"Whoa."
I was surprised that he knew it was real, straight away. I remember seeing the footage for the very first time live on TV, wondering why on earth had they put Die Hard on the Morning Show? Max was in my belly back then. I patted him all day, frozen to the couch.
In a few months he will be ten years old. His whole lifetime has been spent in a towerless world. He asked me today, but where did all the people actually go?
I explained the best I could. The reporter on TV started talking about body parts and I winced but I didn't change the channel. A ten-year-old American boy read a letter out to a father he never met. "Dear Dad ..... we just missed each other. Mum is doing a really great job raising me."
Max turned to me and said, wouldn't it be good if all the people that day were just unbreakable?
::
The focus should always be on recovery. You just have to keep your head together as best you can. Keep hope and faith in your heart when the whole world turns to shit in just one day.
That boy of yours is so wise x
ReplyDelete9/11 - makes my heart ache... but for my own personal reasons...
ReplyDeleteten years...
"The focus should always be on recovery. You just have to keep your head together as best you can. Keep hope and faith in your heart when the whole world turns to shit in just one day"
Thank you Eden. Needed that right now, right this moment. x
That boy of yours is going to be something special one day, Eden.
ReplyDeletex
Wise boy from an equally wise mother. What a power house you must have there. So, so vital, you are. Keep reaching, Eden. SO much more I want to say to you. But I won't (publicly). Til next we meet......xxxxx
ReplyDeleteprofound words from your darling boy. depth beyond understanding.
ReplyDeletexo em
I hope I can protect my munchkin from this day until he is at least as old and wise and Max... Some things kids are just not meant to know. Actually, I kinda wish we didn't have to know either!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful Eden. Wise boy of yours. My baby boy was in my tummy that day too. I haven't spoken to him much about it, the day that the world changed. I wonder if they will talk about it at school tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteThat boy has such an old soul.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful.
xxx
Out of the mouth of babes.......
ReplyDeleteAs a native NYer who witnessed that day first hand I thank you for this post. Please give that boy of yours a big hug for me.
ReplyDeleteMy 10 year old was by my side that day and took in my anguish with a sorry o oh, that broke my heart. A terrible aching day. Not the world you wanted to bring kids into. Can't shelter them from such a big awful truth. Tis my middle ones birthday today, life goes on, good things happen on this day too. Wish we could put on our unbreakables every day.
ReplyDeleteI posted today too - an audio of a girl who lost her dad. She's the same age as my daughter. Heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteI was on my way to work when it happened. The babysitter met me outside (an unprecedented event), asking if I'd seen the news yet. By that time, only the first airplane had hit. We still thought it was some kind of freak accident. By the time I made it to work, (in Oklahoma, by the way) the 2nd plane had hit and I think the Pentagon was hit moments later - I heard this part on the radio. And I thought (a thought which most likely went up simultaneously, across America, at the very same moment... I wish I were psychic so I could confirm this), "We're at war." In that dazed say you think things you have empirical evidence of, but just can't quite grasp yet. And later, still working (I work at a law firm), walking to the court house, scanning the skies, just in case (because ALL the planes were grounded... nothing in the sky but birds) and noting how dead, dead silent it was, even so far away from New York & DC, and walking through the corridors of the courthouse, which was open, and wondering, in the dead, dead silence of those halls, why these people were at work, why wasn't the courthouse shut down that day.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the long comment, but you just brought that day back with vivid clarity. and I hadn't even woken up today thinking about what day this was. Thank you, Eden, for always knowing just what to say. Unbreakable... yes. That would have been nice. Then maybe we would have bounced instead of broken.
Ah, Max...sorry that you have to see the world this way ever.
ReplyDeleteLike.
ReplyDeleteI wish he never had to know about it. Mine is younger and not ready to grasp it (autism - it would leave him quite literally terrified, constantly). I dread the day he learns of it.
ReplyDeleteWise boys you have.
I am an American and my daughter is 11 now. She was 14 months exactly on 9/11/01. Today she was so surprised that she was alive when this terrible thing happened. But it's true, isn't it, that you never think big aweful things like thousands of people being killed in one day will happen in your life? No. Not possible! Sucks.
ReplyDeleteSept 11, 1979 is my son's birthday. Sept 11, 1995 was his 16th birthday and his last dose of chemo, having undergone 33 months of chemo for leaukemia. Because, at 16, he choose to not celebrate his 5 years off chemo and his 21st birthday 'just in case' we waited until Sept 11, 2001 to celebrate that miracle of miracles.
ReplyDeleteYou got it soooo right "Keep hope and faith in your heart when the whole world turns to shit in just one day."
Give that boy a hug for me.
Exactly.
ReplyDelete