Parenting after Orange Alert
Adventures in Living Bravely in a Fearful Time
Usually there were one or two, but on that Tuesday afternoon there were lots of fathers on the elementary school playground when school let out. The adults stood around, dazed and bleary-eyed under the vaulted, azure sky. The school’s flagpole held the flag at half-staff. The dads on the playground had been sent home from work; some were in their good suits, their ties loosened. Some work in Chicago and were sent home so that skyscrapers would be empty should another attack occur. Other companies let their employees go because of the gravity of the day. One woman, waiting for her child to be dismissed from school, looked up at the perfect blue sky and announced, to no one in particular, “It’s so surreal, walking over here after what’s just happened.”
It was, of course September 11, 2001.
My heart, like yours, was broken that day, shocked by the vigorous display of hatred. It did seem surreal to have images of smoke and death imprinted on my mind while all around me all I could see were quiet streets and neat lawns bordered by impatiens. Regular, ordinary life.
“Why did they cancel Scouts?” Theo, then a kindergartner, asked. “Was it the same reason Daddy got to come home from work early?”
“People thought it was a good day for families to be together,” I said.
He looked up at the blue sky, nodded, and smiled.
“Yes,” he agreed.
At home that afternoon, my boys found a slug in the dirt as my husband sat in the wooden swing in our backyard.
“Look at this, Mom,” Theo called, holding the slimy thing between two fingers.
“It looks like a snail,” Ian said. “It has antennae.”
I slipped inside to check e-mail. I didn’t want to tie up friends’ phone lines in New York but wanted to touch base with the people I knew there. I wanted to make sure they were all right. My friend Grace Freedman’s husband, Michael, worked near the World Trade Center. She sent a short note. “It’s devastating, but we’re OK,” she wrote.
My husband’s brother, Brian, called in tears from London, where he was on vacation with his wife, Sara.
“It’s an effort just getting my shoes on, you know?” my mom said over the phone, her voice heavy with grief.
I heard from my friend Laurie, who works for American Airlines at O’Hare airport. She said the airport was eerie, the usually busy runways transformed into a giant parking lot for planes, the terminals quiet. She was dreading seeing the crew lists from the crashed planes. They were the names of people she knew well.
“There was a bad fire in New York,” my neighbor told her five-year-old son. The boy’s uncle worked in Manhattan and, after hours of watching television and trying to phone him, my neighbor finally got through to her brother. I decided to follow her lead and told the boys that there had been a fire. There was just no way to explain it to them.
“There was a fire. People are sad. The firefighters were brave,” I told them. Both boys’ faces lit up. They had been to the fire station only months before on a tour. Firefighters were already their heroes. No duh they were brave—of course they were! (At the time we had two goldfishes. Ian had named his “Cowboy”; Theo’s was “Firefighter.”)
During dinner, the boys chattered about the slug and baby Isabel tossed tomatoes off the tray of her highchair. I stared out the window. The absence of planes in the sky felt oppressive. I missed the familiar, muted thunder of their engines and was suddenly aware of how often, since becoming a mother, I watched airplanes pass by on the highway over our heads.
“Look! It’s an airplane!” the boys were always shouting, as though each time was the first time they had seen one overhead.
All day, I slipped out of the room and I watched the towers come down, over and over, on my computer. Theo asked me why I put my hand over the screen when he came into my office.
“Hey, are you thirsty? Remember the lemonade we made this morning?” I said, changing the subject.
In the evening, my mother-in-law called to say that the brother of one of my high school friends was on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. That scene of a phone ringing, of terrible news being delivered, repeated all across the country. Precious family members lost in a blitz of unspeakable hatred and violence.
They said it over and over again. “Nothing will ever be the same . . .”
Now, of course, all four of my children know about 9/11. Their schools recognize the anniversary of the attacks with special assemblies and lessons. Although I’ve tried, I’ve never quite been able to articulate to the children the cruel way the rules changed when instead of using a bomb to kill innocent people, the terrorists used innocent people to be part of a bomb that would result in such ghastly destruction and fear.
The effects of that day endure and, since then, we continue to digest discouraging news, often related to those acts of hatred. Wars. Global warming. Al-Qaeda. Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Mudslides in California. Terrorist attacks in India. Airlines filing for bankruptcy. A quadruple-dip recession. European debt crises. The way we have to take off our shoes and strip down at airport security and stand in the body scanner, our hands held up above our heads almost in the shape of a heart as though we were a tweenager at a Justin Bieber concert. The dangers of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats. Everywhere you turn there is another caution, another disease or social ill becoming prevalent, or another headline that feels like a punch to the gut.
