In the days following the terrorist attacks, children here struggled with the horror of TV images: planes crashing, buildings burning, bloody survivors running from falling concrete, empty gurneys swathed in white waiting for victims that would never be found.
Parents wonder how much to let their children see, how much to tell them, how much to share the fear. They wonder if it’s better to talk about fear or just to reassure them: Mommy’s not afraid. The bad guys can’t get us here.
My grandson had not seen those terrifying images on TV. He knew there had been some sort of calamity but didn’t understand what it meant. So he was doing okay until his 2nd-grade class had to perform a “lock-down drill,” which told him maybe the bad guys could get us here.
In 3rd grade, his friend had to watch people jumping out of the burning World Trade Center. After that, Devon said he didn’t want to go to soccer practice, that maybe he would quit the team. Then he got sick and didn’t want to go to school. He told his mother he wasn’t afraid, but everything he did said otherwise.
While we were nursing his cough, Devon said he wanted to watch cartoons. He ordinarily does a lot of channel surfing, so I was afraid he would see more disturbing scenes from New York. But for a week he never touched the remote, he knew those pictures were in there. It was Nickelodeon or nothing. So I kept all the newspapers and magazines in my room, emblazoned as they were with images he didn’t want to see, images that even made me cry.
And what of all this talk about war? How does a 7-year-old relate to that? At that age, war is Power Rangers. They worry only how it’s going to change their lives.
I was about Devon’s age when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Of course, there were no TV images, so we sat by the radio to hear President Roosevelt rally us to the cause of freedom. I wasn’t sure what it meant that we were going to “Crush the Axis.” And my parents had to be careful what they said around Ellen, my German nanny. I was told Daddy would not have to go to war because younger men, those without children, would go first. His unmarried brother was drafted.
What I remember most is that the war brought our far-flung family close. My Aunt Betty came to live with us and got a job at Hughes Aircraft, not as Rosie the Riveter, but as a comptometer operator. Then her daughter, Shirley, arrived on a rainy night with her 2-week-old baby. She had driven her old Plymouth coupe from Seattle after her husband had been shipped over to fly missions out of London. At some point I wondered if he was dropping bombs on Ellen’s mother in Hamburg. After the Japanese gardener disappeared, my grandfather started coming over twice a week to tend the lawn. Sometimes he brought Uncle Bill’s letters from somewhere in the South Pacific. I know now Grampa was afraid for him but he never said so.
We all had stuff to do (and stuff to do without) “for the war effort.” Even my mother went to the Red Cross and rolled bandages or something. And I planted my very own “Victory Garden” because the man who delivered fresh fruits and vegetables on our street had also disappeared.
We had ration books with stamps for everything from meat to gasoline. Dad put the Cadillac in the garage and bought a dinky little car called a Bantam. I know the seeds of vegetarianism were born in me when I saw a store advertising “horse meat for human consumption.”
Having seen no graphic war images, I remember only a twinge of fear when we heard the air raid sirens and had to put black drapes at the windows and turn out all the lights “so bomber pilots couldn’t see us.”
I’m glad there was no TV to show us the real war. We saw newsreels when we went to the movies, but they were just shots of ships and planes, soldiers marching, bands playing and flags waving. And slogans: “Bye Bye, Buy Bonds” and “A careless lip can sink a ship.” I had no idea what that meant.
And now our kids are hearing about terrorists and bombs and hijackers, and feeling a fear they don’t want to own. Devon carries around an old plastic sword left over from a Halloween costume. He hides the portable phone in his bed, rearranges his things, anything to feel a small measure of control. Helplessness (the very goal of terrorism) sparks angry outbursts. He always apologizes but still doesn’t want to go to school. I can’t even imagine what misinformation the kids exchange there.
So he stays close to his parents, who reassure him everything will be okay and shield him from the intolerant, self-righteous rhetoric of those who would shift the blame to us (our own fundamentalists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson). A 7-year-old should not share this guilt.
We can only listen when he’s able to talk, give him constructive things to do. And try to keep him from seeing those horrible pictures until he’s old enough to understand.