A Letter to My Senator

Dear Senator Romney,

My husband and I are expecting our first child. The way that sentence sounds versus the way it feels to say it is night and day. It sounds stuffy and formal and overused. It feels joyful and unearthly and improbable. We love each other, and because of that love, a new human is going to join us and life has been created. It’s the most mundane thing on earth, and somehow still a miracle.

A week after we found out that our poppyseed baby was growing inside me, 8 people were murdered in Atlanta through gun violence. Two weeks after we found out, 10 more people were murdered in Boulder through the same bloody means. Two more places added to a list that shouldn’t exist: Tree of Life Synagogue, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, Parkland… I could go on for hours. And I wish that wasn’t the case.

While we are preparing ourselves to bring a precious life into the world, other precious lives are being senselessly ripped from it. A dad filling his prescriptions. A grocery store teller my same age, ringing someone’s groceries up. Someone’s mom, working in a salon. Someone’s daughter, laying ripped apart on the floor, riddled by bullets from a stranger’s gun.

Senator Romney, what am I supposed to do? I’ve always known this world isn’t perfect, and I keep on going. I’ve always known that it’s unfair and unjust, but I am alive in this world. It’s the only one I have, so I keep going. But now I have the chance to bring an innocent life into my world, and suddenly I’m not so sure anymore. How can I share this with them only to know that it is very likely, even probable, that their life could be turned upside down by gun violence?

Having a child — what a selfish act! Becoming a mother — what a selfish person! Who am I to bring a life into the world that will surely eat them alive?

Maggie Smith wrote in her beautiful poem “Good Bones”:

“Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”

Senator, can I do the same thing as any good realtor? Can I walk my child through the world, hold their little hand and convince them that our country has good bones? Can I show them beauty in a life that may be silenced because we need to get eggs from the grocery store? Or because we want to see a movie in the theater? Or because she is in school, learning to reach her potential and laughing with her friends and reading Harry Potter?

I don’t know if I can.

My baby is coming in November. She’ll make her way into the world, stretch her little fingers and toes and keep us up at night, for various reasons, for the next 18 years. She’ll look a little like her dad and a little like me. I hope she has his sense of humor and my love of books. I hope she can kick a soccer ball and make friends and laugh a lot. I hope she loves the same music as her grandpa, because they’ll be going to a lot of concerts together. I hope she’s just like my grandma, whose name she will share.

There are thousands of parents, just like me, who are hoping and praying that their kids will be ok. And we won’t all get our wish. If I do, someone else won’t. If my child survives past her childhood and into adulthood because nobody choses to buy a gun and kill her with it, then somebody else’s child won’t be so lucky. It’s Russian Roulette, and our kids are the ones at the table, and all we can do is look through our fingers and scream.

Please, Senator Romney, please. I’m desperate, as a person who loves her family and adores her husband and can’t believe that she’s going to be a mom. I’m desperate as a citizen, as someone who knows that I’m not the center of the universe, and that if it doesn’t happen to me and my house, it will happen to someone else, which is equally devastating and cruel. Please work toward gun control in our country. Don’t let them take away our kids and parents and brothers and sisters. Don’t let them value their guns more than they value our lives. Think of my poppyseed baby, and other parents’ babies, and choose them over the NRA.

It’s too late for the thousands of people who have been brutally murdered by gun violence in our country. It’s too late for their families and friends and the survivors of the attacks. Please, don’t make it too late for us, too.

Don’t stop chirping on about good bones. This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Your constituent,

Samantha Aramburu