Before my first day of preschool, my life only consisted of a few places, my grandma’s house with the barn out back, my home with the long staircase to slide down, my dad’s office with unwelcoming and uncomfortable gray furniture, and the grocery store where I held my mom’s hand tightly as she grabbed cereal and cleaning supplies.
My whole world burst open on my first day of preschool. I leapt out of the doors of my mom’s dark maroon van that I tenderly nicknamed “lady” and into the doors of the building. Just past the brick walls of the tiny church by the cornfield was a new place to add to the list. There were so many new faces that were the same rosy red as mine, with an exception of a few teary cheeks that rested on the jeans of their parents for comfort.
A few hours later, I was greeted by a bouquet of flowers and balloons in the car.
“Is this my prize?” I asked with astonishment as I tugged on the curled ribbon of my shiny star shaped balloon. My parents proudly turned their heads around to ask about my day. I looked over to see my baby brother’s face in the car seat, his eyes blank of understanding. One day, I thought, he would get to experience the world like I just had.
The balloons rose high above me in my carseat. Eventually, I knew they would have to float slowly, gracefully,
down, down, down.
But I was not thinking about the inevitable end of my balloons. I was thinking about what a great day I had just had, and how my smile was never leaving my face. I was excited to see the girl with the pink bows in her hair, to feel the crayons between my short chubby fingers, and to sit in the same spot on the warm hued carpet and listen to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. I was giddy with the excitement of tomorrow.
My first day of preschool was September 11th, 2001. My parents would tell me later that they watched the events unfold on a TV in the checkout line of Kroger as a shocked worker absentmindedly swiped the barcode of my balloons and flowers across the scanner.
Everyone has their story of where they were on 9/11. For the rest of history, 9/11 will be remembered as the day that Al Qaeda terrorists organized an attack on innocent people in New York by hijacking four commercial flight planes.
At first, the crash was assumed to be an accident, a horrible unfortunate accident. The truth, unfortunately, was much more diabolical, evil, and calculated. The second crash happened at 9:03 AM into the south tower. It was then that it was clear that this was not a mistake. Shortly after, the third plane crashed into the pentagon and the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The south tower collapsed after about an hour of burning. The tower fell quickly, devastatingly,
down, down, down.
A few years later, after the scars were still new, red and puffy with aching, I was sitting cross-legged in the tall immature grass of my backyard with my neighbor, who is ironically also named Taylor. She was three years older, which, of course, meant she had infinitely more knowledge and maturity than I did. Taylor and I sat together under the still blazing late summer sun as we traced our freckles with our fingers.
“Tomorrow is 9/11, you know.” She said with pursed lips.
“Yeah, so?” I said, not knowing why she had said the date with so much hesitation. 9/11 was just the next day, a Monday. I think I might have had a quiz in math, and I was struggling to understand the complex concept of long division. Since Taylor had always been the storyteller, she then went into full detail on the events of a few years prior. The heart wrenching, horrifying, earth-shattering details.
My parents worked hard to maintain a world around me that was full of gold star shaped balloons, not towers falling because of the calculations of terrorists. I had not known that 9/11 had occurred until a few years later. I often question if I would have done the same to my child, if I would have kept this world secret from them. Is it better to have your heart broken by the world now or later? Is it better to always know the world is full of hate, to grow thick skin, and to be weary? Or is it better to be naive and sucker-punched by the brutal news? Maybe I will not truly be able to understand how to answer this question until I’m a parent myself. I will decide then how to raise a child in a world that is sometimes something to be feared.
I wish our world was only full of star shaped balloons and the excitement of tomorrow and that the hardest concept one must process is long division. but no matter how optimistic one is, one must realize our world will never be that way, which can be a hard pill to swallow,
down, down, down.