Divided We Stand--Between Grief and Keeping Up the Routine

The girls wore a red, white and blue ribbon stitched to the front of their soccer jerseys. On the field--after the ref conducted the customary inspection of shin guards, cleats and ponytails--two dozen 10-and 11-year-olds stopped wiggling long enough to observe a moment of silence, then the game between the Brat Pack and Hotshots was on.

On the sidelines, their parents talked about everything but the one thing that was on everyone’s mind. “We need more black felt for the team banner .... Who’s supposed to bring snacks today?”

We complained about the heat. Our daughters complained that the girls on the other team were pushing. And no one failed to notice what a beautiful day it was--how grand the mountains looked off in the distance; how blue the sky was overhead.

It was the most typical of Saturdays, in a world where everything seems to have changed.

And somehow that seemed the most fitting tribute we could pay last weekend to those whose lives were so inalterably changed that they could not salvage any routine.

In the aftermath of tragedy, we tend to survive by dividing our collective response into a kind of before-and-after. We stop, take stock, allow ourselves time to absorb the pain, to wallow in sorrow. Then we dust ourselves off and get back to normal.

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In the week just past, we mounted our flags, opened our wallets, reached out in mourning to one another. Then we purged our grief through a weekend of emotional rituals--prayer services, rallies, candlelight vigils. Now, we have been given permission to move on by everyone from our president to psychologists who talk of closure as if it were as simple as shutting a door on the pain.

In the big picture, the country began getting back to normal on Monday. The stock market reopened, college students settled anew into their dorms, talk shows replaced news programs on daytime television. But in the day-to-day doings of our lives, the process was more seamless, and much more complicated.

There is no tidy way to divide our recovery from this crisis into last week and this week. For us, normality had to co-exist with grief. Our routines never ceased to be. The demands of work and home and raising kids denied us that emotional luxury.

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There was a numbness, a weariness, that accompanied our comings and goings last week, and more than once, I caught myself snapping at my children for doing the things that children just naturally do. I was torn between relief and guilt when they turned our candlelight vigil into a party, marching down the street with other neighborhood kids. And, by Sunday, the return of Nickelodeon and MTV began to grate on my nerves.

Mindful of experts’ admonitions that children function best with routine--and simply because there was no good alternative--little changed in our children’s lives last week. Soccer practice wasn’t canceled, little ones gathered at birthday parties, homework came home in backpacks from school.

While our nation’s leaders were pondering war, fourth-graders were being drilled on multiplication tables. While thousands were stranded far from home, kids were being driven to the orthodontist, the movies, preschool.

Some was by design, this effort to preserve for our children a sense that life is still unfolding as it should be. But some was simply by necessity. Even in the face of this tragedy, there was still laundry to fold, dogs to feed, new hibiscus plants that needed watering.

So, I divide my soul, keep my mind in two places. I make dinner listening to the radio, stay up past midnight to read the newspaper, pack lunches each morning with one eye on CNN. I know life goes on, but I also know that I must know the answer to the first questions my children will ask this morning:

“Do we have soccer practice tonight?”

“Are we having a war yet?”

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Sandy Banks’ column runs on Tuesdays and Sundays . Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.