We Gather Together

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Of all the tasks of parenthood, the first instinct is to keep your children safe. But there are no safety locks, no stair guards for this moment, and parents of six-year-olds and 26-year-olds find themselves confounded by their inability to do their most basic job. "I feel it has changed my relationship with my children," says George Egan, a Pittsburgh, Pa., investment banker, of the fallout from the attacks. He and his wife Annie have two sets of twins, ages 3 and 6. "When I go upstairs at night to check on them I now feel somehow less confident in my ability to keep them safe. I try hard to keep them out of harm's way. But now there is a new element to their reality, over which I have no control. "

No parent likes to see a child frightened; it's a wound both to your heart and your pride. Yet particularly in communities most directly affected by the attacks, children are explicit about their new fears. Researchers from Sesame Workshop surveyed children recruited in shopping centers last spring and again a few weeks after the attacks. The dominant concerns of last May--litter and guns--have been replaced by burning buildings, plane crashes and nuclear explosions and a fear of losing their parents. On the other hand, it was heartening to learn that the kids who earlier surveys showed were likely to count Britney Spears and the Rock as role models now worshipped fire fighters and police.

Older students find themselves approaching adulthood in a transfigured world, and no one has the road map. Some have started keeping two lists of potential colleges, says Suzanne Liberty, vice president for enrollment management at Clarkson University in tiny Potsdam, N.Y.: "One for if everything is O.K., and one only with schools within driving distance in case there's another attack." According to TIME's poll, two-thirds of Americans believe that the events of Sept. 11 will define a generation the way the Kennedy assassination did. UCLA now offers courses on "Navigating Between Blithesome Optimism and Cultural Despair" and "Implications of World Crises for Student Stress and Academic Achievement," in which students will write a journal and interview one another. But on most campuses, rattled students have to fend for themselves. Mental-health services are mobbed; at Syracuse University there's now a 19-day wait to see a counselor unless it's an emergency. At Spirit Rock, a Buddhist meditation center in Northern California, attendance at teen meditation classes is up 30% since Sept. 11. Sophie Clavier, a lecturer at San Francisco State University, says her class in international relations has become "a group-therapy session." The students, she says, normally nervous about speaking up, "have been openly insecure, asking the same questions I'm getting from my 11- and eight-year-old kids at home. They want to know if they'll be O.K. And they come to my office hours in tears."