I now live in the town where I grew up. Life here is the foundation of small town America. Everyone knows each other. Our next door neighbors have the keys to our homes. We trust and look out for one another. It is impossible to take a walk without encountering numerous friendly and familiar faces. It's a safe place to raise your children, seemingly sheltered from the dangers lurking in bigger cities. We read in horror the metropolis tragedies, but feel comfort in knowing that the likelihood of such things happening here are slim.

How often have you heard that? "Things like that just don't happen here." It's a cliche reaction of a small-towner to some horrific event, but it is also such a true portrayal of the shock one feels when big city tragedy hits home.

Two days ago a man randomly entered a Subway here, shot and killed a high school senior who was working there, shot and injured his teenage coworker, then fled the building, only to shoot another innocent man retrieving his mail. The shooter was apprehended shortly thereafter and is now in custody. Two people are dead, one critically injured. There appeared to be no explanation for the shooter's actions.

I have been thinking quite a bit about how drastically the lives of these families have been changed. How does the family of the man shot while gathering his mail come to terms with that? What about the parents of that boy? They said goodbye to their son, "have a good night at work," not knowing that they would never see him alive again - a promising young man, by all accounts of the media, now gone. What about the rest of us as a community? Are we to be worried that a simple act of stopping for a sandwich for dinner may be dangerous? Things like this don't happen here. We don't run errands with our guards up. Should we?

I'm not saying I'm going to be afraid to go out for dinner, and I know that the community as a whole will recover. The local police, fire and medical departments have done, and will continue to do a terrific job in protecting and caring for us. I'm just shocked at the event. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, and to be perfectly honest, it does make me worry for the safety of my own children.

I suppose that we take a risk every day. There's no guarantee that any of us will arrive safely at work, that our children won't be hurt at school, or that our spouses will return safely home in the evening. I remember being so worried about SIDS when both of my boys were newborn. I was so relieved when each of them passed the 9 month mark, because the risk significantly declined. I think, however, that just because they made it through infancy doesn't mean they will make it to adulthood, or that I will live to see them to adulthood. That scares me, worries me, from time to time.

Thinking too much about those risks will drive a person crazy. To maintain any semblance of normalcy, we cannot allow fear of what may be, guilt for how we should act and don't, or grief for those who have experienced great loss overrun us. It takes me back to 9/11 in many ways. The country was wrought with emotion and wracked with fear, but the message that we sent to one another as a whole was that the key to our survival was perseverance and normalcy, not bravery. You can't be constantly brave without being fearful, and fearful is no way of living.

This tragic event does not compare to 9/11 in the magnitude of lives lost or the impact on the nation, but nonetheless, these families are struggling. They have all lost someone or something very dear to them, something to which we can all relate. My thoughts and prayers go out to them right now.