The clouds overhead were protecting us from the stifling Labor Day Jersey Shore heat. We were shopping in Atlantic City for a few hours, my husband, four kids, and I…the kids ages then were 8, 6, 3, and 16 months. We were all on foot, hoping to score some last-minute back-to-school sales before the buses began their routes again in a few days. The glorious week prior to this moment in time was spent “relaxing” at the beach (as much as one can with so many little ones in tow), eating delicious fresh seafood, laughing with our families, and sipping cocktails at happy hour. And today, we were successfully navigating some awesome sales sans stroller, the baby in a carrier, our arms weighed down with loads of shopping bags. We rounded the corner and we crossed the Monopoly-named streets to make a quick last stop for some shoes for the kids. Loaded down like a pack mule, my husband suggested we split up, dividing the kids between us, while he dashed to the car to drop off some bags, but something inside said that we should stick together. He smiled at me and flashed a look, like, “what could possibly go wrong?” He conceded though…and then my 3 year old spilled his goldfish all over the sidewalk. Our slow-moving caravan stopped and we tried to clean the mess as best we could, knowing of course, the sea gulls would be all over it in a heartbeat.
What we didn’t know at that moment, was that right that very minute, just across the street from us, a 50-something year old gentleman was looking to settle a personal vendetta with a 20-something year old male… over a shared female love. The 20 year-old guy was the manager of the store across the street. The 50 year-old had a gun. None of this we knew at that moment, of course, so we bumbled along, a few goldfish lighter, kids asking for sippy cups, and we stepped into the shoe store. The gunned man, at the exact same second, was directly across the street from us walking with a dark mission to find that store manager.
The air conditioning inside the shoe store was a glorious reprieve from the humid heat outdoors, which was hanging overhead like a soggy down comforter blanketing us all. The kids dashed around in the cool as we casually meandered in and out of the outlet store aisles. I heard a woman in the background open the main door from the sidewalk outside and call intensely to her teenage daughter still inside the shoe store, “Let’s go, Jessica…. NOW.” Her voice was shrill, but not having seen her in my line of vision, I assumed it was none of my business, perhaps a mother-daughter moment of tension. Maybe it was the third time she’d asked her to leave…perhaps the girl was too engaged in her cell phone? My husband stayed toward the front of the store, looking through the glass, seeming interested in something going on outside. He turned to look at us and our eyes met for a second. One of the kids pulled on my shirt and my gaze shifted downward to deal with whatever it was they wanted, answer a question, meet a need.
More and more people inside our shoe store were flocking to the front, a wall of windows. In an instant, my typically easygoing husband who is normally a non-alarmist, grabbed our shopping bags and gave me a wide-eyed look and said “get the kids and get to the back of the store NOW.” The manager was racing toward the door just then with keys rattling to bolt us in and saying authoritatively, “Everyone please move to the back of the store. We are now on lockdown.” My oldest two children’s eyes immediately looked directly at me, and I looked at them, eyes wide and then my gaze darted back to my husband who was rapidly approaching. I was standing now at the back of the store, my baby in an Ergo, holding the hands of my other three kids, surrounded by plastic Crocs and flimsy displays and makeshift aisles. Only glass between us and whatever-the-terrible-thing-happening-outside-was. If one thing was clear at that very moment, it was the knowledge that nothing here would protect us from…pretty much anything…not from a bomb, or a gun, or any other of a million potential horrific happenings. Our little family was quickly ushered into the store room, high cinderblock walls, a microwave for employees to heat up lunches, binders, boxes. One way in and one way out. There were ten of us or so. An African American mother with an adult daughter visiting from New York. An older couple who spoke broken English. A young, fashionably dressed man speaking a Middle Eastern language using the beeping speaker phone walkie talkie feature on his phone, talking to someone else on the other end of the line who was responding in the same language. A female manager and male employee, both young themselves, but the female, more senior in rank, assured us all that she had “a lot of experience” with lockdowns. So.
Store-issued walkie talkies began dinging and buzzing and an automated voice began dictating instructions to us. We were being strongly advised to stay calm and to remain where we were…but that legally we were not being forced against our will to stay in this location…but if we did leave then whatever happened to us, was on us.
The summer of 2016 had sadly seen several shootings. Most memorably, nationally, there was a cluster of individual events sprinkled across the country where men were shot and killed by police officers… There was a lot of racial tension in the air given the color of the skin of those involved in these crimes. At that moment, it occurred to me that we were in the store directly next to White House Black Market. Oh God. Was this related to that, I wondered? Shoot. (Pun definitely not intended). Was someone trying to make a statement about race? But. Why here? It was a few days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11. Oh man. Could it be that? It would be odd to target the AC Outlets though…right? Was it an act of terrorism? Was it something just between two people? Were drugs involved? Was it the entire city? A casino holdup? Is it just our store on lockdown? Do I have enough food for the kids in case we are stuck here for a while? I wonder if whatever is happening is already on the news… Do our families know about this? These thoughts, and about 4,000 others, whizzed through my mind faster than a bullet could fly through the air.
