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The Keller family -- from left, Tae, Nora, Sunhi and Jim -- at their Waipahu home. Nora Okja Keller is author of “Comfort Woman” and “Fox Girl.”
"Mom, were they drunk?" my 8-year-old asked last week. The Family
'America Ever After'
"I think everyone in this country has had to dig deep, to touch base with the bedrock of values that define us as individuals, as families, as citizens of the United States of America."
By Nora Okja Keller
Author
Resides in Waipahu with husband and two daughters
I assumed this was part of an ongoing discussion on the evils of alcohol. The day before, we had talked about how drinking kills brain cells, makes you sick, impairs judgment. About how some people might even black out, losing the memory of who they were and what they did.
[ WE REMEMBER ]
"Who?" I asked.
"The people who crashed the planes into the buildings," my daughter said, clarifying her question. "Were they drunk?"
One year after terrorists hijacked four planes -- slamming two into the twin towers, one into the Pentagon and one into a field in Pennsylvania -- my breath still hitches, my stomach still clenches. My eyes and throat still burn with tears at any reference to Sept. 11, 2001.
One year after 9/11, I am still trying to understand that one day's impact on the rest of my life. And on the lives of my children.
My daughter, raised to trust the good in people, still finds it difficult to fathom that someone -- on purpose -- would hurt, let alone kill, another. And that the victims of 9/11 number in the thousands is simply, horribly incomprehensible.
So I hesitate before I tell her, "No, those men knew what they were doing," knowing that this answer will further destroy some of the innocence and security in her life. My voice cracks and so does my heart.
It didn't seem possible that the United States could be attacked on its own soil. When I was my daughter's age, American citizens for the most part rarely looked beyond the country's borders. We enjoyed a type of naive self-indulgence born of stability, power and pride.
My children will never feel the same sense of national security that I took for granted during childhood -- and for most of my adulthood, right up until last year. Both of my girls sat next to me on Sept. 11, watching me watch the television all day and through the night. The youngest, barely out of infancy, couldn't understand my shock and grief at the images on the screen, but she understood tears, and touching them on my cheeks, she, too, cried.
"Are there mommies in there? And daddies?" my oldest daughter asked, pointing at the smoldering remains in the midst of the World Trade Center. "What about children?"
Afraid to nod, unable to voice even a "maybe," I gathered my children close, wrapping them in my arms not only to give comfort, but to receive it as well. Witnessing -- over and over again in instant replay -- the Pentagon on fire and the towers collapse in a funnel of smoke and ash, we were shocked into recognizing both the strength and fragility of our connections to one another.
I think everyone in this country has had to dig deep, to touch base with the bedrock of values that define us as individuals, as families, as citizens of the United States of America. We were forced to review our most cherished beliefs, re-prioritize our lives, reflect on what was most important to us and hold on tight.
In the day, the weeks, the months that followed -- hyper-aware of the vulnerability of life, waiting for the other shoe, the other bomb, to drop -- I vowed to love my family lavishly, to savor every moment shared. I promised to greet each day with gratitude and each person with reverence, knowing that New York City could just as easily be Honolulu and that the courage and the compassion exhibited by the rescue workers, the volunteers, the survivors of 9/11 exist in each one of us.
But everyday life demands normalcy. I'm back to rushing through the day: yelling at the kids to clean their rooms, to stop fighting, to hurry getting dressed for school; juggling errands and meetings; doing laundry and burning dinner; forgetting to call my parents on the weekend.
Still, I am occasionally reminded that the thin veneer of ordinary life shields greater passion and deeper pain. A comment on the radio, an article in the newspaper, one question from a child, and that veneer is ripped away like a scab over a still-fresh wound.
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‘America Ever After’
By Tae Keller
I love to go to the library
walk through stacks
and rows
of books,
picking whatever I like;
the books pull me in.
I can go on any adventure.
I can sit and read
all day,
worming through them,
reading out the whole shelf.
I am at home
and somewhere else
at the same time.One morning,
I saw spinning
planes thud
into tragedy, crumbling
around the whole of America;
everybody listened,
hushed.
We sipped up the sadness.
Hurt.I know I am safe
in my house
with people I love.
I hear the rushing water
of the sighing waterfall.
Mom clicks away on her computer.
I can see my little sister sit
silently,
waiting for Dad.
I grab my book
so I can disappear
into a world
of happily ever after.I see ash
and broken brick.
I am worried.
There are people
under there, too.
My heart drops.
I would not want to be there.
I do not want a war.
I think about other kids
my age
in different countries.
They must be scared, too.
The war might come to them.I am lucky to live
in America.