I grant you that al-Qaeda can’t be blamed for mudslides, tsunamis, and trans fat in our food, but still . . . it’s a dispiriting time, and I find myself with that common malady of compassion fatigue. I want to escape. I am drawn toward light entertainment and silly movies. Maybe I should give There’s Something about Mary another try! I want to avoid thinking about famines, conflicts, and tragedies of every sort.
But I also want to stay awake and to hope.
I can’t help it—hope is built into my DNA and a key part of my Christian faith. Remember the passage that was read at my wedding? Love hopes all things. And love, we read over and over in the Bible, casts out fear. The angel said to Mary, “Do not be afraid” (Luke 1:30). To the shepherds: “Do not be afraid” (Luke 2:10). Do a search on that phrase in the Bible and you’ll find it numerous times. When he appears to humans, our God of love often prefaces his messages with, “Do not be afraid.”
As a mother, I want to raise brave kids who hear that message and know it to their toes. Everything is going to be all right. Love wins, as they say.
I want them to be people who know that there is a bigger picture, a spiritual promise of hope and redemption, even when life circumstances feel frightening.
I don’t want them to lose sight of it or fail to see God’s gifts of love around them because they are afraid of what, ultimately, cannot harm them.
Further, I have some good news for you: we are no longer living under Orange Alert. (Did you know that?) In 2011, our government scrapped the color-coded threat level system that since 2002 had warned Americans of the risk of terrorist attacks. The system was reminiscent of those signs out West that portray Smokey (the) Bear and announce the day’s probability of forest fires. These are updated daily in the hope that, for instance, should a person see that there’s an extreme risk of forest fires on a particular day, he won’t throw a lit cigarette out of his moving car into the brush at the side of the road. “Only you can prevent forest fires!” Smokey says. Knowing how to respond to the Homeland Security warnings, however, was much trickier than making sure campfires are extinguished properly.
The threat of Orange Alert, or a high risk of terrorist attacks, loomed over our heads for years. (The only thing that could have been worse was a Red Alert, but those didn’t pop up too often.) In April 2011, however, the colors were washed away in favor of a new system. Personally, I wish that just for a brief, shining moment, Homeland Security could have made a quick announcement that we were at Green Alert, or a low risk of attacks, before wiping the slate clean, but alas, it was not meant to be.
Now, should there be an imminent terrorist threat, we will learn about it via the National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS. The new terrorism prevention message that replaces the color warnings is reminiscent of the “Loose Lips Sink Ships” campaigns during World War II. “If You See Something, Say Something,”1 it urges. The slogan reminds us that the enemy may be anywhere.
For most of us, as parents going about our days at work and with our children, it’s hard to imagine that we’re part of an antiterrorism effort and that members of al-Qaeda could be lurking around the corner. Sure, if you see a neighbor stockpiling explosives in his garage or if you observe him timing traffic lights, you might get suspicious and certainly should let authorities know. But for most of us, this won’t be the case. As far as I know, the only stocking up my neighbors do involves multipacks of paper towels and breakfast cereal from Costco. But still, we’re cautioned: “If you see something, say something.”
I wonder how living under so much fear and vague warnings since the terrorist attacks in 2001 has affected the way I raise my children. If the suicides in Jonestown frightened me so much as a child, how much more are children growing up now affected by what they learn about those attacks? The people who died on September 11, 2001, were not misguided zealots who had chosen to leave everything they knew to follow their leader to a South American country. They were all just ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.
It’s not always easy to be brave, despite my best efforts.
I find myself part of a typical scene after dinner. It is a moment when in the mix of ordinary life, I fight to remain present, to force worry and fearful thoughts from my mind. Ian begins a long opening argument of why he should have more dessert. He points at his empty dinner plate. He suggests options. Just a bit of sherbet. One square of dark chocolate. That last cookie. He walks around the kitchen, looks in the pantry, examines the shelves in the freezer, and ignores my repeated offers of a banana or yogurt.
The other children chat about school. Isabel reportedly tried the hot lunch that day and to her surprise, she loved it. I ask her what she ate and she speaks each item in a velvety voice as if she is a waitress listing the specials at a five-star restaurant. A blue Popsicle. A big salad with croutons. A blueberry muffin. A bag of carrots.
“And chocolate milk,” she finishes with a sigh.
Mia is relegated to her chair until she finishes her milk. She stands up and then, when directed by her siblings or me, sits back down again. “Drink. Your. Milk,” I say for the sixth time. (Hey, quit your complaining, kid—it isn’t powdered.)
