When I attended prenatal classes nearly twenty years ago, they warned us that watching the news would never be the same again after giving birth; that we would weep more, suffer more, seeing each vulnerable child in the light of our own babies, every family tragedy as a warning of what can happen; that our hearts would break for every mourning mother as though for our own.

Tonight, CNN.com added a line to their coverage of the tornadoes in Oklahoma between updates. They mentioned a man, the father of a third grader, waiting quietly on a stool for news of his child.

I doubt that anyone needs to have given birth to weep with him, to wait and watch with him, to hope against hope and pray with him for his baby.

Whether we are mothers or daughters, sons or brothers, fathers or grandparents, godparents, friends, our hearts go out to Oklahoma tonight, as we wait, and watch, and weep with those whose lives, whose loved ones are on the line, and we offer up our prayers to the night sky, hoping that they will be heard above the noise and chaos of the wind and weather, that peace might prevail in the morning; and we add our tears to those who already mourn.