Many of you know that we as a family do not have cable or satellite or any other live TV - we don't watch the news - which limits our exposure to the outside world on the best of days - and allows us to control how our children find out about tragedy on the worst of days...
Friday was the worst of days as you know - the unthinkable happened - children and their caregivers, safely ensconced in a safe, comfortable learning environment were ripped from that safety and torn from their world. So many lives lost and so many others changed in the blink of an eye...
I struggle to fathom the depths of dispair, as the parent of a kindergartener - I know what it's like to put my child's safety, wants, needs, joys and fears into the hands of others - the wonderful teachers, assistants, therapists, administrators and even the custodial staff.
I also know what I was doing at 9:38 AM on Friday - I was finally breathing a sigh of relief that the computer program that our school uses to track and scan visitors was finally back up and running. All of the computers in the school had inexplicably been shutting down in the middle of work all morning... I'd been relying on my memory, faith and knowledge that most of my job as gatekeeper of our children's safety to allow parents to sign a piece of paper and get a 'star' sticker to be allowed to walk freely amongst our precious children. Most of the faces I knew by heart - other parents, there to take strings class with their child, go on field trips to see the Nutcracker & Madeline, and the special needs classes to a day at the Outlet Malls, the bus drivers who would take our precious cargo on their trips...
And then there were others I didn't know - a new-to-me parent coming in for a conference, a School Board employee coming to install a piece of technology, other parents who were fleeting faces from a crowd... I knew them, but did I know them from our school? I had to rely on faith and the belief in the good nature of people to do my job as a gatekeeper that day...
The scariest thing I had to come to grips with is that I probably would have waved in and tried to chat with a young man who was known to me as the child of one of our teachers... knowing that no barrier or safety measure would have entered my mind... that I would not have been a part of preventing a tragedy if that had been my role.
I sent my son to school today because the way that my heart is healing is to know that life can change in an instant - and today I will be more aware of celebrating all of the instants - the new words he will learn, the new ways he will interact with his teachers, classmates, the school as a whole and the joy I will experience in knowing that he is learning to be a better person...
Will I be more wary as I sign people into the school, probably... but will it stop me from letting parents and grandparents go on field trips, from letting spouses and children of staff wave through? No... because our school is a community - one sadder and heavier because of the Connecticut shooting and the senseless loss of life, but a community none the less...
We cannot prevent every tragedy - or sometimes any tragedy- living in fear is not really living... so today and for the rest of his educational career, I will hug my son and send him into the arms and hearts of his teachers, mentors and friends and hope that I as a parent and every other parent in the world never has to live through the horror of Friday, but I know that building more walls and keeping loving people out of my son's life won't prevent tragedy - my belief in the greater good of mankind has been shaken but not broken... and I will be back at my job as gatekeeper when next I am called for that duty...
