My most recent column appeared in this week's Boone County Journal as part of a 9/11 commemorative spread instead of the opinion section (there's no link to it on the Journal's website.) For those of you who don't subscribe to the paper, I've pasted the article below:
I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 giddy with anticipation. My 30th birthday would be exactly two weeks later and I was busy planning a party to end all parties. Then, the unspeakable happened. Four hijacked planes and thousands of tragic deaths later, plans to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival in this now terrifying world were immediately discarded. Suddenly a party that only minutes earlier was a rite of passage and a good excuse for acting like a fool seemed foolish and grossly inappropriate.
I left work not long after the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed knowing there was no way I could make sales calls while the chaos of the day’s events were still unfolding. I went home and turned on my TV. The images I saw that day are permanently etched into my memory. I am sure that is the case for you, too. One particular image is still so painful to recall that I hesitate to write about it. However, I believe I recall this image so vividly because I was meant to write about it.
An anonymous firefighter, one of the many true heroes of that horrific day, walked swiftly past a camera crew in lower Manhattan carrying something in his weary, ash-covered arms. While most eyes were trained on the debris and smoke blocking out the sun, my focus shifted to the bundle in the first-responder’s embrace. I became physically ill when I realized that it was the lifeless body of a very young child—a child that appeared to be almost exactly the same age as my own son Alex.
My child was at daycare that morning, happily oblivious to the tragedy befalling our country. I thought about going to pick him up early so that I could hold him and reassure myself that the world was not ending, but realizing how lucky he was to be so happily oblivious at that time I decided to let him enjoy his day with his friends.
Then I realized that mine was not the only birthday celebration the Naughton family had been planning. Alex would be turning one year old just a week after I turned 30—just three weeks after the terrorist attacks of that morning. Somehow, despite the darkness that had descended upon our nation that day, Bethany and I would have to pull ourselves together and make Alex’s big day the best of his young life. We would deal with raising a child in the Age of Terror later.
It occurred to me while watching my son stuff chocolate birthday cake into his cute, little ears at his party that as long as American families were willing and able to come together to make the next generation’s special moments the best they could be, the terrorists would never win.
How can parents help America win the War on Terror? By teaching our children that no matter how determined some evil people are to change the way we live, we must be more determined to live our lives the way we choose. We cannot let the actions of a few maniacs cause us to live in fear. We cannot allow a madman on the other side of the world to influence how we raise our children. We must carry on with our lives in honor of those who lost theirs that day and in the ten years since.
And we must not cancel our birthday parties, even during our darkest times. Life is a precious gift and a birthday party is a celebration of that life. I can attest that the expression of unbridled joy on a toddler’s face while he coats his entire head with chocolate frosting on his first birthday, just three weeks after the attacks of 9/11, is a glorious affirmation that America has already won the War on Terror.
