Talk about one busy day today…Nicholas gets a checkup in the morning and we head to the theatre to see Funny Girl that evening.
Nicholas is continuing his climb up the growth charts checking in at 12 pounds 3 ounces, 23 ½ inches long, and a head circumference of 40.4 cm. That places him squarely on the growth charts at 8%, 8%, and 10%, respectively. Not bad for a little guy who started the race five weeks behind everyone else. The way he’s eating and growing, we have no doubts he’s going to rocket up the charts in no time. Other than the poor guy getting several shots and not being a real happy camper about it (though we know Daddy’s a much bigger baby about shots than Nicholas is!), he’s doing just fine in the healthy baby department so I guess we’re doing something right! We’ve gotten clearance to try to wean him off the Enfamil Nutramagen which is fortunate because that stuff is mondo-expensive. Not that the little guy isn’t worth it, but it’d be nice to be able to get those Balrog-sized tubs of normal formula at the warehouse club du jour!
Nicholas continued his trend of being a good guy at the theatre and actually stayed awake for most of it until the first intermission. This was a bit of a surprise because the afteraffects of shots aren’t exactly fun and you don’t know if you’re going to get pleasant Nicholas or crabby Nicholas. Fortunately, the former ruled and he slept the rest of the way.
RANT MODE ON!
All-in-all, not a bad day considering that today was the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks against our country. Earlier at work, Maha and I had a conversation about how one goes about letting their little ones find out that the world is a rather dangerous place and that people will do heinous and insane things to prove that they can.
Maha is a neat lady, always the pleasant outlook on things and she’s got a very precocious six-year old son, Soorya. When the WTC was attacked, it had to be a heck of a challenge trying to figure out how to tell a precocious four-year old what had just occurred…that an already dangerous world had gotten that much more dangerous and now it’s come to her new home. You see, she and her family are originally from India and I’m sure she’s seen enough of the work of Pakistani insurgents, Kashmiri separatists, and the Tamil Tigers when she was over there.
You can’t just drop that sort of a bombshell on your son lest you have the poor kid frightened of his own shadow everytime someone says BOO! At the same time, being economical with the truth just has to gnaw at you (unless you’re comfortable with lying which would be very unfortunate!). Kids are naturally curious creatures and they really want to know the WHY and the TRUTH of things and I really love them for it. It’s very refreshing!
They’re also remarkably good at detecting when a parent or a teacher is trying to feed them a line of bull…the story just feels wrong to them. Unfortunately, the instinct to seek out knowledge and truth is often feared by parents and teachers when it should be utterly embraced and celebrated. The child can’t help but be what they are…an inquisitive, thoughtful, caring and by nature HONEST creature. . They deserve no less in return…but there are things like this where you have to look at the greater good and make a choice.
The truth of it is that we live in a dangerous world. This isn’t something that occurred overnight…it’s been a dangerous place pretty much from the get-go since Oog hit Ugg over the head with a stone club. We as a species have gotten much better and much more efficient at doing nasty things to one another, often for the silliest of reasons. There are people in this world who despise America and Americans because we have it pretty easy over here and they are jealous of our country’s place in the world and the freedoms we enjoy that we fought long and hard to obtain and defend.
There is a time and a place for that truth. Childhood is and should be a time of wonder and of joy and the fascination of learning about the world they share with the rest of humanity. There will be time enough for a child to learn of the less pleasant aspects of life on Earth and hopefully by then (if we’ve done our job right), we’ve prepared them to deal with the curve balls we’re occasionally thrown and knock them out of the ballpark! But you’ll never get to that point if you’re frightening the heck out of them by telling them of all of the bad things that can happen. Pretty soon, that’s all they’ll end up concentrating upon and miss the bigger picture and be that much less able to survive in this dangerous world.
And so, I rather like the way she approached this real googly at the time…by casting the flying of the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as an accident rather than a deliberate and cowardly act. An accident a child can understand…murdering innocents on a grand scale is something that I hope no child ever has to understand. Now that he’s a bit older, he’s starting to get more and more of the background in ways that Soorya can understand and handle.
