We will not be able to say "we didn't know"

It doesn't take long for your world to shake, if slightly -- to rotate enough so that you look at things a bit differently.

It was a lovely morning, most unlike the way we normally imagine late fall (it might be time to toss away the templates, anyway).

A good day to play hooky from the conundrums that have been playing merry hell with my peace of mind.

Write about them! my son yelled at me recently.  It about kills us to fight with each other, so he deals with it by bellowing.

Post them on your blog!

Perhaps I will -- later.

Yesterday, it was other people's pain that concerned me.  Other people's agony, out of all proportion to the constant low level sadness that continues to affect me, like a wound that never heals.

Glancing up at the sky and the trees as  I hiked past streams and over bridges,  I had my phone app tuned into NPR yesterday when reporters broke into the talk show for news.

A Syrian school bombed.  At least 13 children killed.

Ninth graders, these kids.  The age of my son and his friends.

Maybe the young boys and girls gathered for meetings of the young business leaders of Syria.  Perhaps they hung out in the lunchroom, telling stupid jokes to their friends. Maybe they played trumpet in the band, as he does.

No more.

I imagined the grief of their parents -- the wild, agonized cries, torn from the deepest part of their souls.

I imagined the school, rubble scattered everywhere.

I imagined Assad's demonic airplanes flying overhead.

"Never again," Jews said after the Holocaust. And the nation of  Israel has made itself into a nation so strong that it could blow  its neighbors to smithereens multiple times (whether this is a good thing is a debate for another time).

Yes, again.

Again in Cambodia.

Again in Guatemala.

Again in Bosnia.

Again in Rwanda.

Again in Syria.

We cannot dare to claim that we don't know.

Dear God, if we used our imaginations this world would collapse from the force of our grief.

I could have laid on the ground and wailed and beat my fists bloody against the macadam..

Instead, I walked home, and drove to my internship -- the sky as blue, the sun as bright, the air as lovely.

Except for knowing that, as Hillary Clinton said today -- Assad will go. We just don't know, she added, how many people will have to die before he does.  Including children.