Schrödinger’s Child

WARNING: This post addresses school shootings and the threat of those shootings. Please take care of your mental health, always.

I’m sitting at a child’s activity, listening to the moms around me try to figure out the lockdown at their kids’ middle school last week. They’re pretty sure a student just messed up, sending a text with a few of the words that automatically require action.

Yesterday, students at the University of Virginia died in a shooting. 

Two days ago, I had coffee with a friend who showed me a video of armed and armored SWAT agents escorting her daughter out of a high school here in town, after a rash of prank calls a month ago. 

Over the weekend, I listened to This American Life’s October 28 episode, “Kids These Days,” which highlights the voices of students discussing school shootings. 

And last year, my child called me from a lockdown that was not a drill. 

I am asking you all, as a community, why is this normal? Why do we accept it? 

Even if it were somehow possible to accept that all children in America today live under the constant threat of dying at school—live with regular drills in hopes that they won't die at school—children are actually dying. 

Children are actually dying. I can tell you how it feels to not know if my child is alive, but I cannot tell you how it feels to know that my child did die in a burst of gunfire. 

I do not want to know that. I do not want ANYONE to know that. I am not okay with this “normal.” I do not accept it. 

And, unfortunately, I think it will take all of us to make a difference—not by legislating the symptoms, but by rooting out the cause. My instinct tells me that the cause lies in how utterly consumed we adults have all become by our economic survival. I think we need to re-examine our whole culture, reducing our expectations of status, increasing our support networks, and valuing humans—families of all kinds—over production. I truly feel we need less pressure and more connection, more rest, and more joy in our children’s lives—and our own. 

I’m no expert. I am just a parent in 2022 saying that I’m not okay with this. I do not accept it. I am listening for ideas and I will throw my support behind anything that moves the needle away from this unthinkable “normal.” 

 

    Schrödinger’s Child 

    Anytown, America 

            2022 

 

Heartbeats 

Between texts 

Empty space 

Silence 

Between 

Time in which I both have 

And do not have 

A child 

 

9am 

Before class 

Putting his bike 

In the rack 

 

He texts 

Lockdown at school rn 

    For real or drill? 

silence 

    Are you outside? 

silence 

    You’re in parking lot? Can you see or hear anything? 

silence 

 

A brief connection, a call, a voice, my child alive 

    Go inside, find a teacher 

Okay 

 

silence 

silence 

silence 

and 

silence 

(weeks later, as I write this, the school calls 

In between ring and answer, silence) 

 

In silence 

I drive pointlessly 

Toward the school 

Mother of both 

A living child 

And not 

In the silence 

between 

 

Two thousand 

Children that day 

Alive and dead 

In the silence 

between 

(a student in crisis 

the call said later) 

 

Another 

Two thousand 

Last week 

Alive and dead 

In the silence 

between 

(a rash of pranks 

the call said later) 

 

Did you know that 

Our bodies 

don’t know 

The difference 

Between real 

And perceived 

Danger? 

 

In the time between 

My childhood 

And now 

We have all lost 

Our children 

In the silence 

between