Anniversaries

I passed my blogaversary with no Internet access, which seems a little appropriate. I had a chance to reflect on how much I enjoy blogging and how much it has changed my life. Mark says I blog about the things that keep me up at night. And it's true I'm sleeping better. Blogging is good for the soul.

Another anniversary today. September 11th.

Yesterday the kids and I took a hike in one of our favorite forest preserves. As we were heading down the wide main path, Large and Medium started talking about 9-11. They had watched a Brain Pop about it. They have no memories, which is to be expected because they had just turned two and three. All my anxiety over warping them by having the TV on, showing the planes crash in over and over again was for nothing. They don't remember how distraught and depressed I became, how I put them in a morning out program at a nearby church. I told them how they witnessed it on TV and how concerned I was about it.

They asked what we did that day. We bought shoes. It's what we were planning to do. The shoe store was right along the train line in a neighboring town. It's not there anymore, but they had a horse carousel for the kids to ride and you could look out the windows to see the trains. The trains that day were full of folks coming home from work downtown. The city was evacuating, sure that another plan was heading for the Sears Tower. The people were jammed like sardines, the doors opened and they all piled off, dazed. It was 11 o'clock in the morning, a bright and beautiful day. Train after train came in as we tried on shoes. Light up or not? Ties or Velcro? Mundane decisions made impossible.

It amazed me to realize on our hike yesterday that my children are learning about 9-11 as history. In an unschooly way, they learned it on their own by clicking what interested them on Brain Pop. And, typical for the unschooly way, they remembered everything about that segment. It sparked them to ask questions because they knew they were alive but didn't remember it. I'm so relieved I climbed out of my depression that time and reversed my decision to put them in school!