Susan Sink

mural on Little Falls building wall

The difference between last Saturday and this Saturday was palpable.

Last Saturday, I signed my book at a local Catholic bookstore. Yesterday I had another signing at a Christian bookstore in Little Falls, 40 miles away.  This was a new experience for me, and I looked forward to both events, mostly experiencing the book and gift stores during the Christmas season.

In both stores, there were not many customers. People did come in for the book, and that was fun and gratifying. Others came in with surprisingly specific requests. Did the store have memorial ornaments with a place for a photo? It doesn’t seem those are made anymore. Another woman wanted a green ceramic Advent wreath and was sure she’d seen one somewhere.

The trend this year is to buy a pregnant Mary and put her in the creche until Christmas morning, at which point you replace her with a regular Mary and put the baby Jesus in the manger.

Both weeks, a couple came in for a Christening gown. Both places had a single regular customer who piled up books and gifts by the register, saying as they left they were sure they’d be back before Christmas.

Last Saturday the sky was blue and the day was warm. It was hard to believe there would be a snowstorm that night, dumping a foot of snow all over town. People were relaxed and friendly.

Yesterday, the weather was terrible. After the week of soft, quiet snow, yesterday it rained all day, hovering on the edge of freezing, making people tense. It was gray. Several people called to have a book signed to a friend or relative that they would pick up later when the weather cleared.

But the weather didn’t account for the shift. What had changed, of course, was an act of violence that hung over everything. Suffering was present to us in a different way. And over the course of the day, people who were suffering came into the store to talk.

A woman whose husband died of a brain aneurism last spring came and talked, told me the story, while her four children had music lessons next door. She needed to tell the story, but everyone close to her already knew it. I was happy to be there to listen.

A woman came for a card on her way to a funeral for an infant.

Everyone wanted to talk about the shooting. No amount of talking helped. We felt heavier and sadder.  My nephew came in with his dad and when the proprieter asked him his age, and he said “six,” we were all thinking of those other children. We were trying to feel. We were trying to make sense.

A few weeks ago there was a funeral in Little Falls, too. Two teenagers, reckless but not dangerous, went into a home they thought was empty on Thanksgiving. The owner waited for them with his rifle in his basement, shot them both, kept their bodies overnight, then called and claimed his right to defend his property. Two unarmed cousins shot in cold blood in the small town where they lived. It was unthinkable.

It now seems almost certain a man arrested then released for the shooting of the police officer in Cold Spring was falsely accused. The community college he was attending has asked him not to return “until this is behind you.” He thinks it will never be behind him– some will always think he killed a police officer. He hasn’t gone home. We feel heavy and confused. It would be easier if it were him. It would be better if they would find someone, tell us what happened, but each day that seems more remote.

Helplessness, knowing that more security measures and fewer guns is not the real answer. Knowing that the security system the elementary school in Connecticut had in place, their drills, that didn’t stop the deaths of 20 children and 8 adults.

Tonight, President Obama said, “We must change.” It is the most honest thing I have heard. How can we change ourselves, our culture, so this doesn’t happen? We have our outrage, but that doesn’t stop anything. We have to change.

Driving to the signing, I passed a billboard that read: “It’s Still a Problem.” It was an anti-smoking campaign billboard. It made me think again about this truly amazing cultural shift– the movement against smoking that has become something akin to a value in our society. We have changed from a smoking culture to a non-smoking culture in a relatively short time.

And the virulence of the defense of guns, the vocal defense of guns, makes it unlikely we will become a culture that rejects guns whose express purpose is to kill people. It seems so obvious a value, and yet, the will is not there, not really.

We have our outrage, but we go on, distancing ourselves from what happened. We distance ourselves with our disbelief.  We say, “How could anyone do such a thing?” and we are one more step away. We don’t know how to act, or who to act with, and so we don’t act. Or we put up another locked door. We run another drill. We find our hiding places.

And then, we are a country who sends out unarmed drones over inhabited lands and sometimes those drones kill women and children, kill innocents. And we are distanced and don’t feel it is us. And we say nothing, do nothing. And we wonder why our society is so violent. And we want the same man who orders out those drones to do something to stop this other violence.