CODE RED
It’s a Friday morning on the way to school when my third grader asks about code red drills. “We haven’t had one yet this year, Mom,” he says.
“The firemen showed up,” my first grader pipes in.
“That was a fire drill, though,” my older son points out. “We had a tornado drill, too,” he reminds me. “When do you think we’ll have a code red?”
“I’m not sure, buddy,” I say, noticing the question he isn’t asking me: what if something bad happens and we haven’t practiced?
Less than an hour later, I get a text from the school: We are having our code red drill this morning. This is just a drill.
On the way home that afternoon, the code red drill is the big topic of conversation. I try to keep my voice neutral when I ask where they hid and if everyone in their class was quiet. They tell me about the locked doors to the classroom, the principal walking down the hallways and jiggling the doorknobs to be sure, and how long it seemed until the all-clear came over the intercom.
Please keep them safe at school, I think, repeating the silent prayer I say every morning when I drop them off.
//
I’m lining up metal bento boxes on the kitchen counter, preparing to start packing school lunches, when my phone screen lights up. I glance at it—a breaking news alert. Skimming the headline to see if this is breaking news I care about, my heart skips a beat when I read, “shots fired at Raleigh middle school.” I drop the box of Goldfish I’ve just picked up onto the counter and pick up my phone. The middle school is just a few miles from the elementary school my kids go to, one that the siblings of some of their classmates attend.
Information is sparse at first, so in between making sandwiches and washing grapes, I click back to the news—still no updates. I grab ice packs from the freezer and click over to the moms group on Facebook. I tuck bento boxes into lunch boxes, add notes on top, and click over to Twitter.
By the time I tell the kids to put on their shoes, the information has been updated: shots were fired near the school, not at the school. Code yellow, not code red.
//
A few hours later, I’m sitting at Panera, where I’ve settled in with a cup of coffee and my laptop after preschool drop-off. I take a break from work and click back over to the news, wondering if there is any more information about this morning's incident. I dread reading about school lockdowns, but I drop off three kids at school each morning: staying up to date seems like part of my job.
My phone buzzes: it’s my husband. He’s just left a nearby meeting—can he drop by to join me for a few minutes?
He sits down across from me, and starts to tell me about his morning. Another breaking news alert comes across my phone, and I glance down, then slide the phone across the table to him.
“Look,” I say. “Nashville. The one here this morning was a false alarm, but this one’s real.”
A few minutes later, I scan the news story, now updated with more information, and tell him grimly, “A private school. Preschool through sixth grade.”
He shakes his head, swallows hard.
“Sometimes I don’t know how to keep sending them to school,” I tell him. “Dropping them off every morning…” I trail off, think for a second. “A couple of weeks ago, I was there during an assembly. And it was after preschool, so all three of them were in the gym.”
“I knew where all three were,” I continue. “But, I started thinking: what if something happened? I don’t know if I’d be able to get to them all, keep them all safe.”
“You were making a plan,” he says.
I nod. “Our kids should be safe at school,” I say. “But…” I notice another breaking news alert, updating the Nashville death toll, and gesture around helplessly.
Photos taken at NCMA’s 2023 Art in Bloom exhibit
