The Big Hole in the Ground

On Tuesday evening, as I was getting dinner ready, Ethan asked me, "Mom, who's the doctor at our school?" He was asking me the principal's name.
I said, "You mean Dr. Evans?"
He said, "Yes. She makes all the announcements in our school."
"Really?" I asked
"Yeah, and today she said something about some buildings that fell down."
"You know what buildings those were?"
"No, which ones?"
"Remember I told you about the bad men who flew airplanes into those buildings and then the buildings fell down and a lot of people got hurt and died?"
"The one in the picture in the bagel store?" (There is a painting in the bagel store that we frequent that was done after 9/11, it depicts a serpent-like figure in a turban in between the burning towers as people jump from the buildings. It's a little scary actually)
"Yes, those buildings."
"Why did those men do that?"
"I don't know honey. Sometimes people do bad things."

He walked out of the kitchen, the conversation was over and he went back to playing. The impact of 9/11 on him is nothing more than a story about some bad men who did a bad thing. He'll never know what those towers looked like in lower Manhattan because they were destroyed while he was growing inside of me. He'll never know the intense panic I suffered that horrible day when his daddy couldn't make it home because all forms of transportation were suspended into and out of Manhattan. Thankfully, he'll maintain his innocence about the world a little longer, even though he's been past Ground Zero and seen the hole, he doesn't have a concept of what was there before the gaping wound in the ground.

We spend a lot of time in NYC, my in-laws live there and we have free babysitting services whenever we desire a night out on the town. On the drive in, depending on traffic conditions, we occasionally take the Lincoln Tunnel. On the turnpike and on the helix (the helix is the approach to the tunnel, used to be seen in the opening sequence of the Sopranos) there used to be places where there was a clear view of the WTC. There is a void in the skyline now that my children will never know is a void. For them, the NY skyline has always looked the way it does. Maybe it's better that way.