When you ask your kids “So, How was school?” these days, you had better be prepared for the answer.
My daughter, Tessa, went today already knowing that this morning would be Part 2 of a rally her high school was calling “Every 15 Minutes,” which is to bring awareness to kids about the consequences of driving under the influence.
Her school had gone all out, spending thousands of dollars on even having a helicopter land and demonstrate an air lift, and on multiple police and fire resources.
They had several kids play dead, hanging out of mangled cars for ultimate effect.
They had a speaker who had just served nearly a decade in prison for vehicular manslaughter.
Today was supposed to be the “funeral day” of the kids who had supposedly died from drinking and driving.
Tessa said the rally went long, cutting into lunch time, as they wheeled in actual caskets,
and read “last words” types of letters written to the kids’ friends and families. Some kids made a joke of it, some kids had to leave, crying.
Tessa’s friend Kiki, who is from the Czech Republic, commented as they air lifted one student actor that these types of rallies felt like the most American thing she could possibly experience.
After the rally, and Tessa’s confusion over the wide range of emotions she had felt during it,
she went to class, but suddenly that class was halted by multiple types of sirens on the street out front, and an alert not to go to the gym because they were experiencing some kind of community emergency.
Of course, kids DID go (along with teachers) out of morbid curiosity, thinking maybe it was all still a part of the earlier rally.
They got there to find that a naked woman experiencing a mental health crisis had broken into the gym and had harmed herself with a knife in front of everyone.
She was covered in blood from the waist down,
and then bent down to write in it on the floor of the gymnasium.
Tessa said lots of kids recorded it, and some were even laughing.
I could hear the sadness in her that anyone could ever find that funny.
The police and ambulances came, taking the woman so she could be medically evaluated,
but at that point, the videos of the episode had already spread among the kids like fire.
Tessa told me this story, and I hardly knew what to say to her: This daughter who has lived through school lock-downs, a pandemic, and a massive wildfire.
She tried to brush the day off.
I could tell she was trying to remain lighthearted.
She said that it had been hard to differentiate between the earlier dramatic show,
and this very real moment.
I think that must be how a lot of life feels nowadays for our children.
I think they can’t help but have trouble sorting through it.
I wondered about the kids who went home from all of that to let themselves in with their own house key, and sit in lonely quiet with no one at home to support them.
She asked me a few minutes after telling me about this if I’d want to go on a hike, maybe.
She never asks for that.
I looked in her eyes and saw a much younger version of her.
I had a lot to do tonight, but I knew I had to make time for whatever she needed, so we laced up our shoes and went to walk along a quiet trail in the country, just the two of us.
There is not a lot that a quiet trail in the forest cannot make at least some better.
The ferns, and crackling twigs, and dappled light are somehow healing.
Sometimes a person needs a trail only wide enough for a single-file line, where they can walk in silence, all while knowing someone who loves them is following close behind them.
She didn’t say it, but I knew tonight her heart and mind needed solace, and her mother.
Kids these days have so much in front of them, so much to sort through.
What is pretend?
What is real?
What is beyond what you could imagine?
When the world is feeling intense, messy, and tragic, I think sometimes our children just need us to know when it is time to take them
somewhere soft and quiet.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