My husband leaned in to me and whispered that he had seen 5 armed men (and not just handgun pistol-armed men, like mega heavy duty gun-armed men), in both plain clothes and cop uniforms, crouched down, guns drawn, (like you’d see on the show COPS) approaching our side of the street, looking on high alert. I began to hear helicopters.
My husband then started asking questions of the manager. I could see his mind moving full speed ahead. Is there a rear exit to the store? Where does that lead? What is the nearest street to the rear exit? And on and on. He was peeking his head out of our tiny back room and looking down the hall toward the rear exit, back to the front of the store, sizing up our tiny room for places to hide, escape…his wheels turning to next steps and what-ifs. I, too, was incredibly nervous but fully allowed him to mentally occupy that space and I turned my attention fully to calming the kids. We had snacks. We played I Spy. We picked out our favorite shoes. We wondered if the microwave was for food or if the people who worked here heated up the shoes to eat. Gross! Oh look! There is a baggie of Box Tops! See, they collect those too! (Oh gosh, do these employees have children? Where are they right now?). I chatted up the mother and daughter from New York laughing, “Sooo, is this your first lockdown?” “First time to Atlantic City?” “What brings you here today?” The kids seemed okay… but my oldest daughter was extra quiet, physically glued to my side and kept asking with breath drawn, shoulders up, chin tucked, eyebrows furrowed and high… “Mom, are we going to be okay?” And my oldest son had an explosion of testosterone as he heard over the walkie talkies that there was a bad guy with a gun… “I’ll punch him! I’ll win! I’ll beat him up!! He can’t have a GUN!!” (He’s jumping around and karate chopping the air….). All nervous energy needs someplace to go I guess. The three year old hopped on that bandwagon and the two of them were fake fighting each other. The baby was sucking on a pacifier on my chest, cuddling her lovey bunny.
It felt like a thousand years.
These strangers surrounding me…I wondered who they were. What caused them, like us, to choose this store, today, at this exact hour. Who were their families? Would we see our families again? I’d typed out a text to our four parents to inform them of the situation, just in case. The Orlando night club shooting had happened just two months prior and I’d watched on the news as family members reported that they were able to stay abreast of their loved ones’ situation, for better or worse, through text. My husband begged me not to send it so as not to send their hearts a-flutter unnecessarily. Ever the optimist. I’d believed deep down that we’d get out too…but…at that point…who knew? I wondered if this makeshift room, these random strangers…in some weird plot twist…would become like family somehow.
It felt like a thousand years.
At last, a bulletproof-vested officer came in to let us know that the shooter was no longer active, he was contained, the scene was now safe. Lockdown was lifted. We were all free to be released and he wanted to ask us if anyone had any information about the crime just committed. Apparently the gunman did, in fact, shoot and kill the 20-something store manager. He then fled that store on foot and ran across the street, possibly crushing our just-spilled goldfish in his path, ducking right into White House Black Market, the store immediately on the other side of the wall from us. He then shot himself in a failed suicide attempt. How eery to think that, in his state, having just killed a man, he could have run in any direction, knocked into a different path altogether by a passerby or car driving into his way… He could have run, madly, in his quest to end his life, into any other blessed store and it just so happened that it was the store immediately on the other side of the wall from us…one cinderblock away from us…it just as easily could have been the very store we were in.
We just wanted to buy some shoes.
When we confirmed, once more, that the killer was successfully apprehended, the surrounding area was safe and we were permitted to exit, we said our goodbyes to our fellow lock-downers, they unlocked the doors to the store. We ducked under the yellow and black “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape, and hand-in-hand with our flock of tiny humans, we walked past dozens and dozens and dozens of cops. The street was closed to cars, helicopters were chopping the tense, heavy air overhead. We looked into the eyes of each of the officers and thanked them individually, all of us, for putting their own lives on the line to keep us safe every day. While the officers physically saw us, you could see that their eyes and faces were tight, intense, in fact-finding mode, observing, scanning, processing. They were not the faces of the same men you might see when they were out of uniform at a barbecue, for example, but they nodded in response to us, without cracking a smile, their eyes continuing to dart around, putting the pieces of the puzzle together or surveying the scene to find whomever they needed to report to. We passed stores where other scared faces were coming toward their own wall of windows, looking out at us, wondering if we knew if it was safe for them to unlock their doors…or perhaps they wondered if we even knew what they had just experienced. As we got further away, traffic was gridlocked on the side streets, honking vehicles, angry drivers. Did they have any idea what just went down around the corner?
We saw our car shining like a beacon in the night and began to run towards it. As if nothing could happen to us once safely inside the haven of our family minivan. As soon as we all got in and the doors closed, my oldest began to cry. She said she knew for sure, as of that moment, that she wanted to go to outer space so she could be as far away as possible from anyone who would ever have a gun. Later she said that after this day, she knew she would never want to pick a job where someone could use a gun to get something from her, like money. She never wanted to work in a bank. Or a store, where someone might wield a gun to acquire what they couldn’t afford.
