To Marry a Man and To Raise a Son
A 9.11 Memory, Then and Now
A few years ago, I wrote up my 9.11 story. I wasn’t in New York or DC. My memory had seemed insignificant compared to the stories of those who were there or lost loved ones in the attack. But as time passed, as we had children, my memory grew. Not in clarity. It’s not that I remembered more, but that I understood what I remembered.
That day with my husband
By September 11, 2001 I had started volunteering for Orlando Sanchez for Mayor. My husband and I were just shy of a year married. In addition to the chore scorekeeping common in modern marriages, double law firm life had proven unworkable. He traveled and I had a pager for weekend duty. (I was a maritime attorney. Ships collide on the same schedule that babies arrive — whenever.) I got out of firm life. A friend was volunteer coordinating for Orlando and the team needed a scheduler, was I interested. Yes, I was.
I had been there a few weeks. That day Orlando’s schedule was easy in the morning and loaded in the afternoon. So I had a leisurely walk and arrived at HQ after nine. It was quiet. Political headquarters are never that quiet. I found everyone in the meeting room around a TV. The second plane had just hit.
I remember puzzling at the smoke and then asking. They answered. I distinctly remember thinking of spraining an ankle, you know, how you have about two beats knowing that this is going to hurt right before the pain floods in? I could re-stage the room from my memory of those two beats.
When the Pentagon got hit, I called my husband and asked him to leave his skyscraper office. The Houston Ship Channel is close to downtown. A solid hit there could produce extensive secondary damage. He refused. I naively called my father-in-law to ask him to pull rank on my husband. He answered me gently but was no less resolute than his son.
I was so frustrated with him. Didn’t he understand that I was scared? And in that moment, I finally realized what it was to marry a man — not just a male, but a man. He would stand in harm’s way, regardless of the hurt I might face to lose him. I caught just a glimpse of that solemn pride.
I came to rely on his resolve. It still terrified me, or at least I thought it did. Then we had a son, who we are raising to be that kind of man, although I did not begin to appreciate that until he was older.
An anniversary with my son
On September 11, 2010, we were in Hampshire, England, to attend an arbitration conference for my husband. We only had the older children with us. Our son was in Year 1 at his London school. Our eldest daughter had just turned four. Jim was downstairs doing the cocktail circuit. I was attending to the children’s dinner before the sitter arrived. Cool mom that I sometimes can be, I had allowed them room service pizza and a movie in bed. It was a hotel, with kiddy robes, and mom was letting them watch TV. They were happy.
While they watched and ate, I started to get lost in my laptop. On that anniversary, we seemed to be allowed to look at the images again. If readers of an age recall, and I’m sure most do, the day and the days after were full of the images. But by the first anniversary, media was trying to tamp down public anger, righteous or not. They stopped using the images, and that trend continued for years. The year before people got fed up with forced forgetfulness and so this time, the media allowed us to remember.
At some point my son got out of the bed and stood behind me. I didn’t think much of it. He was a late blooming reader, doing just enough sight words and sounding out that his teacher and I chose not to worry. She was an experienced teacher. She suspected that he was just one of those boys — usually it is a boy — who would read late. She had mentioned that if she was right, then his reading mastery might happen very quickly. I told her that is exactly what had happened with his verbal skills. At 18 months he had just the number of words that his pediatrician didn’t worry, but told me to watch. By 22 months he started talking. By 25 months, he was into paragraphs and on his way to oration. None of this was on my mind that evening. School had started a few weeks prior, and while most of his friends were moving on to chapter books, he was still struggling with Ladybird readers. (Dick and Jane kind of books.)
As I read — maybe Foreign Policy or TIME, although back then it could’ve been Newsweek; the background was red but it wasn’t Instapundit — he was reading over my shoulder. I thought he was just waiting patiently to ask a question. After a few minutes of making him wait — working on his patience threshold, because that’s what moms do — I turned to him. He was ashen. He was shaking. I jumped up thinking he was sick. Then he asked, “What’s a t-err-o-rist? Where are those buildings that they knocked down today?” I’d been in the middle of the page. Without the introduction, he thought the attacks had just happened.
While I could reassure him this hadn’t just happened, I wasn’t prepared to answer his questions yet. I recall thinking first, “When did he learn to read?” and then, “Isn’t the sex talk supposed to come first?!” before I rallied. I had assumed I would have more time before we had to have “the talk” about terrorism. I’d naively thought that I’d be able to control when and how he learned some things. But once he could read, that control was gone, something I have re-learned with each of my children many times since.
Thoughts on today
My son is now almost 14, and he is turning into the kind of man his father is. He studies, plans, and then decides and acts — resolutely. One day it could cost me more than I could bear, but I try to push that out of my mind as much as I can. Still, I see things. It is not just my son, or his sisters, who while younger are showing some of the resolve tendencies. It is many of the kids from this generation. They are different. They have old ideas of duty.
This piece was adapted in part from articles I published at PJ Media 2–5 years ago.
