The past two days have been about as hard as it gets for a young person with the kinds of disabilities that shape our daughter’s life. Right now, I am not able to write about what has happened, though I hope I’ll be able to eventually. I can say this: the measure of our greatness as a country must depend, at least in part, on our ability to maintain spaces where a person as vulnerable as our girl is able, if not to thrive, at least be safe. There are parts of her life where this is possible and for that I am eternally grateful. There are other places where the failure is simply abysmal. And she is one of the lucky ones, woven into a community of love, power and privilege that will ensure that from this point forward, she, and hopefully others, won’t ever have to go through what happened to her earlier this week.

I marvel at the strength and resilience of the human heart. Yesterday we spent some time with our girl at BARC. We had been so worried about how she was doing. My funny little valentine girl was up for shooting some hoops, announcing herself as Lebron and baptizing me “Little Bow Wow”. We ran around the court, both of us clueless about the rules and form of basketball, laughing our heads off. We actually managed get that ball in the hoop more times than should have been possible for two gimpy legged, short and silly girls. And we held up our arms in the air singing “We are the champions”. At least of survival and refusing to allow ourselves to be erased, we most certainly are…