Fear

She came in. And hunkered under the curtain. Dragged me with her. And said “shhhh…don’t make a noise”. Then they came in. Called for us. She didn’t let me talk. I was amused at my little one’s hide and seek with us on the Friday evening. So I played along. Then they figured where we were. Lifted the curtains.

Then she screamed. “Mom they are going to shoot at us, we are going to die”. All of us stopped on track. “What??, what are you saying?”. She said, “oh mamma, we are practicing code red. In school when it is code red our teacher gets us to hide. Then those bad guys come in. We should not make a noise. Then officers will come in to save us. If we make a noise bad guys will find us and they will shoot at us.”


Agreed my older one with a more neutral story.

I could not clear the crowded memory since last Friday. All those parents that lost their children, families that lost a loved one in all these years, the pain, anguish, question, dilemma, of these lost dreams and lost lives perform an action replay in slow motion most of the time in my mind. They are not my personal experience but a result of cumulative readership and understanding mixed with parental intuition and understanding.

We send kids to school. We go to places we go to, work, movies, shopping and all other every day errands. And we set out planning to return. And when that doesn’t happen many a times, what to expect of life here? Why take out individual anger and disillusionment on an unsuspecting society? And yes, we do need to learn disaster preparedness. Prepare ourselves for earth quakes, tsunamis, storms, fires etc. But how do we prepare ourselves for bullets?

Go out anticipating that we will not return? Every day? That is living in fear. Living in fear and the American Dream are two entirely opposite things. I don’t want to live in fear, but still fear lingers in my heart.