My older son does not remember 9/11, which means my younger one doesn’t either.  C was seven at the time. D was five.  It was a startlingly beautiful day with the kind of blue September sky that makes you ache with joy. The schools here made the decision to not disclose the news and to keep the kids for the full day — although it was an ‘early release’ day. Parents would tell their kids the news.

I was meeting with a fellow gardener in her home — planning updates to the foundation beds at Bowen Elementary.  Her husband called and said he was coming home and to turn on the news.  So we did and we sat and we watched, dumbfounded, shocked, horrified. I’ll admit it was the first time I’d ever heard Osama bin Laden’s name, which my friend uttered as an early and correct attribution of blame.

I watched the towers come down in real time.

When the kids were in elementary school we generally did not watch the news for the usual reasons — so those endless loops of footage that many people watched in slack-jawed disbelief did not air in our house. We went camping in Western Mass. that weekend, imposing a further media blackout (though Ken and I sat in the minivan with the radio on a few times and drove into North Adams to get a newspaper).  So it is no wonder they don’t remember… but still, it shocks me a little.

But of course, not as much as the events themselves.

This week for social studies, D had to write about a historical event that happened in his lifetime. He has three giant ones to choose from:  September 11, President Obama’s election, and the financial meltdown of ’08. Maybe middle schoolers don’t realize how big those things were.

Sadly, they will. There will be long-lasting effects across so much of our society that it will be an unavoidable realization.