The kids were in holiday jammies.
They were being escorted out of their school, which just became a crime scene, and they were dressed in flannel pants and plaid robes and furry slippers. One boy’s shirt said DON’T MOOSE AROUND above a plaid moose, which matched his red and black plaid pajama bottoms.
The adults were decked out too. One woman, clutching a phone and a water bottle in one arm and a terrified girl in the other, had on pants covered in holiday lights. Her shirt said LET IT SNOW with holiday lights circling the big, blocky letters.
It was probably pajama day at Abundant Life Christian School, at least for some of the classrooms. The week before winter break is a little more performance than pedagogy. Spirits are bright. Attention spans are shot. Teachers have to get creative.
If you have kids, you know. You’re rushing around trying to complete your holiday to-do list — Holiday cards! Holiday cookies! Holiday concert! Holiday staff party! Holiday shopping! Holiday work deadlines so you can take the holidays off! — and an email arrives from school about holiday spirit week and suddenly you’re trying to figure out how to dress your kid as the Grinch by Thursday. And it’s all a little stressful, but it’s also a little magical and it’s also the whole, entire point.
A life that asks you — allows you — to make the holidays (any of the days, really) feel joyful and magical and love-filled is the whole, entire point.
So you go all in on holiday spirit week.
I’m guessing, of course. I’m guessing about the moments leading up to Monday, the day a 15-year-old girl attacked a study hall full of students at Abundant Life Christian School before shooting herself.
I’m staring at photos from the news coverage and trying to reconcile the playfulness of DON’T MOOSE AROUND next to the flattened fury on the face of the police officer tasked with escorting the boy in those jammies to safety. (Safety is a term I use loosely; I’m not sure this child will ever feel safe again. Anywhere.)
I’m trying to imagine how the morning played out for those kids. Before they got to school. Nine days til Christmas. Advent calendars, maybe? That kind of giddy, devious feeling when you’re wearing something that’s usually against the rules? Begging Mom to let you ditch your coat?
I’m trying to imagine how the morning played out for those parents. Before they got the call or text or whatever alerted them to the nightmare playing out in the building where they drop off a piece of their hearts every morning. Coffee, dishes, email, pull the jammies out of the dryer just in time, maybe?
I’m trying to imagine how the morning played out for those educators. Before their workplace turned deadly. Before one third-grade teacher, as the New York Times reported, stood between the classroom door and the students, “armed with a pair of scissors, ready to defend against anyone attempting to enter.” Imagine.
I’m trying to imagine why we allow this to keep happening.
I’m trying to imagine what it would take for us to feel so fed up, so mortified, so absolutely infuriated at the lost potential and lost innocence and lost hope and forever shattered lives that we swear never again.
I’m trying to imagine what it would take for policymakers to stop wasting their time and ours arguing about trans athletes or what parts of U.S. history can be taught or whether rainbow flags are allowed in classrooms or whether dictionaries (dictionaries!) should be allowed in school libraries and start doing the hard, morally imperative work of protecting kids from guns, their No. 1 killer.
I’m trying to imagine the labor and guidance and common sense from Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Wear Orange, Sandy Hook Promise, March for Our Lives, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the thousands upon thousands of angry, heartbroken, determined Americans who refuse to believe we have to live like this … leading us to a time when we don’t.
I’m trying to imagine how in the world we continue to justify this setup. Where kids put on holiday jammies and parents drop them at buildings and teachers meet them at classroom doors and all of it is, ostensibly, the bricks and mortar manifestation of our values, our priorities, our beliefs, what we hold dear.
We hold dear children and opportunity and knowledge and safety and bright futures and big ideas, all sprinkled with love and joy and recess and talent shows and holiday spirit week. We build monuments to those values. We call them schools.
And kids keep dying in them. It’s obscene.
I’m trying to imagine it changing. It’s getting hard to.
Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she continues the conversation around her columns and hosts occasional live chats.
Twitter @heidistevens13