Funny how something as simple as giving can seem so complicated.

Do you give the drunk homeless guy on the street some cash, or your leftovers from dinner, or nothing? Stop for the veteran with the tattered sign by the freeway? I have a friend whose kid spent weeks trying to get ahold of the Special Olympics to sign up to volunteer, and earlier this month (after three unreturned phone calls and as many emails) I gave up on my plan to have Sophie’s Girl Scout troop carol at our local ARC facility this Christmas season. I get it — the folks who run these organizations are overwhelmed, sometimes undertrained.

A simple charitable act gets complicated before you know it, and it becomes so much easier to just be on your way.

Not at our neighborhood elementary school (the one where Annabelle went and Sophie still goes). There, each Christmas, some kind souls put up a tree and hang tags on it bearing wishes for community members in need. You take a tag, buy and wrap gifts, and deliver them back to the school. This year I grabbed two tags and was touched that one family’s wish list included a microwave, pots and pans — and dish soap.

Dish soap. I mentioned it in a Facebook status update and instantly, I was flooded with comments from friends who wanted to give to this family and the little boy from my other tag. Legos came from Washington, D.C., yarn from Cave Creek. A handyman refurbished a microwave, and included a gift certificate for a service call. I gathered the gifts, added a few and the girls and I wrapped them up Thursday night. Sophie insisted on including notes to both the family and the boy; I had trouble explaining that we needed to remain anonymous, as did the recipients. “Ho ho ho ho ho,” she wrote, addressing them as “Boy” and “Family.”

Friday morning I loaded Sophie and the gifts into the car and we drove to school, where the principal greeted us as we pulled up, shivering in short sleeves. “It’s Arizona!” he giggled. “I refuse to wear a coat!” We all laughed. Sophie held the door for me, then the bell rang and I gave her a hug (ok, several, we’re talking about Sophie) and hustled her off to class. I left our packages in the office lobby, wished the office staff well, and headed home.

I got on Facebook to write an update about how successful the giving tree thing had been, and what a gift our little school is — and saw a link to a news story about a shooting at a school so much like our school it sucked the air out of my lungs.

What sort of charitable act can we perform, in the wake of this? Now that’s a tough one. How about a grass roots effort to ban semi-automatic assault weapons? And another to increase awareness about mental illness? Armed guards at every elementary school in America? A bullet proof vest for every child?

I don’t know. It’s not something microwaves or Legos will take care of, this time. But we can’t give up because it’s hard. These schools are the centers of our universe, the roots of the trees that are our children and the people they will become — if they’re luckier than those kids in Newtown. We’ve got to do something.