or fables? Or, should you stay honest, but use gentle language that minimizes the brutality?

Now that she’s a teenager, we talk about this stuff with more directness and clarity. Real-life violence has yet to touch her life directly, which is a blessing. So we did talk about the Pulse nightclub shooting, and I decided to go with accuracy and less emotion (which is always difficult for me, as someone whose emotions tend to be the boss in my head): Who the shooter was, what he did, what was known/not known about him at the time.

We had our talk, and it was briefer than conversations in the past. She hadn’t seen the news yet so I just filled her in on the latest Horrible Thing that had happened, and that was that.

Her reaction was difficult to read. Whether that’s because we were used to these talks by now, or because she’s at the stage where she’d rather process stuff on her own, it’s hard to say. I did realize, though, that this tragedy in Orlando felt different from other mass shootings for me, and possibly for her as well. Why?

Because the Orlando shooting was the deadliest in American history.

A horrifying loss of human life.

Fueled, in part, by a hatred of gay people.

And, because, I am gay.

How can she not worry?

I have been out for five years, and this is the first time such a violent act has ripped into this community I proudly call my own.

My daughter tends to be a worrier. She’s gotten a handle on it over the years, but she has the double whammy of having a very active imagination and a short anxiety fuse. So when my husband and I go out at night and she stays home, she still gets a bit nervous if I don’t text her to check in at least once. (Total role reversal. In another year or so, I’ll be the one asking her to check in.)

It’s not my teenage daughter’s job to worry about me. It’s supposed to be the other way around. That’s the way the universe is supposed to work.

And while our evenings out are usually pretty benign, my girl knows that every once in a while, we do love to go out dancing. Dancing is deeply important to us. It’s how we find our feelings, connect with the world, and thank the universe for everything that we have. We plan to keep on going out and dancing until we’re in wheelchairs. And hopefully, by then, science will have developed the technology to make robot legs and neural Groove implants so we can not only keep dancing but look even cooler than the young whippersnappers around us.

My daughter, the worrier, sees the news from Orlando about the Pulse nightclub shooting as such: people in a gay club — people there because they love their community, love each other and love dancing — being heartlessly killed. The gears in my girl’s brain turn, and she makes the connection.

Someday her dad and stepdad could be in a club, dancing happily, and be killed by someone evil, simply for being.

I know her. That’s how her brain works.

Evil will not triumph on the dancefloor

It’s not my teenage daughter’s job to worry about me. It’s supposed to be the other way around. That’s the way the universe is supposed to work.

But can I tell my daughter her worry is unfounded?

No.

Because the scary truth of it is, it’s sheer luck that I was never in a club at the same time as a monster with an AK-47. This was the killing of my people, in my house. There is no way to pretend otherwise.

So how do I talk about that with my daughter?

In this strange new world where some members of our nation are zealously clinging to their right to own guns, where any attempt at greater gun safety and regulation is met with an outcry of “You can’t take my guns away from me!”, where someone on an FBI watch list can still own a gun and carry it into a place of safety and sanctuary and act out his dream of being a vengeful god, where being gay can still result in persecution, shame and outright fear …

I don’t know what to say to my daughter about that. She’s afraid for me, and I can’t tell her that fear is unfounded.

All I can tell her is this:

Yes, there is a lot of hatred in the world.

That hatred tends to come from fear and ignorance of those we don’t understand.

That hatred can sometimes result in evil, violent action.

But there are far more people who believe in the value of love, and human life, than not. Evil doesn’t rule. It just gets more press.

Oh, and one other thing:

There’s no way in hell that evil is going to keep me from dancing. Ever.

Pulse nightclub mass shooting photo: ©  Alex / Adobe Stock.

It’s funny. We always complain about not having enough time to rest and relax yet, when we get a day off, we feel like we have to do something.

That was me on the Fourth of July. I usually would be more than happy to just hang around the house and do nothing. However, since I’d been traveling the previous two weekends, I felt I owed it to the kids to make this holiday extra special.

As special as can be for a 3-year-old and 6-month-old.

I thought a trip to the zoo would be a fun, family outing. So after I convinced my wife, I let my son know about the plans for our “adventure.” As excited as he was to go see the animals, I was just as excited to have this experience with them.

