Do I Really Have Anything to Say?

Last night, I had “the talk” with my 3 boys. Considering their ages, it was hard for me to decide whether it was the right thing to do, but I decided it was. You see, my oldest had brought an almanac home from school as his library book. In it, there was a section about tall buildings and it talked about the tallest buildings in the world being in Kuala Lumpur and others being built in the middle east. An then it talked about the Empire State Building in NY. I told them that was where I was from and that I used to pass that building every day on the way to and from work, that it was near where the Rangers and Knicks play (I’m training them) and, finally, that it hasn’t always been the tallest building in the City of New York.

So I told them about September 11th. The questions came fast and furious: why would someone do that? That wasn’t very nice! How come the firemen didn’t come to get them? How did they knock them down again? But what about the people on the plane? Did we catch the bad guys? Are they coming back to do it again? Are we safe?

My heart sank. Their faces were stunned disbelief. Their little brains just couldn’t figure out how it could be so that one person would do this to another. How firemen couldn’t get everyone out. How it would ever occur to anyone to use a plane full of people as a weapon.

I did the best I could. I told them what I had seen that day out my office window, that mommy and I had moved away a little after that and that, yes, we had caught a lot of the men who had done this, but then I had the challenge of explaining the zero-sum game that war is to elementary-aged children.

Helping a child comprehend how it’s still a bad thing even when the “good guys” kill the “bad guys” is hard enough. Helping them understand that sometimes the “bad guys” manage to kill some “good guys” along the way is even harder. And then it crushed me.

“So are we safe?”, asked my youngest. I’m not into lying to my kids, so I said, “pretty much, but we thought we were safe before they came and knocked down those buildings, too. Chances are that Nashville is safer than New York City as far as this threat is concerned, but nobody can ever be 100% sure.”

So Connor fell asleep on the couch with me because he was scared to go to bed alone and Parker woke up crying twice. He couldn’t say why he was waking up, but that he was scared so I asked him who keeps him safe. He said, “Daddy and Mommy.” I asked him who kept Mommy and Daddy safe and he answered, “God.” I mussed his hair, kissed his cheek and put him back to sleep. He didn’t wake up crying again.

Tags: country, duty, fath, september 11th, service, world trade