Lockdown.

In 1999, I was a week from my due date with our first child when two teenage boys, tired of being bullied by their peers, and unsure of how to deal with their depression, emotions and rage, walked into their Colorado high school, and killed twelve classmates and a teacher, and injured 21 others before turning their weapons on themselves.

With a heavy heart and a swollen belly, I went to work the next day. My boss, a mother herself and also a grandmother, shared the same sense of heaviness that swept across America that day.

But she also had some thoughtful words for me as I was on the cusp of parenthood, and contemplating the wisdom of bringing a child into this increasingly dark world.

She shared some basic but encouraging thoughts:

Everyone feels this way about parenting at one time or another.

And ... there will always be terrible things happening in the world.

But ... it shouldn't stop us from bringing little people into it.

And... it can't stifle the joy that comes from having them in our lives.

Of course her words proved all too true:

Two years later when I was pregnant with our second I watched on live TV as that second plane flew into that second tower changing forever life as we know it.

But she was right in other ways too:

My children have also changed my life from how I once knew it.

All for the better.

Even if there are difficult questions, and hard facts, and things that they learn about life and the world we live in.

"They said 'Lock down' lots of times at school today," my pre-schooler told me non-nonchalantly last week.

Fifteen times to be exact. The word Lock down .... chanted 15 times over the loudspeakers as a drill. Doors where locked. Heads counted. Prayers said.

I knew because the school sent a note home explaining it. Encouraging parents to give age appropriate information about the lockdown procedure.

I also knew because my 8 year-old has been talking about mental illness and the importance of making it to the closest classroom in the event she is outside of her own if "Lockdown" is intoned.

We live in China, and for the four years we've been here I have felt safer in public and private places than I would if living in a comparably sized city in North America. Chinese citizens are not allowed access to guns. They face great consequences if charged with/accused of a crime (not just if they are convicted of a crime -- but in Chinese society its almost the same.) You are guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around, and it makes for a society fearful to step too far out of line.

But there have been some issues of late. Demented or angry people taking out frustrations on their Society's most innocent. There have been several incidents across China (remember this is a HUGE country with a HUGE population... one our of every six people on the planet live under the Red flag with yellow stars!). Incidents involving attacks directly on students and at Kindergartens. There have been additional incidents they describe as "copy cat."

So, when I walk to the bus stop to get our girlies each afternoon, I wave to the local police officer who has been stationed outside the gate of the small Chinese kindie Bei Bei attended last year. At the girls international school there is heightened security as well, and practices for "Lock downs," and a reminder that this world is indeed flawed.

So we are talking about "Lock downs" on three age-appropriate levels. And we are doing homework and eating meals, and having play dates. We read continue to read Charlotte's Web aloud in the evenings, taking turns reading from two battered copies. We tuck the girls in, kiss them good night, adjust pillows, turn on night lights and remember that although this world is flawed, there also remains much beauty.