The day started simply enough. We woke too early and dealt ourselves out, one boy to middle school, one to high school, one husband at work across town, and me at work here under a sunny lamp, with a dog so deeply asleep even her ear had stopped twitching.
When the phone dingled I turned my office chair to glance at the do-I-want-to- answer-this-or-not display. It’s the school district. They’d called many times in the last few weeks with tape-recorded reminders of back-to-school night, parent-teacher conferences, festivals.
What I write next will not be exact because my mind, within moments, flooded with adrenalin — time both sped up and moved very, very, slowly.
First I heard something about a 911 emergency message from the school and “press one.” I hear words: “A bomb threat, school on lockdown, do not try to contact your child, do not come to school. Do not. Do not.”
Each time I think of what to do, the voice tells me not to. It’s one step ahead, anticipating the skippy-fast, laser-focused thought of every parent: Where is my child? The voice keeps talking and I am looking for my shoes, my keys, my mind knowing all the parents should not descend on the school, but I’m moving anyway.
The voice says all the right things: “Police are on site. Officials. Authorities. Wait.”
At this moment, the other phone rings. I have the school’s voice in one hand, and my son’s voice in the other. He’s safe. He is fine. He and his friends are walking to Qdoba. I don’t say what I am thinking (Don’t walk, run! Run fast. Duck, hide, get away from the school). I say I will pick them up.
When I pull into the parking lot, three girls pass in front of my car. They wear cheerleading uniforms, and walk with their shoulders touching each other, huddled. I ask them how they are and they bend toward my car for a moment, a held breath of vulnerability floats around them; one has been crying. They say they are fine. That it was scary.
The boys are different. When I walk in, two motion to me with their chins, a slight upward hitch that in boy language means “Hi.” Along the window are another 20 or so boys; they wear the effort of their nonchalance self consciously; they remind me of pop-bottle rockets unlit.
Four of them come with me. They start talking to each other, and then over each other, until the car fills with words. They fire and flare with details, excitement.
An announcement over the loudspeaker: “This is not a drill. There has been a bomb threat. Lights off, all shades closed, on the floor, in a tight group, in one corner.”
The school did exactly what it was supposed to do, according to plan, and in concordance with the police.
Some classrooms had boredom; some had tears and panic; some had humor. One boy said to his friend, loudly and across the heads of his classmates, “Hey, come on over here. I don’t want to die a virgin.”
Everyone, including the friend, laughed. I laughed when the boys told me, though my heart cracked a little too. They are so young.
Most people in this world are good. Though the bad, and the frightening, and the unimaginably horrific get much attention, most people are good. This is the only explanation I can give my sons and, of course, it is not an explanation. It’s a reminder, a reassurance, a truth.
Children should not have to hold horror in their hands like the unbroken yolk of an egg, nose-close, still and ripe for careful examination. But, when it happens anyway, I hope we don’t let our own fears for them, and our own anger that we can’t always keep them safe, get the better of us.
I didn’t have grand words for the car full of boys. Nothing fabulous or magic or shatteringly articulate. I simply apologized to them, said I was sorry they had to feel afraid like that for even a moment.
Then I reminded them that most people are good; all around them, every day, are people who want the best for them, who love them, who would slay any dragon, and then some, for them.
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
