Where Courage Comes From

Everyone over a certain age has a 9/11 story. Mine is that I was with my wife on a Holland-America Alaskan cruise. 

We were set to begin our third year of preschool with our daughter Josephine. This was the year that I would be approached by my mentors Chris David and Val Donato to consider becoming a teacher in the North Seattle College cooperative system. I don't need to go into details, but when the news of the terrorist attacks reached us, the ship stopped dead in the water, somewhere off the west coast of Canada, a metaphor for so many things.

Our daughter was staying with her grandmother who, wisely, kept the television turned off. My brilliant mother-in-law was inclined to anxiety, so it was probably a blessing for both of them. We returned to find a cheerful and blissfully ignorant four-year-old who had spent those first few days of aftermath, living a cozy, protected life, something of which those of us paying attention to the news had been robbed.

Hysteria is the word that comes to mind when I reflect back. But in those surreal times -- those impossible, mind-blowing, faith-stomping times -- hysteria was a perfectly valid response. I'm grateful that our daughter was spared it, as the rest of the world lurched about in fear.

A week or so later, we returned for the first day of our final year of preschool together as daughter and father. The parent community had discussed how we were going to approach current events. We weren't going to bring them up, but if they came up, and we expected they would, we had agreed that we would listen, only answer the specific questions that were asked as honestly as we could, and be prepared for emotional and behavioral responses. I had also learned that most of the parents felt their children had so far had very little exposure to the news. 

On that first day, I watched two boys fly "planes" (toy cars) into their block towers, over and over and over again.

The world gets through to our children and when it does they do what they need to do to make sense of it. 

Other than that, however, the events of 9/11 didn't play a significant part in our preschool classroom that year. We had all, more or less, "protected" our children from the dramatic images. In fact, looking back, I've come to understand that one of the things that convinced me to become a preschool teacher in my own right was this experience of it as a place where we could shut out the "noise" and focus on our little community of parents and children. It was a relief to escape the "real world" into the even more "real world".

A couple years earlier, we experienced an even more traumatic event. I had been walking along our school hallway, holding the hands of my daughter and another two-year-old girl when a significant earthquake hit. We had, as a community, "trained" for this. I knew that I was to usher children under tables, and stay away from windows. 

As we rushed into our classroom and under a table, Josephine was asking, "What's happening? What's happening?" When I told her it was an earthquake, my voice was soft and soothing, even as the walls around us shook. "I don't feel it!" she complained.

Other parents had done their jobs as well. I recall looking around the room to see adults calmly chatting with children, smiling, even laughing. Our teacher announced, "Good job, everybody! We're all safe!" And then we all spontaneously started applauding. 

It was only then that it dawned on us collectively that the ground was still shaking and we'd not even thought to protect ourselves. There was a dash for the floor as we attempted to crowd in with the kids. I remember Josephine saying, "This is cozy!"

After the shaking stopped, we followed our protocol, which was for the designated adult to check the hallway, then outdoors for hazards, before signaling the rest of us to assemble in the parking lot. We emerged from the building, every adult with children holding our hands, lustily singing our favorite circle time songs together. Across the lot was an office building. I stood so Josephine couldn't see that direction because the adults there were in a full-on, weeping and wailing panic. Hysteria, a perfectly valid response.

We, however, were singing, lining up, counting heads, making a kind of holiday of it all.

Why the difference? 

We had people who needed us, and we had something to do.

Caring for others, being responsible for fellow humans, is the ultimate source of all courage, especially when it emerges from community. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that community produces courage. We didn't experience hysteria, I think, because it wasn't called for: it wasn't a valid response and together we buoyed one another to a kind of human greatness. We were there to serve others who needed us, who were counting on us, and we did not, would not, let them down.

I often think that many of us spend our lives without experiencing ourselves as necessary to one another. We feel alone. We feel embattled and harassed. A fertile ground of hysteria. Those of us who work with children, who are parents, know the immense power that comes from selflessness, the confidence, the real, nurturing strength of a community caring for one another.

We protect them. We serve them. We, nor they, are alone. We come through for them because the alternative is unthinkable. Perhaps courage isn't the absence of fear at all, but what becomes possible when someone else is counting on us.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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