Explaining the Inexplicable

Friday we were running late and - in the middle of a pouring rainstorm - watched as the school bus pulled away from the stop just as we arrived. Since I had already bundled both kids into the car rather than try to make the one-block trek through gale conditions with nothing but an umbrella, we just headed on to school.

Considering the date, I should have just kept the car radio off. But to do so as we came up at just minute before the fateful time of 9:03 a.m. somehow seemed disrespectful - as if I was somehow denying the tragic events of eight years earlier.

NPR was covering the anniversary, and when the boy heard "attacks" and "towers," his first inclination was to ask what they were talking about. The best I could do without choking up was to say that eight years ago, some really bad people had flown two jet planes into some towers in New York City and a building in Washington, D.C.

There was no "why?" There was no curiosity beyond asking what the folks on the radio were talking about. And honestly, I consider that a blessing, because just saying the words I did was pretty difficult.

As a former reporter and editor who, at the time of the attacks was languishing in the throes of a recent layoff, I still bear a shred of survivor guilt that I was someplace where I was really no good to anyone. Friends and colleagues got called in to work. Others were staffing newsrooms and voluntarily sacrificed extra hours over the subsequent days to make sure coverage was handled with the respect and thoroughness it deserved. All had the benefit of being in a group, where their grief, even in the cynical confines of a newsroom, could be shared.

I watched it on CNN from my living room, feeling impotent and helpless along with furious and appalled.

But in briefly explaining the broader event to my son, the feelings that welled up weren't my own self-pity or even general grief for the event itself. They were instead the looming knowledge that not long from now, I would be called to explain to him the as yet unasked "why?"

Why do people do such things? How could someone hate another person, group, or country so very much? And how can I assure him that nothing like that will ever happen to him.

The sadness is amplified by the fact that I really don't have good answers to either question. Regarding the first question, I could give him some rote propaganda about "freedom haters" and "evil doers," but that just doesn't seem to cut it. In fact, I don't think he would stand for it, because he's been raised in a home where things are rarely cast in such stark contrast. He knows, even at five, that there are areas of gray. An answer such as "Because they hate our freedom," might work just fine for some grown-ups, but all I would expect from him would be, "But what does that mean?" Truth is, I'm not even sure the people that actually say that really know what it means.

Regarding his safety, the hard part is knowing that I, as a parent - charged with safeguarding my children -- can not genuinely guarantee his safety from people at home or abroad who want to do harm to others. "Don't talk to strangers" and "Look both ways before crossing the street" will avert the everyday dangers, but there is no way to know the Next Crazy Thing.

The Next Crazy Thing comes to us nightly compliments of the evening news. It's the random shooter at a mall or high school, the ruthless child molester prowling around schools, the little girl snatched off the street. All these sit in our parental brains, where we know they are unlikely to happen but are all too aware that they do happen, and that when they do there's no way to predict them and there are few ways to guard against them.

So I'm grateful to the boy for letting me answer him in a concise and efficient fashion without going into grisly detail he wasn't ready for. He now knows why they were talking about attacks on towers, but has thankfully left it to later to wonder why.