When we got back to the house, my husband said he could fall asleep on the spot and sleep till next week. I had loads of nervous energy that I’d been suppressing trying to keep my “calm mom everything is going to be just fine” face on….so I wiped every counter and cleaned things that were already tidy and paced and walked and tapped on things and my mind was a tsunami…unleashed. I cried.
The kids had questions for which we had no answers. We tried to respond with words as best we could, explaining things that made no sense.
Almost two years have passed. Still our kids have questions. And still. Still. We have no answers. With the recent school shooting in Parkland, FL… Las Vegas…. All the schools. All the homicides that pepper the local news channels reporting from Camden and Philly…and this nearby town and those nearby people and that nearby school…and store…and church…and concert…and night club and on and on and on and on. It’s just. Too much. The Sandy Hook school shooting was six years ago now. When twenty first-graders and six adults were murdered. Six years. And there have been 239 *school* shootings…which ended the lives of 138 people…since then. And that’s just in the *schools.* IN THE SCHOOLS.
I know people are up in arms, literally and figuratively, about this topic. If in doubt, all we have to do is take a quick look at comments being made on social media or on news stations. People are angry. And on both sides of the debate. I certainly don’t claim to have any answers, nor do I have the political wherewithal and knowhow to figure out the whats and hows to make change. But I sure do know the why. Here’s the truth. No one wants to be shot by someone. Or have their family members shot by someone. Or their friends shot by someone. Or to be in the same place when someone they know (or don’t know) is shot. Or to have themselves or someone they love hiding, scared, not knowing what was going to happen, when someone was being shot. On a very base level, I think that may be the one thing we might all agree on. Is there a place in our society for guns? Sure. You protect and serve? Hunt? Shoot for sport? Collect? All of that can be worked out somehow, I believe. I’m sure we can find a way to satisfy those interests. But must a gun be so simple to acquire? Teenagers, former felons, people with mental illness…. Can we find a way to better restrict access to be certain that guns don’t fall into the wrong hands? Something has to change before *we* are the ones who are next. If my tiny too-close-to-home experience taught me anything it’s that….it was deeply frightening. And sad. And dark. And exhausting. And. It was one MILLIONTH of the stress or misery or pain that MILLIONS of people affected by these shootings actually feel. That is so much hurt for one nation to bear.
My heart truly aches for the many, many, many people who have gone from this world too soon, at the hands of someone holding a gun. But that heartache and our collective thoughts and prayers are *not* going to stop this train. I’m so happy to see more and more people joining this fight together….I think many of us are now FINALLY angry enough to take action. In interviews following these horrific shootings, you hear these well-spoken but *scared* kids and teens asking us…the grown-ups… to DO SOMETHING. As a parent, I’m learning that kids like boundaries. And more to the point: they need them. Of course, they push them…but it’s just to see where the real limits actually are. These kids are looking to us though. To create those boundaries. To protect them. To keep guns out of the hands of the many and also out of their schools. And that’s fair. We need better answers for the people we brought into this world. So that the next time our kids look at us with fear in their eyes and ask, “Mom, are we going to be okay?” we will know we have done all that we can to look them in their eyes and honestly answer, “yes.”
I don’t know how to get us to where we so obviously need to be to keep our world safe. I didn’t have the answers back on that hot day in 2016 either. But the morning after our experience, before the sun came up, we woke our older three kids and we went down to the ocean’s edge as a family and waited in hoodies under blankets for the sun to rise over the water on the horizon. Our main message to them then was, and will forever continue to be, that even in the darkest of times, the sun will always rise again. God is always there. The sun will forever be at the center of our universe. There is still beauty in this world. There can still be hope. Even when things seem hopeless. We owe it to our kids. To each other. To ourselves. To look for the helpers…and to be the helpers.
If you, like me, are looking to be among the helpers, here are some ideas for ways to get involved, stay informed, and take action.
- Donate to https://everytown.org
- Connect with other mothers in your community to come together and learn and act. https://momsdemandaction.org (Search them out, too, on your social media platforms).
- Commit to voting on gun safety.
- Talk. To your spouse. To your kids. To your friends. Talk to your Congressman or Congresswoman. Just KEEP talking. Keep remembering that these horrific events happened so that we can resist complacency.
We can do this, guys. Together.
The sun always rises.
Yes..the sun will come out tomorrow unfortunately those grieving may not experience the beautiful Florida sunshine as they did before losing a loved one…I have to believe we can do this,we can make a difference..we can…we must.. l felt as if I was beside you as I read your.story..I could see you following Pats every move as you entertained the children..trying to distract them,the boys being boys,Bridget,bright eyed,trying to be brave,…..such an experience, beautifully written…..♥️
So true…I am so sad for all the people impacted on that awful day in Florida. Thank you for the kind words. Your support means the world to me.