How do you tell a seven-year-old about 9/11?

I was reading an essay about the passengers of flight 93. Hunter was on the other side of the room, rocking his chair back and forth. I snapped at him, telling him he could break it, then paused, and apologized. He asked why I was apologizing; I said I didn't have a lot of patience today, and I was sorry.

He asked me why I didn't have a lot of patience today.

I said because I was sad about something that happened 10 years ago. Hunter being Hunter, he came over and asked to know what had happened.

We had already discussed what hijacking was, explaining why we needed to go through security procedures at airports.

I told him about people flying two planes into big buildings and making them fall down, killing lots of people. I told him about another plane that had been hijacked and crashed in the Pentagon, a big building where people who made decisions about our military, our country's ability to fight and defend us worked.

He wanted to know why people would want to kill other people like that. I said I didn't know, exactly, but they were angry, and they thought that there were things about America that were wrong and they wanted to cripple us.

I am grateful that, for once, he didn't ask me to explain further.

I told him about the 4th plane, where the people on board found out about the other crashes and decided to fight back, keep the hijackers from killing anyone else with the plane, knowing even as they fought that they would be killed, themselves.

We talked about the firefighters, paramedics and police who ran into the Twin Towers, even as everyone else was running out. I told him about the firefighters who, in the race to evacuate the building, stopped to help a woman who was too exhausted to go any further, and how by carrying her with them, slowed their own descent such that they were above the levels of pancaked floors that would have crushed them if they'd been faster. I told him what it was like on that day, watching the news, not knowing how many people were dead; we expected the body count to be as high as 15 or 20 thousand people. Tragic as the over 3,000 deaths are, we forget the relief that the number was not exponentially higher.

All through telling him this, watching Hunter's face: the innocence, the grief, quivering hope and naked relief.

I told him of my friend, Tad, who had flown to NYC on September 10th and was scheduled to speak at the UN, yet found himself part of a Ground Zero bucket brigade. Curled up together, Hunter and I read the "Dog Heroes of 9/11" chapter of his newest Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker book about how 400 Search and Rescue dogs had helped find people buried in the rubble, then we eased out of the discussion by reading the rest of the book.


Oh, Hunter. There is so much beauty in the world, so much kindness, joy and love.

But there is also much of grief and sorrow, and that, too, is Life.