"What's That, Dad?"

Yeah, its Sept. 11. I spent most of the morning fighting back tears. I woke up and looked out the window at 7:10 a.m. saw that it was a beautiful crystal blue sky and said, “The weather is just like five years ago.”
I watched the beginning of the reading of the names ceremony and quickly had to flip to something else. The kids were great. Tiernan was in the den playing with his toys and occasionally watching Noggin. He’s just trying to figure out why Daddy is walking around the house wiping his eyes and mumbling “fucking bastards” under his breath.
Reagan was with me in the nook just hanging out, literally hanging from the Baby Bjorn, the handsfree device that allows the child to hang from you chest and keeps parental hands free. The American Indians called it a papoose.
As I flipped through the channels, MSNBC was replaying the coverage from Sept. 11 as it happened, in real time in 2006. And, since I had never seen it, because I was working that day, I could not tear away from it. I watched the first tower fall and as the second tower collapsed. I was full of sorrow and anger and pain, with tears streaming down my face. As I watch the smoke and dust fill lower Manhattan, Tiernan walks in, looks that the TV and says, “What’s that, Dad?” Then he looks at me and says, “Are you OK?”
For a moment I had to try to figure out what to say to him. Finally, I said, “I am fine. It is just a very sad day,” then between choking back sobs I said, “five years ago, before you were born, a bunch of bad men did a very bad thing and a lot of people were hurt.”
The tragedy that is 9-11 continues to find new ways to infuriate me. First and foremost is all those lives cut short and all the victims families that have to carry on.
Next, is the loss of innocence. As I said earlier, it was a beautiful day. And I can never wake to a beautiful morning without thinking, “This is the type of day in was Sept. 11, 2001.” These fucking bastards have tainted one of Gods most precious gifts, a beautiful day.
Next, is the emptiness in the New York skyline. I loved to look at the World Trade Center. It was a testament of mans genius, an engineering marvel. They were beautiful buildings. Another gift from God taken from us.
Now, for the first time, I had to explain this barbarism, this senseless slaughter of innocents and innocence to my 2 year old son. That is something I should not have to do. Thankfully, he is still too young to understand any of this, beyond, bad men did bad things. But, eventually, I will have to tell him and my precious daughter what happened five years ago.
How do you explain it to a preteen child? A bunch of men hijacked a plane. “Daddy, what does hijack mean?” Well, it means that they took control of the plane. They bullied everybody into letting them fly where they wanted the plane to fly. And then they flew the planes so that they would crash into buildings. “These men forced the pilots to crash into buildings? What about the other passengers, Daddy?” Well, pumpkin, the hijackers killed the pilots and flew the planes themselves.
The act that I have just described is almost too much for the brain the process. Men took control of planes full of people, killed the pilots, and crashed the planes on purpose. Try to forget for a moment that almost 3,000 people died in the buildings. Just getting your head around the first part of this terrible event is difficult. “Why, daddy?” Because they don’t like Americans. “Why not, daddy?”
You see where this is going, right. I am not sure I have answers to the questions that my kids will eventually ask me. And the very idea that I have answer these questions pisses me off and steels my resolve and feeds my hatred of these bastards.
For now, bad men did bad things. And I picked up my 2 year old son and hugged him and told him that I loved him. And he hugged his 7 month old sister and looked at me and said, “Dad, lets go to the park.” And we went to the park and moved on. Soon the only person crying was Dylan, the redhead that cries when he doesn’t get his way and doesn’t know how to share.