How do you pick up the pieces of your life after a terror attack?

I just came back from Antwerp today. I hold my child's hand, as we get out of the train station. We're singing.

Suddenly I se them, three, four, five policemen. She gets so excited "mummy look, policemen!!!". My heart shrinks so suddenly, so fast, I loose the balance. I look around, and I see two, three police vans, and from one of them about 8, 10 policemen getting of. all full dressed, including protection masks and bastons, or sticks, as you please.

I start crying, holding tighter my child's hand. What can have happened now???

I get approach the closest policemen group and ask to one of them:

- Has anything happen?

I read his face, as he looks restless, yet tired. I fear another young lives ripped away coldblooded. 

- Yes… there has been a manifestation.

- Oh! - I breath very deep. - I was so afraid.

I resume my walk, still holding my child very tight, and can't stop two things:

1 - the tears and the thought of imagining how Life is fragile, and how I can not secure my little girl a safer world, and how vulnerable kids wherever are, to my dismay.

2 - How differently the policeman and I see things: while he's restless because of a manifestation (we're talking a manifestation in Norway), I just take the same manifestation as citizens exercising their right to do just that, manifest. "Daaaa", I think, especially considering that if by any chance the manifestation got aggressive, all the police had to do was to go get their heaviest repression apparatus, like se saw in 2007.

I decide to read more about this manifestation. I know VG always has updated news especially about Oslo. To my disappointment, there's no reference whatsoever about this event on the main online newspapers…

I kiss my child in her cheek, and tell her to remember always that I love her.