This was the first type of outing like this for us as a family of four. And while I tried to make sure I planned accordingly, what I didn’t factor in was the logistics of transporting two kids through the streets of Washington, D.C., and ultimately through the zoo. In 90-degree heat, I might add. Only packing one stroller was a major dad fail. Thankfully, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo provided extra strollers, cooling stations and plenty of food options.

As with any trip, the reaction from the kids, particularly my 3-year-old boy, was hit-and-miss. He loved some of the animals, was scared of the others and, in between, was pretty much indifferent. The highlights of the day, for my son at least, were the frogs and riding in the cool, blue rental stroller. Our baby girl just napped or watched people.

Father put on alert for family’s safety

About midway through our adventure, I received a text alert about the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Seven killed, dozens injured, by a lone shooter taking aim at people lined up to watch a Fourth of July parade.

These types of alerts have, unfortunately, become pretty common, almost to a point of being expected. But this one hit a little differently. With it being a holiday, I’m sure the folks up there were just trying to get out of the house and enjoy a fun-filled day with their families. Just like we were at the zoo.

And that’s why it was different.

In the middle of trying to enjoy a family outing, my mind shifted into a defensive mode. I scanned my surroundings. I wondered what would happen if a shooting took place in this open area filled with hundreds of people.

How would I protect my family? Would we be able to take cover? How would I explain to the kids what had taken place?

That’s where we are now. It’s our reality, not based on any political leanings, just factual data. It’s yet another thing we have to worry about as parents. This is the world our children are growing up in.

Fortunately, my kids are at the age where they’re oblivious to the evils of the world. We have a few more years until we won’t be able to keep them in their little bubbles any longer. And then, I’ll have to be prepared to talk, to have some tough conversations.

For now, I have to deal with my own emotions. The concerns I have as a dad. Concerns about the world my kids will grow up in and how I can protect them for as long as possible. It’s a never-ending worry, and one that’s magnified whenever ever those breaking news alerts pop up on my phone. I hope I will never have to experience a tragedy of that magnitude. And, hopefully, the day will come when we can go out with our families and not have to worry whether we’ll make it home safely.

Photo: ©vchalup / Adobe Stock.

“I could make the jump.”

He was sitting across from me at a small bistro table sandwiched between walkway and railing.

We were sharing a pretzel, one of us more than the other, and speaking of the things that people do while shopping for shorts on a Saturday.

“I could jump to the escalator,” he reiterated against my disagreement. He mentioned his parkour training. He referenced his youth.

“There are better options,” I said.

We were in the same mall we always go to for back-to-school needs, having a new version of the same conversation we’ve had for years. The recent addition of a sporting goods store had made our previous plans all the more plausible. After all, they sell camping gear and baseball bats, not to mention food supplies and all the things required for anyone in the throes of a zombie apocalypse.

On one visit we had realized that bean bag chairs would fit perfectly in the giant iron chandeliers hanging throughout the mall, allowing enough room for our family of four to nest comfortably, assuming we could get into them.

“This mall needs a hardware store,” my oldest had said at the time, before deciding the maintenance department surely had the means of reaching such heights.

The leap to the escalator, however, was a twist, built not on the previous concept of hunkering down, but rather the fastest form of fleeing.

“It would depend where the shooter was,” he said.

When my wife worked in that mall, the shooter had been in a paper store. A man bent on murder found it in the card section, killing his former partner with a pistol like so many jilted lovers before him. Another life lost in senseless rage, just above the food court.

Meanwhile, thousands of shoppers went running.

My wife had been working in a restaurant. She had stepped up, as she is prone to do, and made sure guests and employees got out safely. The restaurant was deserted. There were bags and phones left on tables, strollers flat on their sides, the random shoe abandoned upon the tile.

The sound, she said, was stunning silence, save the distant hum of shouts and sirens, fans slowly spinning with Ed Sheeran singing in the background. She texted me that they were in lockdown.

We all know what that means.

Life in America is not needing to explain to our kids what is meant by “active shooter” or “lockdown.” Life in America is sitting in a mall, church, movie theater, school, office, restaurant, festival, concert … anywhere, and making sure you know where all the exits are should someone walk in and start shooting.

It is explaining to our children that the government cares more about money made from guns than the lives of its citizens, and it is a child’s quick “I know.”

Life in America is a stampede through Times Square over the eruption of a backfire, and it is 100 lives lost to gun violence daily.

