Actually, I made her listen. She’s not one of those kids who begs for that kind of adult privilege, in fact she’s more likely to tell you to turn it off so she can listen to music. But she got that this was important.

“Wait,” she said from the back seat. “That lady they’re talking about on the radio, that’s the one you were just talking about with the other moms at ballet?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

No, not really, though I get where she was coming from. I suppose that if I’m going to raise my kids in Arizona, they’re going to have to get used to this kind of thing.

Annabelle was an infant in 2001 —  I was feeding her and watching a rerun of E.R. when the news cut in on the tiny old TV in her nursery and suddenly, a huge tower was falling. I held the baby close and called for Ray, who was still asleep in the next room. 9/11 defines her life the way it defines all our lives, but it wasn’t the same as yesterday. Yesterday she was 9 years old, the same age as the little girl who got caught in an obviously crazy man’s crossfire. Or maybe he meant that bullet for that girl. I just read that her birthday was September 11, 2001.

I didn’t let Annabelle hear that part, about the 9 year old girl.

But she listened to the radio as an old friend of mine, a journalist in Tucson, talked about Gabby Giffords. None of this is about me, of course, but the whole thing hits a little too close for home. Giffords and I aren’t friends — we had lunch just once years ago while she was still in the state legislature — and I left thinking, “Wow, that woman is too hard a charger even for me” — but we have a lot in common. She is Jewish, she grew up a Democrat in Arizona, we even went to the same tiny college in southern California, missing each other there by a year. She’s way cooler (or dumber) than I am — believes in riding motorcycles without helmets and the Second Amendment — but still, the similarities.

And the hate. There is a lot of hate in this state. I know, I know, in the country, in the world, it’s seeping in and out of every crevice, everywhere. But trust me, it’s particularly bad here. And so the fact that a crazy man showed up at a Safeway in Tucson and shot this quirky, well-meaning, hard-charging, wicked smart woman is no coincidence, not to us here.

Yeah, he’s crazy. Crazy like an Arizonan.

Why do I live here? Why are we raising our kids here? I don’t have a good answer, except this: Because it’s  home. I’ve always said that Arizona is a great place to be a journalist and a lousy place to be a person, and that was never more true than yesterday.

Trying to fall asleep last night, I thought of Harry Mitchell, the sweet man who lost his first election ever last fall. He’d been mayor of Tempe forever and then served a few terms in Congress, losing in November to a creepy guy who’s been running for years and finally lucked out.

But it occurred to me, as I tossed and turned, that Harry Mitchell — a Democrat, another target — is the lucky one. It could have been him yesterday. And then the conversation would really have hit our dinner table, since Annabelle and Mitchell’s granddaughter are good friends at school.

It’s a small world. If it happened in  your state, chances are you’d have the same uncomfortably close connections, the ones that got me up at 3 this morning.

I am so sad, and mad, as my friend Deborah put it yesterday on Facebook. And shaky. The world is very fragile.