The tragic events that unfolded in Newtown, Conn., last week are calling us to do things that might not make us comfortable, but will certainly make a difference. Kerry Trotter shares her thoughts.
For today’s blog, I was scheduled to write something about watching the 1965 Charles Schultz cartoon “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with my toddler daughter.
It would have been sweet, maybe a little heavy-handed, perhaps with a this-sort-of-thing-could-never-get-produced-these-days rant. You know, something decent enough to merit a comment or two.
It would have been your typical Kerry Trotter saccharine reflection of a holiday classic experienced anew in the eyes of a child — with something Catholic thrown in there to make it relevant.
Then Friday happened.
My husband, who happened to be working from home that day, and I spun through what was likely the same vortex of grief, disbelief, anger and terror that most Americans experienced upon hearing the news. We hugged our daughter. We hugged each other. We called our parents. We turned the TV off and shut down the computers. We separately fell into bouts of quiet, sobbing prayer. We looked at each other and said, “Now what?” It was a question for both the short term — we didn’t know how to shake the anxiety — and the long term. Really, now what?...