Kids are so resilient and wise at times, sometimes more than their parents. They have a refreshing and honest view of our world and the people who share the world with us. They’re certainly more accepting of other people in this world than adults tend to be. And I think in their way, they know more than they might let on to the rest of us.
There are singular events that have really stayed with me through the years, ones that I can remember exactly what it was like when it was going down (i.e. the what were you doing when President Kennedy was shot? syndrome).
- When I was four years old, watching President Nixon on TV resigning the presidency in disgrace. Not that I knew the exact reasons why at the time (Watergate would later fascinate me!) but I knew he was somehow important and this was my first political memory!
- The taking of hostages at the American embassy in Teheran in 1979 and their subsequent freedom in 1980.
- The assassination attempt on President Reagan by John Hinckley (to impress Jodie Foster, no less) in 1981.
- The bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.
- The shuttle Challenger exploding a few months before my 16th birthday in 1986. I can still remember the shock at the school as we gathered round the TVs and watched that awful replay over and over.
There have been many more examples since…
- The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
- The fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism soon after (what a joyous day that was for freedom for the oppressed people of Eastern Europe and Russia!). We’d soon have the nastiness in Bosnia and Kosovo…
- The first Gulf War when the first President Bush liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (too bad we didn’t finish the job, we might have avoided Gulf War II).
- Continual bombings and hatred in Israel and Palestine which show no sign of abating.
And of course…September 11th, 2001.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that day. I don’t particularly want to as it would be a disservice to those whose lives were taken. When our company went over to Bailey’s to watch the news coverage of the event and I saw the towers collapse (previously, we’d been reading the news on the Internet and hadn’t seen video yet), I knew we were at war and that the rules of the world had completely changed. Our world had gotten more dangerous by an order of magnitude.
There was the anger at those who could do such an infamous act supposedly in the name of God/Allah thinking they will punch their ticket to Paradise. I’ve got some bad news for you terrorists…any imam will tell you that the Koran specifically proscribes killing those not of the faith, such acts are hateful to the eyes of Allah and the eternal punishment isn’t pleasant at all.
There was the sorrow at the terrible price the families of the victims of the attacks have paid. These people had their loved ones stolen from them by a bunch of cowards wanting to make a political statement.
There was the pride in the days afterward watching the people of New York and Washington and the families of the heroes on Flight 93 pick up the pieces, close ranks, and move forward.
And for a time, our bitterly divided country (as evidenced by the presidential election of 2000) came together and spoke with one voice that we would find those responsible and they would be brought to justice for the acts against humanity they have committed. Since then, we’ve had two wars to do just that…history will judge the ultimate results of those wars but no one will question that our country and her brave men and women in uniform have met and joined the battle that was offered and the world has gotten to be a much tougher place for these criminals to do their dastardly deeds.
And we will prevail! It may well take us years but eventually we will carry the day and hopefully the day the world wakes up from the madness and makes terrorist acts obsolete will come swiftly. That goes for the idiot leaders in Israel and Palestine, the fools in Northern Ireland, that madman in charge of North Korea, and anyone else who thinks that terrorism is the right way to effect political change.
RANT MODE OFF!
But it was a very sobering thought wondering how I’d handle telling Nicholas were he of an age to understand what had occurred. There are times that I’m very thankful that right now his world and his attention span are pretty much this feeding to next feeding. There will be time enough for dealing with the next attack or bit of nastiness when it comes.
It is my hope that he will find that the world is a wondrous if sometimes dangerous place and find his way to work toward that better future that we all dream of. That he will have the courage to face the dangers of this world rather than shy away from them and bring that better future to pass.
I hope that when the questions start coming at me in rapid-fire staccato, I’ll be able to do as well as Maha did two years ago!
And I hope Nicholas will understand that there are times that we have to hold back the whole truth for the time being for the greater good.