I was just lifting my coffee mug to my lips, when suddenly my husband was leaning over to me, phone in hand. His eyes were big, and immediately searching my own.
On his screen there was a message from a mutual friend of ours:
“School shooting threat at the high school. 10 minutes ago…”
Right away I messaged her to find out if she could give more details,
but I barely even heard her.
Something about a report that a kid brought a gun to school, and lots of police were there.
Up until that day I’d been thankful to live close to the high school, saying how easy drop-offs and pick-ups would be for me, but on this day I regretted ever saying that,
because we also live close enough that I could now hear all the sirens up the street.
A ding from my cell phone.
A message from my daughter in her classroom.
She was OK.
They had locked down fast.
She talked about having to try to stay quiet, and how the teacher had put a cartoon on mute on on the television to try to distract them all as he stood by the door with a baseball bat in his hand.
“Where are you right now? What building?”
“I’m in the main building in room 202.
I heard from my friend that the kid that has the gun is on the same floor as me.
He’s in room 212.”
Immediately my heart was racing.
Stay calm. Stay calm.
The school and police…Surely they will know what to do…
Of course when I’ve watched news reports on school shootings, I’ve always tried to imagine how it must feel to stand in that crowd while the lights flash, just watching the doors and waiting, hoping to see your own child run out.
No one sits on this kind of side-line cheering.
I never really knew that on the way to that parking lot you are picturing things like their face as a toddler, and what their baby teeth looked like when they smiled, nicknames you call them,
the way their hair feels and smells,
the way you go over the exact moment they closed the car door that morning,
and what you were talking about.
“Please will you send me a picture of yourself?”
“What for?”
“I just need to see you right now.”
The two hours until she was released to go in amongst a sea of parents and cars and police lights felt like an eternity to me.
The police were directing cars to park at the Jehovah’s Witness church lot across the street from the school.
Clutching the hand of my (maybe now forever) homeschooling nine year old,
I parked my car and started walking, noticing the church sign overhead as I went towards the school that read, “Kingdom Hall.”
“Funny,” I thought as I pulled on my mask.
“This doesn’t feel like a kingdom to me.”
We waited for my daughter, Tessa, at the edge of the cafeteria, where we’d said we’d meet,
as my youngest daughter, Paige, chewed her nails through her mask, and kept turning and clinging to me.
“Where IS she? Why isn’t she here yet? I’m scared. Should we call her again?”
“She will be here soon, Honey. She’s safe now. She has been messaging me.”
I wondered as I stood there stroking her little head, and fixating back and forth between the sidewalk and my cell phone screen, what else I would have to soothe her about.
How many more traumatic things?
As the wildfires spread, and the sky turns black, as the pandemics rage,
as her sister sits inside a classroom where kids are hiding under their seats.
I locked eyes with kids, parents, and teachers walking past.
Everyone had the same expression.
One girl flew into the arms of her tearful father, and with a cracking voice, smiled, and said,
“See. I TOLD YOU I needed a phone!”
The moment that I saw Tessa coming towards me was a moment I will never forget.
Exactly as she had when I had dropped her off. Unimaginable relief.
I had to urge to run, but I resisted it, knowing that to a teenage girl that kind of display would be mortifying.
Instead I just clung to her harder than a teenager ever really wants you to.
I could have wailed there on the corner by that chain link fence,
but I just whispered all I could get out:
“I’m so glad to see you.”
She couldn’t have known the true danger she could have been in.
I’ve shielded her from so many news screens.
Volume down, distract their gaze, shuffle the little ones off to sleep.
We block the blows, and absorb the sights and information load,
hoping to never have to use any of it in order to protect our home.
As I held her there I remembered that morning when I had been sweeping my floor,
I had just finished and had turned to notice a bit of paper, and a small string right where I’d just been, and when I bent to pick them up, I had mused out loud something that stuck out,
“It’s like no matter what I do, there is always more!”
It felt like that moment was a metaphor for how mothering has been lately –
Like sweeping that floor.
I am trying my hardest, breaking a sweat, to keep my family safe,
but now there’s a gun,
a deadly virus,
or heaven forbid their own depression…
Always one more scrap of paper. One more small bit of string.
I’m so tired. I want it all cleaned up, and to just sit and read,
but all we can do is be there at the gate, waiting to gather them back in;
Give them a safe place to come home to when the world outside threatens them.
Tonight the sunset was crimson red.
It spread across the entire sky; A “Sailor’s Delight.”
I looked up at it and thought about how wonderful it would be to be able to trust that the next day would be smooth, simply based on the color of the sky.
Hard day over, a better day comes.
There’s a red sky tonight.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
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.
