Today is both Easter and April Fool’s. I know this well because the  magazine I edit included a 2018 calendar that inadvertently listed only the foolish one. It was either an “egregious religious affront,” as one reader put it, “or sloppy editing.”

I wanted to explain that it was most certainly the latter—and the error didn’t even come close to the living man accidentally listed in the obituary—but instead, I offered my sincerest apology, and he responded with kindness and grace. It was the resolution we all seek. Forgiveness for our mistakes.

Earlier this week, I received an email from a “Moms Against ‘Thoughts and Prayers’” group asking if I could attend a committee hearing in my state capital to support a House Bill that would raise the age limit for gun purchases to 21. In the wake of last weekend’s March for our Lives, I felt an obligation to lend my voice to a cause that will not fix everything but will at least move us in the right direction, on behalf of our children.

I outlined remarks I never delivered. The chamber was laden with NRA influence and its grave opposition to reform. It’s one thing to know of an organization’s power and another to see it up close, in person, overflowing into the halls.

Had I spoken, I would have said I support the bill because of an image that haunts me. On December 14, 2012, as my newborn daughter lay sleeping in my arms, the parents of six- and seven-year olds in Newtown, Connecticut gathered together. I picture them every December, a blur of bodies and tears and confusion, all huddled close as police and doctors and school administrators sorted between the living and the dead. I imagine them being called, one by one, to breathe again, to hold their babies, to thank the heavens for having so narrowly escaped the most horrific horror of horrors. And then I think of the parents left behind.

I think of them after every mass shooting because they could be any of us, at any time.

I know that raising the age limit to purchase a gun will not fix everything, I wanted to tell my state senators. But it is a step in the right direction, and it is part of a movement our children are fighting, not against guns, but against irresponsibility and inaction. The irony of our children having to teach us this lesson both shames and inspires me.

In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I lost all faith that we would ever pass meaningful gun reform, I wanted to say, but in the wake of Parkland and the rallying cry of our youth, I am reminded of all that is at stake.

When I left the state capital, I thought not of the House Bill, but of moms, fighting on behalf of our children, demanding nothing more than common sense legislation to make it harder for our sons and daughters to be slaughtered in their schools. Doesn’t every American want that? How can we possibly lose this fight?

That night, I attended my daughter’s karate promotion, which began as it always does, with the joining of a straight palm (the mind, the scholar) and a closed fist (the body, the warrior). As the class recited their student creed, I cried.

This is not a fight against guns, but a war against irresponsibility, and the irony of learning this simple truth from our children gives me hope that even if we fail them, they will not fail themselves.

Every December, on the anniversary of Sandy Hook, I find myself singing holiday songs and imagining the excruciating pain that must overcome these parents when hearing Mariah Carey’s only Christmas wish.

“God, why now?” I ask, as if there would ever be an appropriate time for such horror. Then I imagine the calendar itself: Christmas, Easter, April Fools. The holidays we celebrate, the truths we ignore.

Life is the meaning of life, a friend once explained to me. “I think it’s called tautology,” he said. “When the answer to the question is the question itself.” As mothers and fathers, we understand this with every fiber of our being. The life we create connects us to our past, our present, our future. Our children are our greatest salvation.

But maybe we’re fools, turning a blind eye to suffering we’d rather not see.