Questions Without Answers

The news from Brooklyn last week was nightmarish. When I first saw that an almost nine-year-old boy from Borough Park never showed up to meet his mother after camp, I worried along with everyone else. But I figured it would turn out okay. He probably got lost, I thought. They’ll find him, I reassured myself. My mind immediately drifted to a popular Miami Boys Choir song from many years ago, which detailed a similar story. A girl got lost after a school trip; hundreds of volunteers turned up to comb the area; she was eventually found, safe and sound; they wrote a song about it. (Yes, I store way too much irrelevant trivia from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s.)

Then, the next afternoon (Wednesday afternoon in Israel; just as the sun was rising in New York) I saw the horrible news that they found the boy’s body.

I cried for the poor boy and his family. I cried that his parents lost a child, I cried that his final hours on this earth were filled with pain and fear. I hoped there was something to the whole “he’s with God now” stuff; at least I could console myself by imagining him Up There with God, doing all kinds of nine-year-old boy things. Because he will forever be a nine-year-old boy.

Much ink, virtual and otherwise, has been spilled these past few days trying to answer the questions this tragedy has raised. Questions about child safety are exploding (or rather, re-exploding). How do we teach our children independence while making sure nothing bad ever, ever, ever happens to them? When can a child walk across the street, walk to a friend’s, walk home from camp? How old is old enough?

To be honest, I don’t know.

So I did what I could and gave my kids a booster shot of the Stranger Talk. And answered the endless what-ifs that follow: No, never get into a stranger’s car, even if they say they know you or me; yes, if it’s your aunt, you can get into the car; no, even if the stranger promises you ice cream and treats; still no, even if you see he actually HAS the treats with him.

Another thing I don’t know? How do we explain to our children how God, Hashem, that All-Powerful Guy,  who can split the sea whenever He wants, to whom we pray for healthy children and new stuffed bunnies, could allow a child to be so brutally murdered?

Forget the kids, actually. How do I explain it to myself?

Because, as is often the case, the kids were more sanguine about the whole bad-things-good-people dilemma. Thank God, they have not experienced death at close range, so they were rather removed from the story. Once we finished our stranger discussion, my daughter wanted to see a picture of the little boy; my son wanted to discuss the intricacies of jail cells, where the bad guy would surely be sent.

Then they drifted off, to books and cars, to their own safe world, where nothing bad ever, ever happens to them. And I was left with my own muddled thoughts and pondering and despair.

I don’t know the answers. I don’t know what the proper independence-to-safety ratio is. And I certainly don’t understand how such a horrific tragedy could happen to such an innocent child. But sometimes, we have to live with the muddling. Sometimes, there are no answers. There’s just us, hoping and praying and doing our very best.