I understand clearly now the looks in my late parents eyes when the evening newscasts on television would roll snippets of film each December 7th.
It affected them so in ways that, until now, I didn't understand. Each year as that day of infamy would come around my folks would remark about it to one another. Of how long ago it had been and how it only seemed like yesterday.
Not that I wasn't conscious of the historical significance or sacrifice that played out on that famous footage taken during the attack on Pearl Harbor - my parents lived it - and my education on all things pertaining to World War II as described by them, and most especially by my father who served aboard the U.S.S. Lexington in the South Pacific, taught me more invaluable first-hand knowledge of heroism and horror than any school textbook could ever have.
But because I couldn't directly relate to something that had ended before I was born, I tested my parents endurance for endless questioning with an unceasing barrage of "Why?"
"Why did they start the war?" "Why did they attack us?" and "why did all those people have to die?" To which my mother and father replied with immeasurable patience time and again the stories that shaped their lives and the lives of countless millions during that great struggle.
It was also those very same questions posed to me by my children that I found myself attempting to answer on September the 11th.
This time, however, it was not death and destruction as replayed on black and white newsreels but an unspeakable evil that poured out in living color through every television set into every home in America, and they were there to witness it as it happened.
How could I answer the questions of our six-year-old about the scenes that were unraveling live before our eyes? Our oldest child who watched the happenings at school arrived home clearly shaken, and preferred the solitude of her room. In those first tence hours I knew as much as either one of them. And it fell to the crew on CNN to explain it to our entire family.
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