image: nairaland.com

On July 14, a man ran his truck into crowds of people enjoying the Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, France, killing eighty-some and wounding so many others.

Bastille Day celebrates France’s beginning of the republic, with its motto, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. fraternity means, among other things, communal support, friendship, brotherhood.

A while after the breaking news, we heard that two of the dead were Americans. Even later: they were a father and 11-year-old son from Texas. Then, Lakeway, which is pretty much a suburb of Austin, where I live. And late that evening my 16-year-old daughter R got an email from the acting studio in Austin that is her second home: the boy, Brodie Copeland, was also involved at the studio. She didn’t know him personally, but it hit really close to home for her.

T and I held her as she cried, and we cried with…