It is publishing this piece and the comments sure to follow.

We all know what that means.

She clings to the green monkey bar on our backyard play set with her little fingers. The nail on her right index finger is an angry purple-blue. The scar from a lost battle with the small iron trap door in the ground by our mailbox that conceals our water meter, which is as endlessly fascinating to a 1-year-old as it is hazardous to appendages.

I stand below the bars, my hands resting on her hips. She presses the souls of her pink and black sneakers against my chest, smiles her heart-melting smile, and giggles as she pushes herself up. Her waist at bar level, leaning forward to peak over the fence into our neighbor’s yard, she probably feels like she’s flying. Her eyes dance as she drops herself back down, dangles for a moment, and presses her body against me for support. For safety.

Despite her precarious position, six feet above hard ground covered with only a thinning layer of red rubber mulch, she is safe simply because of the strength of my arms.

If only it were always that easy to keep our children safe.

The Valentine’s Day school shooting that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., some 200 miles south of our backyard in Orlando, hit close to home. The Pulse nightclub shooting here two years ago obviously hit our local community hard, but Parkland was equally terrifying. Not because of proximity but because it was yet another incomprehensible incursion on the sanctity of our children’s schools.

I was moving back and forth under the monkey bars on that Valentine’s Day morning. Lifting my daughter up and helping her drop down softly onto the ground. We kept at it for what seemed like an hour. I learned to comply with her instructions even if I never fully understood them. It was a lovely morning.

A couple weeks prior, my oldest son, a kindergartener, told me he almost cried while hiding in the bathroom at school during a Code Red, or school shooting, drill. On Valentine’s Day, after school while we were playing outside, just after I learned about Parkland, we heard the elementary school intercom in the distance: an electronic beep, then a voice.

“We have to be quiet and listen when the announcement comes on,” my kindergartener said as we waited. “In case there’s a bad guy and they are calling a Code Red.”

He said it matter-of-factly. Like he was reading one of those very boring kindergarten reader books: I saw the dog. The dog ran. We have to listen in case a bad guy is coming to kill us.

I didn’t feel anything at that moment. Maybe a whisper of sadness or anger, but I was too spent to muster any strong feelings. It’s the subtlety that gets you. The little injustices start to pile up and before we know it, they are just an accepted part of our existence. We let them slide because it is easier to forget. We don’t want to think about what we are doing to our children because we are too cowardly or apathetic to take meaningful action. Instead, we continue to place the weight of everything onto their small shoulders as they crouch in a darkened school bathroom.

Later that night, after the kids were in bed, I sat on the couch next to my wife. We each scrolled through our phones, searching.

I read that the Florida state legislature was introducing legislation that would allow teachers to carry guns during school hours. If something like that were to become law, what would we do? Home school? Move? Out of state? Out of country?

This is what we think about now. Until we don’t. Until the news fades and the pressure of daily life washes away the immediate fear. We go numb. And we wait.

In the mornings, while my oldest two kids are at school, my daughter and I amble around our neighborhood. She pushes herself around haltingly on her red three-wheeled scooter, stopping frequently to drag it along behind her. Bump, bump, bump, the scooter goes along the asphalt street. I hope that bumping is the only sound I hear. I hope I don’t hear the ding of the school intercom in the distance. Or sirens. Or something worse. I think, “Could I hear gun shots from here, half a mile away, if the shooter was inside the building?”

We keep walking in the warm morning sun of early spring in Florida. A car turns into our quiet dead-end street. It heads toward us slowly. I move beside my daughter and her scooter and place my hand on her head to hold her in place until the car passes. To keep her safe.

There are countless problems in the world. They can be found in Sudan, Syria, England, Brazil and Ethiopia, to name but a few. Everywhere there are terrifying acts of nature and unnatural acts of terror. They are here, in America, too: gender and racial inequality, a lack of common-sense gun laws, incurable disease (and the profiting from it), the demonization of poverty, a culture of violence, the celebration of ignorance, and a demagogue wearing hate as a brand who wants nothing more than his bully in the pulpit. The lists go on and on, all of them, and it can seem overwhelming. Some issues affect us personally in our respective daily lives, others anger us from a never-ending newsfeed, and together they build one upon the other, brick upon brick of everything wrong, mortared by our shared fears, adhesive as they are.

They keep me awake at night.

