Like a dislocated limb being reset, it was almost easy to slip back to where we were. A little pain for sure, but the ingrained rhythms of preparation (making charts, sorting crayons) quickly resumed its drumbeat in my heart. Everything had been put back, repaired, restored. Outside, kids and parents came en masse to weed and landscape; to plant trees and put up bird houses. The front doors were painted a bright new blue. And tonight, the community will gather again to hold hands all the way around the school.
This is the ecology of resilience. To choose not to be defined by tragedy, and to bend instead like a new sapling, toward the green sap of hope.