lockdown. [west of the moon, 23 february 2018]
Declan and I get to school early. He's in kindergarten here, where I teach; the drive from Brooklyn isn't so bad if we leave early, but it means we get here early. The elementary school has a before-school program in the library, it starts at 7:45, and every day Declan hassles me about getting there right when it opens, so he can be the first in the door.
We both had plans for the morning. He wanted to be first at Early Birds. I had a few difficult phone calls to make, a class I wasn't fully prepped for, a host of small things that have drifted too far off the radar. And I wanted ten or fifteen minutes alone with a cup of coffee before I set about restoring order to my chaos.
We got to school a little earlier than usual, even, because there's so little traffic--the public schools are on break, it eases everything on the roads.
We got to school and saw a police car parked in front of the building. Then I realized it wasn't a police car, it was a flock of police cars, maybe six or so. When I parked my car, a security guard was waiting when I opened the car door. There's an incident, he said, just go straight into the main building and wait in the lobby. As we approached the building, another security guard opened a door and waved us in. In here, he said, pointing to the main theater. Just wait in there.
Look, no one knew what was going on. We were in there for about twenty minutes. Everyone who arrived on campus in that time was being diverted into the theater. I texted Matt, wondered if I should call him, wondered if I should be more worried. I kept Declan occupied. He was bored, he was antsy, he was upset that he was missing Early Birds, he was the only elementary school child in the room because the other kids (the normal, non-faculty-parent kids) arrive at school in a different place. They were probably diverted into a different secure location. He read his library book and asked to see pictures on my phone. He asked why we had to wait in the theater. I told him I didn't know, but that we were okay. (I don't think it ever occurred to him that we weren't okay.)
I can never tell, with school stuff, how much I can talk about. As a faculty member, I shouldn't talk about anything. As a parent of a child at the school, I think I'm free to say whatever I want. In any event, there had been a threat made against the school and they wanted to keep everyone in a secure location until the threat assessment protocol, or whatever, was complete. After we'd been in the theater for about twenty minutes, someone came to tell us that the police had given the all-clear; it was just a threat, not an emergency. We have complete confidence in the safety of the campus, it's safe to go about your day, everyone was just following protocol, everything is fine.
We made an orderly exit from the theater, the "all clear" radiating out into the community through phone calls and text messages and "oh my god you guys." I walked Declan over to his building, gave him an extra hug, thanked the Lower School security guards for taking such good care of the kids.
It hasn't quite been the day I was expecting.