Doing it Right

There is an incomparable kind of joy you feel in raising a child right.

On September 11th my daughter was one and a half years old. She doesn’t have any memory of that, thank God, but the subject came up a few years later and she asked me about some of the commemorative activities at one of the anniversaries. I was laboring hard, trying to explain to a 3 or 4 year old how the terrorists crashed the planes into buildings and how people died and it was sad. She asked if we knew the people and I said no, but tried to explain that we cared about all living beings, and particularly humans and particularly Americans and that when they died it made us feel bad and it should make us feel bad.

My daughter pondered this and then replied “unless they’re from Michigan, right daddy?”

Later in life, my daughter might not give a lick about football, might live on the East Coast or in South America, but when someone says the word Michigan, she will have a visceral, negative reaction. A feeling of dislike will fill her and she might not even know why.

It will be beautiful.