Remembering and honoring

Parents have been struggling with this for nine years, and this year it was my turn. How do you explain to a child what happened on September 11 and why?

He caught me crying while watching a Sept. 11 tribute on TV and started asking questions. I tried to keep it simple: some bad people destroyed some buildings and a lot of people died. I tried to keep out the areas that might affect him: no mention of airplanes, no mention of the firefighters and policemen who died.

Of course his first question was "why?"

"Because they didn't like America," I told him.

"Why don't they like America?"

"That's a good question," I said. "It's just a very sad day."

Later in the evening, we attended a 9/11 ceremony in Duluth, which Jeff took part in. As luck would have it, I found a couple flags in the trunk (most likely still in there from the fourth of July parade), so the kids were able to carry them to the event.

I've gotten used to seeing very low attendance at this event. Quite honestly, if Jeff wasn't with the Honor Guard, I wouldn't go either. But I was really disappointed by the number of flags I saw flying at full staff yesterday. Almost 3,000 people died on 9/11, and approximately 6,000 military men and women and have died in the nine years since. Yet the majority of the people in this area couldn't be bothered to lower their flag in honor of them. Even the flag at the stadium where the tribute was at the top of its pole. How quickly we forget.

Except AJ. I know he'll be asking me questions about this for days and weeks to come. One nice thing about the small community we live in: the husband of AJ's teacher was marching along side Jeff in the ceremony. So if AJ starts asking his teacher a lot of questions, at least she'll understand why.