Two years ago today, my sister called me from two thousand miles away, asking if I was okay, because she heard there’d been a shooting in a Tucson grocery store. I laughed. “Tucson’s a big city,” I said. “We have lots of grocery stores.” I assured her that whatever had happened, it had nothing to do with me.
Ten minutes later I was scanning news sources and twitter feeds, trying to figure out whether or not my congresswoman was alive.
Gabrielle Giffords survived, but six others didn’t. In Tucson we remember their names–Christina-Taylor Green, Gabe Zimmerman, Judge John Roll, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwan Stoddard–and this morning we
rang bells in their memory.
Neither the survivors nor the victims’ families pressed for the death penalty, and because of this our community was spared a lengthy trial that would have changed nothing. In doing so, they gave a gift to all of us, and I’m grateful for that.
Meanwhile, today, while a couple hours north of us another county’s sheriff is sending armed volunteer posses to patrol schools, former Tucson congresswoman Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly are launching an
initiative to find more responsible solutions to gun violence.
I can’t think of a better place for this to begin, or of better people to begin it.
This is the chanciest time of year, here in the Southwest. The earth has gone dry through our bright-flower spring and dragon’s-breath early summer, and the brief rains we’ve had so far in the monsoon season that follows haven’t been sufficient to change that. Storms are moving in, but the land has yet to feel them. This is the season where lightning can meet dry wood, where dry wood can flare high and hot with little warning.
Change is moving in. We all feel it.
But it isn’t here yet, and the last moments before a change are the most perilous. They’re the moments when growth can catch flame and turn to ash. When one can be tempted to walk away from long-time challenges, struggles, goals. There’s energy here, but little else. Why not use that energy to change course and move on while we can? This building tension can’t last. It never does.
Except, if we wait, maybe it will rain. It doesn’t always, of course, even in this officially rainy season.
But sometimes–sometimes it does.
Will it snow? I hope, and watch the snow levels drop, down the mountains, toward the desert floor … but I know better than to hope too hard. The snow levels are low, but not low enough. The freeze will likely come after the rain, not before, as it does around here.
Still, sometimes, maybe every decade or so, the magic happens.
So I’ll keep looking out the window, just in case. 
