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Sept. 3, 2006

A beautiful day

When I remember Sept. 11, 2001, I remember a clear blue sky, a perfect fall day. My husband was about to take Caroline to preschool when the celebrity quiz on the WGN news was interrupted by news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. We thought it was an accident when he left.

By the time they arrived at school, I had seen the second plane crash. Teachers were being warned that whatever they did, they must not turn on televisions in their classrooms that day, and working to find ways to deal with what had happened.

Many parents brought their children home early that day. Those who were still at school that afternoon had a prayer service. One boy built a paper model of the twin towers, a model that was displayed in church for months.

Caroline was 3 years old, and it was the beginning of her third week of school.

For her, all of her education has come in a post-Sept. 11 world. It’s a world where planes still occasionally fly into buildings on TV—an event likely to happen more often in the days ahead.

It’s a world where Frankie-then age 4—and I were randomly chosen for special screening at the airport. It’s a world where many people have stopped asking, “Why do they hate us?” and concentrated all the harder on hating them back.

I notice the changes all around me, from emergency plans being updated to the quick looks at planes that seem to fly a little too low.

But Caroline doesn’t. She doesn’t remember a pre-9/11 world, where no one in the United States ever imagined suicidal terrorists using full passenger jets as kamikaze missiles. For her, this is the way it always was.

The funny thing is, I don’t think the world is that much more dangerous; there was nothing stopping such attacks from happening before 2001. All that changed is that we can imagine it now, because we have seen it. It’s kind of like my husband telling me how much more dangerous the world seemed after Richard Speck killed eight nurses in 1966. That was when, he said, his family became careful to lock their Northwest Side house up each night.

I hadn’t been born yet when Speck went on his killing spree; I don’t remember my parents ever leaving our suburban home unlocked at night. I do remember fallout shelter signs on my school, and, when I was very young, drills designed to help keep us safe from bomb attacks. But by the time I was old enough to understand the idea of an atomic bomb—in the 1980s—I knew that those things offered no protection.

No one, not even me, can offer my children protection from all the bad things that might happen to them. That’s where faith comes in. Every day, I ask God’s protection for them. I know they live in his love, and that he loves them more than I do. For now, even knowing that they can be hurt anyway, that has to be enough.

Michelle Martin is a Catholic New World staff writer.