It arrives. Punctual as a Swiss watch, as the sunset in the morning and hunger after a long fast, with the first discovery of evil. That sentence. “The world is not nice as you wanted me to believe”. It’s my child who is growing up. And I shut up. Hit by the deepness of his thought, by his fear of evil, by his dropping down of trust in tomorrow, I stop and think. I think about how we sorrounded him only with kosher animals in the crib. I think how his lullaby was composed only by Jewish words and chassidic notes. I think about the strictly kosher food which we allow to enter in his mouth. About the pictures with Jewish images hanging on his bed. I think how we tried our best, since the first day of life, to surround every child with Torah words. How we do our best to make them chew only good, positive, light and love. How we shut up our mouths preventing bad news to reach their ears, hoping they do not loose their faith in this world. How we hide newspapers with cruel images in the first page, hoping that they will go to sleep thinking this life is nothing but a marvellous trip. How we whisper and share through codes, sad events, justifying our unhappy eyes with a terrible headache due to a heavy day. But then, during time, the unavoidable happens and the magic gets broken. News about another tragedy run faster than our trials to hide them once again. Those tiny faces of children unaware of the shortness of their lives, bring to the arousal of the deep sentence. “The world is not nice as you wanted me to believe.” My dear love, that sanctuary I tried to build around you during all these years, is not always there outside. Sometimes there are events we cannot change or influence at all. When these happen we just have to look for enough strenght to go on and pray. Other times even a tiny gesture can change all the scenario bringing back hope. That tiny gesture is able to remind us we have the braveness after all. My dear love, that sanctuary can be found even there outside. In the midst of horror, of a tragedy without any reason, in the screams due to pain. That sanctuary is there, in that teacher, Victoria Soto, who gave up to her own life trying to save her little students. That sanctuary is there, in those Sandy Hook school teachers, who lost their lives in the trial to make their students go on and believe in them. My dear love, that sanctuary will be even there. If you and me and everyone else, will not give up and will go on and believe. That with responsibility and commitment of all of us, even from the deepest dark, a perfect sanctuary can arise.

Gheula Canarutto Nemni