Explaining the World Around Us

I meant to write this post yesterday, but I was away much of the day, so it never got done. But here goes.

Over the last three months, I've thought about Nicholas growing up, and trying to explain to him the world around him. Simple things, like what the grass and the sun are, more complicated things, like the infield fly rule. Since January, I've looked forward to telling him what it was like to stand out in the cold and watch a Presidential inauguration.

It will be hard enough someday to explain to Nicholas was it was like to be alive on September 11, 2001.¹ How I heard about the attacks—and that my first thought was that it couldn't possibly be true. How I spent 90 minutes trying to get his grandparents on the phone, at the same exact time as everyone else either in New York or with relatives there, just to make sure they were okay. What it's like to realize that something you've always taken for granted as part of the landscape just isn't there anymore.

But I also realized yesterday that at some point we will have to explain to Nicholas that there are Bad People in the world, and sometimes they do Bad Things. I don't think I'm intelligent enough to even broach the topic of why anyone would do such a thing. There's just no answer that truly makes sense, to explain what would make someone want to murder 3,000 people (actually, I suppose the hijackers hoped they would kill even more) and take out landmark buildings. It will have to suffice for him to know that such things happen, that we move on, that we don't succumb.

That day will be a moment, one among many, in which the cocoon peels away just a bit, and he becomes just a little less protected. That's a sad thought right now. I mean, there is a part of me that looks forward to seeing him make his own way, and confront the world. Maybe he will even make some lasting change in the world—who knows? But I just hope we can shelter him from the bad long enough that he's strong enough to handle it.

¹ I also find it somewhat bewildering, because the event reinforced a sense of community, that we now have a member of the family whose first long-term memories of anything will come some 12-14 years after 2001.