Tuesday afternoon, as I do most days, I went to the YMCA near my house in Alexandria. On the way in, I said hello to my neighbor and her daughter, who is in my own daughter’s class at the Lutheran school about a mile up the road. I ran a couple of miles on the treadmill listening to podcasts and went home.
This morning, I awoke to reports that my local Y had bullet holes in it. It shares a parking lot—a long, 50-foot wide strip of asphalt with a grassy median—with the baseball field next door where five people, including Congressman Steve Scalise, were shot. As horrible as the incident was on its own, I immediately thought of the Y next door because, as school lets out this time of year, the Y is full of many underprivileged young kids participating in summer programs. Had one of the Y’s buses been unloading kids in that parking lot this morning when dozens of bullets started flying, the tragedy could have been so much greater.
I realize that for much of America life inside the Beltway is little more than a contemptible abstraction. I live here and I sometimes feel that way—the richest counties in America now surround D.C., and the political reasons for this are dispiriting. But despite the high property values, the neighborhood where the shooting occurred is also a vibrant community with real struggles. It wasn’t just an attack on Republican congressmen; it endangered kids from nearby housing projects.
After I went to the Y, I caught a flight out to Colorado late last night to go to a wedding, For the first time ever, I woke up out of state wishing that I could be back in the D.C. area on a humid 90-degree day. I know hundreds of people and business owners who live in walking distance of that baseball field, and it would be nice to be part of my community at a time like this.
In the meantime, I hope we put aside the offensive attempts to score political points at this horrible time. I am glad the congressional baseball game will go on as scheduled Thursday, because it will be reassuring to see Republicans and Democrats engaged in friendly competition, knowing that they still care a great deal about each other, despite their differences. But mostly I want to see it go on because it’s going to raise a lot of money for local children’s charities.