Speaking to kids about such things may seem daunting, and granted, the level of discussion should always depend upon several factors that will vary from child to child: age, maturity, want of knowledge, and other things that parents know best, but the talk(s) should happen, nonetheless.

Why?

For starters, why not?

Of course there are arguments against it, namely the wonder and innocence of childhood being compromised by concerns they can do nothing about. I get it. I have used this same argument for years. I champion the concept of wonder and innocence as a life philosophy that should be curated for as long as possible — forever if you can get it; however, I do not believe innocence and information need be mutually exclusive.

What I do believe, is that allowing a child insight into the worst of us may very well inspire the best in them. Providing children access, albeit with parental guidance, to the ills of the world, puts perspective to our predestined privilege, even preventing said privilege from manifesting itself too fully. Instead, children that have a greater and broader appreciation of the workings of the world become more invested in it, more susceptible to empathy and compassion, more willing to stand for what is right. Show a child a problem, and chances are they may see a solution.

That isn’t to say that I would expect (or ask) future generations to fix all we have broke. Rather, I think they will be better prepared to avoid additions to it. I think it clear that our children are better than us, and their generation already has the capacity to address the issues, to tear down the walls we are building from so much fear and rote.

Children need to be able to defend themselves and what they know as good and right. We can give them the means for protection with context and knowledge. Don’t (only) tell them why you are against something, but show them what that something is against. Don’t guilt them into overindulging on a side dish because children are starving, well, everywhere, but show them what hunger looks like. Show them the effects of bad decisions and greed, the favela, the refugee, the farmer and the broken unions of people.

There is no better teacher than failure, and with that we have taught our children well. We may be overwhelmed by all of the problems in the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t also solutions, and by including our children in the conversation we are investing in them and their ability. After all, they are the future, and the future starts now. The wonder is theirs for the keeping.

Child’s Insight into Trump Word drawing by Z. Honea.

Dear Camilla,

I’m writing this letter to you because I’m hurting, and I want you to understand why. I’m writing this because I hope it will help me gain some solace. Something happened that has affected me in a way that I’m trying my best to deal with, Camilla. On June 17, in Charleston, South Carolina, in these United States of America, a man entered a place of worship, Mother Emanuel AME Church, shot and murdered nine people. Nine innocent people who were there to worship their lord. This man entered and apparently took advantage of the generosity and warmth of these worshippers and murdered them. This is sickening and is one of those occurrences that we wish would not or could not happen. But, it did. And the families of these nine individuals have to now deal with the aftermath, as unfair as it is.

One of the people killed was named Clementa Pinckney. People called him Clem. He was the pastor of that church and a state senator in South Carolina. You know what else he was, Camilla? He was my age. We were born in the very same year. He won’t be able to see his two children this Father’s Day. He won’t be able to attend church this Sunday. He won’t be able to help his community as a state senator or help them worship as a pastor.

Clementa Pinckney and I share something else in common, Camilla: our blackness. Every day I think about the effect my skin color will have on your life. The looks we receive, the way people talk to me. You’ve already witnessed some behavior that might well have been motivated by hate. I don’t want to hold you back. I also don’t want you to be afraid of what might happen to me every time I am away from you, knowing what the world is capable of doing and how it too often treats men who look like me. You see, Camilla, there’s a good chance that Clementa Pinckney was murdered because he was black.

There are still far too many people who hate others for simply how they look. Our country has a long history of treating “the other” with disrespect, with hate. Hate is very real. Evil is very real. We see it far too often. That won’t change. I wish I could say something different. Yes, we have made some significant strides in this regard, but you will certainly continue to see this type of hate in your lifetime. That saddens me.

I’m also struggling to tell you something else, but I must. There is no completely safe place. These things happen in churches, schools, one’s home. The list can go on. Hate can appear everywhere. Evil comes in many forms. But, what I want you to know is this. We must not let fear conquer us.

I don’t want the evil to win. So, can you promise me something? We often talk about times to be brave. This is one of those times, Camilla. I need you to be brave. I need you to live without fear of hate. I need you to get as much out of life as you can. Don’t let the fear consume you. Keep being the person we know you already are. Be thoughtful, respectful, concerned. Be a good citizen. Address injustice. Contribute to society in a positive way. Live to make change. Because life is worth living, Camilla, and every day we have together is a special one.

Sincerely,

Your Father