This morning I woke at 3 a.m.
to blinding flashes of light and thunderous blasts of noise.
But I had the comfort
of being able to lie in a warm bed
and listen to heavy rain on the roof.
So when I cried,
it was because I pay taxes to a country whose administration chose
to initiate war against Iraq,
to go against world opinion,
to alienate long-time allies,
to impose unilaterally its own agenda
(a complicated mix of insecurity, self-imposed isolation, and greed),
and to subject innocent people to blinding light and thunderous noise
from bombs that could kill them.
When my daughter Rachel came to find me
because she was scared,
I had the luxury of being able to tell her truthfully
that the storm that had awoken her
was not the one that would hurt her
and that she could go back to sleep.
