Questions unanswered....

It's been awhile since I've had the time to sit down and write something for this blog. I write all of the time. I write for magazines, newspapers, myself, my friends...but this blog has taken a back seat. That is until today as the 5 year anniversary of 9/11 and my son Hayden woke me up a little bit and nudged me back into the blogosphere.

I assume like everyone else on the planet I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on Tuesday, Sept. 11th, 2001. I was getting ready for work. Someone else was driving to work. Others were painting, some were drinking coffee and yet others were buildings houses or cleaning teeth or playing dolls with their daughter. We all have our story. I read an article today about the infants of 9/11 and how they are now old enough to ask about their daddy or mommy or whoever it is that they lost on that terrible day. What do you say? I suppose their parent has rehearsed the answers a million times and this is hard because there are really no good answers.

Our son Hayden posed some thought provoking questions to us this weekend that made me realize no matter how old you are, there are just some things that we don't have the answers for and probably never will. While driving late at night north from Tennessee to Ohio, we spotted a beautiful, full and luxurious orange moon lying low in the sky. It was so big that you felt like it might just roll out of the sky and hit the roof of the car. "Look Hayden, look at the moon...it's orange!" I said with great excitment. He kept replying, "Where? Where? I can't see it." Once we passed the long line of trees that were blocking his view, he was in awe at the beautiful sphere in the sky. As we continued driving, the moon slowing turned yellow and then white and at that point we had an aggravated three year old on our hands as he was mad that the orange moon was no longer visible. "Look Hayden, the moon is way up high in the sky now! and it's white," I said. He replied, "I don't want it to be white. I want it to be orange!" I then told him he'd need to take that up with God himself since I couldn't control the change of the moon's color.

It was then that he started asking questions for which I didn't have a prepared answer. He said, "Where is God?" "Well," I said, "he lives in the heavens Hayden. "Is he far, far away?" he replied. "Well, in some ways he is but even though you can't see him, he's always with you," I said, knowing we were headed into an area of conversation that was about to make me feel very dumb. "Why can't I see God," he asked innocently. "Well...."and the conversation continued for several minutes. I realized that no matter how strong my faith is and how solid my beliefs are, I have not rehearsed a meaningful answer that a three year old might understand. It's hard to do that with such a complex subject but we did the best we could.

I felt the same way this morning when we woke up to the numerous 9/11 tributes on television. We were sitting together on the couch and the relatives of the World Trade Center victims were reading their names one by one. You could see footage of the buildings prior to falling and then as they actually fell down to the ground. Then you could see the empty spaces in the ground as the area appears today. Hayden asked very maturely, "Where did the buildings go?" I said, "Well, buddy, they fell to the ground." He then asked, "where there people in there?" and I said, " Yeah, buddy...there were." "Were they on top?" he inquired. "Yes, and inside too," I said. Then, after nights of reading and learning Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty verses, and in a somewhat mature yet innocent way, he said, "Did they all fall to the ground and break their crown?" and I got tears in my eyes. What an interesting way for him to describe it but accurate at the same time. I said, "Yes, buddy....they broke their crown," and then he went on to play.

I was touched by the innocence of his inquiries yet each of them made my adult mind ponder deeply about how to better answer life's unanswerable questions. All I know is that I have a faith that is not easily wavered and a belief that people, in general, are good at heart. On this 5th Anniversary of 9/11, no matter how many media outlets tell us that the images are too graphic or the topic too solemn, we should always remember what happened that day. Perhaps, some generation down the road, our children and our children's children will know a world without violence or hate. Until then, perhaps we just continue to reach for the moon and know that God is on the other side of it and trying to help us answer our own unanswerable questions just like we were with Hayden.