A Moment of Silence

Boots has a cold. This is a tad unusual because he is hardly ever sick. And this boy follows the old saying of "Feed a cold", he is never more hungry than when he is sick, and it seems to work because he gets over colds pretty quickly.

So this morning when he was sitting quietly in front of the coffee table with his little Star Wars men sitting in a long line before him with his eyes closed, I thought nothing of it. I walked past him picking up a few things and said, What ch'a doing buddy? He looked at me and put a finger to his little lips and very quietly shushed me, he put his head back down and closed his eyes again.

At this point I am very curious, but I do as I am told and wait quietly until he picked his head up again, a moment later, and again I asked, "Boots, what are you doing?". He turned to me a smiled and said, I was having a moment of silence." Shocked, I asked him if he knew what that was, he quickly answered yes, it's to member' people momma. Again, I was shocked, and said what made you think of that? He said the tv in our room had a moment of silence. I nodded my head and let him go about his buiness and I quickly made my way to our room, trying to figure out what he meant. As I walked in I heard peoples names being read, and realized a little too late what today was, the fifth anniversary of 9-11. I had absentmindedly left the tv on as I watched the weather this morning and it had gone on to the live coverage of the anniversary in New York. So the light came on, now I knew where he had heard it. But it still amazed me that he stopped to listen and understood what he was seeing.

He knows nothing of the destruction of this day, he is only three. He didn't watch for days the coverage and feel the safety draining from our lives. The events of that day were catastrophic for all americans, but there was something slightly deeper for those of us who are New Yorkers.

We were careful not have Little P see the news then, she was almost three then. But as fate would have it, she walked in to the living room and one of us was not quick enough with the remote, just in time to catch the first plane into the first tower. We were a mere three months away from her first plane ride, and we had spent a long time talking about planes and how they work and that they were so safe. We had many more talks after that, about safety and planes. I think it was harder for us to believe that than her.