We sit at the table, the four of us, plates half-eaten and mouths full of food. Pass the ranch. Can you get me some water? Toes bouncing to a hidden rhythm on the floor. Eyes alive. Hands full of blood coursing through them rendering them lovely and useful, and life being lived, and there they are. My three hearts sit perfectly healthy in front of me, all eager to talk as the school year begins. They volley for space for their words.
My precious middle speaks up, his voice’s time. “We had a hard lockdown today.”
My oldest responds with words that stop me in my tracks and freeze me to the chair I am sitting in.
“I was scared. I thought it was real. Someone was on the other side tapping on the lockers, and I thought it was a real gun. I thought it was a shooting.”
His face denies any emotion carried in the weight of those enormous words, but they gut me like a direct blow to my middle. This is their childhood, and it devastates me, rendering me helpless on the spot.
My middle continues, “I was in the bathroom . . .” He lets out a quick pause until he finds a laugh. One he knows isn’t appropriate, but the thoughts taking place behind what is about to come out is too much for a 10-year-old to articulate, so it is delivered in some sad version of twisted humor, “The kids wouldn’t be quiet, and they kept laughing, and we were supposed to be quiet . . . I just kept thinking I don’t want to die in this bathroom with these people.”
My entire being shuts down, and I am left speechless. Nausea lands subtly.
I sit quiet for too long because what can I say to my babies when this is what they are growing up in? What words do I have to offer my children when the adults in their lives do not care enough that they are being murdered in their school to literally storm the streets in chaos until the whole thing comes crashing down? For they are aware riots have been held for much less.
I finally utter the only words I can form. They are vastly insufficient, but they are all I have.
“I don’t . . . have words for this. I hate you have to experience any of it. No child should ever have to think these kinds of thoughts. This is really, really hard for me to talk about because it is terrifying and my worst fear, but . . . we have to.”
So we talk, and it is so hard. All of it.
The conversation ends with my middle son and me sitting alone. In his mind, I see the fear running. He asks, “What would happen if . . . ”
He trails off, and the question hangs. His eyes grow glassy with water he refuses to let fall.
I am quiet until the only words I have leave my lips.
“All I know to say is that I need you to never doubt how much I love you. Always will. No matter what. Until the end of time, and I am so, so proud of you.”
His eyes are full and heavy. My heart is broken and angry.
I pull his frame, almost as big as mine but still just a boy, into my arms. I wrap him up for a little while.
These babies. They deserve so much better.
Originally published on the author’s Facebook page
by Tracy Gerhardt-Cooper 
by Sandra Samoska 
by Carol Moore 
