By Eric Lightman
A year after I left Israel I found myself on my couch, in my low-end apartment in the West End of Richmond Virginia, with the girl I was dating at the time. An expression on her face prompted me to ask her what she was thinking about.
She paused. “Remember our first date, when I was really nervous and stressed? It was the three month anniversary of the shootings at Tech.” She was a Virginia Tech student and an EMT with the volunteer fire department in Blacksburg. “Being back home for the summer,” she continued, “without my friends from school, is really hard.”
I blinked. And then I held her because I knew I understood.
I glanced at my IKEA coffee table and saw, under the removable glass top, my collection of photos I put there when I...
