No title

Haven’t a clue what the title should be for this one. Mary and I don’t know what to think.

Someone tried to kill our daughter today. As it happens, Daughter Two is safe. But other people’s daughters aren’t safe. Many daughters and sons tonight are injured terribly, physically or psychically and our hearts and minds reach out to them.

Hurt is hurt.

It’s never a good thing when your cell phone rings and your daughter’s voice says, “I wanted you to know I’m all right. It was right where we were standing but I had already left and I’m okay.” (You can probably hear the sound of a father’s brain spooling up as it seeks answers to questions that begin with the five Ws – especially, ‘what’ and ‘why?’)

She was fundraising for Camp Kesem and a half hour after she left, the place where she had been standing became a terrible new piece of our history. And she will spend the rest of her life knowing this evil that reached out to touch her and missed, owing solely to a fluke of timing.

As a father, I’m feeling what I’m feeling, as you can imagine. We need not go into that here. You get it.

But as a person, as a citizen and as A dad – as opposed to HER dad – it horrifies me that any harm that might have befallen her would have come to her so unthinkingly. The bomber(s) don’t know Two and don’t care to know her. Had she been one of the victims, one of the physical victims that is, the bombers wouldn’t have cared that she was there raising money for a charitable cause.

They didn’t care that she was my daughter…

…or your friend…

…or a budding engineer…

…or one of the best minds of her generation…

…or a beloved sister…

…a volleyball player…

…or  Odin’s bud…

…a gifted singer and arranger…

…or a great, intuitive project manager.

Whoever these demons turn out to be, they just don’t care who they hurt. They do this because they think that in so doing, they can send a message.

I don’t give a crap about them. Their agenda is of no moment to me. I don’t care to know what message was being sent today. I don’t care if they’re feeling oppressed or that their religion has been insulted. Don’t care about any of that. The people who did this just. Do. Not. Matter.

What matters to me is that my daughter and her friends are safe. And it matters to me grievously that others are not.  

It matters to me that in the same snippet of film in which one sees the blast, we also see bystanders, officials, friends and strangers jumping in and pulling away the barricades so they could begin the task of helping the injured. Two bombs went off and I see as many people running toward as away.

Someone tried to kill my daughter today. And that someone is nothing to me. The people that matter to me are all in the newsreel. People pulling together in the first seconds after the horror. People in extremis. People whose first reaction in extremis was, “I have to help.”