As my daughter grows, I can shelter her less and less from the pains of the world.  But maybe by unleashing her sorrow, one more heart will be free to look for peace.

“Can’t you take steps any bigger than that?”  Saoirse asks as we make our way down the hill on the dogs’ morning walk.  She’s twelve, and overnight, her legs seem to have stretched longer than my own.  I don’t know if she’s surpassed me in height just yet, but her stride is already greater.  I stretch my gait.  She has things she wants to talk about.  I need to keep pace.

“Why is it so important to people to make other people believe their religion?” She starts in straight away with the heavy stuff.

“I was hoping you’d have an answer to that.”

She directs her attention out over the mountains.  I see her noticing the morning light as it illuminates the bare trees.  Usually she stops to admire it.  Today, she keeps moving.  Her eyes are troubled.

We’ve sheltered our daughters from much of the news for years.  We’ve worried that being aware of all the violence that plays out in the world not only deprives them of a childhood, but also leads to apathy and cynicism — two enemies of positive social change.  Bob and I felt that our daughters needed a childhood where they could fall in love with the world before they were charged with the task of saving it.

And then the killings happened in Beirut.  And then Paris.  Call it a double standard that we stayed quiet through all the other incidents.  But Saoirse knows Paris.  She has walked those streets where the gunmen inflicted terror.  And when Bob and I tuned in the radio to find out what had happened, she listened to every word.

I think she wants to cry.  But she is trying to act grown-up.  She is trying to pretend that this news development doesn’t pierce her heart.  “But why?”  She won’t let me off the hook.  “Why does it matter so much to make people believe what you believe?”

“Sometimes I think it’s a lack of faith,” I’m stumbling blindly on a smooth road on a clear morning.  “Maybe they don’t know what they truly believe, so recruiting others helps to validate their own choices??”

“But why do they have to kill over it?”

We’ve been through this.  I cannot answer why.  I can only answer with the one history lesson my own grandmother insisted that I master.  I remember her leaning across her kitchen counter, her soft smiling eyes suddenly hard and angry, her plump fingers, caked with cookie dough, tightened into a fist.  “Do you want to know about history, Shanny?”  Her voice was as American as could be.  She’d done everything to lose the accent that told the story of the country she’d fled.  “I’ll tell you everything you need to know about history.  More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.  That’s history.”   I repeat her words to my daughter now.  They quiet her for a few minutes while I try to catch my breath.  Then the next question comes.

“Why can’t we stop it?”

“We haven’t stopped it for thousands of years,” I begin, but I don’t go forward with the discussion.  This isn’t what she needs.  Saving the world doesn’t happen with jaded thoughts.  It takes hubris, naiveté, and blind optimism, paired with a keen understanding of where the true problems lie.

“Do you know why people kill?”  I stop.  She can wait for her short mother to make her point before demanding my legs stretch further.  “Because they have nothing here to live for.”

Her brown eyes are wide, waiting.  I go on.  “Because they don’t have the simple things that make walking on this earth so lovely.  They don’t have these mountains, they don’t have places where they can lie down beside a tree and watch the clouds, they don’t have a way to keep their families safe, they don’t even have a chance to imagine a bright future with a family of their own.  Many people don’t even know where the next meal will come from.    And we do.  And then there are people out there who have even more than that.  So much more, that it robs these fundamental rights from the majority of the planet’s citizens.”  I have a tendency to get preachy when I get on a roll.  “It’s horrible to kill,” I tell her.  “But the only way to fight this is with trust, generosity and love.  If people can have those things, they lose the drive to kill.”

I want her to lap this up.  I want her to puff up with resolve, to start thinking of ways this can be remedied.  I want her to apply her youthful imagination to fixing things.  She only swallows and then walks on, eyes still filled with fear and horror.

I don’t want her to think about this any longer.  Her Uncle Sean is home for a few days.  We’ve been taking care of his old border collie, Harp, at the farm while he had a six week post for NOAA in Washington, DC.  He has come home to retrieve her before he moves on to his next post.  The girls only see him a few times each year, and for them, it is an occasion for a holiday.  I want Saoirse to think happy thoughts.  Bob and I have to go out for the night, and Uncle Sean will come up to stay with them.  They plan to watch movies, and he will sleep over.

“Have you thought about what movie you’re gonna watch with Uncle Sean?”  It takes her a few moments before she lets go of her troubles and turns her mind back to the joys of childhood.  I notice it is taking longer and longer these days.

Uncle Sean does come.  And she and Ula are thrilled.  When we get home late that night, he and Ula are fast asleep.  Saoirse has waited up for us, bouncing with pleasure once more over the wonderful evening she’s had.  I’m comforted that she could push her concerns aside.

But Uncle Sean is gone before we get up.  We get a note later in the day.  Harp has gone into vestibular failure.  He doesn’t know if she’ll make it.

We go to the farm that evening for supper.  Harp is propped between long pillows, her breathing labored.  She doesn’t know where she is in the space around her while Sean hopes for a recovery, but makes plans to have her put to sleep. Saoirse goes and sits beside her.  She is quiet for most of the evening.

She sobs the whole way home.  She sobs as she brushes her teeth.  She sobs as she pulls on her pajamas.  I want to snap at her.  I want to order her to cease carrying on the drama.  She hardly knows Harp.  We see animals die all the time.  This is just one more friggen death on a family farm where half the business is slaughter.

But something stops me.  I pause before I snap.  And I realize that Harp has given Saoirse a gift.  In the jaded cynicism that has become the global norm, Harp has let her cry.  She has given this child a justification to drop the grown-up pretenses, the fortress that shields the grown-up heart that is trying to take over her body.  I think better of my compulsion to demand that she perfect the callouses of a farmer.  Instead, I pull her into my arms.  We melt as one onto my bed, and Ula climbs in beside us.  And I let her tears make my shoulder slick.

I don’t sleep long.  I wake at one, and find my way downstairs.  I leave the lights off, but stir the fire, then take my chair beside the window and gaze out at the stars with one dog and one cat in my lap.  And in the course of my time there, I count four shooting stars.

That’s four wishes.  I always wish twice on shooting stars.   The first is always for peace.  And the second is for whatever is most pressing on my mind — for my family’s health, for their happiness, for the success of our farm.  Tonight, as each star falls through the night, I only wish for peace.

And then, in the darkness, my thoughts turn to the first Thanksgiving.  For the Puritans, a true day of Thanksgiving was a day of fasting; of recognizing the horrors that have been endured, of offering prayers of gratitude for the blessings that remain.  There must always be blessings that remain.  And I think about those killings.  And I think about this dark war that plays out so far from the battlefield, victimizing so many innocent pawns.  And I give thanks for the blessings that I hold now: for this child, who is learning about the pain of the world, and for the dog, who, in her final hours, gave Saoirse the gift of unleashing her sorrows.  And I give thanks for the sorrow, too.  For the fact that we can still feel it.  Because maybe in the sorrow, maybe in the hugs of gratitude as family and friends find their way back to each other’s arms, as prayers for nonviolence and harmony rise up to the divine, we will rekindle hope, and nourish ourselves enough to move forward in our quest for peace.