Isabel asks to be excused and disappears down into the basement to a bin of cleats, baseball socks, and pants. Tomorrow night she has her first game. She emerges from the basement with a few pairs of softball pants. I ask her if they are the right size. “They’re fine,” she says. “I wore them last year, all the time.” Since last season, she’d gained something like fifteen pounds and grown about four or five inches.
“Why don’t you try them on,” I say.
She shrugs and takes them into the bathroom.
Ian, meanwhile, continues his negotiations. He notes that there is only one cookie left in the package. Maybe, he wonders aloud, it would be a good idea to split it with his brother. Finish it up, you know, and recycle the package.
Mia continues to refuse to drink her milk. She picks up her glass and raises it, but before taking a sip, she again speaks of about the newborn goats she saw that morning at a local zoo.
“They were born last Wednesday. In the evening,” she says.
“Drink your milk,” I say.
Isabel returns wearing a pair of softball pants. They are uncomfortably tight and barely reach her knees.
“I’ll get you new ones tomorrow,” I promise.
Ian walks up close to me and brings his index finger to one of his eyebrows. He notes that his brows are growing thicker.
“See, here?” he says.
“People get hairier as they grow older,” I say.
“You’re getting hairier because you are turning into a monkey,” Mia explains, the glass of milk again raised in her hand.
We all break into laughter, but Mia nods to herself matter-of-factly, glad to have clarified the situation. I look at each of my children, my heart aching with love. I wish I could grab hold of the evening and freeze it in time. The repeated requests for more dessert. The outgrown pants. The milk (finally) dribbling down my daughter’s chin. The dirty dishes still on the table. The upside-down bottle of Ranch dressing. The dog wandering in and out of the room, checking under the table for fallen bits of food.
It’s beautiful to me, and I’m aware of how precious it all is.
But I can’t keep this moment.
Usually when time is frozen, it’s because something terrible has happened. Otherwise, life moves on in its ordinary, unobtrusive way. Gray hairs appear at the temples where they haven’t been before. Kids grow taller between the times we stand them against the wall and mark their heights. The bulbs we planted last fall send shoots up overnight and, when we aren’t looking, they bloom. But when something awful happens, time stands still.
Hurricane Katrina. Shootings on college campuses. An earthquake in Haiti. Car wrecks. 9/11. In the days that follow such tragedies, we look at pictures of the victims. Even strangers’ faces affect us. We know each one is someone’s child, precious and loved like our own. Children whose parents limited the number of cookies they could have for dessert, made them finish their milk, kept them in clothes that fit, and experienced countless moments of regular, ordinary life with each one of them.
We realize how priceless each life is.
We wish there was anything we could do to turn back time and make things turn out differently.
My sons erupt into laughter, yanking me from my thoughts.
They repeat their little sister’s pronouncement over and over: “That’s because you’re turning into a monkey!”
Mia smiles, raises her glass, and finishes drinking her milk.
Despite the anxiety of the times, the way we mess things up, and the challenge of raising hopeful, optimistic kids in a post-9/11 world, we roll up our sleeves, plunge in, and say yes to family because, as clinical psychologist and author (and yes, television personality) Dr. Phil McGraw says, “family matters.”
“Family matters because it is the single most outcome-determinative factor shaping one’s outlook and achievement. Your family powerfully determined what you’ve become and how you think about yourself, and so it will be for your own children. That’s why among all words in the English language, none means more to human beings than ‘family.’ ”2
Amen!
God, grant me serenity—just a little serenity.
(Once in a while and for a few minutes, at least.)
Midweek would be ideal because, as you know, dear God,
by Wednesday night, my sense of humor is
running on fumes.
Give me courage, God, at the grocery store,
When the baby is crying and I have to
pick up a few things for dinner.
Guide my child’s outreached hand
toward the natural granola bars,
Not the ones that contain trans fat,
high fructose corn syrup, and food dye.
(Lord, I confess, I do not always have the
wisdom to know the difference.)
Keep me from making irrational conclusions
about my children’s behavior, Lord.
Let me remember that just because he grabbed
a handful of chocolate-covered raisins
from the bulk foods bin,
my three year-old is not destined for life as a shoplifter.
Help me recognize that just because she
drew on the dining room wall, Lord,
My kindergartner will not spray paint graffiti on the sides
of buildings when she is a teen.
Help me not to see danger around every corner
Or to be afraid of my world, dear God.
It is, after all, your creation.
Help me not to fear the shadows,
But help me to send my kids into the world as the
Beautiful, light-bringers that you made them to be.
Most of all, as I mother these children
who are your gifts to me,
Grant me your peace.
Amen.