As the Boston Marathon week of questions and grief winds down, the face of the youngest bomber is everywhere. His classmates have been interviewed. They are surprised, taken aback and alarmed that their quiet classmate had slowly been transformed into a foot soldier.
Youthful zealotry, unchecked, is dangerous. Eighteen-year-old's make great soldiers because they have less fear and more idealism than they will again.
My children, not born into a dismal Chechen village, were not transplanted into a new country and culture. They have the benefits of parents, family and roots. They were not primarily raised by a disgruntled and poorly assimilated older sibling. Yet, they still grapple with what is good and bad and wrong and imperfect in this world. Because they are supposed to, they are young adults.
My children are thinking about their world, their choices. And by so doing, they are engaged in developmentally appropriate tasks. I provide them with endless missteps, things that I do that should be done better. I think of myself as a cautious person. I never snorted coke, I didn't like being drunk, I go for annual physicals and I don't intentionally eat butter. I also think of myself as socially conscious. I compost and recycle. My children, while thirty minutes away, Boston was on the verge of lock down, outed me as a rule breaker and a fascist.
Here's how my comeuppance went down:
"You will lose your arm should the airbag engage." I am gliding around town, one handed driving, listening to the incessant coverage of the marathon bombing. Town is moving in the aftermath of shock, when nothing really focuses but life picks up and keeps going. I am thinking bombs and terror, when Sadie tells me that if I had a wedding ring on, like many women wear, my forehead would be gouged when my arm snapped back, air bag, engaged.
"Mom, I didn't mean the wedding ring thing to be insulting..."
"One handed driving is more dangerous than two?" I make small talk. But all I can think about are the innocent lives taken, friends and families affected.
"Yes, you need parallel hands, at all times." Sadie stares at the road while I feel around with my free hand for my chap-stick. The radio lists hospitals where victims of the bombing are being treated.
"What, what are you looking for, you're like a kid!" Sadie's bag is packed, her wallet organized. She knows where her chap-stick is. She shakes her head in disapproval. We hear on the radio, that the hospitals were prepared for an act of terror. The doctor being interviewed had worked in Israel; he had seen bombing victims, many, many times.
Briefly, we stop squabbling and listen.
"Mom, do you know you're tailgating?" The blue car with the Romney sticker in front of us is going too slowly.
"I am not." The radio lists gruesome facts about lower extremity injuries, the shattering of flesh by projectiles.
"You are. You can't see underneath the car in front of you."
"That's the rule?" I don't like that rule, it also makes sense, as rules can. I'm rushing to Starbucks. I'm rushing away from the news on the radio. I listen for days on end.
Later, Gabe comes in from the car, he's been running errands and doing very helpful things for me. I am grateful. However, I forgot to clear my Starbucks evidence from the car. I'm watching the news. The sister of the boy from Dorchester, the one whose picture holding a sign about peace, is on the television, his sister has lost her legs. Both of them.
"Mom, you know that driving all that way to get tea is incredibly wasteful." Gabe hands me my Starbucks cup.
"I so enjoy their tea..." The little sister was an Irish step dancer. Her mother has a head injury. They were a family who went everywhere together. I see that, from the pictures. They are happy. A happy group. They were.
"Mom they don't practice fair trade, they suck." Gabe looks at me like I'm a stranger, with no moral compass. I drink tea sold by a money grubbing company. The little sister will dance again a manic newscaster predicts. She will?
The news droned on and on about the youngest bomber eluding the police, running over his brother, killing a police officer. And then, Boston was in lock down. Not since the Boston Strangler escaped had Boston been in lock down.
I mute the television and look at my children.
I beam. They are safe, for the day. I beam bigger and they ask, what? What's wrong? Gabe with his Starbucks's frown, Sadie with her organized bag, I am so proud of them. They are both capable of making good choices for themselves and the earth. They are smart, questioning, skeptical and critical, true to their developmental task. They are situating themselves to go forth and do better.
How does one young person become a terrorist and another work for Greenpeace?
By sharing their ideas with adults who listen and care? By being engaged in conversations where many ideas and different perspectives are explored? By learning that tolerance is next to godliness? Civics classes, literature classes, history classes -- these are places of rich discourse and intellectual growth. Adults are important because we can offer insight, and ideally, tolerance. We have lived longer and we are (hopefully) mellower for it. We have a handle on nuance and the lack of absolutes when it comes to ideas, concepts and politics. It takes a village, it takes more than one adult, it takes many, to nurture and care and listen and encourage a child into adulthood.
The youngest bomber is a young adult, an idealist and a ripe receptacle. He was also perfectly dangerous, because he had no counter-balance to his brother's ideas. He didn't have another adult who could point out that change takes time, that violence does not create change. What if he had talked to another adult, a professor a coach, he had many of both, people who cared for him, what if he had reached out to one of them, or they to him? Just one conversation could have changed everything. Everything would be different and the big brother and the little Irish step dancing sister, they'd be eating dinner together.