Sept. 11: On Being Connected to the World Around Us

one wtc

Born and raised on Long Island, I remember when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were completed in lower Manhattan.

Not long after, my friend Melissa's parents took the two of us out for a day in the city, and we visited Ellis Island and went up to the top of the WTC. These two buildings were a part of the skyline for me. I couldn't imagine it without them, unlike my mother, who'd grown up in Brooklyn and thought them incredibly ugly and a blight on the beautiful skyline.

I went away for college and moved to Florida after graduation. I visited New York often and finally went back to the Twin Towers one day when I met a friend who worked at the Wall Street Journal nearby for lunch. But every time I flew into the city, I knew I was home when I saw the twin sentinels from my window seat.

When I finally moved back to the metro area, a swell of happiness rose in me whenever I saw the towers, driving by or into Manhattan. I was back in my beloved New York.

And then one day, they were gone. I still, whenever we drive north from our home in Jersey toward the city, instinctively scan the horizon for the towers. It wasn't uncommon for the first few years for me to say to my husband, "I still can't believe they're not there."

It was one of those times, about five years ago when Rafael was 5, that he piped up from the back seat and asked what I was talking about.

My husband and I glanced at each other for a moment. My chest tightened. How do you explain terrorism to a 5-year-old? Most adults don't understand it. But this metro area is his home. The fall of the Towers is a part of his life, even though he wasn't even close to being born yet.

My husband spoke up. He'd recently had to explain to Rafael why an elderly man had shot people in the Holocaust Museum, when the boy had overheard the TV when daddy was watching one of the news channels.

He took that lesson and applied it here.

"Remember how I always tell you how you're connected to everything and everything is connected to you?" My husband had been teaching Rafael to calm his mind through meditation and some other Buddhist teachings. Rafael liked the idea of being connected to the world around him.

"Yes," Rafael answered.

"And remember how I told you about how that man you saw on TV did those bad things because he didn't feel connected to anyone or anything?"

"Yes."

"Well, in 2001, years before Mommy and Daddy were lucky enough to have you and your brother, several people who also didn't feel connected took some airplanes and flew them into some buildings in New York City."

Silence.

"The buildings were the tallest in the city and the crash caused the buildings to fall down. Remember when we've shown you that pointy building that's really tall in the middle of the city? The Empire State Building?"

"Yes."

"That's the tallest building in the city now because these two buildings, called the Twin Towers, were knocked down. A lot of people died in them and that made their families and friends very sad."

Rafael has always thought very deeply about things and he absorbed this and didn't say much. He hasn't asked much about it since.

I've always loved my husband's explanation, despite the fact that I'm pretty far from being Buddhist about anything. (When it comes to ants in our kitchen, I am a brutal murderer.)

Truth is, the terrorists who briefly brought this nation to its knees that day were not really connected to anyone or anything. You don't choose to kill yourself in the name of your cause unless you believe you have nothing to lose.

One of the most important things we need to do as parents is to foster the connection between our children and the world around us. To feel a part of the world is to want to participate in it.

Yes, it's far more complicated than that, I know. And I'm not trying to overly simplify the matter, but when you're talking to young children about something so big, you do need to make it as simple as possible at first.

So this weekend, make sure you spend some time with your children. Talk with them. Do something social - take them to a park or playground; volunteer at a soup kitchen; whatever suits your family's personality best.

Just bring them out into the world and show them how they're a part of it all.

I took the photo of the new Trade Center building.