12...

Kevin is definitely our sensitive kid; when the earthquake hit Japan yesterday, we turned the TV off and worked at keeping him away from the news. We didn't want to close him off from what was happening, but we didn't want him to see it as it unfolded, and as it turns out, that was probably a good thing.

If we'd let him watch and he had seen footage of the tsunami as it rolled into Japan, and the live coverage of people and cars speeding down roads trying to save their own lives as that water rushed in, he would have been one wrecked kid today.

He can handle knowing about it; he can't handle seeing it, not as it happens

Still, this morning Alex was up earlier than Kevin and woke me up; he'd been watching the news, following events as they unfolded, curious about how Hawaii and the western U.S. was going to hold up to what was headed for them. In watching it all he realized that Kevin was going to go to school and likely they would watch some coverage in class, and thought we might want to prepare him for what he would see.

Horribly, I admit, my first thought was that this was a shitty start to his 12th birthday.

Alex woke him up early and while he was still trying to shake the sleep away, we tried to explain to him what had been happening all night, the enormity of the damage in Japan, the possibilities of what it also might mean for Hawaii and the west coast, and then let him decide if he wanted to see it at home before going to school.

He wanted to see it.

While we sat there watching video from yesterday and last night, Alex offered him explanations of how tsunamis function, why boats are safer at sea than docked, and some of the things that can happen when the water reaches land.

It was informative to me, as well.

Kevin watched with interest, but not agony, which was what we worried about. He asked questions, gave a few of his own observations, but he absorbed it better than I expected. When he left to catch the bus, we were satisfied that if he had to watch video of the quake and tsunami at school he wouldn't be too shaken by it.

That didn't keep us from worrying while he was in school.

He got home a little while ago, and they did discuss it at school but they weren't shown anything too graphic. And he said that what he chewed on the most all day long wasn't the people, though he does feel bad for them, but the animals. He wondered how many people had to run and leave their pets behind. He was bothered by the idea of so many stray cats and dogs being swept up. Even the lost livestock bothered him.

Still, he was all right, and what he took from it was that he wants us to be prepared for something awful. Where, he wanted to know, are the cat carriers? How fast can we get to them? If we had to grab and go, would we be able to get all the cats and the dog?

I didn't know. I wasn't going to tell him we could, because in a true emergency, we're grabbing the kids. If we can get the pets, we'll get them.

What he wants now is to have carriers in every closet, and near the front door. I don't know that we'll do that, because there are a hell of a lot of closets in this house, but we can make sure there are enough in the front closet, easy to get to. And we can place some in the closets we know the cats like to hide in.

This is how he turned 12, spending the day contemplating what to do in an emergency, and his thoughts were less with himself than they were with others.

He wants to go out to dinner for his birthday, but before we go he just wants to go outside and take Tank for a walk, then play a few video games with Alex and Rachel. Last year he was learning to snowboard; this year he just wants to hang.

Next year he turns 13, and I'm not sure either of us likes the idea of 3 teenagers in the house. Damn.