Today is a tough day for many of us.  I worked in lower Manhattan for years.  On 9/11/2001, I was fortunate to have been at our advertising agency in midtown when the planes hit the World Trade Center.  Many of my colleagues were in the office on the 47th floor of the World Financial Center and watched the whole tragedy unfold.  Thankfully, everyone in our group survived (although our company lost a few employees who did work in a travel office in the WTC).

I’ve struggled whether to tell Benjamin about the events of 9/11.  He’s not quite six (actually, 5 and 3/4 today) and I don’t think he’s ready to learn that the world can be an evil place.  I have told him about the Twin Towers.  One of our favorite books is called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.  It is the true story of Phillipe Petit, a young French aerialist and street performer who dared to walk a tightrope between the towers (which stood one thousand three hundred and forty feet high) on August 7, 1974.  It’s a beautiful book and story, written and illustrated for children by Mordicai Gerstein (it was a 2004 Caldecott Winner). 

At the end of the book, it says “Now the towers are gone.  But in memory, as if imprinted on the sky, the towers are still there.  And part of that memory is the joyful morning, August 7, 1974, when Phillipe Petit walked between them in the air.”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am by Stefanie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.