You know, we don't tell our kids

I have pretty strong defenses for keeping terror at bay.  I try to avoid news.  I try to only open my heart to what actually touches me.  I feel things and I would prefer not to.

Last week's shooting in Tel Aviv felt like too much to take in, please not more, because I'd been at a shiva for a brave woman who decided not to fight her cancer, and I saw the face of her son who supported her decision.  I saw what it cost.  And I was helping a friend whose father had a heart attack on the anniversary of his mother's death.  The father died after the attack in Tel Aviv and before we got the news about Orlando.

And we don't tell our kids.  Sure, they hear about it in school.  If we mention things, we mention them quietly.  We have one word that covers everything man-made - pigua - it means people were hurt.  It means but does not say terror.  It refers to the harm.  So when we are talking to one another about Orlando, we aren't talking to our kids, and when they ask what happened we say it was a pigua, someone shot up a club.  We don't say a gay club.  We don't want them to feel less safe for being part of this family.  We don't watch the news and we don't let them know details.  They know Shira Banki died last summer and how and "why".  They know that homophobia and hate is out there.  We want them to know and we don't want them to know.  We can barely breathe ourselves - should they feel the same way?

I walk one of our dogs and I see the border police have stopped a car and there are six men on the sidewalk, seems to be three police and three Arab men.  The discussion seems calm, the car eventually drives away.  I think one man may have been arrested or detained.  The beginning of a bad day for him at 6 am.  Meanwhile around the corner two men jump a fence and continue walking/running to work avoiding these same border police.  Another Arab man comes to the bus stop.  I live on the line of the West Bank and our town is one big porous illegal border crossing.  If I want to fear, there are ample occasions.  I comfort myself by reminding myself that the attackers can get a much bigger response from attacking a larger venue.  Tzur Hadassah is not Tel Aviv, is not Jerusalem, is not.....  And I walk with my head held high because honestly, in my heart of hearts, I know that most people around me are not killers, and that the men I see every morning are on their way to work to support their families, just like people everywhere.

I wonder a lot about the lessons I teach as a parent.  Our kids know our politics, but I try hard not to tell them what to think.  I prefer to listen as my daughter starts to develop her own critical thinking skills, and maybe suggest a direction or two, but quietly.  I am not sure how my son is making sense of the world.  I would say I do more interrupting and questioning than pushing ideas.  And in the absence of a frame, in the absence of a pat answer to tell my children, in the absence of any earthly explanation of how a human being can gun down 50 people for being in a gay club, I have nothing to say.  So I don't tell them.