Is This How It's Going To Be?

Once again we have awakened in Washington to the news that there has been another sniper shooting, this one to the south of us.

Again, as it always is in the first hours after these things, the police are saying they don't know if it is connected to the others. We went to bed hearing them tell us they were working hard and that progress was being made in the investigation, and no one doubts their sincerity.

But once again a sniper, maybe the same one, maybe a different one, took aim, shot someone, and got away. And once again a promising lead, this time a shell casing found earlier in the rental truck, did not pan out.

For more than two weeks now this is how it has been in Washington, a place that has already been through a plane crashing into the Pentagon during 9/11 and the anthrax scare.

Somehow it is the randomness of this one that makes it so difficult. We keep the kids indoors, we cancel soccer games, we rearrange schedules. We do it all, but we don't know if we're being prudent or overly cautious. All we know is that the sniper is still out there and no one seems immune.

Hardest of all is dealing with the thought that keeps coming back to us: Is this how it is going to be now? Is this to be the world where our children will live and grow up?

There are many questions still to be answered, but we must promise ourselves that the answer to that question will never be yes.