On my kitchen bulletin board is a 2" X 4" photo of a beautiful blond woman flashing a radiant smile. Sometimes the photo goes missing under a school notice or a temporary "art installation"--but the photo is never removed. It was first pinned up eight years ago on our old bulletin board; it resumed its position on our new one, immediately after we renovated our kitchen.
It was only during the past year that my youngest child, Beatrice, now seven, asked after this otherwise total stranger who peers out from amongst the detritus of our family life.
"Barbara K. Olson." She sounded out the words below the photo slowly but with the pride of an improving reader. "December 27, 1955. September 11, 2001."
"Mom," she asked, "why are there dates on this photo? Who is she? Why is she on our board?"
Over the years I've wondered how long it would take for Bea to ask about 9/11. Her two elder siblings--Miranda, now 18, and Nathaniel, 15--lived through it in the harrowing, close-up way so many others in New York and Washington did that day. They were both students at a Jewish day school in a near-in suburb of the capital, about a 20-minute drive from our home. Their father at that time worked in the White House. Barbara Olson was on the plane that smashed into the Pentagon. The students were herded into the main gymnasium and told what was going on--or rather, as much as anyone knew at 10 a.m. what was going on. Miranda found herself trying to console a weeping girl whose father worked in the Pentagon--while wondering about the status of her own father. Had the White House been hit? Would it be? Who knew?
"Barbara Olson was a very good friend of ours," I answered Bea. "She was killed--"
"How?" would be the next question, I knew. And what was I going to say? Bea has no idea how intimately her pre-natal existence and early infancy is tied up with 9/11, at least in my memory. My last photo of Barbara was taken on our back porch, in the summer before the attacks; we are sitting with a group of female friends. You can just see the curve of my pregnancy under a coral blouse. Everyone was "tanned and relaxed" as they say, like those lounging hotel guests photographed during the summer of 1914.
On 9/11, Nathaniel was the same age as Bea is now--so astonishingly young to witness, as we did together, the live footage of the second plane hitting the tower. My mother had called me, screaming to turn on the television. Nathaniel was home from school feigning a stomachache. I didn't attempt to shield him from the footage because...who knew?
"How?"
I hesitated. "In a terrible attack. By terrorists." Bea is old enough to know about terrorists: sinister people in faraway lands whose presence she is occasionally made aware of if she sees the news. But to her they are not vivid, real, and potentially nearby--as they are to her brother and sister. She does not think about them every time she boards a plane. She did not know the Manhattan skyline before its two front teeth were knocked out. She can't remember the orderly buzz of F-16s patrolling the airspace for months afterwards--a buzz that coincided with her 2 and 4 a.m. feedings during her first weeks of life. She doesn't remember the beautiful and vivacious "Mrs. Olson"--nor the hysterical phone call that day from a mutual friend informing me of her death.
Do I want her to? Not especially.
But that's not right either.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to the recently re-opened American History museum. A visiting nephew was in town. Among the war exhibits was a new display of 9/11. Bea and I had just wandered through the first two world wars and Vietnam. My son and his cousin lingered behind, interested in absorbing everything they could. Bea tugged on me impatiently whenever I paused: She'd already "done" the First Ladies dresses and was keen to go see "the big flag." War, I'm afraid, bored her.
But in the 9/11 exhibit, I insisted she stop and look. "Remember you asked me about Mrs. Olson--the woman on our bulletin board?"
"Yes."
"This exhibit shows the attacks in which she was killed. The terrorists attacked New York City and Washington. See those flaming towers? They were taller than the Empire State building but they are gone now. That's why you hear about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are fighting people who would want to do this to us again. And who did it once. We don't want it to happen ever again."
Her little face was solemn. I did not point out that the terrorists' missiles of choice were commercial airliners filled with passengers like her: no need to download that new nightmare "app" for now.
"That's why I keep Mrs. Olson's photo on our board. So we always remember her. And we never forget what happened."
Her quiet nod indicated that she had no further need to ask,"Why?"
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Outraged peoples' will react in outrages ways others will call terrorism. Though there are always solid reasons for why peoples' react in outrages ways. Addressing the reasons for their outrages is the only solution to stopping future explosive reactions.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com
Their hypocrisy can no longer be kept from the Worlds public thanks to the internet.
I hope the writer will tell her children about he US and their participation in ethnic cleansing in Palestine, Their conduct in Vietnam,
Their disregard for the people of South and Central America overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting Hitler like dictatorships..etc,etc,
The US has wasted so much, It could have truly helped in putting the World on a path to a virtual utopia
Knowing someone who died on 9-11 doesn't bestow on you or anyone else the right to appropriate it in any way you see fit, at the expense of truth.
Of course, as her mother, you're entitled to say whatever you want to your child. But you're not doing her any favors.
Because that would be a lie.
Unfortunately, I will have to tell my daughters that my country went to war against people who had NOTHING TO DO WITH what happened eight years ago. I'll have to explain that eight years ago we had just recklessly put the Presidency in the lap of a drunken infant with a daddy complex who wanted war as soon as he could lie his way into it. So he could wear the fancy costumes embroidered with his name and strut around calling himself a "war president". And a "decider".
I mourn today because very soon, my young daughters will know that thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have paid the price for our ignorance and arrogance, because apparently even some Huffington Post writers still can't get it straight.
Remember. Never Forget. 9/11/2001. 9/11.
These have become, or are, thought-ending cliches meant to erase any ability to actually think, educate or learn from this event. Pure and simple indoctrination is what this day is becoming. America was no greater on 9/12 than it was on 9/10. If anything it was weaker in its lust for revenge. The false comfort and justifications being inculcated upon the people of this country, by the use of the memory of that day, is disgusting and horrible and practically insures that it will happen again as we refuse to learn from our mistakes.
I understand where you are coming from about speaking with children but we must first check ourselves for our own errors of indoctrination. Take this section.
"That's why I keep Mrs. Olson's photo on our board. So we always remember her. And we never forget what happened."
I lost a cousin to a drunk driver. But I don't have to keep a photo of her on a board to "always remember her" and "never forget what happened". I remember! How could you forget!? Who could forget such a thing!? Who knows? Maybe I should keep a photo up meant to galvanize people against the horrors such people perpetrate by playing on people's fear of their own mortality. I don't hear her trying to talk about why it happened. How it was wrong to use that event as justification for attacking Iraq.
I want people to TALK about it, not spew idiotic nonsensical catch-phrases that have been designed to circumvent the intelligence and rational thinking of our countrymen. Specifically designed so that we AVOID talking about the real reasons, horror and implications of such events.
I've been struck today by how so much of the talk (not the article above, though it does trouble me in the ways I've discussed already) seems fake, disingenuous or forced.
Here's an excerpt and the link:
"I remember the agony I felt hoping that he was alive that Tuesday (the eleventh of September 2001)
and that Wednesday, and Thursday, that somehow he had made it out.
But Andy worked on the 105th floor-- for Cantor Fitzgerald… no one made it out."
http://kellysalasin.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/for-love-of-my-country/