Today has not begun well. I was awakened last night repeatedly by odd noises. Raccoons yowling woke me at midnight. The mosquito sprayers woke me an hour or two later. And sometime around 4 a.m., a bizarrely loud bird that wasn�t an owl but sounded a little like one began yelling on the tree outside. Around 5 the neighbors� dog started howling. That�s about when I decided it wasn�t even worth trying to get back to sleep.

AJ must have heard the cacophony too, because he popped out of bed a good hour earlier than usual. He was extremely excited and perky this morning, which I certainly was not, and he�s been chattering non-stop since he woke up, but with the assistance of an extra-large dose of coffee (for me, that is), we managed to make it through playgroup and a trip to the store without any bloodshed. Finally, when we sat down to lunch I asked him if he could just be quiet for a few minutes because I was feeling grumpy. I know that when I ask a happy two-year-old to be quiet that I am at my wits� end. It�s not like he was doing any thing wrong. He had just worn me out completely. AJ got quiet for a minute then put his hand on my arm and peered into my face and said, �Make Mommy happy?� I have never felt like more of a jerk. What a nice kid.

I swore that I wasn�t going to write about 9/11, although I did put up a link yesterday to what I thought was an excellent story. I don�t feel like I really have the right to talk about it. I�ve lived in New York. The Connecticut town where I grew up lost several people on 9/11. I certainly know people who lived or worked nearby and were traumatized by it. But I did not know any of the deceased, nor, to my knowledge, do I even know anyone else who did. It is not my tragedy, any more than it is for any other American or human being. But we all seem to feel the need to make it our tragedy � I know that I do. I�m not saying that�s a bad thing, just something I�ve been thinking about. But it reminds me of the penchant in recent years for piling up flowers and teddy bears as impromptu shrines for the unjustly dead, often by people who never knew the deceased. What do we wish to accomplish by this? Are we expressing solidarity? Or guilt? Are we trying to set something right that is impossible to repair?

September 11, 2001 I felt it was my tragedy. AJ was 6 months old and I was nursing him and, quite uncharacteristically, was watching the morning news. I saw the first news break-ins to announce the first plane hitting the WTC. And I watched someone interview a person about seeing the first plane in front of a window while the second plane passed on the other side. Up until that point, everyone thought it was an accident. That was the moment the horror hit. I didn�t leave the TV for hours. I felt so vulnerable with a small child. At the time we lived a stone�s throw from the Sears Tower, which was considered another possible target. Every building within two blocks from us had been evacuated, but since ours was a residence and not an office, we were not asked to leave. In the afternoon, not knowing what to do with ourselves, we walked over to Grant Park. It was the eeriest thing I�ve ever experienced. It was an unusually beautiful day. It should have been rush hour. No cars, no pedestrians, no signs of life anywhere. It was a ghost-town. We didn�t see another person until we got to the park. That was when it became clear that everything was going to be different. I think that was the moment we decided to move out of the downtown area � who wants to raise a child into a world like that?

Some, however, choose to remain in the thick of it, to dive in deeper. My brother and his family moved to Israel less than two weeks before 9/11/01. Except for a brief period at the beginning of the Iraq war when they were evacuated, they have remained there. One of the most recent suicide bombings was right near the apartment they lived in until a couple of months ago. But they go about their daily lives as if people weren�t blowing each other up all the time. What else can they do? And they feel they must remain because they feel they can make a difference in the quality of lives there.

Some have no choice at all. And it is these people that made me feel like I had to write something about 9/11 after all. lass wrote yesterday about a child in her care being disturbed for the second year in a row by school events to commemorate 9/11. This child had no choice. He (or she) is being forced to confront issues that he is not emotionally ready to deal with. Why does he have to think about it now? What point does this commemoration serve for this child? To make him afraid? He has the government�s terror alert warning �system� for that. The New York Times� story on the ceremonies in New York also mentioned children: �It fell to the children to read the victims� names � children as young as 7�� These children are the ultimate tragic figures. But why is a seven year old child in the position of having to represent the mourning of a nation? That feels a little too much like exploitation to me. Perhaps the seven-year-old volunteered to participate. Perhaps his/her participation helped him/her deal with her grief. I hope so.

The children are important to us in this process. The numerous newspaper stories on the babies born after 9/11 whose fathers perished that day are testament to that. When people leave tokens at makeshift memorials to the dead, they don�t often leave the trappings of adulthood. They leave teddy bears. The children left behind represent the former children lost as well as our ability to regenerate after such an event. They represent what we long to secure, to protect. In our grief, the children represent us all.

In truth, we would have moved out of downtown Chicago anyway. A loft is no place to raise a toddler if you want to maintain your sanity. But 9/11 changed our actions. We wanted to protect our child. That is why it is my tragedy after all.

0 people said it like they meant it