I talk to my son
all. the. time. (Before he was born, I talked to myself all the time, so it's nice to have a little person to actually talk to now.) By the time he was a month old, I'd told him all about each holiday in the year, every single family member he would meet, and all the places that his daddy and I had been/would take him someday.
Nowadays, I still tell Nate everything. Except about today. I just can't bring myself to find the words to tell such innocence about the horror of 9/11. Does it matter to him now? Not really; most of my conversations are met with "mama!" or "car!" or "bbbbbbbbbbfffft!" He doesn't much care what I'm telling him about; he simply loves to talk.
But, what about in 5 or 6 years? What will I say on the 15 year anniversary of the attacks when he sees those images on television and asks me? How does one recount the horror and tragedy of that day to a child? Or should we? Maybe we shouldn't focus on the terror and death, but rather on the bravery and unity that 9/11 brought to the United States.
I really don't know how I will share 9/11 with my son, but I will. Someday. My husband and I were talking about what we remembered from that day, when we realized that Nate will grow up learning about September 11, 2001 in his history books. To him, it will always be a horrible day that happened long before he was ever born--similar to the way that we "remember" the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
Eventually, when he is old enough, I will share my own memories of 9/11 with my son. I wasn't in New York or Washington DC, but, like every other American citizen, that morning changed my life.
I was a junior in high school, and I was sitting in Mr. Andy's 2nd period psychology class. I sat in the second row, near several girls who were also in my anatomy class. Each day in psychology class, we worked on homework for anatomy while our psychology teacher/basketball coach talked sports with the boys in the front row. That particular morning was no different--I sat at my desk filling in blanks with the parts of the human body. About halfway through the class period, someone from the history department rushed into the room and told Mr. Andy to turn on the television. I saw the building burning, and only half listened to news commentary about the plane that had accidently hit the tower. Suddenly, a boy in the front row yelled, and I looked up just in time to see a second plane hit the twin tower on live television. The anatomy homework was forgotten, and we were glued to the television for the rest of class.
When the bell rang, I hurried down the hall to my English 11 AP class, where everyone was talking about the planes. Our teacher, however, was not. She assured us that it was "not a big deal," and that we had work to be doing. I believed her--even felt somewhat reassured by her lack of worry. (She didn't even have a TV in her classroom.) We began class, and I settled into my normal routine. Our normalcy was short lived--a student came from the classroom next door and said,
"The Pentagon has been hit! And, our teacher says that your class needs to come next door to watch TV!" For the first time that day, I realized that something BIG was happening to our country. I was scared. We filed into the classroom next door, and I remember sitting very quietly on the floor of the room for the rest of the period. For the rest of the day at school, we watched the news in every single class. I remember sitting in 7th period anatomy, wishing that we were actually having class because I didn't want to see the horror of the day on television any longer. Little did I know that the images of that day would stay with our entire country for so many years.
