On Connecticut

There are no words for the horror I felt Friday afternoon when I got off work, went through my usual routine of pulling out my iPhone to check headlines, and discovered that an unfathomable massacre had happened that morning at another elementary school a thousand miles to the north.

As a mother, the mother of a second grader and a kindergartner, my first instinct was to rush to my children's school and hug them both tightly while thinking and sympathizing with the parents who wish they could do the same, as well as the parents who must now help their children who survived the senseless slaughter of their classmates.

As a professional I thought of the children who come into the library every day, and the questions they ask, seemingly ordinary questions: Do you have any books on snakes? Where are the comic books? Has my copy if Diary of a Wimpy Kid come in yet? And the fact that a day full of ordinary questions can become a day of horror in an instant.

To my knowledge there are no books on this type of tragedy, even 13 years post-Columbine. I hope that no books will ever have to be written because I hope we can find a way to make this stop. One book that has come to mind the past couple of days is one written on another tragedy, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Carmen Agra Deedy wrote Fourteen Cows for America after interviewing a young Kenyan man who was studying to be a doctor in New York City at the time. He returned to his native village and told the people what he experienced: buildings so tall that they touched the sky. Machines that carried hundreds of people through the air at a time. And the three thousand people who lost their lives because of others who, out of hate, slaughtered the pilots with box cutters and flew the planes into the buildings.

The villagers, who had little to offer, wanted to offer something to show their sorrow for the Americans. And to these villagers, the cow was their greatest source of life.

When the American ambassador arrived at the village from Nairobi, he was greeted with a sacred ceremony and a gift: 14 cows for America. Because no nation is so strong that it can't be hurt, and no people are so small that they can't offer comfort.

In a tragedy like this one, there are no straight answers, and all we can do is offer comfort as we can.