Burned Books

War hit uncomfortably close to home this weekend. I tend to travel in circles where few young people enlist, and television reports about far away fighting touch us the way reports of gang violence on the south side of Chicago touch us. It's tragic, but it's happening to someone else.

I know only one soldier in Afghanistan, and when there is news of the occasional slain American, I immediately check to be sure he is not the one, knowing the odds are good he is not. In my life I have known very few soldiers. My father was a World War II veteran; dumb luck landed him in Panama, where he was wounded on the tennis court. I am only here because the war never made it to the Panama Canal.

This weekend, though, a young woman was killed, a young woman about whom I have heard a lot from a friend who taught her when she was in high school. She had made a lasting impression on him, and he still kept up with her, was proud that she had chosen a career in foreign service. Bright and idealistic, a girl who could have succeeded in anything, she decided to pursue her foreign service in Afghanistan last year. This weekend, she, along with several others, was slain while on the way to deliver books to children somewhere near Kabul. Twenty-five years old, a year older than my own daughter, whom I worry about constantly when she travels. When she drives to Indiana in the middle of a snow storm. When she flies to North Carolina while hurricanes strike the east coast. I cannot even imagine what daily life has been like for Anne Smedinghoff's parents, who released a statement saying they were consoled knowing Anne died doing what she loved. I admire their strength.

In the days after 9/11, my son, then eleven, told me he was going to join the air force. Like many folks back in those dark days, I was overcome with patriotism, and truly believed I would be thrilled if he were to make that decision years down the road. I fantasized about my son the fighter pilot, the kid who couldn't ride his bike for at least a year without heading into a tree. But there are no trees in the sky so why worry? And, he was, after all, only eleven. Ask me now how I would feel if he told me, at twenty-two, that he was going to join the air force. Come to think of it, don't bother asking.

The news reports refer to Anne as an American diplomat. Wikipedia (the gospel) defines diplomacy as the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. Anne was delivering books to children who otherwise would not have them. Conducting negotiations? Maybe, down the road. But in my mind Anne was a beautiful and bright young woman, a daughter, a sister, an inspiration to friends and teachers and coworkers. Anne's tragic death should remind us all to pay more attention, to what is going on so far away, and to how lucky we are to have all that we have back here at home.