Brave New World

There is an assumption I live with, a cozy little thing I feed a steady diet of hardly glanced-at headlines and confidence-boosting thoughts, like the  fact that the last time an enemy invaded America dentures could give you splinters.  I live with this assumption because it makes it easier to hop on planes, enter public places, and occasionally draw controversial cartoons.  Okay, so I’ve never done that last one.  But I live with it because we’re number one!  Or, at least, that’s what we were the last time I checked.  Like I said, I only glance at the headlines.

But, lately, my assumption isn’t doing so well—that rosy expectation I’ve cultivated over the years that terrorism, though a problem, will never reach my family has started to crumble.  The pictures of grief and fear in Paris bring other pictures to my mind—pictures of towers burning, smoke billowing, and people fleeing as firemen rushed toward danger.  When the Charlie Hedbo staff left for work the other day, they, like the people who worked on the upper floors of the World Trade Center, were expecting it to be just another day.  But it wasn’t.  It was their last day.

This grim reality has forced me to set aside my sunny assumption, and realize that if this could happen to them, it could happen to me or someone I love.  So what is a mother to do?  My first impulse is to retreat.  If other people’s children are going to be terrorists, mine are going to be bored—just a trip to the general store each morning for a few essentials and then back inside the bomb shelter.  The world is just too dangerous.  But, ah, the world—despite its perils it’s a beautiful place, and that beauty is something I want my children to not only see, but be.  I want them to claim this planet, to experience its wonders and make it a better place.  I want them to stand against it becoming the playground of thugs--a thing they cannot accomplish if I’m keeping them safe behind reinforced concrete.  Sure, there are certain places it would be foolish for them to visit (we’re not booking a family trip to Afghanistan,) but a kosher deli in Paris—they should be able to go there.  And so they must advance into the world, not retreat from it, because if other people’s children are going to take an oath to protect and defend our way of life, then the least I can do is teach mine to be brave.