It's hard to know what kind of world it is that welcomed my baby girl almost one year ago today. When you birth a child, you birth with it high hopes for life and joy and passion and change. You birth with it hopes for eternal innocence, even while you know that true innocence doesn't exist for even a day.
For a while my due date was September 11. At the time, I insisted that it would have been okay with me. It would have been thumbing my nose at terrorists who tried to claim that day as theirs. It would have been proof that life really does go on, even on the most terrible day in so many of our memories. God chose to give my love another birthday, and now September 15 is the day that life and joy and passion and change was born. So we'll celebrate on Friday. Today we celebrate something different.
I'm grateful to have a one year old on the fifth anniversary of September 11. I'm grateful that I don't have to try to summarize September 11, 2001, and the events of that horrible day and year for this child whom I so desperately crave one more brief moment of innocence. I'm grateful that I can hug this squirming bundle and steal a kiss through my tears and know that there is hope, even in the midst of grief that still feels raw. And not just for that day but for that year. That year when the world felt like it couldn't go on turning for the sheer weight of it. That year when every phone call seemed to bring with it more bad news. That year when every beat of my heart longed for Home.
Praise God for good friends. For Family. For the hints of Home that they are. We wouldn't have lived without them. And praise God for wee babies that we can look at and love and cherish now five years later.
Which brings me to today. A day when I carried a heavy heart around in addition to my already heavy diaper bag and purse and an increasingly heavy almost one year old. I think, though, that when I looked in to her eyes this morning, I caught a glimpse of innocence. So I guess I owe it to her to do my grieving and show her how to do the same. I guess I owe it to her to carry that heavy heart and show her how Family lessens the burden. I guess I owe it to her to say "I love you" when I mean I'm sorry and show her that the sorrys don't matter because it's love that keeps us there. I guess I owe it to her to claim the beauty of today and celebrate her innocence.
I'll have a six year old on the tenth anniversary, and maybe that will be the time to begin to open the door. But on the fifteenth anniversary, she'll be eleven. And then sixteen when we celebrate again. And that's the year that we'll open the time capsule. Pretty close to fifteen years from today. Maybe that will be the time. Maybe she'll grasp it all a bit more then. Maybe by then the wars will be over and the horrors will stay on TV instead of creeping in our doors. Maybe by then we'll be Home. But if we aren't, I hope I can figure out how to tell her everything.
As Bono sang in remembering five years ago today while at the Superbowl the next winter, "It's a beautiful day." It is. And it was. That's what I remember the most clearly about that day. Just how gorgeous the bright blue sky was. It was a beautiful day, even though it didn't look so much like it. Sometimes you have to look a bit below the surface to see the true beauty. So if you look, you can see it. And maybe, somehow, we can keep just a bit of that innocence.
