Walk the talk

There has been a lot of bus-stop conversation over the last week about what we are telling our children today. I still wish I knew.

The boys are having a day to talk about our friends in the military, and how people are helping to keep us safe. This seems innocuous enough for 5 year olds, as long as they don't ask me what they are keeping us safe from.

I have no idea what my 4th grader will learn today. I just hope I don't have to talk about it with her, but I cannot come up with something coherent to talk about.

It is not that I wish to dishonor those who gave their lives in such a tragic event, and all of those who have worked tirelessly over the last 5 long years to improve my safety by not talking about it and them. We live within 30 miles of Washington, and we are acutely aware of terror levels, low-flying planes, and evacuation routes. The parents, are, anyway; my children still point at the planes with wonderment.

I just don't know how to explain it to them. How can you talk to your children about something that your own heart cannot wrap itself around - that people can be so evil and unfeeling as to twist their beliefs and make it ok to take another life?

I have read all of the parenting articles that explain what to say about war, and terror, and the unexplainable. I used to think that a firm "we are your parents and we'll keep you safe" was enough. In a pinch, "God will protect you" would seal the deal. Even a pithy "Everything happens for a reason" could satisfy them. But after all that has and continues to happen, I'm not sure I believe those answers anymore, and I can no longer confidently spout them at my children.

The kids were all under 4 when things changed; they have never seen the towers, not even on the news. We turn the channel when commercials advertising the tributes are played, the seemingly countless TV movies that are shown. I'm not naive enough to think that Katie doesn't know anything - girls and teachers talk, and this is a lesson that she's likely had in school. The boys, however, are still blissfully ignorant - New York is only the place where Aunt J lives.

In watching the Jules and Gedeon Naudet documentary again last night, one of the fireman made a statement that sums it up for me - something to the effect that he had no idea how evil evil could be.

My children are still loving and kind - their idea of a horrible event is when one won't let the other go first on the swing. Even my 4th grader doesn't truly understand heartbreak and loss, and I'm not eager to dispel their feeling that the world is generally a good and safe place for them to be. Call me unpatriotic and unfeeling for those families, but I want them to know a Norman Rockwell childhood. There is time yet for them to understand evil, hatred, and senseless acts.

So today, I will find a mass, and light a candle, and the kids and I will say an extra prayer for the freedoms we enjoy and the protection of all those fighting at war. And I will quietly pray that my children never have to explain how hatred can consume people and bring such destruction.