Strange Days Indeed...

We opened the pool up this weekend.  The joys of Summer are here!

Life with Ali, sparkles to say the least.

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On Wednesday, while Ali and I are biking home from school, she tells me that a boy was mean to her and her friends on the playground at lunch, so they reported him to their teacher, and all were sent to the school Counselor.  The boy, crying, returned to the classroom to pack up his desk, and was escorted out of class.
 
You’d think I would have pressed Ali for details, but I was on overload, so I took it as classic third grade play yard conflict. My husband is out of town all week to procure business, and the constant stream of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, chauffeuring, laundry, clean up, homework supervision, and bed times has me in constant motion.  Add in two huge work deadlines (one Tuesday, one Thursday) for which I am….well, unprepared (remember that trip to Boston in which I thought I’d get stuff done? I worked on my parents' stuff the whole time, not mine).
 
So when Vice-principal Montoya calls shortly thereafter to tell me, “Your daughter did the right thing by reporting this incident”, all I ask is, “Did this boy get suspended?”  She cryptically replies, “I would go by whatever your daughter told you.”
 
I dive back in to my work that is haunting me: an analysis for my lit group of the book Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.  It has been years since I’ve read a book that has so astounded me with its lyricism and story.  In the prologue (so NO spoilers) we are told that Hamnet, the only son of William and Agnes Shakespeare, dies at age 11.  When I grow up, I want to write like O’Farrell.  Here’s an excerpt from when the family has just buried Hamnet’s body, and now has to leave the cemetery:
 
Her husband takes her arm as they reach the gate; she turns to look at him and it is as if she has never seen him before, so odd and distorted and old do his features seem. Is it their long separation, is it grief, is it all the tears? she wonders, as she regards him. She can see in his face the cheekbones of her dead son, the set of his brows, but nothing else…
She cannot leave this place, she cannot pass through this gate. She cannot leave her son here.
She gets hold of the wooden gatepost and grips it with both hands. Everything is shattered but holding on to this post feels like the only thing to do. If she can stay here, at this gate, with her daughters on one side of her and her son on the other, she can hold everything together” (pp. 232-233).
 
 I live the week partially submerged in this powerful book grieving a child's death, partially treading water in my own chaotic world.
 
After Lillie’s hip hop class, Ali debriefs us that night at dinner: “So here's what really happened. First XX said that boys run faster than girls.  So we chased XX around the yard and proved that he’s wrong. Then he said, ‘Well, my family has more money than any of yours’.  To this, I replied,  ‘You don’t know that. You can’t just assume things about people.’ To which he replied, ‘Well, I do know that we have a gun at home (he named the type) and I’m going to bring it to school and I’m going to use it to shoot all of you in the gut.”  
She says this very matter of factly.
 
I am stunned.  Speechless. All I can think of to utter is, “I’m glad you reported this...I see why he was suspended.”
 “Oh, so rude of him!” Ali agrees, showing none of the fear that is coursing through my body.  

The school is closed for the night.
 
Awake at 3 AM, my mind is racing. My rational part wants to dismiss all of this…just a kid talking. But in every school shooting, doesn’t the boy (always a boy) give warning before he strikes, verbally, or on social media? After the shooting, don’t people always say, “Oh, yes, he said something, but I never thought he’d actually go through with it!”? Don’t many residents have guns out here? 

John Lennon’s song about the absurdities we never expect to face comes to mind: “Nobody told me there’d be days like these!” Yeah, and look how the gun thing turned out for him.
 
With Jory out of town, and Hamnet's poetic loss of a child in my head, I watch Ali sleep.  As she nestles under her blanket, I try to imagine my world without her vivaciousness, her smile, her big heart.  I see my life cleaved in two: Before and After. But my brain cannot even imagine the After part because my body cannot cope:  tears run down my cheeks, my heart races, my head pounds.
 
At 8 AM the next morning, I call Vice-principal Montoya back, somewhat peeved by her obtuse message from the day before.  After formalities, the call goes something like this:
“I’m concerned about the death threat my child received on the playground yesterday.”
“Well, safety is our number one priority, I can assure you.”
“So what you are doing to mitigate this threat?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to discuss the other student with you.”
“My concern is not the other student. I just want to know how you are keeping my child safe.”
“Oh, we have all protocols in place: we keep the school itself locked, and we have lockdowns, and a swat team is – “
(I cut her off)
“No – no – most of that is in RESPONSE to a shooting that is in progress. What are you doing to keep this from happening?”
“By law I have to honor the other child’s privacy, M’am. I cannot tell you.”
I think, well, as far as I’m concerned, when this boy threatened my daughter, his privacy became secondary to her safety (but I realize this will not help my cause, because…bureaucracy over reason). What I say instead: “Do I need to go down there and take my child out of school?”
“Not at all, M’am. As I’ve said, I assure you, safety is our number one priority. I understand your concern. Look, his parents were notified, the counselor was notified – there are only three days left in the school year. We are on top of this.”
I finally get her to compromise with me, and I put our agreement in writing in an email titled “Safety in Ms. S’s class” and send this to the school principal, Ali’s teacher and my husband in Belize.
 
While much of the school's protocol deals with what to do in response to an active shooter (lock down, squat team etc), the Vice-principal finally agreed that should the student come to school in the next three days, his back pack and person will be searched to ensure he is not carrying the weapon that he said he will bring.
 
I cannot believe I am writing this email, but being relatively new to Albuquerque, we know nothing of the student or his family other than he threatened our child's life. We have learned that many people do keep guns in their homes out here.
 
Two requests:
 
1) that the counselor follow up with the girls today to make sure they feel safe, and congratulate them on advocating for themselves.  This is not the last time these girls will face intimidation in their lives, and I would like the congratulations and reinforcement of how important it is to speak up for themselves be made loud and clear to them. (Somehow it never sounds the same coming from a parent!)
 
2) Although your window to request certain classmates not be in class next year has closed, I formally request that should XXX attend Georgia O'Keefe next year, he NOT be in class with Alexandra.  I think any of us would have a hard time feeling safe with a colleague who verbalized a desire to put a bullet in our gut.
 
Please let me know your thoughts on this.
 
By the end of the day, the principal has agreed to both requests.
 
It is the rock star teacher who privately lets me know that according to the boy’s mother, they have no gun at home; this must have come from the video games he plays. (Third. Grade.) However, for even making this threat, the boy will be attending school virtually for the remaining days of the school year. (Thank you beloved teacher - was that really such a breech in protocol?)
 
I am at once relieved, grateful, and, let’s be honest, exhausted.  
 
The discussion on Hamnet and the Shakespeare family loss is nothing short of inspired.  
 
But I cannot stop thinking of my dear friend in Los Angeles whose vibrant daughter unexpectedly passed away after her 11th birthday, three months before COVID hit.  Unlike “widow” or “orphan”, we don’t even have a word for a grieving mother, as if our language itself  cannot bear the anguish that comes with this state.  
 
It is luck. Wrong place, wrong time, genetics, illness: just a heartbeat separates us from crushing tragedy. We need to be more gentle with each other, I think. We are all of us fragile, headed for the same fate. 
 
We want joy, but isn’t the point of life to embrace whatever comes our way: to experience loss when we encounter it, feel the fear when a child’s life is threatened?
 
Professor of biology and mindfulness-based author Jon Kabat-Zinn put it this way:
“We can be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion.  It arrests development and short circuits the cultivation of wisdom”.
 
So here’s to messy, complicated, unpredictable LIFE. 
​ 
As our modern day Irish bard Bono reminds us,
​“We’re One, but we’re not the same...We’ve got to carry each other, carry each other.”