Waking up to the news that there had been yet another terrorist attack, this time in London, I felt the desire to shield my children from the news, wishing that they didn’t have to live in a world where such things were possible.
My son was up early. At 14, he is well attuned to some of the harsh realities of the world. An avid listener to National Public Radio, he has a fairly broad sense of what goes on beyond the confines of his rather idyllic urban existence.
My daughter, however, was still asleep. At 8, her understanding of the geo-political world is still quite vague. Geography is an abstract concept despite the more than 100 globes we have in the apartment (alas, I am a collecter of vintage globes). Far away is Queens or New Jersey where school friends have relocated. Even farther is California where her grandmother lives on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley.
London is where Harry Potter lives. Paris, the home of Madeline. Russia is where her Aunt is adopting a beautiful baby girl.
While my daughter slept, I was reminded of the morning of September 11th when she was just 4. As news of the attacks came across the radio, she wanted to play. I tried to quell my desperate anxiety, my sinking sense that our world was coming undone. I remember polishing her toenails in the kitchen in effort to make things feel normal in that most un-normal of days.
She watched the attacks over and over on the television in our neighbor’s apartment where we gathered that morning (her brother was in his 5th grade classroom at PS 321). The grown-ups were too distraught to even notice that the children were watching it again and again. A few days later, my daughter had a dream that her Barbie doll crashed into a tall building causing a terrible explosion.
Her world had changed even though I didn’t want it to.
When she woke up yesterday, the radio was airing non-stop reports from London. My anxiety about the world we live in was exacebated. I turned off the radio, didn’t mention anything when I took her to her camp just a few blocks away.
While we can’t necessarily shield our children from the realities of the world, we can hold them close and tell them that they are safe. Because they are: in our love for them. In our love.