Savannah's Weblog

I’ll be interested to know at what stage I can tell Savannah about Sept. 11th, 2001. It’s not that I’m dying to tell her, but at some point she’ll hear about it and come asking me or Daddy.

How do you explain terrorism to a child? She’s still wrapping her mind around the random possibility of an earthquake, since we moved to California 2 years ago. She’ll have to be old enough to understand that a) countries commit acts of war, sometimes in the name of their god; b) she’ll have to understand that the chances of a terrorist attack on our home, school, church, library, ice cream parlor are almost nil, but then there’s c) and she’ll have to understand that it can happen to us or those we love, as much as it happened to the people at the Pentagon or in the twin towers. Then she’ll have to take that information and live her life anyway, trying not to fear this possibility.