The times we live in..

I dropped off the kids’ lunches at school. As I was driving away, the fire alarm went off.

The loud, piercing sound was especially high pitched and disturbing. I imagined how startled the kids must have been in the middle of work. Maybe my five year old had dropped his pencil and yelled out, maybe my daughter’s hand jerked on her page and disfigured her neat handwriting?

Tears stung my eyes and my heart felt constricted. My thoughts went to a part of my brain that is usually locked, the part with information about brutally murdered children. I had to fight hard to block the deluge of images that threatened to drown me in a sea of sadness and negativity. If I allow myself to imagine a mother wailing as she holds the body of her dead, blood soaked child, I cannot go on. I wish I could un-know the sadness of Beslan, Sandy Hook, Peshawar and countless other children that are killed by air-strikes, bomb blasts and gun shots in our world.

At the end of the day I asked my son about the fire drill. “It was just a fire drill mama, not a lockdown drill, that’s when a bad guy comes to the school and we have to turn off the lights, lock the door, turn off our voices and hide where the teacher tells us to.”

I know it should give me some comfort to know that my children are prepared for the eventuality of a crazy person with a gun or a terrorist with a bomb, but that conversation just brought on more heartache.

We came home and hugged the cat, we watched the panda cam at the San Diego zoo and laughed at how he was stretched out on this back, his head thrown back with abandon. My thoughts go back to normal, I prepare for dinner, ‘that part’ of my brain can be locked again, I have that luxury — for now.