I knew it would come eventually, this day of explaining. I just never prepared enough for it.
Why is my name Faith?
Why would it have been bad for me to come on my due date?
What does that wall say?
What does memorial mean?
These are the questions that have come. We have been able to explain around them until yesterday.
Yesterday, The Middle One came home with a note saying he needed to wear a patriotic shirt because they were taking a field trip to the town memorial for a service in honor of 9/11.
Mom what’s 9-11?
I can’t explain around it anymore.
I want to spare my kids from this.
Selfishly, I don’t want to explain because it still makes my heart tired. I am one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose anyone personally. But we all lost something didn’t we? I don’t want my kids to know that pain.
In MD we could allow it to creep to the back of our minds over the years.
Here, in a town full of brokers and traders,with a house 1.9 miles from Cantor Fitzgerald offices, there are reminders everywhere. Memorials in every park and playground. There are school wide memorial services and days for patriotic shirts. We sing God Bless America every single Sunday at the end of church and my daughter wonders why I well up every single week. That song instantly takes me back to the days and weeks after-when we sang it everywhere and held onto our loved ones with renewed vigor and quite frankly, desperation and fear that can only come from not knowing what lay ahead. My children’s father takes a train directly to The Site every morning and leaves from The Site every afternoon. I can’t let myself think about that too much.
I wanted to spare my kids from knowing this kind of ugly existed.
That ended today.
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Why is my name Faith?
Why would it have been bad for me to come on my due date?
What does that wall say?
What does memorial mean?
These are the questions that have come. We have been able to explain around them until yesterday.
Yesterday, The Middle One came home with a note saying he needed to wear a patriotic shirt because they were taking a field trip to the town memorial for a service in honor of 9/11.
Mom what’s 9-11?
I can’t explain around it anymore.
I want to spare my kids from this.
Selfishly, I don’t want to explain because it still makes my heart tired. I am one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose anyone personally. But we all lost something didn’t we? I don’t want my kids to know that pain.
In MD we could allow it to creep to the back of our minds over the years.
Here, in a town full of brokers and traders,with a house 1.9 miles from Cantor Fitzgerald offices, there are reminders everywhere. Memorials in every park and playground. There are school wide memorial services and days for patriotic shirts. We sing God Bless America every single Sunday at the end of church and my daughter wonders why I well up every single week. That song instantly takes me back to the days and weeks after-when we sang it everywhere and held onto our loved ones with renewed vigor and quite frankly, desperation and fear that can only come from not knowing what lay ahead. My children’s father takes a train directly to The Site every morning and leaves from The Site every afternoon. I can’t let myself think about that too much.
I wanted to spare my kids from knowing this kind of ugly existed.
That ended today.
Reading this makes me wonder how I'll react to one day talking to my kids about this. To this day I still can't talk about what happened without tearing up… in fact a few tears even came when I tried to blog about it today.
Hope all went well with talking to the middle one about it!
It is horrible that 9.11 happened and that you have to explain it to such innocent little ones. It did change all of our lives in many ways but luckily they don’t know the difference. You knew it was inevitable now that they are in school that they were going to learn about 9.11, it will be in their history books so better you explain it to them first. They will always know of the event but we all hope they never experience that kind of fear or ugliness in their lifetime.
I have to agree with Julie that one year later a new light was born into our family. A light that will want to figure out a way to get rid of all of the ugliness in this world and has already had an impact on doing so….:)
But a year after that horrible event an amazing gift was given to our family. An incredible little girl that has lived up to and I think even surpassed her name sake. Happy early Birthday to The Girl!! Love and miss you all.