September 11, 2002

I've kept the television off so far today, but I spent a lot of time the past two evenings watching remembrances and documentaries of various sorts. I'll probably watch the 60 Minutes II interview with the President this evening, but I'm not sure I'll watch the 9/11 documentary that follows. I watched it the first time it was on, and it was incredible. It is probably the single best piece of television created ever. But I'm not sure I need to see it again now.

I had dinner last night with Vince and Liz and Avery. Here we are one year after that terrible attack and the best way of tracking the march of time since then is little Avery herself. Avery was still a few days away from joining our world on this day last year. Now you can't take your eyes off of her because she is getting ready to walk. I had the exciting feeling a few times last night that I was about to witness a child's first steps. She is so close.

I can't even imagine what it's like to actually be the parents in that situation. It's almost cliche to talk about how precious children are and how fascinating it is to watch them grow and learn especially during the first few years and especially when it is the first child. But it is amazing. And it is fascinating. And it is wonderous. Better still is that a child's development makes for a far better timeline than a history of the war or a look at the clean-up of the towers or anything else that I have seen or heard of in the media that traces what has happened over the past 365 days.

I have a much better understanding now of the fascination that the media and the public has with the 100+ children who were born after losing a parent in the attack. I see now the sense of hope that those children represent. They, like Avery, will never know a world where it was once inconceivable that the United States could be attacked on our own soil. They will be raised by parents who have a different set of fears and hopes and dreams for their children than their grandparents did for their parents.

Everything is a little bit different now. But there are lots of young kids out there for whom we fight. I feel here like I might as well just link to Whitney Houston's I Believe the Children Are the Future. The post seems kind of sappy and strange to me. But I have realized that I'm at that point where suddenly lots of people my age that I know are having kids. Suddenly, everywhere I go friends and friends of friends have little babies. And I suddenly find myself looking at things a whole lot differently as I watch them watching their babies grow up.

It's a terrible thing that these little ones may never know the same kind of peace and tranquility that we once took almost for granted. But it's a wonderful thing to watch them grow up and to measure time in babbling and first steps and first words and first mountains climbed and first days of school and first bike rides. I along with my friends and our parents and our grandparents grew up in an America that was safe and beautiful, strong and prosperous, hard-working and hopeful. There is no reason that the attack of September 11, 2001, should change that for our children. In fact, we must ensure that it doesn't.

Jonathan 9/11/2002 03:11:00 PM