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\u201cDo you think I should still go to Israel?\u201d our 25-year-old daughter Ally asks. She\u2019s nervous after the June 8th<\/sup>\u00a0 shooting deaths in a popular Tel Aviv market.<\/p>\n\u201cSecurity\u2019s incredibly tight there, so you\u2019re probably safe,\u201d my husband reassures her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI confess it\u00a0makes me nervous,\u201d I chime in, \u201cBut who\u00a0would have thought before this weekend that it was risky going to Orlando, Florida?\u00a0These things are incredibly scary, but still really rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t seem rare to Ally. She was 8 years old when two teenagers unloaded their lethal anger at Columbine; 10 when the Twin Towers fell; 12 when we went to war against Iraq. Ally was terrified whenever planes flew over her middle school, afraid\u00a0they’d drop bombs. Mass shootings have unfolded with increasing regularity throughout her life\u2014Virginia Tech, Aurora, Tucson, Newtown. A year after Ally graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a disgruntled young man murdered six students on the same streets she had walked along every day during college.This Friday marks the first anniversary of Dylan Roof\u2019s murderous rampage in a South Carolina church. The Planned Parenthood gunman, San Bernardino, Orlando–the list goes on and on, though many more daily gun homicides and suicides never make the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cHas it gotten worse?\u201d Ally asks. \u201cWere you scared growing up?\u201d<\/p>\n
We recount\u00a0the threat of nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, the war in Vietnam, Jonestown, the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. These were our times. People just a few years older feared polio. Our parents lived through all this as well as the Great Depression and WWII.<\/p>\n
The truth is, though, that I was never scared. Even the possibility of my older brothers and male friends getting drafted seemed abstract. The outside world seemed far away, the violence less random.<\/p>\n
But now with news feeds implanted in our brains 24\/7, the outside world has broken through.<\/p>\n
My family is lucky. We\u2019ve never had to flee a war zone, worry about catching a stray bullet walking in our neighborhood, gone hungry or homeless, been brutalized by police or bullied for being different. \u00a0Ally fears an infinitesimally small possibility, not the grinding daily reality too many live.<\/p>\n
I remind Ally of a service trip to Mexico she made a few years earlier with a church group. Before they left, the minister tried to assuage parents\u2019 anxiety about drug violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is a risky place,\u201d she said. \u201cI worry each time my own children travel to faraway countries. But then I realize that the far greater risk comes from never leaving home.\u201d<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
How do you\u00a0answer the question, “Is it safe?”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDo you think I should still go to Israel?\u201d our 25-year-old daughter Ally asks. She\u2019s nervous after the June 8th\u00a0 shooting deaths in a popular Tel Aviv market. \u201cSecurity\u2019s incredibly tight there, so you\u2019re probably safe,\u201d my husband reassures her. … Continue reading