Ah – the end of the school week. (There's no school tomorrow for a professional day). I will take the girls for flu shots and some school shopping, and then they have a playdate with their friend Abigail.

Tonight we did projects – M colored in her little book for school, and A worked on her ballerina sticker book. A and I read one book together and M joined us for the second one.

I don't have to make lunches for tomorrow! Ya-hoo!!

I wrote this post today for a group blog that I contribute to, and thought I would repurpose it over here. I don't think there is any overlap between readers! (And only 20 people or so read this blog, I think).

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Last night, my daughter picked a previously unread book from the bookshelf and added it to the pile of pre-bedtime reading. We've inherited a lot of books from her older cousins, and I pick up lots of kids books at used book sales, so I am not sure where this book came from. But it turned out to be a very moving book. It's called The Man Who Walked Between The Towers, by Modicai Gerstein, and it's about Philippe Petit, the daredevil who walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974.

"Is this a true story?", my daughter asked me, when we looked at drawings of Petit lying – yes, lying – on the tightrope, a quarter mile up from the ground. I told her that yes, it is a true story, that Petit is still alive, and that there was even a movie made about him last year. The drawings are breathtaking and powerfully convey the danger that Petit was in, as well as the feeling of exhilaration he must have felt as he performed on that tightrope while America held its breath.

Soon after my daughter asked me if the story was true, I turned to the second to last page, which simply said, "Now the towers are gone."

I skipped that page. (Thankfully, she can't read yet.)

For how could I possibly explain 9/11 to a five year-old? I hesitated, looking into her face, wondering if I should go down that road. And then I thought of what would be going through her head as she tried to fall asleep that night. Planes? Flying into a building? On purpose? But why? And if planes flew into those buildings, could they fly into my house? Or my school? And what about the people on those planes? Why would anyone do anything so awful?

I confess that at times when I've gone a little while without thinking directly about 9/11, even I soemtimes stop and wonder, "Wait, did that really happen? Those towers fell – they're gone?" And then I mourn it all anew.

Amazon says that The Man Who Walked Between The Towers is appropriate for ages 4-8.  I don't know – unless you skip that pivotal page, and don't have kids who know New York well enough to know that those towers aren't there anymore, I am not sure that age range is right. Five still seems too young to me to be able to process something that sad, and that scary.