Friday, September 11, 2009

disillusionment

Tyler picked Grace up from school today. He said she got in the car and he could see that she had been crying. Hard. The whole front of her shirt was dotted with tears. She refused to speak to him. All the way home he tried to get out of her why she was crying. Finally, as they approached the house, she gave in and squeaked out "a plane flew into a tower and a lot of people died!"

Once he got her calmed down a little, he told her that it happened before she was even born. Imagine her quizzically cocking her head and blinking at him for a minute before saying, "ooohhhhh.....I thought it happened today."

???

Apparently, in her class they had a moment of silence and read a book about 9/11. And CLEARLY they DID NOT do a sufficient job of explaining it.

Add this to her ever-growing file of "we should have figured it out by now." It never crossed my mind to talk to a 7 year old about the significance of this day. I still so want to shelter her from sadness and uncertainty. As a result she gets blindsided continually. Sigh.

2 comments:

Lilian said...

Well, she responded exactly as I did when it DID happen. Poor kid. It was/is traumatic. It's also hard to imagine there are little people like her who will only read/hear about it. It still feels like it just barely happened.

Bea said...

What a tender heart. Bless her.