I expected last night's active shooter lockdown meeting to be hard. Sitting in a room full of angry, frightened parents trying to understand what happened and how a miscommunication could affect their children so enormously was always going to be rough for an emotional sponge like me.
I didn't expect to have to cope with jealousy.
The school was so quiet on Friday when I picked up Gooseberry, and it wasn't just because so many of the kids had been taken home early. I know that quiet, where somehow the wind and the ground and the sky are themselves subdued. It's the sound of fear. Of heartache. Of lost innocence.
I remember exactly three things about my high school graduation. 1. Standing in line outside the theatre, hoping not to screw up. 2. That we had no idea what our commencement speeches said, because the sound system was in place for the audience, not for us. And 3. The gut-clenching moment of hushed voices as we, 17 and 18 year-olds without adult suggestion, pinned blue and silver ribbons and CHS stickers to our lapels - to walk carrying them with us across the stage.
Watching the parents last night struggle with the fear and shock of a chaotic afternoon that ended in, "Oops, never mind," 99% of me overflowed with compassion. "You'll survive it," my heart whispered. "Your kids will be okay. They'll carry those minutes with them, possibly forever, but they'll be okay." But that last 1% made me angry.
"These parents got so many more years than we did," it growled. "They didn't spend their child's first year here learning to exist with the fear of an open campus shadowing every drop-off and pick-up. What does a life like that even feel like? We should have had the chance to find out!"
And then the superintendent said something about, "Whether it's the classroom or the cafeteria or the library..." and I had to squelch a pained gasp. Every parent story about how their child spent Friday afternoon and the weekend in between summoned up unwanted images.
The cheerleaders in my PE class, collapsing into each other's arms as we listened to the radio.
The news, replaying over and over the line of high schoolers sprinting across the field to safety.
The pictures I built in my head that accompanied the stories of classes trapped in bathrooms, in hallways.
Of the ones who didn't make it.
Of talking to a friend in Home Ec days later about the bomb threats and suggestions that our school was going to be next.
Of how that quiet seeped into all our classrooms and stole the joy and color from our last few weeks of high school.
I want to help the parents now. To reassure them. I want to stand with them in ensuring the safety of our children. But I can't. It bothered me a lot that I couldn't, all weekend leading up to the meeting. Through the whole meeting, until a commotion at an adjoining door prompted the explanation that the girls' basketball team was practicing next door. So oddly coincidental, it covered me in goosebumps.
The kids will be okay. They have teams of people watching over them. The parents will be, too, eventually, once the dust settles on their new worldview. I can't stand with them for the simple reason that they aren't my charges to help.
In the weeks after Columbine, our teachers spent their prep time between classes standing guard over the hallways. It scared me, that constant reminder that they needed to. The one image I keep seeing, again and again without reprieve, is of the girls' basketball coach - normally a jovial and smiling fellow with a mug of tea casually in hand - his face made of stone, eyes sharp and hard, arms folded, positioned at a corner for maximum visibility. Who he was inside had fundamentally changed, and in that moment, I recognized the difference with a shock that went all the way through me.
It was the moment I truly understood love and connection and sacrifice. I realized in one glance that every one of my teachers, beloved or otherwise, and every adult in the whole school would willingly die for a single one of us. It wasn't part of their job description. They weren't trained in weapons or security or rescue; they wore no armor and no helmets; yet when it was asked of them, they set their jaws, lifted their heads, and stood sentinel over us all.
No one talks about the adults in school shootings, except to note exceptional acts of heroism. And no one in the meeting on Friday voiced any concern for them, either. They expressed appreciation for those that handled the situation well, but the teachers were, as they always are, discussed as employees. Not as victims of trauma. Not as civilians in a horrible circumstance for which there can be no adequate training. Not as people. As responsible parties to whom we could assign blame or praise for their contributions to our children's experiences. End of sentence.
I spoke to the principal afterward, to express my concern (which, considering the state of my social anxiety at present, says a lot about my level of concern). She listed off what the school was offering to staff, clearly trying to reassure me. And I, with my impaired emotional state, couldn't explain properly.
Our teachers and staff are not hardened security officers. They are, especially in elementary school, human beings made of compassion, generosity, patience, joy, and so much love that they won't blink at being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for the children in their care. And we fail them every time.
It's not enough to offer them access to trained therapists (to whom, I'm told, only six staff members spoke in a K-8 school). It's not enough to bring them coffee the next morning. "Thank you" only goes so far. As a parent, I can offer a hug and a deeply heartfelt outpouring of gratitude to the adults who kept my child safe and calm. And that's important. But it's still not enough.
I have been one of those children, and I have seen our teachers' hearts and their eyes and their souls when they've become bodyguards and warriors on the inside. For us. For me. They deserve so much more than the cookies I sometimes bake them on any normal day.
They deserve our honor.
Our gratitude.
Our support.
Our encouragement.
Hugs so tight they can feel them hours afterward.
And so much love and respect from the whole community that they will never doubt that we understand and appreciate in our heart-of-hearts what we ask of them should the unthinkable happen.
I can't do much else for them (the Century shooting fallout having stolen my ability to organize), but I can carry forward what my teachers did for me. I can be their sentinel, watching and listening for danger others might not notice. Ensuring they don't fall between the cracks. In such a small community, I don't know that they need to feel seen or connected more than they already do, but it doesn't really matter.
I know what they did for our kids on Friday, who they became in those terrible minutes before they knew it was a false alarm. And that makes them mine to shelter and protect.
Every single one of them.
Always.
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